Key to Deficit Reduction Is Reducing Poverty

In 2011 the official poverty rate in the United States was 15 percent, statistically unchanged from 2010. This means that 46.2 million people—or nearly one in six Americans—lived below the official poverty line of $23,018 a year for a family of four.

Make no mistake—this lack of progress is not an accident. Widening income inequality over the past 40 years, the proliferation of low-wage work with poverty-level wages, and conservative obstructionism on creating jobs are stalling progress on advancing our goal of cutting poverty in half in 10 years.