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.

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).

How do you fix poverty? It’s a question many people have struggled to answer. Poverty experts Charles Murray and Melissa Boteach have very different views.Murray, of the American Enterprise Institute, believes that making the right personal decisions is the key to curbing poverty in America. Boteach, director of Half in Ten: The Campaign to Cut Poverty in Half in Ten Years, sees the problem of poverty differently. She said that progressives and conservatives agree that personal responsibility — mixed with public and private initiatives to lift people up — is a key strategy in fighting poverty.

Today’s presidential debate in Denver on domestic policy will hit six topics over the course of an hour and a half. Moderator Jim Lehrer of the PBS NewsHour can’t possibly get in all the questions on the minds of Americans. Here are seven questions that policy experts think should be asked, but probably won’t:

It’s time we give poverty, particularly child poverty, the attention it deserves. A good place to start would be the first presidential debate in Denver on October 3. Were Jim Lehrer to ask the candidates how they would address child poverty as president, it would kick off a long-overdue dialogue on poverty in America.

New Numbers on Poverty, Income, and Health Care. Today, the federal government released a raft of economic numbers on various topics, including the number of Americans in poverty, income, and the number of people without health insurance.

Melissa Boteach speaks on poverty’s role in American culture, education and the presidential campaign