If we had a functional government, America would address three
“cliffs” posing far larger dangers to us than the fiscal one:
The child poverty cliff. Between 2007 and 2011, the percentage
of American school-age children living in poor households grew
from 17 to 21 percent. Last year, according to the Agriculture
Department, nearly 1 in 4 young children lived in a family that
had difficulty affording sufficient food at some point in the
year. Yet federal programs to help children and lower-income
families — food stamps, aid for poor school districts, Pell
grants, child health care, child nutrition, pre- and post-natal
care, and Medicaid — are being targeted by the Republican right.
Over 60 percent of the cuts in the GOP’s most recent budget came
out of these programs. Even if these programs are preserved,
they don’t go nearly far enough. But the Obama Administration
doesn’t talk about reducing poverty in America. It talks only
about preserving the middle class. Yet unless we focus on better
schools, better hea