Middle class may be losing political influence

Capitol Hill politicians love the American middle class - or at least they always say that they do.

Yet, while the traditional middle-class lifestyle seems to take hit after hit as the U.S. economy continues to struggle, some observers say Congress no longer is in touch with middle-class concerns and anxieties the way that it once was.

They wonder if the middle class is losing its political clout as lawmakers shift their attention to the wealthy and superrich.

Upper-income Americans, who have accumulated a large percentage of the wealth in the country, as well as outsize political influence, are viewed as the engineers of the economy. Middle-class Americans, once the beneficiary of all kinds of government programs and support, now must fight just to keep the ones they have.

That feeling is not shared by everyone, and some doubt that middle-class voters are losing their political power, given that their numbers still can pack quite a punch at the ballot box. While that's true, the middle class is a large, politically diverse group that is sharply divided on major policy issues, often reflecting the partisan rancor that grips U.S. politics generally.

There is no widely recognized middle-class agenda - many Democrats and Republicans alike tend to shy away from debates that could be framed in class- warfare terms - and even the middle class itself is hard to define. The conservative "tea party" movement on the right and organized labor on the left both claim to champion middle-class values and view each other as enemies.

"Everybody wants to claim the middle class because it sounds American," said Jane Junn, a professor of political science at the University of Southern California and an expert on voter demographics. "It doesn't sound snotty. It doesn't sound poor. It's in-between. But the problem is that 'in-between' is very wide."

Social Security and Medicare, two time-honored middle-class programs, inevitably will face big changes in coming years as lawmakers scramble to keep them solvent. Pushing back the retirement age or means-testing recipients are among the ideas that are discussed.

Tax deductions for home-mortgage interest and charitable contributions, both middle-class tax breaks, could be restricted or changed to produce more revenue. A more recent fight has erupted over President Barack Obama's support for an extension of the 2011 payroll-tax holiday that backers say helps the middle class. This time, some Republicans are inclined to let the tax relief expire.

Ultimately, the debate turns political. Democrats may support an expanded safety net - for example, extending unemployment benefits. But Republicans argue that government intervention in situations like the foreclosure crisis can provide some immediate relief but also have the perverse impact of prolonging the pain by preventing the market from hitting bottom as soon as it otherwise would.

In any case, the middle class - Democrat, Republican and independent - has the power of the ballot but remains vulnerable. Its interests and politics are so splintered, it lacks a powerful voice at a time when major issues about government taxes and spending are on the table.

A new pro-middle-class political movement ultimately might be forged out of the current conditions of economic duress and widening income inequality. So far, that hasn't happened, despite middle-class angst that has been on display at heated congressional town-hall meetings over the past few years.

"From the perspective of politics and clout, one of the things that is problematic is that you just don't have an organization that stands for the middle class," said Solon Simmons, a sociologist and assistant professor who specializes in American politics at George Mason University's School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution in Virginia. "You've got lobbying groups that stand for various corporations, various interest groups, various business segments, but you don't really have a middle-class organization like workers once had unions. You've got the (national seniors organization) AARP, but it doesn't stand specifically for the middle class. And without that kind of organization, you're simply unlikely to get much bang for your buck in Washington, D.C."

Alienation in middle

By multiple gauges, the income disparity between the rich and the middle class has grown in the United States.

The most recent Census Bureau statistics available show that the top 5 percent of the nation's nearly 118 million households that reported income in 2009 represented 21.7 percent of money income in the country. The top 20 percent of those households earned 50.3 percent of money income.

"We're back to a concentration of wealth we haven't seen since the 1920s," said Bill Samuel, the AFL-CIO's director of government affairs.

For all of the times that the term comes up in political rhetoric, there is no official U.S. government definition of "middle-class." Mostly, it refers to a lifestyle in which a family has a steady and reliable source of income, owns a home, can afford to send their children to college, looks forward to a comfortable retirement and can even enjoy occasional luxuries such as vacations.

Such households flourished in the 1950s and 1960s but have been under stress since the 1970s as economic globalization has resulted in the flight of manufacturing jobs to cheaper labor markets overseas. U.S. companies have become more sophisticated about resisting labor-organization attempts, and union membership has declined dramatically. Wages have remained stagnant for decades.

The middle class, particularly in Arizona, also took another beating in the recent housing-mortgage meltdown, which has left many families owing more on their homes than they are worth.

A cornerstone of the middle-class experience is stability, and that stability has been shaken.

While Democrats and Republicans continue their partisan bickering and political maneuvering in a highly polarized environment, some middle-class Arizonans wonder if anyone on Capitol Hill cares about them anymore.

"I think they have completely fallen out of tune with Americans in general but especially the middle class," said Amy Todd, 31, a registered independent and mother of two from Phoenix who works in the long-term-care insurance industry. "It's always about whether you're rich or you're poor. There's nothing talked about for the middle class."

Todd added that at this point, she is not counting on ever getting anything out of Social Security, despite paying into it for years.

Another Arizona resident said the middle class is carrying more of a tax burden while lower-income Americans get welfare assistance and upper-income Americans get tax advantages.

"The problem with Congress is that they're too far right and too far left and they're not willing to meet in the middle," said David Barrett, a 59-year-old nurse from Surprise who is a registered Republican but doesn't vote a straight ticket. "The only thing they are worried about is getting re-elected. They don't care about solving any problems or anything. We get left out."

Issues come to a head

With tough decisions looming for the budget-deficit supercommittee formed out of the recent bipartisan compromise to increase the nation's $14.3 trillion debt ceiling, Arizona politicians remain divided on whether the decline of middle-class political influence is real or overblown.

Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., said middle-class influence on public policy "has dwindled significantly" in conjunction with the rise of the assorted corporate special interests that have become powerful players in U.S. politics.

"In the past, job bills, unemployment insurance, funding for education, the security of Medicare and Social Security - all those things were driven by the middle class and those who aspired to the middle class," said Grijalva, one of the most liberal members of Congress and co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. "Now, all those things are jeopardized because the agenda has shifted to those special-interest groups who right now are controlling the purse strings and are making it possible for people to be elected, and influencing those elections."

Grijalva said the middle class needs to stand up for itself or else the negative trends will continue and the outlook will get bleaker. Middle-class voters, along with seniors, still can rock elections if they can get behind an agenda, he said.

"You know, this is the first time where we can't guarantee the sons and daughters of the middle class that their lives are going to be better than their parents," Grijalva said. "We're getting to that point. I think the pushback of the voting constituency in protection of their interests has got to come. That is the avenue left."

Two conservative Arizona GOP congressmen countered that worries that the middle class is losing its pull with Congress are overblown.

Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said one big reason that lawmakers have put off reforming financially troubled Social Security and Medicare for as long as they have is because of pressure from middle-class groups and activists.

"If the middle class has lost clout, I haven't seen it," said Flake, who is serving his sixth House term and is running for the Senate. "If the assumption is that they are wanting to keep the benefits that they have, they certainly have been successful at that."

If the supercommittee decides to recommend tinkering with or eliminating the popular mortgage-interest deduction, for example, "there will be fierce resistance to that, I'm sure," he said.

Rep. David Schweikert, R-Ariz., acknowledged that "the really rich have done stunningly well" in recent years but scoffed at the idea that middle-class political power is in decline. "You don't get elected to major office without the middle class," he said.

It's not surprising that middle-class activists come from varying political persuasions and run the gamut from tea partyers to progressive labor organizers, Schweikert said, given that Americans have different middle-class experiences.

"It matters what your path to the middle class was," Schweikert said. "Did you get there by being a unionized firefighter or did you get there by having a trade or some sort of profession that was outside that union environment? Both are still arguing for what their vision of how you get to the middle class is, but both groups have been suffering because of this recession."

The supercommittee is stacked with Democrats who support increasing taxes to raise revenue and Republicans who oppose new taxes and want to cut spending.

Philosophically, conservatives say they don't want to take away tax advantages for upper-class Americans or hike taxes because it could further discourage job creation and investment. Liberals argue that the wealthy are not paying their fair share and that new upper-income tax brackets are needed.

Middle-class benefits could be at risk as the committee targets its cuts. Tax deductions for home-mortgage interest and charitable contributions, which can help middle-class taxpayers who file itemized returns, face reform.

Referendum in 2012

Predictably, Republicans and Democrats likewise fundamentally disagree about the impact of various policies on the middle class.

GOP leaders point to out-of-control government spending and the massive national debt as a threat to the middle-class lifestyle and say serious changes are needed to avoid higher interest rates and other negative consequences.

"That's what a lot of the anxiety is about. People recognize that we just can't go on the way that we've been going," Flake said.

But critics say Republican opposition to taxation on the wealthy and other laissez-faire policies only will exacerbate the income-inequality problem, which some warned could even lead to social unrest.

"We will then structure into our economy a permanent subclass where aspirations to move up and be middle-class are denied," Grijalva said. "Once we start closing the doors, that's going to have a huge effect on society as a whole. The divisions will be sharper. If you have a marginalized subclass in our society that feels that they are in that status permanently, it does not bode well for keeping everything together."

Simmons, the George Mason University sociologist, noted that American politics tend to avoid class-warfare debates, but he wondered how long the income-inequality issue can be ignored, particularly if long-term GOP free-market solutions result in short-term discomfort for voters.

"I imagine that the left is going to rise up in some kind of an angry spasm," he said. "You're going to see inequality come raging back (as an issue), and the question is, can you come up with a clear and credible agenda that will translate those values into action?"

With the slow economic recovery, the stagnant job market and government deficits front and center in the months before the 2012 elections, the various segments of the middle class, including millions of independents, will be watching as policy decisions are made.

Their votes in 2012 will be a referendum on how well the politicians' decisions have connected with them and their shaky sense of stability.

"Middle-class isn't so much an issue of the amount of money you make, it is how safe you are," said Junn, the University of Southern California political-science professor.

"People don't feel very safe anymore. Only rich people are safe."