Anyone despairing that Congress can't get anything done should note last week's swift vote to get furloughed air traffic controllers back to work. Congress can move very quickly and efficiently when it wants to and when their own comfort and that of constituents well-off enough to fly was affected. Reduced unemployment benefits, children dropped suddenly from Head Start programs, poor mothers and babies losing food supplements, teacher layoffs, and cancelled meal deliveries for seniors didn't move them -- but airport delays as members headed out of town for their April recess were apparently unacceptable.

It’s safe to say that the Republican Party’s recent decision to “relaunch” itself and suddenly reach out to poor people is motivated more by a...

Sequestration will indeed be catastrophic: catastrophic at least for homeless and low income people who are caught between a market that cannot provide housing they can afford, and a government that cannot balance its books.

Dr. King is not coming back. It's up to us to redeem the soul of America. He told us what to do. Let's do it.

Obama's budget does not hammer the poor. The GOP's counter to it would. Obama's proposals as they now stand are the only ones that keep the poor from barreling over the fiscal cliff.

PORTLAND, Maine -- Poor and elderly Americans who rely on aid from the federal government to heat their homes stand to get less help this year if Cong...

It's time for that conversation, and so much more, about how we are going to address the avalanche-style tumble of families in America into the bottom two quintiles of the socioeconomic ladder.

If we spend less on school lunches and food stamps to make the numbers add up on an Excel spreadsheet, we will indeed pay much more with poor performance in school and chronic health issues later.