The following article by Rachel West and Katherine Gallagher Robbins was posted on the Center for American Progress website September 8, 2017:
Next week, the U.S. Census Bureau will release its annual estimates of income, poverty, and health insurance coverage for 2016. Experts expect that these data, which reflect the final year of Barack Obama’s presidency, will likely show that middle- and working-class families continued to make modest economic gains during 2016, with moderate reductions in poverty rates, increases in wages—particularly for low-wage workers—and health insurance coverage rates that remain historically high. The new data, which follow a year of historically strong improvements on all three measures during 2015, will demonstrate the critical importance of policy choices in improving economic security as well as underscore how much is at risk under President Donald Trump’s and congressional Republicans’ budgets.
As he has done in the past, President Trump may try to claim credit for progress that entirely preceded his presidency. But whether he does this or chooses to ignore the most important yearly benchmark of Americans’ economic well-being, one thing is clear: Under policies Trump has proposed—which he has largely failed to enact—struggling working families would have far fewer resources to make ends meet. Put simply, in the America President Trump wants, poverty would be much worse. Continue reading “Trump’s Budget Jeopardizes Gains Expected in New Census Data”