Word: bidens
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...million for green job-training programs, along with billions in loan guarantees for green industries. "At a time when good jobs and good wages are harder and harder to come by. it is critical we find new and innovative work opportunities for middle class families," Vice President Joseph Biden said at the launch of the White House's Task Force on Middle Class Families on Feb. 27. "That's why we're here today - to learn and listen about how investing in green jobs can help build a strong middle class...
That is not to say there are no points of contention. Vice President Joe Biden told a security conference in Munich last month that although Washington was ready to listen, it expected more from Europe in return. When it comes to Afghanistan, European nations are still dragging their feet on troops. And on trade, Obama narrowly avoided an early confrontation with the E.U. when he changed the language of the "buy American" clause in the financial stimulus bill just days before the congressional vote...
...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...
...task force didn't specify the number of jobs it hoped to create in the green sector or how much of an impact the programs are expected to have on the middle class as a whole. Annie Tomasini, Biden's deputy press secretary, says the Philadelphia meeting was just a "listening session" and that the task force will not actually make any decisions regarding green job creation. They'll have to go back to Washington to do that...