Middle Class Challenges Congress

Floor Speech

Mr. TONKO. Mr. Speaker, America's middle class, her determined, hardworking middle class, is challenging Congress. Will Congress respond to our middle class?

We in the middle class are growing increasingly aware of the statistics that the wealth concentrated in the top 1 percent has grown exponentially--275 percent. Over the same timeframe, America's middle class has seen its wealth flatline, and if it's grown, something diminished like 15 to 20 percent. That is unsustainable. America's middle class knows it.

They know that we need to invest in our middle class, empower the purchasing power, raise our children, invest in their education and higher education, invest in health care, invest in public safety, invest in job creation and job retention, invest in research that equals jobs. That is the commitment that they're asking for.

They know it's within the grasp of Congress to fix it. They know increasingly the American Dream is growing outside their grasp. We need to go to work, provide jobs, the dignity of work for our middle class. We need to solve the problems of America through the eyes of our middle class.

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