Charles E. Schumer Quotes

I don't mind the rich getting richer, but the poor shouldn't be getting poorer, and there should be more people moving into the middle class.

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.

No matter how wealthy a few plutocrats get, we can never drive a great national economy. Only a thriving middle class can do that.

So when the only domestic social policy is tax cuts that mostly benefit the wealthiest Americans, we say, 'Where is faith being put into action here?'

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.

Our main task is not to see that people of great wealth add to it, but that those without much money have a greater chance to earn some.

You must not embark on programs to curb economic growth without placing a priority on maintaining income, so that the poorest people won’t simply be further depressed in their condition but will have a share, and be able to live decently.

There never can be equality of rewards or possessions so long as the human plan contains varied talents and differing degrees of industry and thrift, but ours ought to be a country free from the great blotches of distressed poverty.

Maybe it’s that silver spoon in his [Mitt Romney’s] mouth that keeps him from seeing why the middle class doesn’t pull itself up by its bootstraps, like he did when Daddy loaned him his first million dollars.

Americans have historically been more willing than Europeans to tolerate high inequality levels if accompanied by strong economic growth and a healthy middle class.

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

An important factor influencing intergenerational mobility and trends in inequality over time is economic opportunity.

We have a choice: we can allow the growing disparity between rich and poor to continue unimpeded, or we can take action to budget responsibly and strengthen and expand the middle class. If we want this economy - and this country - to meet its full potential, the choice is simple.

What good is a high GDP if some, or even many, Americans are left behind?

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

Spreading the wealth punishes success while setting America on course for a greater dependency on government.

Prosperity isn't something that squirts out of rich people.

The goal to strive for is a poor government but a rich people.

Most of the time in America, we're surrounded by oppressive inequality such that the wealthiest 1 percent collectively own substantially more than the bottom 90 percent. One escape from that is America's wild places.

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.

Income inequality is troubling because, among other things, it means that many people in our society don't have the opportunities to advance themselves.

In fact, it works the other way: A government as big and bossy as this one is maintained on the backs of the middle class and those who hope to join it.

You have to let the market reward effort and skill. But a system in which inequality of incomes constantly increases over time is worrisome.

The perennial conviction that those who work hard and play by the rules will be rewarded with a more comfortable present and a stronger future for their children faces assault from just about every direction. That great enemy of democratic capitalism, economic inequality, is real and growing.

To see poor people, their benefits being cut, to see pensions of Americans who have worked like my father, all their lives, and taken away, to see the rich just accumulating more and more wealth. I mean, it seems to me that there has to be a point where you have to say, 'No, this has to stop.'