Democrats would like us to buy their Big Fat Lie that welfare, food stamps and unemployment benefits boost people out of poverty.
But that’s all it is … a Big Fat Lie.
Policy is set jointly by the House, the Senate and the President.
Whichever party dominates two or three of these three bodies dominates policy.
Each party has held dominance for a significant chunk of time in recent years, allowing their policies to have a real impact.
Thus we can easily see what effect real Republican vs. Democrat policies have had on real poverty rates.
Sources:
Poverty rates are calculated annually by the U.S. Census Bureau. Basis for my graph is from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States.
To see a graphical History of Political Party Controlin DC from 1953 to the present, go to http://tinyurl.com/kh6s6gf. Feel free to link or copy my graphics. The data I used came from Wikipedia where each session of Congress has its own page. You can start with the current Congress @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/113th_United_States_Congress and cycle back by clicking on the numbers at the bottom of the box with the Capitol building photo.
polination.blog 
Just give everyone a million dollars cash every year. It would be cheaper than the mess we are in now! But that would not buy votes for the stupid, uninformed dimocraps!
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I like this post, Chrissy. Thank you for the effort you put into documenting this. One can pick practically any economic indicator and see that things improved under the Republican majority Jan 1995 – Dec 2006, and worsened under the Democrat majority Jan 2007 – Dec 2013.
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If I could make just one suggestion for improvement, it would be to pluralize the word “Democrats” in the chart:
I.E., “Poverty INCREASES when DEMOCRATS are in control in D.C.”
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Oops. Just a typo. I can fix that. Thanks for spotting it.
You would not believe how hard it is for me to SEE typos on my graphics. I spend so much time writing and rewriting the text, formatting the images and fonts and colors … by the time I’m ready to publish, I’m not seeing the words any more.
Sometimes I will zoom in really close and LOOK at each word one by one, but mostly by the time I’ve finished, I’m too tired and bleary-eyed! LOL
This graphic was particularly difficult, because the only graph I could find of the poverty rates was formatted for another purpose, so I had to go in and erase and tweak it pixel by pixel.
I’ve shopped for a graph maker occasionally, but always end up deciding I have NO idea what I want anyway, so why waste the money. And in this case, it would’ve been as much or more trouble to make a graph from scratch because the stinking Census Bureau does not appear to provide historical date in any place I could find.
The rates are in their big annual reports, which are 100+ page pdf files. I loaded some … waiting waiting waiting … to get a single number. What a pain.
Okay, I’m done griping now. LOL
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Thanks for fixing the typo, and thanks again for all of the effort you put into getting the data and creating the graph to correlate the poverty rate with political party in control in D.C.
Your efforts are appreciated!
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Do you happen to have a copy of that graph here on WordPress, so that readers don’t have to log in to Facebook to see it?
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Doing what I can to spread the word…
https://twitter.com/ITTRP/status/425617996644487168
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