Don't buy the spin.
Contrary to early press reports, the bad news in today's Census Report is not limited to the alarming rise in poverty, as tragic as that is.
It's also about the overall drop in worker earnings and employment-based health coverage:
[T]he real median earnings of both men and women who worked full-time, year-round declined between 2003 and 2004. The median earnings of men declined by 2.3 percent, from $41,761 to $40,798 and the median earnings of women declined by 1.0 percent, from $31,550 to $31,223. . . .
The percentage of people covered by employment-based health insurance decreased to 59.8 percent in 2004, from 60.4 percent in 2003.
Why are these numbers about working Americans important? Because stories that focus on poverty, as important as they are, can more easily be dismissed as stories about
other people.
But combine the rise in poverty with the overall drop in earnings and employment-based health coverage, and it becomes more clear how the Bush economy has broadly hurt working Americans.
The first paragraph of the Census Bureau's press release no doubt contributed to the poverty-focused nature of the early press reports, because it portrayed the income and health coverage numbers as being stable:
Real median household income remained unchanged between 2003 and 2004 at $44,389, according to a report released today by the U.S. Census Bureau. Meanwhile, the nation's official poverty rate rose from 12.5 percent in 2003 to 12.7 percent in 2004. The percentage of the nation's population without health insurance coverage remained stable, at 15.7 percent in 2004. The number of people with health insurance increased by 2.0 million to 245.3 million between 2003 and 2004, and the number without such coverage rose by 800,000 to 45.8 million.
The actual numbers in the Bureau's report paint a less favorable picture for the Administration on both household income and health coverage.
With respect to income, although the Bureau claims that this is the second year with no change, there was actually a slight drop in income both 2003 and 2004 ($64 and $93, respectively). Those declines follow larger declines in 2001 and 2002.
Overall, since Bush came to office, real household income has dropped $1,669.
And, as noted above, while income levels have started to flatten out, worker earnings continue to drop. As one economist put it:
Most of that growth in the economy over the last couple of years has gone to higher income people and has taken the form of capital income -- interest, rents, dividends.
As for the percentage of people without health coverage, while the Census report calls it "stable," it actually rose from 15.6 percent to 15.7 percent. And the only reason it didn't rise more is that losses in worker coverage were offset by the social safety net programs that Republicans want to weaken:
The percentage and number of people covered by government health insurance programs increased between 2003 and 2004, from 26.6 percent and 76.8 million to 27.2 percent and 79.1 million, driven by increases in the percentage and number of people covered by Medicaid, from 12.4 percent and 35.6 million to 12.9 percent and 37.5 million.
Overall, since Bush took office, the percentage of people without coverage has risen from 14.2 percent to 15.7 percent.
There is much more information in the reports to digest, but the big story seems clear:
Republican Economic Policies Are Failing Working Americans
With that in mind, it seems only more clear that the time has come for the Democrats to re-embrace their roots as the party for working people.