its bad by cosmo standards ...but here are some silly uncle sam safety net facts

Without government assistance programs, the poverty rate would have been nearly twice as high in 2010:  an estimated 28.6 percent, compared with the actual figure of 15.5 percent, based on a measure of poverty that includes the impact of programs like food stamps and housing assistance and tax credits (including the Earned Income Tax Credit).   If the safety net hadn’t existed, another 40 million people would have been poor.

Just one part of the safety net — six temporary federal initiatives enacted in 2009 and 2010 to bolster the economy by lifting consumers’ incomes and purchases — kept an estimated 7 million people out of poverty in 2010.

The number of young adults with private health coverage has risen by roughly 2.5 million since an Affordable Care Act provision took effect last year requiring insurance companies to allow young adults to stay on their parents’ insurance plans through age 26.

Up to 2 million more people are employed in the fourth quarter of 2011 because of the 2009 Recovery Act, according to the Congressional Budget Office.  The law’s impact on employment peaked in the third quarter of 2010, when as many as 3.6 million people owed their jobs to the Recovery Act; large parts of that Act have since expired