Issue Position: The Middle Class

Issue Position

Focusing our attention on those that truly abuse the proverbial "system':

In order to strengthen and protect our "Middle Class', we need a wage that properly rewards our state's workforce. No one should work 40 hours a week and still have too little income to make ends meet.

Ensuring the welfare system of users and abusers requires that leaders focus on the real problems. Governor LePage, instead of focusing on the problem of an entirely un-livable wage, has used divisive language in order to excite hatred towards a welfare program that 99.9% of the time works. His approach shames people who seek assistance and causes people to assume that all welfare recipients are abusers. The fact is Maine has a fraud rate of two-tenths of one percent -- only 10 to 15 criminal charges are filed each year.

While every instance of fraud should be properly handled, the conversation needs to be shifted towards why people find themselves seeking assistance in the first place. We need to address why Maine spends the second highest percentage of its annual budget on welfare. A minimum wage of $7.50 is just not enough. While fast food jobs are widely considered employment opportunities for high school students, the average age of workers in the industry is actually 29 years old. People are turning to a low-wage service industry in order to sustain their families -- many still needing extra assistance.

The worst part: while corporate profits have steadily increased since 1970, the labor share has fallen. This is simply unfair. We have a workforce in Maine that serves as an engine to a profit making machine that has failed to reward its engine with more fuel. The users and abusers are not those shoved to the margins receiving welfare benefits. Instead, the users and abusers are those that provide their employees with wages that fail to barely cover the cost of childcare.

We need to send a representative to Augusta that will lower welfare costs by appropriately addressing what causes people to seek it!

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