America's middle class is under siege and ready for a change. People are working harder and longer for less and less.
Corporate profits are up. CEO pay is up. Wages are lagging. Household debt is soaring. At the same time, health care, energy, and education costs are rising. Last year, more people went bankrupt in our country than graduated from college.
For six long years, it's like America's middle class and working families have been invisible to our president. He's looked right through them.
If you're a worker who can't organize for fair wages and safe working conditions, you're invisible. If you're a grandmother who has watched this administration try to privatize Social Security and dump piles of debt on your grandchildren, you're invisible. If you're a mother who can't afford child care, a kid who can't afford college, a family that can't afford to get by on the minimum wage, you're invisible.
When Hillary is in the White House, no American will be invisible to the president of the United States.
As president, she will work from day one to strengthen and grow our middle class and restore the basic bargain: If you work hard and do your part, you can build a better life for yourself and your family.
Hillary believes Americans have the right to expect fiscal responsibility, discipline, and honesty from their leaders.
As president, Hillary will:
* Make health care affordable and accessible to every American.
* Reduce the cost of energy and make us energy independent.
* Expand access to affordable, high-quality child care.
* Make college more affordable.
* Protect families from predatory lenders and help them avoid foreclosures.
* Increase the minimum wage.
* Create good jobs with good wages to expand the middle class.
* Balance the federal budget so we don't pass today's massive debts to the next generation.
* Reward savings, protect pensions, and provide greater retirement security.
Ready to Lead
As a senator, Hillary introduced a plan that ties increases in the minimum wage to Congressional pay raises, so that if Congress votes a raise for itself, the minimum wage goes up as well.
Hillary has consistently supported tax relief for middle-class families. She has supported permanently ending the marriage penalty, extending the lower-income tax rates, providing a deduction for college tuition, and providing a refundable child tax credit and adoption tax credit.
She has worked to make college affordable and accessible, fighting to increase the federal Pell Grant, which currently covers just a third of tuition at an average public college. Hillary has also proposed the Student Borrowers Bill of Rights, a comprehensive set of reforms that would eliminate unscrupulous lending practices.
In New York, Hillary championed tax incentives like wage credits for businesses and job creation in upstate New York and elsewhere. She also helped launch economic development initiatives to provide critical resources to small and micro businesses and helped launch a private sector venture called New Jobs for New York that makes venture capital available to New York's innovators.