WASHINGTON - Ways and Means Committee Ranking Member Sander Levin (D-MI) today delivered the following remarks at the Forum on Economic Challenges Facing the Middle Class, hosted by Senator Elizabeth Warren and Congressman Elijah Cummings:
Thank you Senator Warren and Congressman Cummings for convening this important forum. And thank you to our prestigious panel. I look forward to hearing your testimony.
The crisis that hit our economy in 2008 was so deep that more than 680,000 jobs were lost in each of six consecutive months at the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009, more than in any single month since 1949.
Our economic rebound has been dramatic. The economy is growing at the fastest pace since the 1990s, the unemployment rate is well below what economists were anticipating even a year ago, and health care costs have never before increased so slowly, thanks to the Affordable Care Act.
Yet, in contrast to earlier recoveries, wage growth has continued on the same flat trajectory that it has experienced during the past four decades, even as productivity has risen in recent years.
Middle class families are struggling, and the path to the middle class is narrowing.
Despite our admiration for President John F. Kennedy, what he said at the time about a rising tide lifting all boats has not worked in the decades that followed.
And the Republican dogma of trickle-down economics has been a disaster for the middle class.
It is vital to understand and address the causes of wage stagnation.
Globalization is here to stay, as is technological change, but we need to shape their course.
Fewer and fewer workers are represented in labor organizations that can bargain for a decent wage, and Republicans are determined to weaken them still further, illustrated by the new initiative of Wisconsin Gov. Walker.
Contrary to the efforts led by Republicans - to take their notion that free markets domestically work without regulations, curing any defects on their own, and automatically applying it to expanded international trade as basically an end in and of itself - trade agreements must be shaped actively to support, not undermine, middle class jobs.
Today’s forum represents an opportunity to tackle these issues and I join in welcoming this exceptionally distinguished panel.
