Steve Israel: Democrats’ path forward in 2015

Middle-class Americans have felt the squeeze in recent years. From stagnant paychecks to soaring student loan debt, working families across the country have had to tighten their belts to get through some trying economic times. But as we head deeper into 2015, there are new signs of hope and economic progress for middle-class families. The unemployment rate, which peaked at 10 percent during the financial crisis, is now down to 5.7 percent. Gross domestic product growth has surged over the past year, and for the first time in a long time, a majority of Americans feel like the U.S. made real economic improvements over the past year, according to a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC poll.

With these encouraging economic indicators, however, comes a sense that the gains we’ve made since emerging from the recession are not permanent — a sense that, at any moment, we could slip back into a prolonged period of decline that wipes away the hard-fought progress we’ve made. Americans are resilient, but we’re not stupid. We recognize how big of a hole we’ve had to dig ourselves out of and how much further we have to go to achieve our goals. So, the question becomes: How do we lock in the gains we’ve made and build for a brighter future? 

{mosads}As the chairman for House Democrats’ new Policy and Communications Committee, I spent a lot of time at our recent retreat asking this exact question. And the answer my colleagues and I kept coming back to is a stronger middle class. That’s the message. But with any good message, there needs to be substance — the policy — that serves as a framework to communicate values and ideas.

Growing up the product of a middle-class working family in Levittown, N.Y., America’s first suburb, I learned the value of an education, hard work and resilience — the values that have stood as the bedrock for American prosperity and opportunity for more than two centuries. While my colleagues on the other side of the aisle often pay lip service to these values, recent news of the Koch brothers’ plans to spend nearly a billion dollars in the 2016 election, to maintain the status quo of tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations, serves as an important reminder of the people Republicans are fighting for. Republicans’ willingness to put our national security at risk by refusing to pass a clean funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security and Rep. Charlie Dent’s (R-Pa.) summation of his first month back on Capitol Hill provide further evidence for their priorities in 2015:

“Week one, we had a Speaker election that didn’t go as well as a lot of us would have liked. Week two, we spent a lot of time talking about deporting children, a conversation a lot of us didn’t want to have. Week three, we’re debating reportable rape and incest — again, not an issue a lot of us wanted to have a conversation about. I just can’t wait for week four.”

Here’s week four: the 56th vote against the Affordable Care Act. And House Republicans continue to refuse to pass a clean funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security. Nothing to strengthen the middle class, grow paychecks, build infrastructure or make education more affordable. 

Democrats, on the other hand, are laser-focused on locking in the economic gains we’ve made and addressing these critical issues to ensure a stronger, more secure middle class. Last week, President Obama released his fiscal 2016 budget that lays out a path to a stronger middle class and makes critical investments for our future. And just last month, Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) proposed Democrats’ Middle Class Action Plan for America that offered a tax cut of $2,000 dollars for couples earning less than $200,000. Democrats recognize that by putting money in the pockets of working Americans, we can continue to grow our economy and provide additional opportunities for American families to join the middle class.

In the coming weeks and months, Democrats will continue to offer bold new policy ideas and solutions that offer bigger paychecks for workers and better infrastructure that spurs investment and economic development. We’ll look to make education more affordable for students and we’ll continue to protect Medicare and Social Security, ensuring our promise to our nation’s seniors. At a time when Americans are primarily concerned with the economy’s personal impact on their own lives, we’re going to make sure their voices are heard loud and clear. So while Congressional Republicans continue to stand in the way of creating jobs and making the American recovery permanent, we’re going do everything we can to finish the job.

Rep. Steve Israel (D) has served New York’s 3rd Congressional District since 2001. He sits on the Appropriations Committee. He currently serves as the chairman of the House Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, and previously served as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in the 2012 and 2014 election cycles.