WASHINGTON, DC   Senior researchers in the Bush administration have discovered that the current poor economic climate is largely the fault of poor people.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, one researcher explained that they had been asked to discover the root causes of the down economy, and had only just started looking when the answer "just popped right out at us".

It turns out that people below the poverty line, defined as those earning less than $9,214 per year if single, or $17,960 for a family of four, number about 33 million people, or roughly 11 percent of the US population.

"If they just spent another $10 per day, on average," says our source, "that would pump another 120 billion dollars into the economy, which would be more than enough to lift us out of the current recession. Basically, we have a whole lot of people who simply aren't pulling their own weight, economically."

So far, the government hasn't decided what to do about the problem, although a new "get tough" approach towards the poor is gaining momentum.

Courtesy of "Ahead of the News"