The compromise legislation now before the Senate—designed to garner the needed 60-vote supermajority for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act—is an important step toward quickly slowing the downward spiral of the U.S. economy.

The current, severe economic crisis has made addressing poverty much more urgent. Job losses are mounting across the country and the unemployment rate has spiked to 7.2 percent.

The current recession is associated with sharp rises in unemployment and underemployment, leaving families with fewer resources to address their most basic needs—food, heat, and shelter.

Both the House and Senate economic recovery bills would expand the federal Child Tax Credit, but there’s a major difference between them. Twelve million low-income children would benefit more from the House version: 2.2 million additional low-income children would qualify for the credit and 10 million more would receive a larger credit. The House approach would translate into an additional $3.9 billion total for very low-income families.

With hard times facing so many, what do Americans think about taking action to fight poverty? In a Gerstein/Agne poll for Half in Ten conducted shortly after the election, more than three quarters of respondents said that cutting poverty in half in the next ten years should be a national goal.

The Unemployment Insurance Modernization Act would address this problem by providing states with money (7 billion in total) for closing major gaps in the unemployment insurance safety net.  If UIMA is enacted, states will qualify for one third of their total funding when they have in place a policy called the “alternative base period,” which counts a worker’s recent earnings when needed for them to qualify for benefits.

Melody Barnes, President-elect Obama’s choice for director of the Domestic Policy Council, delivered a keynote address at LCCR’s recent national board meeting that affirmed the new administration’s commitment to cut poverty in half.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors released on Friday the results of its 2008 Hunger and Homelessness Survey, which surveys 25 major cities.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture released its annual report on food security in America yesterday, which showed that one in eight Americans—over 36 million people—struggled to feed themselves during 2007. And that was even before the economic downturn.

A new report by Maurice Emsellem and Andrew Stettner of the National Employment Law Project, Lisa Donner of Half in Ten, and Alexandra Cawthorne of the Center for American Progress Action Fund provides insight into the current unemployment crisis and explains the necessity of immediate action.