Commentary: “..the U.S. Census Bureau announced that the U.S. poverty rate reached 13.2 percent in 2008. Even this significant increase from the 12.5 percent rate in 2007 surely understates the share of Americans struggling to make ends meet today in September 2009. The Census poverty data are based on the incomes of individuals and families gathered over the past calendar year—in this case from January through December 2008. Although the U.S. economy was in a recession throughout 2008, monthly unemployment didn’t pass 6 percent until August. (For all of 2008, the unemployment rate was 5.8 percent.) The economic picture darkened rapidly: the U.S. unemployment rate started 2009 at 7.6 percent and had reached 9.7 percent by August. The annual unemployment rate for 2009 will be near 9 percent. In the last 50 years, only once—between 1974 and 1975, when the rate moved from 5.6 to 8.5 percent—has the United States experienced anything close to this year’s rapid rise. Then as now, rates this high bode ill for American families.”