U.S. Poverty Data Raise New Questions About Cost of War

Nationwide, more than 36 million people, or nearly 13 percent of the total population, lived in poverty last year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau report released this week. Among those officially considered "poor," over one third are children, most of them non-white minorities such as African Americans, Latinos, and Asians.

Noting that currently the U.S. government spends about $720 million a day on the war in Iraq, Joyce Miller, a human rights activist associated with American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker organization, said that amount could buy school lunch for 1 million children.

Recent studies point out that over 23 million Americans seek emergency food each year. About 13 million American children worry where their next meal is coming from.

With that money, according to her, the government could also provide over 400,000 children with health care.

"Reducing poverty is not rocket science. We can go a long way by investing in education, health care, job training, and housing," she added.

In urging the Congress to adopt the human needs spending bills, the AFSC's Spivek said the nation should spend $720 million a day on ending poverty, not on war.

[Haider Rizvi, writing in OneWorld]