The recession has hit America's working and middle-class families the hardest. During the Bush administration, average incomes fell, foreclosure rates soared while health care costs skyrocketed, and our economy shed millions of jobs. Since President Obama took office, Democrats have been focused on creating jobs and rebuilding our economy for the long run. Democrats cut taxes for small businesses and for 95 percent of working families. They passed Wall Street reform to protect consumers and ensure that taxpayers never again had to bail out big banks. Democrats expanded access to education, made health care more affordable, and ended the worst abuses of the insurance industry.
There is still work to be done in order to rebuild a middle class that has been struggling for more than a decade, but across the country families are beginning to see progress. Here are the numbers behind that progress:
1,999,000
Number of middle-class families in Minnesota that received a tax cut through the Recovery Act
200,576
Number of new hires in Minnesota for which their employer may be eligible for a tax cut through the HIRE Act, which Democrats passed to promote private-sector job growth
63,000
Number of jobs created or saved through October 2010 in Minnesota because of the Recovery Act
1,181,000
Number of families in Minnesota that will receive tax credits and other assistance because of health care reform
November 6th, 2012 will be here before you know it. There is no such thing as "too early" when it comes to protecting the great progress we've made and the great progress that is still to come.
We've done it before and YES WE CAN do it again!