Chuka Umunna Quotes

Historically, it has required a combination of favorable employment trends and active government intervention to lower the percentage of people in poverty and raise living standards for the working middle class.

Millions of people are falling out of the middle class into the ranks of the poor.

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 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 grew up in a family where my parents worked full-time and still found themselves and their six children trapped like so many of the working poor.

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.

We need to make sure middle-class people are able to pay the bills. We need to make sure that poor people don't starve. Those are values, too.

I don't know of a Democrat - whether they're a conservative, a centrist or a liberal Democrat - that doesn't think that it's important to have quality jobs that pay decent wages so that families can support themselves, so that they can have the dignity of being able to afford health care, put money aside for pension, buy a home.

The family wage has been eroded by the same developments that have promoted consumerism as a way of life.

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.

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

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.

It is unacceptable that someone can work full time - and work hard - and not be able to lift themselves out of poverty.

The best social programs we've had in this country are those that have united the middle class and the poor.

Workers, the most absolutely necessary part of the whole social structure, without whose services none can either eat, or clothe, or shelter himself, are just the ones who get the least to eat, to wear, and to be housed withal — to say nothing of their share of the other social benefits which the rest of us are supposed to furnish, such as education and artistic gratification.

There’s been an economic war going on in this country and the middle class and the poor have been losing..

Politicians should tell working Americans what they need to hear, not what they want to hear. And what they need to hear is that it is possible for all Americans to have good lives, even if the can’t all have good jobs.

I'm not running from the left; I'm running from the bottom. I'm running in fierce advocacy for working-class New Yorkers.

I believe America thrives when the middle class thrives.

I want to help the middle class.

The people at the bottom who are working but working at relatively low wages need some help.

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?

Politicians seem desperate to appeal to their respective versions of the so called 'middle class,' unable to empathise with the precariat and eager to dream up fresh and tougher sanctions against society's wounded.

Chronic insecurity will not be overcome by minimum wage laws, tax credits, means-tested benefits, or workfare.

It's never been clearer that unrestrained market forces do not produce the kind of societies we aspire to - economically stable and socially inclusive, where citizens have access to secure jobs with the dignity of a fair wage and a welfare safety net.