We're All Middle Class
Now, to be fair, this is not a Republican or a Democratic trick, it is dishearteningly bi-partisan. In this instance I wrote to my Representative in particular because he had announced joining a new Caucus in the House, and I was hoping that in the context of a legislative body, some of the disingenuousness might be stripped from the tactic.
Alas, no.
What is this tactic? "Supporting the Middle Class."
Why is this tactic disingenuous? Well, you can go back and read the letter I sent, or you can just read Congressman Tiberi's response, which does a pretty fair job of summarizing:
Dear Mr. Sullivan,
Thank you very much for your email concerning the Congressional Caucus on the Middle Class. I'm glad you took a moment to write.
As of this email, 35 members of the U.S. House of Representatives representing both political parties have joined the Congressional Caucus on the Middle Class. The Caucus was created to serve as a forum for discussion and bipartisan policy development on issues that affect a broad range of American society such as rising gas prices, access to health care, retirement and financial literacy, and housing, just to name a few.
The release I issued announcing my membership in this caucus mentioned a report issued by the non-partisan Pew Research Center, a subsidiary of the widely known and respected Pew Charitable Trusts. This report was presented as providing a "portrait" of the middle class and may be found online by visiting http://pewresearch.org
As you note in your letter, the Pew report survey indicates that 92 percent of American adults identify themselves as belonging to some part of the middle class. The report also draws a distinction (that you also recognize in your email) between the use of the terms "middle class" and "middle income." When I was growing up in Columbus I always thought of my family as middle class. But as a participant in the free and reduced lunch program in Columbus public schools, we may not have been - especially if the middle class had been defined only as an expression of wealth or median income. I believe the report's concept of the middle class as, "a state of mind as well as a statement of income and wealth" is something we should be mindful of as the Caucus proceeds with its work.
Again, the Caucus was designed as a forum where we can discuss and, hopefully, come to agreement on, solutions to problems faced by a wide range of Americans. I'm concerned that conditions and limitations placed on the work of the caucus, either by members of the Caucus or other groups or individuals, could result in a closed forum whose work would resemble the gridlock along party lines that we unfortunately see in Washington, D.C. all too often.
Thank you again for your email.
Sincerely,
Patrick J. Tiberi
Perhaps a bit of background is required: American families were asked to identify themselves as "lower," "lower middle," "middle" "upper middle," or "upper" class. In addition, family incomes were divided into 5 equally sized income brackets - lower, lower-middle, middle, upper-middle, and upper. Even though, 60% of Americans fall into those middle three income groups, 92% of Americans use one of the middle three labels. Making things even trickier, many people in the middle three income brackets actually identify themselves as "lower" or "upper" class, meaning that if middle class is both a mental state and an income level, the proportion of people under discussion is closer to 95%. Mr. Tiberi is right when he says that a family that qualifies for reduced price school lunches is probably middle-class in their own minds, but not by economic standards. This only becomes a problem when someone seeks to 'support the middle class' by giving a tax break to those who earn 150k-200k per year, and fund it by cutting back on programs supporting the "poor," like food stamps or even... reduced price lunches. Unless your policy predominantly affects multi-millionaires and/or the homeless, it will by definition be predominantly affecting members of the middle class.
There's nothing wrong with "a forum where we can discuss and, hopefully, come to agreement on, solutions to problems faced by a wide range of Americans." As a matter of fact, I kind of thought that's what Congress was.
