The Center for Public Integrity

As hard times linger, unemployed workers are grappling with shame, anxiety and depression. They are cutting costs, losing health care coverage and worried about retirement. They fear their children’s generation will be worse off than theirs.

Yet they still believe in the American dream.

Those are the findings of a new poll of out-of-work Americans conducted by The New York Times and CBS News. When asked if they think it is still possible “to start out poor in this country, work hard and become rich,” a robust 67 percent of the unemployed said yes— just a few points less than the 75 percent of all Americans who replied in the affirmative.

The jobless workers’ faith in America, however, does not extend to its political and economic systems, or to their current cast of elected leaders. When asked who is to blame for the nation’s high unemployment rate, one out of five jobless workers chose “politicians.” It was the leading explanation, more than double the rate given by out-of-work Americans just two years ago.

Some 60 percent of the unemployed disapprove of President Obama’s handling of the economy, and his efforts to create jobs. More than a third believes the Democratic president favors the rich.

But 81 percent disapprove of Congress, and just 15 percent think that congressional Republicans have a clear plan for creating jobs. And 82 percent of the unemployed think Republicans favor the rich. Only 5 percent believe that the GOP’s policies help the middle class.

The American dream may still be a viable promise for these folks, but 77 percent think the distribution of money and wealth in the United States is unfair.

Their feelings echo the latest scholarly finding, by the Congressional Budget Office, of growing economic inequality in America.

Until 2008, Darrell Seela owned a home in Las Vegas where he and his wife worked and raised three children. After the crash, he lost his job as a draftsman and industrial engineer for a major homebuilding company. The Seelas lost their home soon after.

The family moved to Ridgecrest, Calif., where Darrell found work. But his wife hasn’t been able to land a new job as a mortgage administrator. “With two incomes we might be able to make it fairly well,” Seela says, “but with one income it’s killing us.” Seela now makes $57,000 a year. His oldest daughter is 18, attends college and works; his 13- and 16-year-olds still live at home.

“We’re used to a certain type of life, and we’re getting that taken away from us,” he says.

When Seela votes for president next fall, he will vote for an economic strategy, as well.

As part of their plans to revive the economy, several presidential candidates have offered innovative prescriptions to reform the U.S. tax system.

For the Seelas and millions of other American families, there is no status quo: if Congress does not act on President Obama’s proposals, the Bush-era tax cuts are scheduled to expire, with powerful repercussions. The charts here show a sampling of the tax proposals, and what would happen if the Bush tax cuts expire.

In a nutshell, Obama wants to end the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, while retaining them for working and middle-class families.

Mitt Romney’s plan would preserve the Bush tax cuts for the rich as well, and cut taxes on wealthy estates and corporations.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s proposal for a new flat tax, and Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan, offer more radical change.

Perry wants to slash taxes on individual Americans and businesses, and offer taxpayers a flat tax rate of 20 percent, with generous deductions.

Goaded by battalions of corporate lobbyists, members of Congress are working to give a select group of U.S. multinational firms like Apple, Oracle and Pfizer a lavish tax break on a trillion dollars stashed offshore.

The avowed goal is to generate jobs and investment, but the offshore tax holiday was tried before, in 2004, and the lion’s share of the benefits went not to unemployed workers and their families, but to corporate shareholders and executives.

With today’s high unemployment, and soaring costs for college, health care and other family essentials, critics are asking why an elite class of corporations and their shareholders should get a huge tax break on overseas profits.

The proposed tax holiday could cost the Treasury from $40 billion to $80 billion over the next decade, and the high cost of the measure is one reason that its prospects for passage are mixed.

But 73 members of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, have signed up as co-sponsors. And cash-rich mega corporations are pushing hard for the tax break.

A number of trade groups and corporations that would benefit have joined in a coalition called WIN America. New lobbying disclosure reports show that the group and its member firms have spent millions of dollars, and employed dozens of lobbyists, to press for the tax break, according to an analysis by iWatch News.

The current rules for tax repatriation, as the process is called, are a thorn for U.S. firms that make money overseas. American companies face a 35 percent corporate income tax. Money earned offshore is taxed only by the country of origin until it is “repatriated” to the U.S., at which time an additional tax is levied to make up any difference and bring the rate to 35 percent.

Reporter Arthur Delaney, who is working with us on the Raw Deal project, has written Huffington Post's first published e-book: A People's History of the Great Recession.

Delaney specializes in "putting flesh and blood on the statistics" of economic calamity, as his news site says. In his book you will find the voices of people like Bob Poropatich, of Pittsburgh, who was working part-time as a barista after losing his job as a manager for a major clothing retailer during the recession.

Porapatich had been with the company for six years, had a master's degree, and 30 years experience in the field. When Delaney interviewed him last spring he was making lattes, earning about $180 a week.

Porapatich told Delaney that the worst day he had to endure was when his ex boss, the one who laid him off, came in and ordered a venti mocha. "It didn't faze him at all," Porapatich recalled. "I felt like I was two inches tall. I wanted to say, `Excuse me,' and run into the bathroom."

Poropatich landed a second job stocking shelves at a grocery store. "Together both jobs pay me not even close to a third of what I made when I had just one job," he told Delaney.

Like many of those that Delaney has interviewed, Porapatich believed that his age—he was in his late fifties when he lost his job—was held against him when he applied for work. After a while, he began offering prospective employers a deal: if they hired him, he wouldn't sign up for health insurance.

But "nobody is impressed," he said.

Delaney has come up with "rules" faced by job searchers these days. Don't Be Old. Don't Be Unemployed. Don't Expect To Make More Money At Your Next Job.

Household incomes fell and the number of Americans in poverty surged last year as the stubborn hangover from the Great Recession lingered.

The 2010 statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau offered a grim picture of working class America:

• The real median household income in the United States in 2010 was $49,445, down by 6.4 percent since 2007.
• The ranks of the poor swelled by 2.6 million Americans, as the poverty rate rose to 15.1 percent, its highest level since 1993.
• And some 900,000 more Americans were without health insurance, pushing the total close to 50 million.

The number of men working full time, year-round has dropped by 6.6 million since 2007. Some 6 million young adults, aged 25 to 34, are living with their parents, rather than launching independent lives. The poverty rate for children jumped to 22 percent.

The Census figures, which cover the first full calendar year after the recession, were released as the Center for Public Integrity embarks on a new election-year project. It is the saga of how corporate actions and government decision have left America’s working families with falling wages and shrinking benefits, and jobs shipped overseas.

We will be telling this story with the help of those most affected by hard times: the members of American working class families, struggling to cope with debt, unemployment and other unyielding pressures, who open their lives to us and agree to share their experiences.