04-03-06,9:00am

Two new reports show how the Bush administration and its apologists twist the facts to tout a recovery that misses the average worker.

While America’s workers are building a bigger pie, workers are getting a smaller piece, according to a report by the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute (EPI).Two new reports show how the Bush administration and its apologists twist the facts to tout a recovery that misses the average worker.

While America’s workers are building a bigger pie, workers are getting a smaller piece, according to a report by the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute (EPI).

Productivity growth has been strong during the current recovery (averaging annual growth of 3.5 percent), but the fruits of this growth have disproportionately flowed to profits instead of wages and benefits. EPI economist Josh Bivens calculates corporate profits claimed the largest share of national income in 37 years in the fourth quarter of 2005. Workers’ share of corporate income fell 1.4 percent since the downturn in 2001, while corporate profits rose by 3.9 percent.

This strong productivity growth provides the potential to generate broad-based increases in American living standards, but, so far corporate profits have been the only clear winner,? Bivens said.

But you’d never know that Americans are losing their slice of the pie if you read U.S. Census Bureau figures. A report published jointly by EPI and the non-partisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, shows the new Census Bureau alternative poverty measures actually understate how many American families are poor.

The new measures discard a decade-old expert analysis developed by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) outlining the best methods for measuring poverty accurately. Bush’s Census Bureau also drops past Census Bureau practices?for example,? it drops child-care costs as part of families? work expenses?and changes factors indicating home ownership.?

Here’s the problem: The official poverty rate for 2004 using the current method was 12.7 percent. This new procedure, according to the report, will allow the Census Bureau to amend the 2004 official poverty rate to read 8.8 percent, a nearly one-third cut, without a single change in public policy to step up the fight against poverty. In 2004, the federal poverty threshold was $18,850 for a family of four.??

The reality, according to a recent AFL-CIO analysis, is that working families throughout the United States are increasingly are being squeezed?they are working longer today to pay for middle-class living than they had to 25 years ago:

Nationally, today’s families are facing a combination of stagnant incomes and staggering cost increases for health care, education, housing, transportation and, especially now, fuel. In 2005, the average two-earner family needed to work 31.5 weeks a year to pay for taxes and health care, housing, college and transportation costs, compared with 30.2 weeks in March 2001 and 28.7 weeks in March 1979. After paying for those basic needs, that average family had $951 less than families in 2000 and $1,702 less than families in 1980 to pay for other basic items as well as to save for retirement.

Between March 2001 and June 2005, housing costs increased by 13.3 percent nationally, gasoline and fuel costs increased by 43.7 percent and food costs increased by 10.6 percent.

Since President Bush took office, health insurance premiums have increased by more than 50 percent, winter heating costs have increased by 79 percent, a four-year college education at a public university has increased by 57 percent.