Count on the U.S. Census Bureau to provide numbers suitable for just about anyone’s political purpose.
Take this week’s report on family finances.
There was good news for the Bush White House in the finding that the nation’s poverty rate had declined from 12.6 percent in 2005 to 12.3 percent last year. Also encouraging was the fact that the median household income was up slightly over the same period to $48,200.
But Sen. Edward Kennedy and his fellow Democrats chose to dwell on the negative aspects of the report, particularly the revelation that the number of Americans without health insurance had climbed from 44.8 million to 47 million.
According to Kennedy, who chairs the Senate Committe on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions:
Today’s report is an indictment of this Administration’s failure and inaction on health care. Costs are skyrocketing, yet the number of Americans who can’t count on having a family doctor continues to grow. The right way to begin to reverse this trend is by making quality health care available to children of working families. It’s baffling that the President would threaten to veto bipartisan legislation to cover the nation’s children, and I hope today’s report will cause him to reconsider that threat.
Or maybe they should just put everyone on the public payroll.
