As President Barack Obama began his second term in January, nearly 50 million Americans were living below the income line that defines poverty, according to the bureau. That's one out of every six Americans or 16 percent. When Mr. Obama took office in 2008 the number was 13.2 percent.Poverty is up because job creation, and thus employment, is dismal:
Enrollment in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, as the modern-day food-stamp benefit is known, has soared 70% since 2008 to a record 47.8 million as of December 2012. Congressional budget analysts think participation will rise again this year and dip only slightly in coming years.
At the end of 2008, at the depth of the Great Recession and as President Obama first took office, that number was below 40 million.
We have added 10 million people into poverty since Obama took office, most of whom fell into poverty after the stimulus and the technical recovery began. In comparison, we have only added 123,000 jobs over the same period ... which showed a seasonally-adjusted employment level in December 2008 of 143.369 million, compared to 143.392 million in February. The civilian participation rate in the workforce ... has dropped from 65.8 percent to 63.5 percent during that time, equaling August 2012 for the worst since September 1981.No president has presided over an economy this bad for this long since the Great Depression of the 1930s and as long as Mr. Obama and his party refuse to allow the development of our energy wealth, continue to impose burdensome taxes and regulations on businesses, and insist on raising employers' costs by compelling them to conform to the requirements of Obamacare, there's no reason to think it'll get any better.
There's a sad irony here for graduates and African-Americans, the two groups who suffer the most in an economy that offers few jobs. These two demographic groups were the most enthusiastic supporters of the man and the party whose policies are most responsible for their bleak employment prospects.