He should ask;
Who ARE 'the poor'? Define 'poor'.
After defining it, how long do these people STAY poor? It is usually a temporary condition. Young people in their first jobs, etc.
And the ASSUMPTION here is that poor people cannot help themselves but have to be personally attended to by President Bush.
And yes, his spending on 'the poor' is out of sight.
...snip...
The Census Bureau reports that 35.9 million persons "lived in poverty" in 2003. To understand poverty in America, it is important to look behind these numbers and examine the actual living conditions of the individuals the government deems to be poor. For most Americans, the word "poverty" suggests destitution--an inability to provide a family with nutritious food, clothing, and reasonable shelter. Yet only a small number of the millions of persons classified as "poor" by the Census Bureau fit that description. Although real material hardship certainly does occur, it is limited in scope and severity. Most of America's "poor" live in material conditions that would be judged as comfortable or well off just a few generations ago.
The following facts about persons defined as "poor" by the Census Bureau are taken from various government reports:
Although the poor are generally well nourished, some poor families do experience hunger--meaning a temporary discomfort due to food shortages. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in 2002, 13 percent of poor families and 2.6 percent of poor children experienced hunger at some point during the year.8 In most cases, their hunger was short term. Eighty-nine percent of the poor reported that their families had "enough" food to eat,9 while only 2 percent said they "often" did not have enough to eat.
Overall, the typical American defined as poor by the government has a car, air conditioning, a refrigerator, a stove, a clothes washer and dryer, and a microwave. He has two color televisions, cable or satellite TV reception, a VCR or DVD player, and a stereo. He is able to obtain medical care. His home is in good repair and is not overcrowded. By his own report, his family is not hungry and he had sufficient funds in the past year to meet his family's essential needs. Although this individual's life is not opulent, it is equally far from the popular images of dire poverty conveyed by the press, activists, and politicians.
Of course, the living conditions of the average poor American should not be taken as representing all the poor. There is actually a wide range in living conditions among the poor. For example, over a quarter of poor households have cell phones and telephone answering machines, but at the other extreme, approximately one-tenth have no phone at all. While the majority of poor households do not experience significant material problems, roughly a third do experience at least one problem such as overcrowding, temporary hunger, or difficulty obtaining medical care. However, even in households in which such problems do occur, the hardship is generally not severe by historic or international standards.
The best news is that remaining poverty can readily be reduced further, particularly among children. There are two main reasons that American children are poor: Their parents don't work much, and fathers are absent from the home. In good economic times or bad, the typical poor family with children is supported by only 800 hours of work each year: That amounts to 16 hours of work per week. If work in each family were raised to 2,000 hours per year--the equivalent of one adult working 40 hours per week throughout the year--nearly 75 percent of poor children would be lifted out of official poverty.
Father absence is another major cause of child poverty. Nearly two-thirds of poor children reside in single-parent homes. Each year, an additional 1.3 million children are born out of wedlock. If poor mothers married the fathers of their children, almost three-quarters would immediately be lifted out of poverty. If welfare could be turned around to really require work and to encourage marriage, remaining poverty would drop quickly.
The recent Census Bureau report substantially exaggerates the extent of poverty and economic inequality in the United States. To the extent that enduring poverty continues in our society, it is largely the result of personal behavior, particularly the lack of work and marriage. Policies that require welfare recipients to work or prepare for work as a condition of receiving aid and that encourage the formation of healthy marriages are the best vehicles for further reducing poverty.
Robert Rector is Senior Research Fellow in Domestic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
Is an American secretary "poor?" Because by many measures and American secretary in 2005 is better off than Queen Victoria (1819-1901) was in her own time. Victoria was of course fabulously wealthy, but she could not travel by jetliner or by automobile, she had no electricity, no radio, and no TV. And the health care available to her and her family (her husband predeceased her by twenty years, and she was basically depressed for the remainder of her life) was a joke compared to the MRIs, CAT scans, PET scans, surgery - never mind minimally invasive surgery and joint replacement - pharmacology, radiation treatment, etc, etc.After defining [poor], how long do these people STAY poor? It is usually a temporary condition. Young people in their first jobs, etc.It is not an accident that American "poor" are so well off; the Constitution sets the goal of "to preserve the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity." And by implication the greatest "blessing of liberty" of all is - for the "poor" and for all of us - the prospect that our descendants (rich or "poor") will take for granted a standard of living now enjoyed only by billionaires. Which is a big reason why American conservatism - that strange form of "conservatism" which conserves not the status quo but the freedom to choose our profession or even invent a new business or profession - commends itself not only to the rich (who are more likely to be Democrat than Republican; the Democrats get larger donations than the Republicans, who get donations from more people) but to the middle class and even to some of the more discerning among the "poor."
. . . an important and too little appreciated point. The income quintiles so beloved of the class warrior are quite deceptive. First because the lowest income "quintile" is loaded with young people just starting out (and not a few who count in the lowest quintile only because they didn't graduate college until June, and have only 6 months' earnings to show for the year) but also because the lowest "quintile" is actually not 20% of those reporting income but actually a smaller fraction than one fifth (Class warriors cook the books to inflate the ratio of the total earnings of the top "quintile" to that of the total earnings of the bottom "quintile").