Political Quotes

“I think virtually everyone in America understands our country is in extremely difficult straits; that the middle class is collapsing; that poverty is increasing; and that one of the immediate factors that is driving so many Americans over the edge is outrageously high energy prices. This impacts every community in America, but it especially impacts rural States such as the State of Vermont, where workers are forced to drive long distances to work and end up spending an inordinate amount of money at the gas tank. It is not uncommon in my State for people to travel 100 miles a day to work and back. If you do the arithmetic, you will find that in many cases, as oil prices and gas price have risen, people today are paying $1,000 a year more than a year and a half ago to fill up their gas tanks. If you are a worker earning $30,000 or $35,000 a year, and you got a 3-percent increase in your wages, that is pretty good; in some cases all of your wage increase is going down that gas tank. You have to pay higher health care costs, higher educational costs, higher property taxes, and you are in a lot of trouble, which is why the middle class in America is, in fact, shrinking significantly. Not only is this a major crisis in terms of what is happening at the gas pump, there is also severe worry about what happens next winter when people have to fill up their home heating oil furnaces and stay warm in the winter in States such as Vermont.”