Political Quotes

“And yet we're seeing across this Nation a Republican attack on unions claiming that unions are bad. But the great history of this Nation is that the union movement, collective bargaining over these many, many decades did in fact create the middle class. And so that in the 1960s was the period of time when the middle class of America was at its peak. It had the greatest distribution of wealth. The greatest share of the income went to the middle class. It was also the time when the union movement was the strongest in America. Since that time through a variety of governmental policies, we have seen a decline in the union movement and a commensurate consistent decline in the middle class. We're going to build the middle class. This is about making it in America. This is about rebuilding the middle class. I want to now turn to our colleague from the great industrial--the once and future great industrial center of America, Ohio, and share with us--you've got some specific proposals that you've put forward. I'd like to talk about them. I know that our Congresslady from Illinois has, and I do, too, so we're going to talk about specific things that we're going to do to rebuild the middle class by making it in America.”