Half in Ten’s 2012 report underscores growing inequality, effectiveness of work and income supports, and ability to cut poverty while tackling federal deficits.

Andrea Mitchell covers the new report released on Monday from the “Half-in-Ten” campaign, outlining where the U.S. is falling short in fixing its poverty problem and how it can take big steps toward a solution. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, D-Los Angeles, joins in the discussion.

As Congress looks to avoid the fiscal cliff, the Half in Ten campaign released a new report today that provides key insights into how America is faring on key indicators of cutting poverty and expanding opportunity for all.

There were nearly 50 million Americans living in poverty in 2011, under an alternative measure released by the Census Bureau Wednesday. That’s 16.1% of the nation, higher than the official poverty rate of 15%. The official rate, released in September, showed 46.6 million people living in poverty.

Congress is currently considering the fate of many critical programs for low-income Americans in the year-end fiscal showdown, widely known as the “fiscal cliff.” As lawmakers debate the future of these programs, the U.S. Census Bureau today released important new data on poverty and hardship that should inform Congress’s decisions about a balanced approach to deficit reduction and tax reform.

9to5, a Half in Ten partner coalition, headed to the Colorado 2019 Poverty Day Summit—an all-day conference that discusses effective and realistic methods of reducing poverty—on October 19. Participants rode buses to different areas of Denver to visit organizations with…

On the eve of the second presidential debate, Obama broke his silence. Romney declined to answer, according to an e-mail sent to the coalition in late September. But Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan devoted an entire speech to poverty yesterday in Cleveland. Unfortunately, anti-poverty advocates were not impressed. Katie Wright, research assistant with Half in Ten, is cited, saying ” Rep. Ryan stuck to conservative rhetoric that paints safety net programs as the problem rather than as the essential support for struggling families who fall on hard times.”

Paul Ryan addressed poverty today in a speech at Cleveland State University - and said the key to stopping poverty is a robust private sector that both employs people and serves the poor. It is not controversial that creating good jobs is essential to addressing poverty. However, as far as the safety net - Melissa Boteach, the Director of the Half in Ten Campaign, says private charities have always played a role, but “if the Romney/Ryan plan for nutrition assistance were to go into effect, every church in the United States would have to raise $50,000 a year for the next 10 years just to replace the food assistance that would be cut for families struggling to make it in this economy.”

The nation’s poverty rate is as high as it’s been in almost two decades. Last year, 1 in 6 Americans was poor — more than 46 million people, including 16 million children. But on the campaign trail, the issue of poverty has received surprisingly little attention.

According to a new report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), families will be spending more to heat their homes this winter. The EIA projects that families will need to spend, on average, “nearly 20 percent more on heating oil and 15 percent more on natural gas. Unfortunately, higher fuel costs could spell disaster for the nearly seven million Americans who receive help paying energy bills from the Low Income Housing Assistance Program (LIHEAP).