Biden To Wall-Street-Friendly Democrats: The Middle Class Comes First
First Posted: 04-20-10 01:58 PM
Vice President Biden today challenged a gathering of Wall-Street-friendly Democrats to join President Obama in making sure that this economic recovery, unlike the last one, actually benefits the middle class.
"I have one question. I have one challenge to you all. What policy steps will once again link productivity growth and middle-class incomes?" Biden asked the audience. "I hope collectively we can find an answer.
"The middle class needs to get its fair share again," Biden said. "It sounds like a trite political slogan, but, folks, the system is not going to work if they do not believe they're getting a fair share commensurate with the effort they put in."
Biden was speaking at the relaunch of the Hamilton Project, a think tank founded by ultimate Wall Street Democrat Robert Rubin to publicly despair about the deficit and other things bankers worry about the most.
So his speech was something of a shot across the bow.
"If the next expansion fails to lift the middle class, if it bubbles and bursts, if it gives a high five to Wall Street while stiff-arming Main Street, then it will be an expansion that we will not be proud of and it will not be the expansion that the President and I believe this nation so badly needs," the vice president said.
Biden acknowledged that the recovery is so modest thus far that it has yet to be felt by most American families. And, he said, economic indicators only mean so much. "We're far more interested in when growth is going to reach, which it has not yet, the broad middle class and those who aspire to join it"
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/20/biden-to-wall-street-frie_n_544753.html
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