to my mind if you're going to propose something that's unpragmaticly big, i would want to spend that money on something else. another problem that i have is that the proposal is sort of premised on an overstatement of the problem that we face. i don't say this to be pollyanna-ish about poverty. i think the number of poor people we had in america could fit in this room, i would still want to help them. so you should not take this to mean that we don't have a child poverty problem. that said, child poverty is at an all-time low. i've written on this. there's an economist at the congressional research service, thomas gabe, all found essentially that child poverty is at historic lows today. if you include non cash benefits, not talking about medicaid. if you include things like food stamps and housing benefits and co-habiters income when you determine who's under the poverty line, also probably at an all-time low. cli chris's numbers would probably show that if they were updated today. $2 a day poverty is frankly so rare that it can't be reliably detected. i think the comments about $2 a