Scarletwine
New Yorker
This report cuts through the sound bites.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/milking_the_middle_class.php
Milking The Middle Class
Fernando Ferrer
September 16, 2004
Finally, someone had the good sense to investigate where legislators stand on helping the middle class. The Drum Major Institute just released its first-ever report card. Here, DMI president Ferrer writes about how both parties stack up. In November, voters in 34 states will choose a senator to represent their interests in Washington D.C. DMI found that—of those 34 races—16 will feature incumbent U.S. Senators who get good grades for helping to strengthen and expand the middle class. But 10 involve incumbent senators with a history of voting against the interests of the middle class.
Fernando Ferrer is president of the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy.
Experiencing “middle-class fatigue?" It’s understandable. Every four years, like clockwork, the middle class and their concerns are pushed to the forefront of the national discussion as candidates court their prized electoral votes.
But this year, especially, we must push through the fatigue. Because the plight of the middle class is the best illustration of the failure of current social and economic policy and our best hope for change.
...
The legislation we examined didn’t specify “middle class” in their titles, but the impact on the middle class was remarkable. From the effort to repeal the estate tax—which will force an inevitable increase in the local taxation burden on middle-class families—to the amendment to protect U.S. workers from the consequences of offshoring, to the Pharmaceutical Market Access Act allowing the importation of cheaper drugs from Canada, legislators had a real choice in 2003 to support or abandon middle-class families.
Too often, however, your representatives chose to fail the middle class. While the Senate earned a grade of “B” overall, the average grade masked great disparities: Almost 90 percent of Democratic Senators received an A, while fully one-quarter of Republican Senators received an F for their failure to support the middle class.
These party divisions were evident in the House of Representatives as well: Two-thirds of Republicans received an F, compared to one percent of their Democratic colleagues.
Again and again, in 2003, Republicans’ votes were body blows to struggling middle class families—from a tax cut that lavished the wealthiest one percent of Americans with 40 percent of the total tax cut and left the average middle-class family with an $800 check, to a bankruptcy bill that would create a windfall for an unregulated credit card industry at the expense of vulnerable middle-class families. When 88 percent of Republicans in the Senate vote against preserving overtime benefits for eight million American workers, the voters who elected those senators have every right to hold them accountable.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/milking_the_middle_class.php
Milking The Middle Class
Fernando Ferrer
September 16, 2004
Finally, someone had the good sense to investigate where legislators stand on helping the middle class. The Drum Major Institute just released its first-ever report card. Here, DMI president Ferrer writes about how both parties stack up. In November, voters in 34 states will choose a senator to represent their interests in Washington D.C. DMI found that—of those 34 races—16 will feature incumbent U.S. Senators who get good grades for helping to strengthen and expand the middle class. But 10 involve incumbent senators with a history of voting against the interests of the middle class.
Fernando Ferrer is president of the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy.
Experiencing “middle-class fatigue?" It’s understandable. Every four years, like clockwork, the middle class and their concerns are pushed to the forefront of the national discussion as candidates court their prized electoral votes.
But this year, especially, we must push through the fatigue. Because the plight of the middle class is the best illustration of the failure of current social and economic policy and our best hope for change.
...
The legislation we examined didn’t specify “middle class” in their titles, but the impact on the middle class was remarkable. From the effort to repeal the estate tax—which will force an inevitable increase in the local taxation burden on middle-class families—to the amendment to protect U.S. workers from the consequences of offshoring, to the Pharmaceutical Market Access Act allowing the importation of cheaper drugs from Canada, legislators had a real choice in 2003 to support or abandon middle-class families.
Too often, however, your representatives chose to fail the middle class. While the Senate earned a grade of “B” overall, the average grade masked great disparities: Almost 90 percent of Democratic Senators received an A, while fully one-quarter of Republican Senators received an F for their failure to support the middle class.
These party divisions were evident in the House of Representatives as well: Two-thirds of Republicans received an F, compared to one percent of their Democratic colleagues.
Again and again, in 2003, Republicans’ votes were body blows to struggling middle class families—from a tax cut that lavished the wealthiest one percent of Americans with 40 percent of the total tax cut and left the average middle-class family with an $800 check, to a bankruptcy bill that would create a windfall for an unregulated credit card industry at the expense of vulnerable middle-class families. When 88 percent of Republicans in the Senate vote against preserving overtime benefits for eight million American workers, the voters who elected those senators have every right to hold them accountable.
, but they always seem to be the party that is worrying about the middle class and the poor. The link that Scarletwine provided shows that the Democratic party is the party that makes the choices that benefit the middle class:
