As House Republicans use the cost of recovery from Gulf Coast storms as
an excuse to rip last-minute holes in the social safety net, it's not
too late to change priorities.

Fitful efforts to rebuild the Gulf Coast unfold against a backdrop
of looming economic disaster: rising unemployment and interest rates,
misplaced priorities and a recession that will hurt the weakest most.

It takes a hurricane to raise awareness that the
numbers of poor people are growing on George Bush's watch. Will that be
enough for the President to begin to level the playing field?

A better approach to measuring poverty.

The Bush budget cuts programs for the hungry.

In American Dream, his masterful new book about welfare reform, Jason DeParle brings together two groups of people who rarely seem to meet: welfare policy-makers and welfare recipients.

Not being "middle class," the poor have been invisible in this campaign.

Hidden in a Census Bureau report on poverty released in late August is a factoid with significant political and social consequences. Poverty has moved to the suburbs.

The main effect of bringing back the draft would be to further militarize the nation.

Advocates are demanding not just equal but decent schools for all children.