Jack Kingston: “I got a call last night from a gentleman, a father from Pennsylvania, had two kids, and I could tell he was a lot like…”

“I got a call last night from a gentleman, a father from Pennsylvania, had two kids, and I could tell he was a lot like my middle-class friends back home, struggling to make the ends meet. And he just left a message, ``Please keep us in mind; keep working.'' I think about this man. I think about the women I see that are my wife's friends, who are around the neighborhood raising those 3-year-olds, those 5-year-olds. I drive the carpool every Monday when school is in, and when I am driving the carpool, quite often I get out and I talk to people. Mostly it is women. There are a few other dads, but, fortunately, one of the good benefits about this job is we do have some odd hours during the day and we are a little more flexible when we are home. I see these families struggling. They save a little money, but at the end of the month instead of going down to Florida for the weekend, they have to spend it on a new dryer, or they have a car payment, or the house mortgage is payable. And they can manage it, but then they want to do something else to the house, a little modification, or they have to put in a new stove or oven, or something like that, and there is no money at the end of the month. We passed a $500-per-child tax credit. If you had two kids, this gentleman, this family in Pennsylvania, that would have been $1,000 more that they could have.”