Bill Delahunt: “I think when we hear our friends on the other side talk about the economy is growing, well, the economy is growing. The…”

“I think when we hear our friends on the other side talk about the economy is growing, well, the economy is growing. The question is who is benefiting from that growth, and the answer is very simple. It is a very small segment of the American community. It is the top 1 percent, the top 5 percent. Their income is going up; but remember this, the median income for a family of four in this country that is directly in the middle, it is not an average, it is directly in the middle, has in fact gone down since the Bush administration came to power. There are today in absolute numbers and percentages more Americans below the poverty line. So what we have is an economy today that is eroding the middle class and is creating a Nation and a society where a very few, a small segment, is doing quite well and everybody else is slipping behind. What we have or what our friends would do is, they support ironically a welfare program, a welfare program for pharmaceutical companies; a welfare program for large energy companies; a welfare program, by the way, for Iraq, not for the United States, but for Iraq, because here is what we are doing in Iraq. We are building schools. We are building primary health care centers. We are educating teachers. I see the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) has a chart there that illustrates this.”