Obama Vows To Help Middle Class Voters, Again

"A Strong Middle Class equals a Strong America.

We can't have one without the other.

This Task Force will be an important vehicle to assess new and existing policies across board, and determine if they helping or hurting the Middle Class.

It is our charge to get the Middle Class-the backbone if this country, up and running again." Vice-Pres. Joe Biden, 2009

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Obama Targets Middle Class With New Aid Plans



President Barack Obama on Monday offered help for people struggling to pay bills and care for their families, appealing to a middle-class he says has been "under assault for a long time."

In a partial preview of a State of the Union address that aims to answer voter angst about the economy and reconnect with the public, Obama outlined the series of proposals from the White House. The product of a middle class task force headed by Vice President Joe Biden, the proposals will also be included in Obama's budget request due to be submitted to Congress next week.

Among the initiatives: a doubling of the child care tax credit for families earning under $85,000; a $1.6 billion increase in federal funding for child care programs and a program to cap student loan payments at 10 percent of income above "a basic living allowance."

His initiatives also include expanding tax credits to match retirement savings and increasing aid for families taking care of elderly relatives. That program would also require many employers to provide the option of a workplace-based retirement savings plan.

Obama is seeking to offer some attractive options to taxpayers, mindful of the painful implications of the loss of a traditionally Democratic Senate seat in Massachusetts to Republican Scott Brown. White House advisers see Wednesday's State of the Union speech as a key opportunity for Obama to recalibrate his message and reset his presidency after that stinging setback, which took away the Democrats' 60-vote supermajority in the Senate and put his main domestic agenda item, a health care overhaul, in doubt.

Obama and fellow Democrats are trying to regroup to stem more losses of congressional, gubernatorial and legislative seats in this fall's midterm elections. Obama's poll numbers are also off — primarily because of the slow economic recovery and double-digit unemployment.

"Too many Americans have known their own painful recessions long before any economists declared that there was a recession," Obama said in remarks to the task force, gathered around a horseshoe-shaped table.

The president said that creating new jobs and reducing unemployment is the "single-most important thing we can do to rebuild the middle class." "I won't rest until we're doing just that," he said.

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But, Obama said, "We also need to reverse the overall erosion in middle-class security, so that when this economy does come back, working Americans are free to pursue their dreams again."

The White House says the new proposals are aimed at just that — the "sandwich generation" that is now struggling to care for both children and parents. The theme fits into the planned economic message of Obama's prime-time address to the nation on Wednesday, which promises to provide a sharper focus on jobs and is likely to cover financial regulations, energy, education, immigration and a push to change the political tone in Washington.

Under the president's proposals, families making under $85,000 a year would see their child care tax credit nearly doubled. Families making under $115,000 would also see at least some increase in their tax credit as well. Obama will also call for the allocation of $100 million to assist families caring for aging relatives by providing help with transportation, adult day care and in-home aids.

The initiatives also focus on savings, requiring employers that don't offer work-based retirement plans to enroll their employees in a direct deposit retirement account, unless the employee opts out. The cost to employers would be offset by new tax credits, and the administration says the smallest firms would be exempt.

Obama will also call for caps on some student loans, limiting a borrower's payments to 10 percent of his or her income, and forgiving all remaining debt after 10 years of payment for those in public service work — and 20 years for all others.



Sources: MSNBC, Whitehouse.gov, Pundit Kitchen, Youtube

America's Disappearing Middle Class (Voters)...Where's Obama's "Middle Class Task Force"?

Study: Half of all U.S. children will need Food Stamps. Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis say nearly half of all American children and 90 percent of African-American children will be on food stamps at some point during childhood. NBC's Brian Williams reports.

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(VP Joe Biden)

"A Strong Middle Class equals a strong America. We can't have one without the other.
This task force will be an important vehicle to assess new and existing policies across the board and determine if they are helping or hurting America's Middle Class.
It is our (Obama Admin.) charge to the Middle Class, the backbone of our country, up and running again".










America Without a Middle Class


Can you imagine an America without a strong Middle Class? If you can, would it still be America as we know it?

Today, one in five Americans is unemployed, underemployed or just plain out of work. One in nine families can't make the minimum payment on their credit cards. One in eight mortgages is in default or foreclosure. One in eight Americans is on food stamps. More than 120,000 families are filing for bankruptcy every month. The economic crisis has wiped more than $5 trillion from pensions and savings, has left family balance sheets upside down, and threatens to put ten million homeowners out on the street.

Families have survived the ups and downs of economic booms and busts for a long time, but the fall-behind during the busts has gotten worse while the surge-ahead during the booms has stalled out. In the boom of the 1960s, for example, median family income jumped by 33% (adjusted for inflation). But the boom of the 2000s resulted in an almost-imperceptible 1.6% increase for the typical family. While Wall Street executives and others who owned lots of stock celebrated how good the recovery was for them, middle class families were left empty-handed.

The crisis facing the middle class started more than a generation ago. Even as productivity rose, the wages of the average fully-employed male have been flat since the 1970s.

But core expenses kept going up. By the early 2000s, families were spending twice as much (adjusted for inflation) on mortgages than they did a generation ago -- for a house that was, on average, only ten percent bigger and 25 years older. They also had to pay twice as much to hang on to their health insurance.

To cope, millions of families put a second parent into the workforce. But higher housing and medical costs combined with new expenses for child care, the costs of a second car to get to work and higher taxes combined to squeeze families even harder. Even with two incomes, they tightened their belts. Families today spend less than they did a generation ago on food, clothing, furniture, appliances, and other flexible purchases -- but it hasn't been enough to save them. Today's families have spent all their income, have spent all their savings, and have gone into debt to pay for college, to cover serious medical problems, and just to stay afloat a little while longer.

Through it all, families never asked for a handout from anyone, especially Washington. They were left to go on their own, working harder, squeezing nickels, and taking care of themselves. But their economic boats have been taking on water for years, and now the crisis has swamped millions of middle class families.

The contrast with the big banks could not be sharper. While the middle class has been caught in an economic vise, the financial industry that was supposed to serve them has prospered at their expense. Consumer banking -- selling debt to middle class families -- has been a gold mine. Boring banking has given way to creative banking, and the industry has generated tens of billions of dollars annually in fees made possible by deceptive and dangerous terms buried in the fine print of opaque, incomprehensible, and largely unregulated contracts.

And when various forms of this creative banking triggered economic crisis, the banks went to Washington for a handout. All the while, top executives kept their jobs and retained their bonuses. Even though the tax dollars that supported the bailout came largely from middle class families -- from people already working hard to make ends meet -- the beneficiaries of those tax dollars are now lobbying Congress to preserve the rules that had let those huge banks feast off the middle class.

Pundits talk about "populist rage" as a way to trivialize the anger and fear coursing through the middle class. But they have it wrong. Families understand with crystalline clarity that the rules they have played by are not the same rules that govern Wall Street. They understand that no American family is "too big to fail." They recognize that business models have shifted and that big banks are pulling out all the stops to squeeze families and boost revenues. They understand that their economic security is under assault and that leaving consumer debt effectively unregulated does not work.

Families are ready for change. According to polls, large majorities of Americans have welcomed the Obama Administration's proposal for a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA). The CFPA would be answerable to consumers -- not to banks and not to Wall Street. The agency would have the power to end tricks-and-traps pricing and to start leveling the playing field so that consumers have the tools they need to compare prices and manage their money. The response of the big banks has been to swing into action against the Agency, fighting with all their lobbying might to keep business-as-usual. They are pulling out all the stops to kill the agency before it is born. And if those practices crush millions more families, who cares -- so long as the profits stay high and the bonuses keep coming.

America today has plenty of rich and super-rich. But it has far more families who did all the right things, but who still have no real security. Going to college and finding a good job no longer guarantee economic safety. Paying for a child's education and setting aside enough for a decent retirement have become distant dreams. Tens of millions of once-secure middle class families now live paycheck to paycheck, watching as their debts pile up and worrying about whether a pink slip or a bad diagnosis will send them hurtling over an economic cliff.

America without a strong middle class? Unthinkable, but the once-solid foundation is shaking.


By Elizabeth Warren: Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law at Harvard and is currently the Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel.


Sources: Huffington Post, MSNBC, Whitehouse.gov, MTV, Youtube