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Without help from the federal government, millions more people would have sunk below the poverty line in 2010, U.S. Census data shows.

Unemployment insurance helped keep 3.2 million Americans out of poverty in 2010, according to new statistics released Tuesday. Without this vital lifeline, which lasts up to 99 weeks, these jobless folks would have joined the roughly 46.2 million people now considered in poverty.

Other government assistance programs, such as food stamps, also provided much-needed support to the poor. But because the Census Bureau's official poverty statistics don't consider these income sources, they were not taken into account when determining whether a person fell below the line, which is $22,314 for a family of four.

However, the Census Bureau does calculate what impact this assistance would have had if it were measured. Food stamp benefits would have lifted 3.9 million people out of poverty had that aid been counted as income.

And 5.4 million people, including 3 million children, would not have been considered impoverished had the Earned Income Tax Credit been counted. The EITC is a refundable federal income tax credit for low- to moderate-income working Americans. Some 22 states also offer similar credits.

Federal health programs, including Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program, also helped hundreds of thousands of youngsters stay insured even though their parents lost employer-based coverage. Some 570,000 fewer children were uninsured in 2010 than in 2007, before the recession began.

The number of people receiving help from the federal government is hovering near all-time highs as the Great Recession unleashed wave upon wave of layoffs. And with unemployment remaining stubbornly elevated, many Americans have had a hard time getting back on their feet again.

Roughly one in six Americans are on government aid, with the largest two programs being Medicaid and food stamps.

But federal and state budget crunches are swiftly chipping away at these safety nets. At least six states cut back on the number of weeks that the jobless can collect state unemployment insurance. Some states have reduced the generosity of their Earned Income Tax Credit, while Michigan recently limited the amount of time the poor can collect cash welfare benefits.

Even greater threats loom on the federal level.

The deadline to apply for federal extended unemployment benefits expires at the start of 2012. President Obama is pushing Congress to once again extend the deadline to apply for these benefits, which more than 3.1 million people collect. But House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said Tuesday he'd only favor an extension if it were tied to job opportunities.

And it remains to be seen what type of cuts the national debt super committee will recommend. It is charged with proposing up to $1.5 billion in reduced spending, and some advocates for the poor feel the ax will fall heavily on safety net programs. The federal government provides a wide array of assistance to low-income folks, ranging from health insurance to food stamps to housing help to child care.

"What those changes are will have a very large impact on poverty in both the years and decades ahead," said Robert Greenstein, president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/14/news/economy/poverty_government_assist
ance/index.htm?hpt=hp_t2

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An act for the relief of sick and disabled seamen was written by the authors of the Constitution:

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§ 3. That it shall be the duty of the several collectors to make a quarterly return of the sums collected by them, respectively, by virtue of this act, to the secretary of the treasury ; and the president of the United States is hereby authorized, out of the same, to provide for the temporary relief and maintenance of sick, or disabled seamen, in the hospitals or other proper institutions now established in the several ports of the United States, or in ports where no such institutions exist, then in such other manner as he shall direct:Provided, that the moneys collected in any one district, shall be expended within the same.

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So out of the said tax, the federal government provided healthcare for the sick and disabled seamen. Sounds like socialized insurance. The money collected from EVERY sailor helped the sick and/or disabled seamen.

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§4. That if any surplus shall remain of the moneys to be collected by virtue of this act, after defraying the expense of such temporary relief and support, that the same, together with such private donations as may be made for that purpose, (which the president is hereby authorized to receive,) shall be invested in the stock of the United States, under the direction of the president; and when, in his opinion, a sufficient fund shall be accumulated, he is hereby authorized to purchase or receive cessions or donations of ground or buildings, in the name of the United States, and to cause buildings, when necessary, to be erected as hospitals for the accommodation of sick and disabled seamen.

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Also according to this act, the President had the authority to purchase land and build hospitals to care for the sick.

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§ 5. That the president of the United States be, and he is hereby, authorized to nominate and appoint, in such ports of the United States as he may think proper, one or more persons, to be called directors of the marine hospital of the United States, whose duty it shall be to direct the expenditure of the fund assigned for their respective ports, according to the third section of this act; to provide for the accommodation of sick and disabled seamen, under such general instructions as shall be given by the president of the United States for that purpose, and also, subject to the like general instructions, to direct and govern such hospitals, as the president may direct to be built in the respective ports.

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There you have it. One of our founding principles was to care for the sick through taxation of private industry. Now I am sure there will be those on the right proclaiming that not EVERYONE was covered under this law.

This may be true, but the trade and shipping industry was a critical part of our nation’s economy in 1798. If many sailors got sick or injured the Captain of the ship couldn’t make money, thus cripple our economy due to lack of trade.

The real point is, did our founders believe in a federal government mandate to insure the sailors. Yes!

Did the federal government collectively take care of the sick through taxation? Yes! http://www.politicususa.com/en/founders-single-payer Paine was one of the first and strongest proponents of a safety-net system and with it the first variations of welfare.

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It wasn't FDR who first seriously promoted the progressive income tax in the USA: it was Thomas Paine. It wasn't LBJ who invented anti-poverty programs by introducing Medicare, housing assistance, and food-stamp programs: Thomas Paine proposed versions of all of these. It wasn't Jack Kennedy who first talked seriously about international disarmament: it was Thomas Paine. And Teddy Roosevelt wasn't the first American to talk about the "living wage," or ways that corporate "maximum wage" wink-and-nod agreements could be broken up: it was Thomas Paine. Even Woodrow Wilson's inheritance tax, designed to prevent family empires from taking over our nation, was the idea of Thomas Paine, as was the suggestion for old-age pensions as part of a social safety net known today as Social Security.

Paine thought that the best way to build a strong democracy was to tax the wealthy to give the poor bootstraps by which they could pull themselves up. He proposed helping out young families with the expense of raising children (a forerunner to our income tax exemptions for children), a fund to provide housing and food for the poor (a forerunner to housing vouchers and food stamps), and a reliable and predictable pension for all workers in their old age (a forerunner to Social Security). He also suggested that all nations should reduce their armaments by 90 percent, to ensure world peace. Summarizing, Paine noted:

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"When it shall be said in any country in the world, my poor are happy; neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive; the rational world is my friend, because I am the friend of its happiness: when these things can be said, then may that country boast its constitution and its government."

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Paine was a powerful influence not only at a national level, but also on the states. He writes about how Thomas Paine helped promote an early draft of the Pennsylvania constitution, wherein "they provided for a one-house legislature, annual elections, voting an office-holding rights for all taxpaying men, and term limits. (The drafters even entertained setting limits to the accumulation of property!)"

Observing that Monarchy and aristocracy entail "excess and inequality of taxation" and threw the "great mass of the community ... into poverty and discontent," Paine added the question of class to the brief. "When, in countries that are called civilized, we see age going to the work-house and youth the gallows, something," Paine declared, "must be wrong in the system of government." And he bluntly asked, "Why is that scarcely any are executed but the poor?"

When Paine was attacked by British conservatives not as a liberal or a democrat, but as a staymaker (it was actually his father who helped make women's undergarments and dresses), the Aurora - one of the more prominent of the pro-Jefferson anti-Federalist newspapers of the day - published a commentary in December 1792 that said:

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It is well enough in England to run down the rights of man [speaking of Paine's book], because the author of those inimitable pamphlets was a staymaker; but in the United States all such proscriptions of certain classes of citizens, or occupations, should be avoided; for liberty will never be safe or durable in a republic till every citizen thinks it as much his duty to take care of the state, as to take care of his family, and until an indifference to any public question shall be considered a public offence.

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Paine's influence continued in America. He chronicles the rise of the "workingmen's movement" through the latter part of the 1700s and early 1800s, leading to the creation in the mid-1830s of the National Trades' Union. However, the Panic of 1837 devastated the economy and, with it, workers' capacities to organize. Still, the worker's ideals and aspirations did not die but persisted in the initiatives of a generation of democratic intellectuals who would continue to draw upon Paine's arguments. A group inspired in part by Paine, the Young Americans, were split in 1845 by debates over Manifest Destiny. The group's original Painite vision lived on, however, in the labors of the nation's greatest democratic writers, Melville and Whiteman. ...to both, Paine was democracy's first champion." Pertinent excerpts from http://blog.buzzflash.com/hartmann/10022 make my argument for me regarding what one of the Founding Fathers envisioned for our country.










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