Lee Metcalf: “there is a rising tide of despair and growing resentment all across this Nation. The American dream is being snuffed out…”

“there is a rising tide of despair and growing resentment all across this Nation. The American dream is being snuffed out for more and more American families. This is directly related to the decline of the middle class. The rich are getting richer, but the middle class is being assaulted today by the flight of family wage jobs overseas, by high taxes, by the disparity of income between the rich and the middle class. The middle class has shrunk, as many families no longer have the income to buy a home, save money for their children's education or prepare for their retirement. The number of millionaires is dramatically increasing. That is great, unless at the same time more people fall out of the middle class to become the working poor, descending into poverty. Many say that the Republican Party is the party of the rich. I say this Republican Congress is the party with the duty to resurrect the middle class. My dad quit school and went to work at age 16 on his first job for $1 a day. That was the pay, $1 a day on his first job. Just 10 years later, he made enough working in a mill in Marysville to support a family, built his own house and, 2 years after that, to build his own small commercial fishing boat. And all that was paid for at that time. Today with both husband and wife working, many families cannot get ahead. They are caught in a cycle of what we have to call the working poor. We must ask ourselves, what is happening to America?”