Editorial: An accurate picture

Wednesday, Dec. 19, 2007 | 7:02 a.m.

As the income gap between the wealthiest and poorest Americans continues to widen, more families are asking social service agencies for help in obtaining food and shelter, two new reports show.

One report, released last week by the Congressional Budget Office, says that the total income in 2005 of the 3 million highest-paid Americans was about the same as the total income of the 166 million people who earn the least.

What's more, the income of the wealthiest 1.1 million households makes up 18 percent of all the income in the United States. It is, the report says, the largest share of total U.S. income that this group has attained since 1928 and 1929 - the years preceding the Great Depression.

Meanwhile another report, released Monday by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, says that in a survey of 23 major metropolitan areas, most reported that requests for emergency food and housing for homeless families increased last year over 2005, as did the number of people seeking assistance.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors represents 1,139 mayors of cities with 30,000 or more residents. No Nevada cities were among those included in the homeless survey.

These reports were generated independently by unrelated groups. However, when taken together, they paint an economic picture that is very different from the one on which President Bush focuses. In a speech before a Virginia Rotary Club on Tuesday, Bush acknowledged the mortgage crisis but said the economy's "underpinning is good" because "people are working; productivity is high."

But Bush - who has championed lavish tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans - ignores that income increases have been small for the middle class and almost unnoticeable for the poorest Americans, despite the fact that members of both groups are working more.

Jared Bernstein, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., told The New York Times the U.S. economy "is working, but not working for everyone."

The Bush administration is conveniently blind, too, when it comes to people who are homeless. Housing and Urban Development Department Secretary Alphonso Jackson told USA Today the chronically homeless population has declined 12 percent. What he failed to note, however, is that only 10 percent of all who are homeless are chronically so. Most families struggle to buy food or become homeless because they live paycheck to paycheck and are but one financial catastrophe away from slipping over the edge.

It is pitiful that these conditions can exist in the United States. It is even more tragic that the president refuses to acknowledge how many people truly are hurting in this country and that another round of tax cuts isn't going to lift them out of poverty or get health insurance for their children.