The poor aren’t what we thought they are

I read with interest Katrina vanden Heuvel's article (“And now, the populist revolt,” Aug. 2) in which she blames the Tea Party for trying to reduce federal spending. Reduce federal spending? What a quaint idea! She quotes Robert Greenstein, who claims that these cuts will affect the poor, “exacting pain on the most vulnerable in our society ... ” Oh, cry me a river.

We need to re-examine our perception of the poor. The stereotype is that the poor live in abject poverty, are persistently hungry and seek shelter in cardboard refrigerator boxes. An article by Robert Rector in nationalreview.com on July 26 offers a strikingly different picture of the poor. The typical “poor family” as defined by the Census Bureau:

l Lives in an air-conditioned house or apartment (75 percent)

l Has cable or satellite television (66 percent)

l Has widescreen TV

(33 percent)

l Has a microwave

(92 percent)

l Has a larger living space than the average middle-class European

Further, a recent Department of Agriculture survey found that

99 percent of children did not skip a single meal in all of 2009 due to lack of money.

Sounds to me like the poor are not as bad off as we're led to believe. Help the poor? Yes. But give a free ride to the lazy? No.

Rich Zeis

Walker