Grading PolitiFact *Liberal*-Style: Poor is More

Newt Gingrich, who with a blessing from even Bill Clinton, has now taken the lead in the Republican presidential polls as the contender who may be the last resort before Mitt Romney. He recently had this statement rated by PolitiFact (PF): Under President Barack Obama, "more Americans are in poverty ... than at any time since the Census Bureau began keeping records on it over 50 years ago."

It seems it’s pretty cut and dry, and that is writer Lou Jacobson’s approach:

Gingrich is right that the numbers go back more than half a century, to 1959, and that the absolute numbers of people in poverty in 2010 -- 46.1 million -- is at its highest since the statistic has been recorded.

However, Gingrich ignores population growth since 1959. Over that period, the U.S. population has increased by 73 percent. So today’s poverty rate -- that is, the percentage of people in poverty -- is 15.1 percent, compared to a high of 22.4 percent in 1959. Between 1959 and 1965, the poverty rate was higher every year than it is today.

That paints a somewhat different picture than what Gingrich suggested.

Still, the poverty rate in 2010 was higher than it’s been in every year for more than four decades save one -- 1983, when the rate was 15.2 percent -- and that’s largely in tune with Gingrich’s larger point.

PolitiFact ignores, however, how the Conservatives/Republicans define poverty: they don’t believe there’s as much as Democrats—or the “lame stream media”-- would like you to believe. And it’s more and more important these days for them to cast such an image to the public because it can (and will) be used to justify massive government spending cuts. It’s also a useful weapon against the Democrats in the battle of winning the “class warfare” that the Republicans proclaim the Democrats engage in.

In July, the conservative Heritage Foundation published a research report called “Air Conditioning, Cable TV, and an Xbox: What is Poverty in the United States Today?”

Yet if poverty means lacking nutritious food, adequate warm housing, and clothing for a family, relatively few of the more than 30 million people identified as being “in poverty” by the Census Bureau could be characterized as poor.[2] While material hardship definitely exists in the United States, it is restricted in scope and severity. The average poor person, as defined by the government, has a living standard far higher than the public imagines….

Regrettably, annual Census reports not only exaggerate current poverty, but also suggest that the number of poor persons[5] and their living conditions have remained virtually unchanged for four decades or more. In reality, the living conditions of poor Americans have shown significant improvement over time.

Here’s the first paragraph of a previous Heritage Foundation report from 2004:

If poverty means lacking nutritious food, adequate warm housing, and clothing for a family, relatively few of the 35 million people identified as being "in poverty" by the Census Bureau could be characterized as poor. While material hardship does exist in the United States, it is quite restricted in scope and severity.

I wonder if Newt gets $60K for his frequent
addresses of the Heritage Foundation.

Gingrich is a frequent policy speaker at the Heritage Foundation. If Gingrich knows that it has reported that “living conditions of poor Americans have shown significant improvement” it makes his statement about poverty less credible and more political. And Gingrich should know, as this concept about the “poor” has been around a while. Robert Rector has been extensively quoted for his “poverty” studies by all the conservative pundits/politicos.

PF based the definition on what most of us consider poor: without adequate housing, nutrition, transportation, medical care. But based on the Conservative/Newt Gingrich definition, it was not true. And the Republicans need (even more today) to keep that view wide in the public eye to be able to rationalize that the huge cuts in government spending won’t have consequences on anyone.

Jacobson concludes that Gingrich overstates the amount of blame Obama personally deserves for this statistical "economic fact". In that I called this definition of poverty a right-wing weapon at the start of this review, it  should be noted that recently according to conservative columnist Thomas Sowell, this is an “economic fact” being used as a “shield” by those on the left:

The whole future of the welfare state depends on how poverty is defined. "The poor" are the human shields behind whom advocates of ever-bigger spending for ever-bigger government advance toward their goal.

If poverty meant what most people think of as poverty -- people who are "ill-clad, ill-housed, and ill-nourished," in FDR's phrase -- there would not be nearly enough people in poverty today to justify the vastly expanded powers and runaway spending of the federal government.

PolitiFact never looked at this part of Gingrich’s argument. Gingrich used a vastly different definition of poverty when attacking Obama than the one his conservative philosophy is based on, and has been based on for a number of years. Because if it’s an “economic fact” that there is no “serious” proverty, and if living conditions have actually “improved over time” according to the studies of Gingrich’s compatriots, how can Obama be blamed? And how can Gingrich even say that more Americans are now in poverty than at any time before?

Gingrich’s disingenuousness was flagrantly cynical.  He has to be keenly aware that his party has made "poverty" a misleading word. It’s unfortunate that PolitiFact missed it.