Carol Shea-Porter: “I was interested in hearing from Members on the other side speak about the money we needed to save and the debt we have…”

“I was interested in hearing from Members on the other side speak about the money we needed to save and the debt we have, because it was the Republican administration that drove us into the greatest deficits in history. Indeed, they are the reason I am standing here today. I am a social worker by profession, and for years I noticed things were getting worse and worse for the middle class. I kept saying the middle class is stumbling and the poor have fallen, because while the very wealthy were enjoying the tax breaks, thanks to this administration, the middle class was trying to figure out if they had enough money to go to the movies on Friday night and have money for pizza. Indeed, this is the first time we have seen this great, great difference in the rich and the poor since the time of the Titanic. Wages have been flat for several years now. The American public understands this. This is not a Republican issue, it is not a Democratic issue, it is an issue about protecting the middle class, building the middle class, and bringing the poor so we do not have a permanent underclass in this country. The way to do that is to make sure we have a fair tax system, and we have to have accountability and oversight to make sure that we do. We know that the tax breaks have gone to the top 1 percent for too long.…”