Word: bidens
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Last Friday, Vice President Joe Biden and seven White House Cabinet members traveled to Philadelphia to kick off the inaugural gathering of President Barack Obama's Middle Class Task Force. The task force will convene monthly in cities across the country to confront the problems faced by average Americans. It's an admirable goal - in light of rising costs, stagnant wages and job cuts, a Pew Research study found that 78% of self-described middle-class Americans have trouble maintaining their current standard of living...
...America's most beloved demographic group has never been an exact science, most academics agree that the term refers to anyone earning between $30,000 and $100,000 a year. (Median household income in the U.S. hovers around $50,000.) Every member of the President's task force - from Biden ($227,000) to Council of Economic Advisors Chairwoman Christina Romer ($172,000) to Energy Secretary Steven Chu ($191,000) - makes well over $150,000, putting them in the top 5% of wage earners. (See pictures of crime in Middle America...
Middle-class Americans are invited to submit questions and ideas through the task force's website, but while tickets for the Philadelphia meeting were distributed to labor and environmental groups, the task force did not accept questions from the audience. "If Biden and his team want to go into this [middle-class issue]," says Daniel Morris, communications director of the Drum Major Institute, a think tank that analyzes middle-class policy issues, "they're going to need to talk to real members of the middle class. There's no substitute for immediate intimate interaction...
...addition to its disastrous implications for Russo-American relations in the post-Soviet era, the defense program would put a damper on President Obama’s promised negotiations with Iran regarding its nuclear weapons program. This January, at the Munich Security Conference, Vice President Joseph Biden announced that the United States would “continue to develop missile defenses to counter a growing Iranian capability,” hardly the language of constructive diplomacy. To many, Biden’s speech sent a very direct message to Tehran: Even with Bush gone, it remains part...
Vice President Biden attempted to define middle-class Americans as people who would find it difficult to miss more than two paychecks, and he wasn't far off; with wage increases failing to keep pace with inflation, about 21% of middle-class Americans have spent themselves to the limit. Personal bankruptcies rose by a third last year and mortgage defaults - well, they're moving beyond subprime borrowers and hitting those with previously high credit scores. On Feb. 27, Biden and eight members of his task force, including Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Energy Secretary Steven Chu, will meet...