America's middle class is under
siege and ready for a change. People are working harder and longer
for less and less.
| Corporate profits are up.
CEO pay is up. Wages are lagging. Household debt is soaring.
At the same time, health care, energy, and education costs
are rising. Last year, more people went bankrupt in our
country than graduated from college.
For six long years, it's
like America's middle class and working families have been
invisible to our president. He's looked right through them.
If you're a worker who can't organize for fair wages and
safe working conditions, you're invisible. |
|
If you're a grandmother who
has watched this administration try to privatize Social Security
and dump piles of debt on your grandchildren, you're invisible. If
you're a mother who can't afford child care, a kid who can't
afford college, a family that can't afford to get by on the
minimum wage, you're invisible.
When Hillary is in the White
House, no American will be invisible to the president of the
United States.
As president, she will work from
day one to strengthen and grow our middle class and restore the
basic bargain: If you work hard and do your part, you can build a
better life for yourself and your family.
Hillary believes Americans have
the right to expect fiscal responsibility, discipline, and honesty
from their leaders.
As president, Hillary will:
- Make health care affordable
and accessible to every American.
- Reduce the cost of energy and
make us energy independent.
- Expand access to affordable,
high-quality child care.
- Make college more affordable.
- Protect families from
predatory lenders and help them avoid foreclosures.
- Increase the minimum wage.
- Create good jobs with good
wages to expand the middle class.
- Balance the federal budget so
we don't pass today's massive debts to the next generation.
- Reward savings, protect
pensions, and provide greater retirement security.
As a senator, Hillary introduced
a plan that ties increases in the minimum wage to Congressional
pay raises, so that if Congress votes a raise for itself, the
minimum wage goes up as well.
Hillary has consistently
supported tax relief for middle-class families. She has supported
permanently ending the marriage penalty, extending the
lower-income tax rates, providing a deduction for college tuition,
and providing a refundable child tax credit and adoption tax
credit.
She has worked to make college
affordable and accessible, fighting to increase the federal Pell
Grant, which currently covers just a third of tuition at an
average public college. Hillary has also proposed the Student
Borrowers Bill of Rights, a comprehensive set of reforms that
would eliminate unscrupulous lending practices.
In New York, Hillary championed
tax incentives like wage credits for businesses and job creation
in upstate New York and elsewhere. She also helped launch economic
development initiatives to provide critical resources to small and
micro businesses and helped launch a private sector venture called
New Jobs for New York that makes venture capital available to New
York's innovators.
