High-Stakes Election for Middle-Class Families

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Friday October 26, 2012 · 6:02 AM PDT

2012/10/26 · 06:02

Having grown up in a small remote mining town in southern Nevada, I know what a struggle it can be to put food on the table, to ignore health needs because you can’t afford a doctor or to live paycheck to paycheck. I know, because I watched my parents live like this.

When I was young, Franklin Roosevelt gave my family the promise of a better life. A slogan of his hung in my childhood home and read: “We can. We will. We must.”

This century, President Obama has fought to give middle and low-income families out of a tough economy. He believes in a country that’s built to last from the middle out, not the top down.

President Obama’s vision provides a stark contrast to that offered by Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. This election, you and every other American, have a choice: you can vote for Obama to keep moving this country forward, or return to the policies of favoring big corporations and the top one percent above all else – policies that triggered massive job losses and sent the middle class into a tailspin.

The President has worked hard to help American workers get back on their feet, while Republicans have sat back – obstructing and delaying one common-sense piece of legislation after another.

Despite this unprecedented Republican obstruction, President Obama has saved the auto industry, passed health care reform to put power back in families’ hands, and presided over thirty straight months for private-sector job growth.

For the next four years, President Obama has laid out a plan that continues down this path of growing our economy from the middle out. You can read the full plan here.

For example, President Obama will grow new manufacturing jobs here in the U.S. so that American workers can stamp “Made in America” on more products to sell around the world. He will wind down the war in Afghanistan, and use the savings to pay down our debt. And he will cut taxes for the middle class, while asking the wealthiest one percent to pay their fair share.

In contrast, Gov. Romney’s vision puts America’s wealthiest ahead of anyone else.
Under Mitt Romney’s tax plan, multimillionaires will get a quarter of a million dollar tax cut, while the middle class will see their taxes go up.

Under the plan proposed by his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan, the Medicare guarantee will be broken, and the program on which so many seniors rely will be turned into a voucher system.

Mitt Romney is used to playing by his own rules. From the one tax return Romney released, we know he pays a lower tax rate than many middle-class families. Romney has made it clear: he only wants to be president of half the United States.

The 47 percent of Americans that Romney so callously derided includes seniors on Social Security, students dependent on tuition help to afford college and middle-class families raising children. They are hard-working people who do not enjoy the privilege of being born into a rich and famous family, and having every advantage provided to them throughout their lives.

If Mitt Romney won’t stand up and fight for every American, he doesn’t deserve to represent any American as president.

With President Obama’s continued leadership, we will get middle-class Americans back to work and build an economy that’s fit to last. As Roosevelt once said, “We can. We will. We must.”

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High-Stakes Election for Middle-Class Families

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