Behind the daily headlines of our turbulent political climate is a stark, hard fact: The American middle class is hurting. Household incomes for the middle 60 percent of the distribution are rising, but painfully slowly, and primarily due to more work (including longer hours) rather than better wages. As the economy continues its long climb back after the Great Recession, the middle class are still feeling the squeeze, in terms of both money and time. Whichever party is in power in Congress after the midterms, an immediate priority must be to bolster the quality of life for our middle-class families.
There are plenty of policy ideas floating around, many of them good. But making them a reality requires two political feats: galvanizing congressional support and addressing fears about the fiscal impact of new spending. In the spirit of offering a positive agenda for the middle class, we offer four proposals that ought to find bipartisan appeal, paired with four revenue-raising proposals that could fund each of them. Taken together, the package would be deficit-neutral.
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