9/24/2005 - MMFA Spreads Falsehood About Poverty Rates.
Posted in Unspecified
Media Matters for America has been recently repeating a certain lie about poverty during the Bush/Clinton administrations.
In several items, MMFA has repeated the following lie, in different forms:
"...the poverty rate declined every year of the Clinton presidency and has increased every year under the Bush presidency."
This is, of course, a false claim. As the historical poverty table from the U.S. Census website reveals, poverty increased in 1993, the first year Clinton took office. Poverty rose from 14.8% in 1992 to 15.1% in 1993.
Of course, some would argue that, this does not count on Clinton´s official tenure, and is technically still carryover from the Bush administration. Alright, fine. Then we must apply that same rule to George W. Bush, who took office in 2001. Poverty rose in 2001 from 11.3% to 11.7%. If we applied that rule to Clinton and then apply it to Bush, then Clinton is responsible for the jump in 2001. Either way, MMFA´s claim is patently false.
UPDATE-- Caught something in the item I linked to. It refers to the year 2000 as the "the last year of the Clinton administration." So apparently, using MMFA's standards, 2001 was the beginning of Bush and 1993 was Clinton. With these standards, Clinton should be responsible for the 1993 jump in poverty.
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