The 2001 figures released by the Census Bureau demonstrate that the economic policy of the Bush Administration has only succeeded in further benefiting the rich and powerful. A single year increase in the official poverty rate of at least 3.5% cannot be dismissed as insignificant, as the Bush Administration spokespeople allege it to be. The figures show that in 2001:

• 1.3 million more Americans fell below the scandalously low official poverty lines bringing the total to 32.9 million.
  
  
• 800,000 more Americans were classified as “severely poor” (with incomes less than one half the official poverty line), an increase of four per cent
  
  
• The top twenty percent received 50% of all of the household income generated in the Untied States while the bottom twenty percent received only a 3.5% share. The top five percent received 22.4% of the national income.
  
  
• Median income fell by 2.2%, or nearly $950, while the average income for the top 5% rose by over $1000 in 2001
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• Poverty increases were most dramatic in the suburbs, the South and among non-Hispanic whites. Poverty rates for minority groups, trumpeted as at “record lows,” remain at twice the rate for whites.

These statistics do not begin to measure the real economic pain in our communities that are threatened by job losses, service reductions as the result of budget cuts, and an extremely frayed safety net. The administration needs to take immediate steps to deal with our economy including:

• Passage of an improved version of the Senate Finance Committee approved TANF Re-Authorization Act, which would allow the pursuit of a college education to count as fulfilling the TANF work requirement. The bill would also fund childcare more generously than the administration’s House alternative.
  
  
• An immediate increase in the minimum wage of at least $1 an hour as well, as a schedule of increases to restore its purchasing power to at least 1968 levels. The minimum wage should also be indexed to inflation.
  
  
• Approval of national living wage legislation that has been introduced in Congress.
  
  
• An extension of unemployment benefits and reforms in the unemployment system to at least double the number of eligible unemployed.
  
  
• Repeal of the Bush tax cut, which both redistributes income from the working and middle class upwards to the rich, but which also would prevent any increases in government spending on beneficial social programs.
  
  
• Support a multilateral inspection regime in Iraq and end the jingoistic, unilateral war rhetoric that destabilizes financial markets and forces up oil and other commodity prices.

--Frank Llewellyn, National Director DSA