Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I yield myself such time as I may consume. For more than 1 year, I have been working on a series of hearings, both in Washington, DC, and in Iowa, focusing on the state of the American middle class. We have learned that the American middle class is disappearing, falling into the widening gulf between the haves and the have-nots. The people who do the real work in this country are being squeezed to the breaking point. Their paychecks aren't rising. Their benefits are disappearing. Their pensions are disappearing. Their jobs are being shipped overseas. When we looked into the causes of this crisis, we found that the middle class is not disappearing due to some inevitable effect of forces beyond our control such as globalization and technology. In fact, the decline of the middle class is primarily due to policy failures. We have failed to respond to our changing economy, while at the same time we have allowed many of the underpinnings of a strong middle class, such as a fair minimum wage, strong overtime laws, and defined benefit pensions to disappear. One of the biggest factors in this downward spiral has been the decline of American unions. As former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich explained when he testified before the HELP Committee last year, when unions were strong, the middle class thrived and our country prospered.…”