While some eager shoppers are preparing to wait in long lines when their favorite stores open on Black Friday, many Americans are already lining up at food banks, simply hoping to put food on the table this Thanksgiving.

In a heartbreaking report, CBS chronicles the plight of “America’s new poor” — many of whom used to be the very people who donated to food banks. But with millions out of work, foreclosure rates still high, and the country’s economic outlook as bleak as ever, yesterday’s givers have become today’s takers.

Take Forsyth County, near Atlanta. Despite having the highest average household income in Georgia, hundreds of these “newly-needy” file into local food banks:

“People lost their jobs and went from great incomes to no incomes,” said Sandy Beaver [who] leads The Place, Forsyth County’s biggest non-profit center for social services. She calls those who visit The Place “the new poor.” The Place’s main mission: Feed the hungry. [...]

“Many of our people who have come for assistance used to be our donors. And they’ll say, ‘I never thought I’d have to do this, never in my wildest dreams.’” [...]

People like these married retirees in their 70s, too embarrassed to appear on camera…They retired comfortably in their early 50s. But now, after bad investments, a ruined portfolio, and costly medical issues, they qualify for food stamps – and could lose the house.

“Taking the food was really tough,” the woman said. “The hard part was, we used to give it, and now I’m taking it back, you know?” she said, crying.

At one Forsyth high school, 8 percent of kids now get free lunch, double the number three years ago. And unfortunately, the situation Forsyth is not unusual. One in six Americans — 49 million people — isn’t sure where their next meal will come from. A record 15 percent of Americans are now receiving food stamps — a jump of about two-thirds since 2007.

Veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, who are returning from combat to face higher unemployment rates than nearly any other group, are also struggling to get by. Raymond Price, an Afghanistan vet, says “All I want is a job. I don’t really want anybody’s handouts.” But with a family to feed, he came by a food bank last week for a box of non-perishables.

This holiday season, please consider donating to a local food bank. You can find one nearby or donate online through the Feeding America website. You can also give to Operation Homefront, a group that provides assistance to military families.

Despite their unwillingness to raise taxes one penny on millionaires and billionaires, Republicans have stubbornly refused to extend unemployment benefits and the payroll tax break that middle class families depend on in these difficult times.

GOP presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney has dutifully toed the party line. In a USA Today op-ed opposing the extension, Romney argued that the central problem was that “unemployment benefits, despite a web of regulations, actually serve to discourage some individuals from taking jobs…”

Yet Huffington Post reports that when he was governor of Massachusetts in 2003, Romney actually supported a “huge increase” in business taxes to pay for unemployment benefits:

Facing a depleted unemployment insurance trust fund upon entering the Massachusetts governor’s office in 2003, Mitt Romney proposed a $260 million tax increase on employers as part of a plan that included comprehensive benefit reforms. [...]

[T]he willingness to sign off on an agreement that involved even those tax hikes also reflected a type of political pragmatism that few Republicans would show today. “There’s still going to be a huge increase,” Romney told The Patriot Ledger’s editorial board at the time, acknowledging that his plan would also include a tax hike. [...]

Indeed, two years after making that initial proposal, Romney had presidential ambitions and had shifted to a more conservative plank, calling for tax cuts for employers as part of comprehensive unemployment insurance reform. Six years later, second-time presidential candidate Romney has gone even further, suggesting the privatization of the program.

Romney’s evolution on the issue is yet another example of his willingness to ditch any previously held position to pander to the conservative base. When asked at a debate whether he would support an extension of unemployment insurance benefits set to expire at the end of the year, Romney said he favored privatizing benefits. In short, Romney believes workers should pay for their own unemployment benefits.

Suzy Khimm at the Washington Post points out “Americans are heavily dependent on UI benefits because there are no jobs to be found, not because they’re not motivated enough to find them. Currently, there are 4.5 job seekers for every open job — and that ratio is worse in areas with high unemployment.”

The system Romney proposes would disadvantage low-wage workers who have “have more trouble building up funds in their accounts on a regular basis, particularly in a climate of economic instability.” He would also nix the protection workers have that requires employers who lay off large numbers of people to pay a higher payroll insurance tax.

Additionally, Romney refuses to back an extension of the payroll tax breaks everyone who gets a paycheck is receiving this year — apparently the one tax hike he is willing to support. Yesterday President Obama once again challenged Congress to extend and expand the tax cut, in the spirit of the holiday season. He noted that if Republicans vote no, middle class families will have to pay an additional $1,000 in taxes next year.

“If your members of Congress aren’t listening, you’ve got to send them a message,” Obama said. “Tell them, don’t be a Grinch.”

As Occupy Wall Street protestors continue to demonstrate across the country, congress’ fiscal super committee failed to craft a deficit reduction package due to Republican refusal to consider tax increases on the super wealthy. In fact, the only package that the GOP officially submitted to the committee included lowering the top tax rate from 35 percent to 28 percent, even as new research shows that the optimal top tax rate is closer to 70 percent.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), who co-chaired the super committee, explained that the major sticking point during negotiations with the GOP was what to do with the Bush tax cuts. With that in mind, the National Priorities Project points out that those tax cuts this year will give the richest 1 percent of Americans a bigger tax cut than the other 99 percent will receive in average income:

The average Bush tax cut in 2011 for a taxpayer in the richest one percent is greater than the average income of the other 99 percent ($66,384 compared to $58,506).

“The super committee failed to grapple with the extraordinarily costly Bush tax cuts for the richest—tax policies that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, cost more in added federal debt than they add in additional economic activity,” explained Jo Comerford, NPP’s Executive Director. Frank Knapp, vice chairman of the American Sustainable Business Council, added in a statement yesterday, “the high-end Bush tax cuts are a big part of the problem – not the solution…It’s obscene to keep slashing infrastructure and services for everybody on Main Street to keep up tax giveaways for millionaires and multinational corporations.”

The Bush tax cuts have done nothing but blow up the federal debt and hand billions in tax breaks to the Americans who needed them least. As a reminder, past grand bargains when it came to the budget included substantial new revenues, to balance the pain of getting the country’s budget in order. Instead of adopting that approach, the GOP wants to continue lavishing tax breaks onto the 1 percent, while asking everyone else to sacrifice.

The National Labor Relations Board — which is the federal agency in charge of enforcing the nation’s labor laws — has proposed a new regulation for union elections, aimed at ensuring that employers can’t needlessly delay an election while engaging in union-busting activities. Currently, according to research by John-Paul Ferguson of Stanford Business School, 35 percent of all union elections are called off due to endless delays and often illegal employer opposition.

The NLRB’s proposed regulation would speed up the election process to help workers show their true feelings toward whether or not they want to form a union. However, the one Republican member of the NLRB has threatened to resign from the board if the rule goes forward, which would not only prevent that rule from becoming law, but would cripple the NLRB entirely:

The labor board’s sole Republican member, Brian E. Hayes, has threatened to resign to deny the N.L.R.B. the three-person quorum it needs to make any decisions, according to board officials. Mr. Hayes has made his threat expressly to block the Democratic-dominated board from adopting new rules to speed up unionization elections, which the board’s other current members, both Democrats, intend to pass Nov. 30.

The Supreme Court ruled last year that the NLRB needs three members (out of a possible five) to legally operate. Hayes’ resignation would bring the board down to two members, preventing it from making any decisions. The U.S. already has the weakest labor protections in the developed world, and leaving the NLRB toothless will only make the situation worse.

But this is just the latest episode in a wider GOP attempt to cripple the NLRB (though the first involving a member of the board itself). Republicans have moved several pieces of legislation that would cut the board’s funding and limit its ability to make rules. The GOP also refuses to confirm Obama’s nominees to the board, which is what has left it so shorthanded in the first place.

“Given its recent activity, inoperable is progress,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has said of the NLRB. And now it seems that the Republican member of the board is planning to be complicit with the congressional GOP’s goal.