The affirmative agenda: what should the 110th Congress do for the middle class?
As Ganesh noted yesterday, Tuesday's sweeping victory for Democrats - in congressional, gubernatorial, and local races - may have been driven, in significant part, by the frustration of the middle class. President Bush and the 109th Congress have done shockingly little to address their concerns, and despite reasonably robust economic growth, middle class families across the country are struggling with rising health care costs, higher net tax burdens, and diminishing home values.
Having recaptured both houses of Congress, the burden falls to Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and their respective caucuses to succeed where their Republican counterparts failed. The question on our collective mind is: what will they do? Having spent the last several years as a reactive minority, Democrats are now accountable to voters as proactive leaders. In the coming weeks, Democrats will lay out their legislative agenda.
In the coming days, so will we here at Warren Reports. Stay tuned for a series of brief, discrete policy proposals that we think would address middle class economic needs that the current Congress neglected. For the most part, we'll leave questions of political wisdom to the politicians; our aim is to offer substantive ideas that we think will improve the lot of the broad American middle class.
One last note: we have no monopoly on good ideas. If you have some, let us know in the comments and we'll incorporate them into future posts. Stay tuned...
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