Keith Ellison Quotes

Inequality of income is bad for everyone, not just the poor and the middle class.

The jobs crisis has reached a boiling point, which is why we see Occupy Wall Street protestors crying out for an America that lets all of us reach for the American Dream again - a dream that says if you work hard and play by the rules, you can have a good life and retire with dignity.

Average working people need more fresh starts. Big corporations, banks, and Donald Trump need fewer.

Income inequity has to be addressed.

It's morally wrong, and economically self-defeating, that so much wealth flows upwards towards the richest of Americans, while millions work full time but still can't provide for their families.

I must say that I do wrestle with the amount of money I make, but at the end of the day what am I gonna say? I took less money so Rupert Murdoch could have more?

Bush already gave obscene tax breaks to people like me and Warren Buffet, and we are saying it's not fair.

In a morally adjusted economy ... the rich should not get richer if the poor get poorer.

There’s a mal-distribution in wealth in this country. Entitlements end up going to the rich anyway. Some of them should be attacked. The ones who rip us off, the ones who get bailed out.

Unless you’re at the very top, you need a more equitable economy.

This growing inequality … is not only morally wrong, it’s bad economics, because when middle class families have less to spend, guess what. Businesses have fewer consumers.

In a good society, those in the middle and at the bottom ought to benefit significantly from economic growth. When the country prospers, everybody should prosper.

I'm really sick of the 'one percent' that is taking all the money from this country, draining the middle class, making it nonexistent.

We have an economy that's really geared toward rewarding the investor class. What are we doing to make sure that people who want to have a middle-class life are able to keep up?

I believe the benefits of tax reform should flow to those who most need them most - hard-pressed working families struggling to reach or stay in the middle class.

I try to deal with the poverty gap - to do policies for all of us rather than only for the wealthy.

Americans are falling out of the middle class, not into it. And they deserve relief. I absolute support extending the Bush tax cuts for those who work the hardest and invest the most in our economy - the real drivers of American growth, the middle class.

In order to invest in our future, we must ensure that we appropriately protect programs that provide skills, services, and education for middle-class Americans rather than providing tax breaks for large corporations.

One thing we're going to focus on is the middle class and the crushing prices and stagnant wages they're facing. What motivates me is looking at my 3-year-old son and thinking about what we're passing on to him and his future wife and their future kids.

We have concentrated wealth and capital to such a degree that the vast majority of us don't have the discretionary dollars to make our economy go and grow.

But I don't think the Democratic Party is at eye level with the middle class.

Many of my friends and family are scratching it out somewhere decidedly south of the ever widening gap between the haves and have nots, looking at losing their homes, colleges they can't afford and healthcare they can't avail themselves of.

I worry about growing income inequality. But I worry even more that the discussion is too narrowly focused. I worry that our outrage at the top 1 percent is distracting us from the problem that we should really care about: how to create opportunities and ensure a reasonable standard of living for the bottom 20 percent.

President Obama believes that income inequality is one of the most pressing matters facing the nation. If we are going to be a country that provides ladders of opportunity and believes in a thriving middle class, then we have to raise the minimum wage.

You can't run the economy on BMWs alone. If the average person is in a pickle, how do you have a healthy economy?