Catherine Dodge and Mike Dorning discuss the new 2011 poverty data, which show that while poverty has remained stable, the gap between the rich and the poor has expanded to the widest it has been in more than 40 years. Melissa Boteach is quoted. saying that gains from economic growth have not reached working families struggling at the bottom.”

The U.S. Census Bureau today released new data on poverty in 2011. Just looking at these headline numbers, however, misses some of the most important things the data tells us about growing income inequality, the state of the middle-class and more.

Today, in response to new Census Bureau data for 2011 that reveal an unchanged rate of poverty and declining middle class incomes, Half in Ten’s leadership issued the following statements.

The Republican presidential campaign of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is knowingly misleading the American people about President Barack Obama “gutting welfare reform” in a series of TV ads that falsely say the president is eliminating the work requirement so that “they just hand you your check.” The lie earned the Romney attack ad a maximum Pinocchio status from all nonpartisan fact-checkers, yet Romney pollster Neil Newhouse acknowledges that whether or not the ad is true is immaterial because “we’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.”

Even though many levers exist with the potential to relieve poverty among the American Indian Alaska Native population, education is one area where the federal government itself has the immediate power to focus its resources and leverage change in these communities.

We need a national conversation on poverty in America, but we need the right people at the table. It needs to be a conversation rooted in the experiences of the true poverty experts — families who struggle every day to stretch their paychecks far enough to put food on the table, pay for childcare, and make the rent.

Head Start is a program of the Department of Health and Human Services that provides comprehensive education, health, nutrition, and parent involvement services to low-income children and their families. With sequestration pending, funding for Head Start hangs in the balance.

Next month the Virginia Interfaith Center in partnership with Half in Ten will begin its fall advocacy trainings for members of the Commonwealth’s faith communities through a program entitled Social Justice University.

Sophie Feldman and Melissa Boteach demonstrate the bipartisan achievements of deficit reduction and poverty reduction between 1985 and 1997 in a telling timeline.

From Catholic and Protestant bishops to the 40-religion advocacy group People Improving Communities through Organizing (PICO), representatives of various faiths have shown disdain for Ryan’s 2013 House Republican budget, which passed on March 29.