Keith Ellison Quotes

The people who support Mr. Curbelo's campaign are people who oppose Medicare and Social Security, want to reform it to take it away from our seniors, and oppose a minimum wage.

I oppose the president's plan to privatize Social Security.

I am emphatically against the privatization of Social Security. It is going to hurt millions of American women, American families and ultimately the whole country.

As the 2016 presidential race kicks off, candidates on both sides of the aisle are promising to stand up for the middle class. Voters deserve to know that anyone who champions Obamacare cannot honestly say she or he is also a champion of middle-class Americans.

I never sought to privatize Social Security.

This is the middle-class equivalent of raising the minimum wage.

We are going to stand and fight to kill the privatizing approach [to Social Security.]

We cannot afford to balance the budget on the backs of America's middle class and seniors and must do what it takes to strengthen Social Security and Medicare, including enabling the government to negotiate the price of prescription drugs.

I was on the committee that helped raise the minimum wage here in Seattle. I introduced a statewide bill to raise the minimum wage in Washington state my first year in the state senate, and I really believe that raising the federal minimum wage, while not the answer to everything, addresses a lot of the issues at the very bottom.

For Democrats to win, they're going to have to address the needs of working people. They're going to have to address the needs of the middle class.

Look at the [Bill] Clinton Administration and now the [Barack] Obama administration more recently. What we believe is that we implement policies that help people reach the middle class which is the cornerstone of our economy.

I was at the forefront of the effort to pass $15 minimum wage in Seattle, and have been collaborating with the people who are trying to make that happen across the country.

I want people to make a lot more than $9. $9 is not enough. The problem is that if you can't do that by mandating it in the minimum wage laws. Minimum wage laws never worked in terms of helping the middle class attain more prosperity.

[Donald Trump] said it's against affordable health care for poor people and will not fight to raise wages for working poor people, that's pushing all of them in terms of policy.

We will talk about the contrast between both parties' nominees and our desire to continue to build on our success in helping people reach the middle class.

Every single thing I've done, from the Affordable Care Act to pushing to raise the minimum wage, to making sure that young people are able to go to college and get good job training, to what we're pushing now in terms of sick paid leave,everything I do has been focused on how do we make sure the middle class is getting a fair deal.

There's a false choice being put forward by some Democrats now. Either we double-down on our progressive values, or we go out there and talk about the middle class and the working class. I've never found them inconsistent. They go together.

Increasing the minimum wagewill put billions annually into the Social Security trust fund.

The only way America can reduce the long-term budget deficit, maintain vital services, protect Social Security and Medicare, invest more in education and infrastructure, and not raise taxes on the working middle class is by raising taxes on the super rich.

When President-elect [Donald] Trump wants to take on these issue, when his goal is to increase the economic security of middle class families, then count me in.

That's the standard technique of privatization: defund, make sure things don't work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital.

Because [Donald Trump] so clearly - through his words and actions and the type of people that turn up at his rallies - represents people who are not the middle, not the upper middle educated class, there is a fear of seeming to be associated in any way with them, a social fear that lowers the class status of anyone who can be accused of somehow assisting Trump in any way, including any criticism of Hillary Clinton.

Middle-class societies don't emerge automatically as an economy matures, they have to be CREATED through political action.

You can't lift people out of poverty simply by tweaking the tax system, or by raising the minimum wage by a few cents, or by reducing student debt slightly. These might be necessary components of a larger anti-poverty program, but you have to accept they are pieces of a much larger puzzle.

Our society is connecting workers with the products people consume and recognizing workers for their contributions. It is important to do that, and to have organized labor - a middle class - to preserve our democracy.