Middle class most needs our help

Just as the Great Recession has begun to ease along comes another crater in the road to stymie the return to a reasonable level of economic sanity. The recent spike in fuel prices is unaffordable to the middle class who need to consume gasoline in order to work and provide for their families.

The federal government and politicians at state and local levels need to be mindful that any sustained recovery will only be accomplished if the middle class has the ability to develop reasonable discretionary spending levels supporting consumption of manufactured products and consumables.

Common knowledge that if no one can buy what is being built, demand will falter and the economy will stall and the recession will continue. The middle class is the engine that drives our economy. I am not talking about incomes over $100,000.

Middle-class citizens incomes are not structured to support the needed consumption with the rising cost of energy, food, housing and education. To coin a phrase would be to say they are “tapped out.” This realization appears to fall on deaf ears or our political leaders are going around with blinders on. The extension of the Bush tax cuts did nothing to help the middle and lower class.

I urge politicians, Republican and Democrats alike, as well as big business and the elite 2 percent to understand that if the middle class does not succeed nor will our return to sustained growth. Anything which is done to favor the growth of income for the masses is needed to alleviate certain disaster that is looming on the horizon.

Tom Rajcan

Wheaton