BUSH BOOM!

America's Second Harvest, the nation's largest charitable food distribution network, is now providing help to more than 25 million people, an 8 percent increase over 2001....

That increase in the number of people who are hungry or "food insecure" -- Washington bureaucratese for "not sure where their next meal will come from" -- is reflected in data collected by the US Department of Agriculture as well. In 2005, it found more than 38 million Americans lived in "hungry or food insecure" households, an increase of 5 million since 2000....

More than 35 percent of the people who are served by Second Harvest come from homes with at least one working adult, according to the study...

--Christian Science Monitor, 2/23/06

But, of course, a lot of people who say they can't hack it are just deadbeats -- right?

...On the day President Bush signed the bankruptcy bill, he said: "In recent years, too many people have abused the bankruptcy laws. They've walked away from debts even when they had the ability to repay them." ...

Now, in the first analysis of the tens of thousands of people who have undergone credit counseling since the law passed, the bankruptcy attorneys association found that nearly all (97 percent) of the debtors truly couldn't pay their debts.

The association [the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys] examined data provided by six large and small credit counseling firms from a cross-section of the country...

Four out of five filers felt forced to seek bankruptcy protection because of a job loss, catastrophic medical expenses, or the death of a spouse, according to the report, "Bankruptcy Reform's Impact: Where Are All the Deadbeats?"

Fewer than 1 out of 20 consumers (3.3 percent) were candidates for paying off what they owe under a debt management plan (DMP), the report indicated....

--Michele Singletary in today's Boston Globe (via The Washington Post)

Never mind the GDP and the housing boom -- for the have-nots, these are hard times.

(VIA DU.)