Middle Class Decline Looms Over Final Years of Obama Presidency

By Howard Schneider. Barack Obama enters the final two years of his presidency with a blemish on his legacy that looks impossible to erase: the decline of the middle class he has promised to rescue.

The revival of middle-class jobs has been one of Obama’s mantras since he took office in 2009 fighting the worst economic crisis in generations. It was a major theme of his last State of the Union address and is expected to feature in the one scheduled for Tuesday.

Administration officials said on Saturday the president would propose higher capital gains taxes, new fees on large financial firms, and other measures to raise $320 billion for programs and tax breaks aimed at the middle class . . .

But for the middle class the scars of the recession still run deep. Federal Reserve survey data show families in the middle fifth of the income scale now earn less and their net worth is lower than when Obama took office. (Read more about the middle class decline HERE)

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Majority of U.S. Schools Poor Enough for Lunch Help

By Reuters. The share of public school students who qualify for free or reduced lunch in the United States has grown to 51 percent, in an indication of growing poverty, according to a report released on Friday.

The problem is most acute in Mississippi where 71 percent of students were in that category, according to the report from the Southern Education Foundation.

The group identified the share of students from low-income families by analyzing 2013 federal data on children who qualify for free or reduced lunch at school, which is offered to those from families at or below 185 percent of the federal poverty level. For a family of four, the poverty level is less than $24,000 a year and 185 percent of that figure is about $44,000. (Read more from this story HERE)

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