Political Quotes

“I rise today to talk about the retirement crisis in this country--a crisis that has received far too little attention and far too little response from Washington. I have spent most of my career studying the economic pressures on middle-class families--families who worked hard, who played by the rules, but who still found themselves just hanging on by their fingernails. Starting in the 1970s, even as workers became more productive, their wages flattened, while core expenses such as housing and health care and sending their kids to college kept going up. Working families did not ask for a bailout. Instead, they rolled up their sleeves. They sent both parents into the workforce. But that meant higher childcare costs, a second car, and higher taxes. So they tightened their belts more, cutting spending wherever they could. Adjusted for inflation, families today spend less than they did a generation ago on food, clothing, furniture, appliances, and other flexible purchases. When that still was not enough to cover rising costs, they took on debt--credit card debt, college debt, debt just to pay for the necessities. As families became increasingly desperate, unscrupulous financial institutions were all too happy to chain them to financial products that got them into even more trouble--products where fine print and legalese covered the true costs of credit. These trends are not new. There have been warning signs for years about what is happening to our middle class.…”