Political Quotes

“We need to also understand where the power has shifted. The power has shifted here. This is the average pay of the CEOs of the five biggest oil companies--$14.5 million. That's 307 times the pay of a firefighter, 273 times the pay of a teacher, 263 times the pay of an average police officer, and 218 times the average pay of a nurse. So what we have seen--and part of this has to do with collective bargaining--is that the power has shifted to the CEOs, to the extraordinary wealthy, and that it has resulted in this situation: where the middle class and the poor in America have seen virtually no change in their incomes over the last 20, 25 years. They've been flatlined--basically the same level of income. They're just making it. This particular line is the next highest 20 percent. The only reason they've seen their incomes grow is that both husband and wife are now working. Back there, back in the seventies, mostly just one or the other was working; but now both are working. But look here: this is the top 1 percent. Here are the 99ers. Here is the 99 percent down here at the bottom and the 1 percent up here. What we're saying is let's put Americans back to work with the American Jobs Act, and let's have a Fair Tax, not the George W. Bush tax cuts that gave this group even greater wealth, a greater annual income by cutting their taxes, but rather to restore that tax rate and allow that money to be used to hire the unemployed veteran. There are 877,000 unemployed veterans.…”