Our parents and grandparents understood this truth deeply. They believed - as we do - that to create jobs, a modern economy requires modern investments: educating, innovating and rebuilding for our children's future. Building an economy to last, from the middle class up, not from the billionaires down.

You can't strengthen the ranks of your middle class, you can't strengthen and grow the ranks of your businesses and family-owned businesses, unless you are fiscally responsible.

Our argument is everybody ought to be paying lower rates, and we ought to be focused on growing the economy and rebuilding the middle class.

The answers to feeding hungry children is not fewer dollars to feed hungry children, it's to do more. It is to raise the minimum wage. It is to increase, not dismantle, the earned income tax credit. It is to make college more affordable for more middle class families, not more expensive. These are the things that grow our middle class.

I'm painfully middle class.

Upper classes are a nation's past; the middle class is its future.