The middle class has now reaped what the Bradley/Bush team has sown.  Two years ago, I said I was running for the bottom 99% of us because I could see the financial difficulties middle-class families were enduring.  As I often said in 2006, the middle class is stumbling and the poor have fallen.  George Bush and the Republican leaders were consistently supporting the very wealthy and against the middle class, and Jeb Bradley voted with them more than 85% of the time.  Unfair tax advantages, deceptively packaged as "cuts," have helped out the richest 1% of the country (those individuals making  $400,000 or more), who now hold 40% of the wealth. The loss of this vital tax money (an estimated 48% of the deficit is caused by the Bush tax breaks for the wealthy), coupled with an inconceivably expensive war (a billion dollars every other day) has left the middle class struggling with the burdens of taxes, high insurance and medical costs, soaring energy and housing prices, and reductions in services.

So while tax breaks have flowed to those in the top 1%, the rest of us have had to struggle in increasingly tough times.  The US Census Bureau says that the poverty rate has been rising since 2000. There are now 37 million Americans below the poverty line, which is set at $19,350 for a family of four.  There are twelve million kids in poverty, which is 17% of all kids under 18.  This is not acceptable in our land of opportunity, and it must change.

While squeezing the middle class and cutting services, the Bush Administration has drastically reduced revenue by extending tax advantages to corporations. A July 2008 Government Accountability Office report found that over two-thirds of US corporations and foreign corporations that have the privilege to do business in the US paid no federal income or corporate taxes at all.  But it's patriotic to pay your fair share to support this magnificent country!  Let the wealthiest pay their fair share also, because it's both patriotic and necessary in order to restore America's financial health.

We all must contribute according to our ability, so we can protect our nation. We are presently borrowing money from Communist China and other countries to pay our debts and to fund the war in Iraq, instead of getting our financial house in order.  That jeopardizes both our way of life and our national security.  The previous Republican-controlled Congresses, with the support of Jeb Bradley, took us from the budget surplus of $5 trillion projected over the 10 years (from 2000-2010) to "a grand total of increased indebtedness of more than $20 trillion during [the first 5 years of] the Bush presidency..." (Bruce Bartlett, Editorial: Borrow and spend: Republicans burst the budget, Manchester Union Leader, 1/08/06).

To get our own fiscal house in order and as a key part of balancing the budget once again in the new 110th Congress, I voted for  the reinstatement of the pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) policy.   This is one of the policies that gave us a budget surplus of over $142 billion by 2000.

Many other complicated measures can be taken, but these simple and fair measures, undertaken now, will produce immediate revenue for the country.

I will continue to fight fiscal irresponsibility and work towards a budget that is financially sound and morally fair to all.