Words from Bernie Sanders:
Millions of Americans have absolutely
no confidence that the U.S. House or Senate is even remotely
concerned about their needs or views.
Here’s the truth. The middle class
in this country is collapsing. The number of Americans living in
poverty is nearly the highest on record and the gap between the very
rich and everyone else is growing wider and wider. And very few
people in Washington give a damn.
Year after year the
American people have begged the Congress and the president to move
aggressively to protect the middle class from total collapse. And, so
far, their leaders have failed to act. Today, the American
people are demanding action to create jobs for their kids and
retirement security for their parents.
They are deeply worried
about the state of the economy, and they have every reason to worry.
Here’s what’s going on:
Real unemployment: Counting those
who have given up looking for work and those who are working
part-time when they need a full time job, the real
unemployment rate is 13.7 percent, not 7.3 percent.
Average wages: Non-supervisory
workers have seen their wages go down by eight cents an hour since
the beginning of the so-called recovery and are now a paltry $8.77
an hour.
Income and wealth inequality: From
2009-2012, the richest 1 percent of Americans captured 95 percent of
all new income, while the typical middle class family has seen their
income go down by more than $2,100. The Walton family, the owners of
Wal-Mart, are worth more than $100 billion and own more wealth than
the bottom 40 percent of Americans.
College unaffordability: Over the
past 30 years, the cost of a college education has gone up by more
than 250 percent. The average American graduating from college this
year is drowning in debt of more than $35,000. Even worse, hundreds
of thousands of high school graduates are unable to go to college
each and every year not because they are unqualified, but because
they can’t afford it.
- Childhood poverty: We live in the richest country in the
world, yet one out of five children in the U.S. is stuck in poverty.
And the reality is that children living in poverty in America today
are more likely to stay in poverty when they grow up than in any
other advanced country on earth.
The lesson to be learned from the widespread opposition to the war
is that the American people standing together can make a difference.
Building on that momentum,
NOW IS THE
TIME to demand that Congress create millions of
decent-paying jobs repairing our crumbling roads, bridges, dams,
culverts, schools and housing.
We need to end our dependence
on dirty fossil fuels that are threatening the planet and move toward
energy efficiency and renewable energy. We must increase the minimum
wage to at least $10.10 an hour and lift millions of Americans out of
poverty. We must fundamentally rewrite our trade policy so that
American products, not American jobs, are our No. 1 export. We must
stand up to the greed on Wall Street by breaking up too-big-to-fail
banks that have done so much damage to the economy. And, we must make
college affordable so that every qualified American can get the
education they need to reclaim the American dream.
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