[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 13]
[House]
[Page 17986]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    MIDDLE CLASS CHALLENGES CONGRESS

  (Mr. TONKO asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  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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