Chris Fitzsimon
The latest poverty data released by the U.S. Census Bureau on Thursday was unfortunately not a surprise, showing significant increases in the number of people living in poverty across the country and in North Carolina in 2009.
The percentage of people living in poverty nationally rose to 14.3 percent, up from 13.2 percent in 2008. The increase in North Carolina was larger, rising to 16.9 percent from 13.9 percent in 2008. Almost 300,000 more North Carolinians joined the ranks of the poor in 2009.
The data puts actual numbers on the effect of the recession on families, but it also provides a reminder of how public investments can help ease the pain and why more help is needed.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports that unemployment insurance benefits kept 3.3 million more people out of poverty in 2009 – the benefits that were part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that the anti-public investment crowd vigorously opposed.
The poverty rate among seniors fell by more than 7 percent, a credit to Social Security, the program that the right-wingers keep desperately trying to dismantle.
Experts say that without Social Security, the number of seniors living in poverty would have grown by as much as 14 million in 2009.
The census will release more poverty figures later this year and they are likely to be lower than Thursday’s numbers because they will take into account the other benefits from the Recovery Act. The numbers released Thursday included only the expanded unemployment benefits in their calculations.
The numbers also ought to be a wakeup call to all the legislative candidates running around North Carolina vowing never to raise any new revenue and instead address the looming $3 billion budget shortfall with cuts alone.
More people living in poverty means more people needing help with vital services they can no longer afford, from health care to transportation to help taking care of a family member with a mental illness.
The $3 billion figure for the shortfall may be end up being low. It is likely to take more than that to keep state services at current levels while the number of people who need help increases. But given the rigid adherence to the no-new-tax mantra, the swelling ranks of the poor needing services is not likely to soften the rhetoric of the candidates on the right very much.
The new census data comes the same day that Families USA released a report showing that more than a million people in North Carolina will be eligible for tax cuts beginning in 2014 thanks to the health care reform law passed earlier this year.
More than a million, almost all in the middle class. That’s not something you hear very much amid all the hyperbole from the right about the health care law. It will actually provide a tax cut for more than a million people in North Carolina in three years.
That’s not likely to slow down the rants on the right either, because it’s not about the poor or the uninsured, it’s all about an ideology that doesn’t allow for investments that help people help themselves.
State and federal officials should take Thursday’s numbers about the poor as reminder of how deep the recession became and how many families are still suffering as a result.
They also ought to brush aside all the calls from the anti-everything crowd to do less to help and instead should redouble their efforts for meaningful public investments to further ease the suffering and help people rebuild their lives.
Chris Fitzsimon is executive director of N.C. Policy Watch.