September 15, 2013
Independent U.S. Senator from Vermont
At a time of great political division in our country President
Obama has found a remarkable way to unite Americans of all political
persuasions -- conservatives, progressives and moderates. With a loud
and clear voice, the overwhelming majority of the American people,
across the political spectrum, are saying NO to another war in the
Middle East -- Syria's bloody and complicated civil war.
There are two major reasons why the people in this
country are adamantly opposed to the U.S.'s military intervention in
Syria.
First, of course, is the much discussed "war weariness."
The United States has been at war in Afghanistan for 12 years, and the
war in Iraq dragged on for nearly nine years. The cost of these wars
has been horrendous: more than 6,700 American deaths; hundreds of
thousands suffering from traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic
stress disorder; and a financial cost of between $4 trillion to $6
trillion by the time the last war veteran receives needed care.
Further, as a result of the ineptitude and dishonesty of foreign policy
decisions made in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, the American people
worry deeply about the unintended consequences of another military
venture.
But there's another reason why Americans are reluctant to
get involved in a third Middle East war in 12 years. And that relates
to the fact that Congress today has a 14 percent favorability rating and
millions of Americans have absolutely no confidence that the U.S. House
or Senate is even remotely concerned about their needs or views.
Here's the truth. The middle class in this country is
collapsing. The number of Americans living in poverty is nearly the
highest on record and the gap between the very rich and everyone else is
growing wider and wider. And very few people in Washington give a
damn.
Year after year the American people have begged the
Congress and the president to move aggressively to protect the middle
class from total collapse. And, so far, their leaders have failed to
act. Today, the American people are demanding action to create jobs for
their kids and retirement security for their parents.
They are deeply worried about the state of the economy, and they have every reason to worry. Here's what's going on:
- Real unemployment: Counting those who have given
up looking for work and those who are working part-time when they need a
full time job, the real unemployment rate is 13.7 percent, not 7.3
percent.
- Average wages: Non-supervisory workers have seen their wages go down
by eight cents an hour since the beginning of the so-called recovery
and are now a paltry $8.77 an hour.
- Income and wealth inequality: From 2009-2012, the richest 1 percent
of Americans captured 95 percent of all new income, while the typical
middle class family has seen their income go down by more than2,100.
The Walton family, the owners of Wal-Mart, are worth more than $100
billion and own more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of Americans.
- College unaffordability: Over the past 30 years, the cost of a
college education has gone up by more than 250 percent. The average
American graduating from college this year is drowning in debt of more
than35,000. Even worse, hundreds of thousands of high school graduates
are unable to go to college each and every year not because they are
unqualified, but because they can't afford it.
- Childhood poverty: We live in the richest country in
the world, yet one out of five children in the U.S. is stuck in poverty.
And the reality is that children living in poverty in America today
are more likely to stay in poverty when they grow up than in any other
advanced country on earth.
The lesson to be learned from the widespread opposition to the war is
that the American people standing together can make a difference.
Building on that momentum, now is the time to demand that Congress
create millions of decent-paying jobs repairing our crumbling roads,
bridges, dams, culverts, schools and housing.
We need to end our dependence on dirty fossil fuels that are
threatening the planet and move toward energy efficiency and renewable
energy. We must increase the minimum wage to at least $10.10 an hour
and lift millions of Americans out of poverty. We must fundamentally
rewrite our trade policy so that American products, not American jobs,
are our No. 1 export. We must stand up to the greed on Wall Street by
breaking up too-big-to-fail banks that have done so much damage to the
economy. And, we must make college affordable so that every qualified
American can get the education they need to reclaim the American dream.
None of this will be easy. But the American people have proven that
if they speak out, if they flood Capitol Hill with phone calls and
emails, they can stop a war. Now is the time to use that same energy
and passion to save the middle class.
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