Weve spent a lot of time this week talking about Hunter Biden and impeachment , which is fair enough. I just wish wed found more time to discuss another story, because it painted an alarming picture of whats happening to millions of low-income Americans and made it very clear which partys leaders want to do something about it.

Im talking about the annual U.S. Census Bureau report on income and health insurance, which came out Tuesday and which my colleague Jonathan Nicholson summarized for HuffPost. The report found that the countrys poverty rate jumped from 7.8% in 2021 to 12.4% last year and that the poverty rate among children, specifically, rose even more dramatically, from 5.2% to 12.4%.

To put it another way, last year more than 1 in 8 American kids were living in a household struggling to pay for food, shelter, transportation and other essentials. Just a year before, fewer than half as many kids were in that position.

Of course, none of this was a surprise. In 2020 and 2021, poverty fell dramatically, with poverty among children hitting record lows. The reason was the extra income support that the federal government had provided as part of its efforts to get families and the U.S. economy through the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic.