Lonely in the Middle
Compassionate conservatism has been the catchphrase of George W. Bush since the presidential campaign of 2000, but those two words must now ring hollow to the more than 100 million Americans who make up our middle class. There is nothing conservative about our rising record budget and trade deficits. There is nothing compassionate about the president's idea of Social Security reform, the rollback of coverage for ever more costly healthcare for working Americans, or the most recent assault on the middle class: the new bankruptcy reform bill that Bush signed into law last week.
It's ironic that Congress approved the bankruptcy bill to impose fiscal discipline on the middle class when the federal government last year ran up a $412 billion budget deficit and a $617 billion trade deficit. President Bush's temerity in signing this legislation was the ultimate hypocrisy in a town already very well credentialed. Add to that hypocrisy the House of Representatives' vote to permanently repeal the estate tax for the wealthy, as Congress further rent the middle class's social safety net.
Compassionate conservatism? The new bankruptcy law was virtually written by the credit card companies and banks, making it far more difficult for American families to erase their debt. The credit card firms are not exactly struggling. Their profits, in fact, have risen steadily over the past decade.
Personal bankruptcy filings fell nearly 4 percent to 1.56 million in 2004, down from a record high a year earlier. But these aren't just lazy debtors taking advantage of a broken system; these are working men and women who have faced hardships and financial failure, and tried to avoid bankruptcy court. A recent Harvard study shows that nearly half of all personal bankruptcies in this country are caused by costly illnesses and medical bills. And surprisingly, more than three quarters of the debtors who sought court protection from creditors had some health insurance coverage at the onset of the illness that triggered bankruptcy.
"Do we run the country for the people, or do we run it for nameless, faceless banks or international corporations?" asks Harvard Law School Prof. Elizabeth Warren. "That was the issue way back as far back as the Depression. The ultimate decision was we run it for the people. ... And now we have made a complete turnabout: We not only don't invest in the middle class, we drain away from the middle class. We tax them harder; we leave them with bigger risks like never before in history. And we take away the last shred of a safety net--bankruptcy. It's war on the middle class."
Bipartisan attack. It's now a war being prosecuted by both political parties. Neither party in Congress is looking out for the interests of the middle class. Not surprisingly, every Republican in both the Senate and the House of Representatives voted in favor of the bankruptcy bill. Seventy-three Democrats in the House as well as 18 in the Senate joined their pro-business colleagues on the other side of the aisle by voting against the needs of the people. To permanently repeal the estate tax, 42 House Democrats voted in favor of supporting another break for the wealthy. Every Republican in the House except one approved that legislation.
"The middle-class working-family interests are not being guarded on Capitol Hill," says Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, who voted against the bankruptcy reform bill. "They are, unfortunately, victims of what has become a tidal wave of pro-business legislation, which has been unfair to a lot of families that are struggling to get along."
Durbin acknowledges that too many in his party are now under the sway of the all-powerful political influence of corporate America. "It's sad that there are many Democrats that felt, initially, this was an easy business vote when the bill came up 10 years ago," Durbin said. "Unfortunately, over the years, the bill got progressively worse and much more unfair for consumers, and many of those same Democrats still stuck with the Republicans."
Abraham Lincoln declared that a government "of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the Earth," but the 21st century has so far seen it certainly diminishing. Unless one political party (and let's hope both) finds the courage to resist corporate interests and put working men and women first, our middle class will be among the loneliest people in a faded nation.
This story appears in the May 2, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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