Determining precisely who are the poorest Americans would seem to be a simple enough things to do. But like many bureaucratic tasks, counting up the official poor is fraught with political complications. Last October the issue became front-page news when The New York Times suggested that the Census Bureau might raise the poverty level, boosting the threshold that establishes who counts as officially poor from $16,600 to $19,500 for a family of four. Actually, the Times was wrong (the bureau doesn't even have the power to change the level). But even the false assertion that the poverty level might be raised sparked a fair amount of debate.