Median incomes are not growing as fast as they should be. This is true. And it is a serious problem.

[DanTex]

Now in my opinion, rather than just complain, we might want to discuss the kinds of policies that might be able to address this. For example:

--Raising the minimum wage
--Increasing taxes on top earners
--Expanding the earned income tax credit, a program which helps lower income workers
--Extensive investment in infrastructure, which will put people to work and increase aggregate demand

What do these things have in common? They are all part of Obama's current agenda. Right now, Obama is going around advocating for an increase in the minimum wage, and the rest of those items (and many more) are in his proposed budget.

Here's the problem. This stuff isn't going to make it through congress. Why? Because of the GOP.

The allegation has been made that DUers supporting Obama think about the "team" while those opposed to him are thinking about "policy." But this is not reality. In fact, if all those OPs talking about how disappointing Obama is, and about how he's really looking out for Wall Street and 1%ers -- if, in addition to complaining, those threads included policy proposals, I would wager that a lot of the "wish list" would already be included in the Obama budget.

Of course, Obama isn't perfect, and he's not as liberal as many people here would like him to be, myself included. So, yes, I'm sure there are policies that people would like to see advocated that aren't. But this brings us to the second key point.

The limiting factor right now isn't Obama's willingness to propose things, it's congress's willingness to approve them. There's really no getting around this. As disappointed as some may be in Obama, the current state of affairs is not the result of the Obama administration's bad policymaking, it is the result of the GOP congress opposing pretty much everything that would have a chance of improving things.

This isn't just conjecture. We saw what happened when Obama had a favorable congress. We got the most significant piece of social legislation since LBJ, we staved of a second great depression, we passed some of the most significant financial regulations in decades, for starters. Yes, Obamacare, the stimulus, and Dodd-Frank all could have been better, but we have to remember that even in their current form, they all just squeaked through congress.

So, yes, hold Democrats' feet to the fire when they do bad things. But let's not lose sight of reality.