Tim Ryan: “I appreciate the opportunity. I just want to say thank you to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) for her great words…”

“I appreciate the opportunity. I just want to say thank you to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) for her great words and Congressman Crowley, who was here a little bit earlier, for his good words as well. I am starting tonight a segment that I am calling America 2.0. I think we are in the midst of, obviously, some chaos in the United States, in Washington, D.C., and in so many communities across the country that feel we are disoriented with our politics, disconnected from our politics, and we are disoriented around the idea of what is happening in our economy. Globalization, automation, all of these things have dramatically affected the American economy and American wages and standard of living. We have actually seen, Mr. Speaker, over the course of the last 20 years, a huge decline, a sucking out of middle class wages that have gone primarily to the top 1 percent. Now, I am not here to bash rich people. I am not here to make any enemies, but I think it is important and instructive for us to look at where we were and where we are now. If you look at where we were in 1980, of all the income growth in the Nation in 1980, 70 percent of all income growth went to the bottom 90 percent of Americans. So we had some significant income growth, and 70 percent of it went to the bottom 90 percent, 30 percent went to the top 10 percent.…”