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Released: December 20, 2011

The Middle-class agenda

Source: New York Times (Free Registration)

Earlier this month, President Obama delivered his first unabashed 2012 campaign speech. Unlike his opponents, Mr. Obama acknowledged the ravages of income equality, the hollowing out of the American middle class. There is no hyperbole in the urgency he conveyed about “a make-or-break moment for the middle class, and for all those who are fighting to get into the middle class.”

The challenge for Mr. Obama is to translate the plight of the middle class into an agenda for broad prosperity. Congress’s inability to cleanly extend even emergency measures though 2012 — including the temporary payroll tax cut and federal unemployment benefits — underscores the difficulty. The alternative is continued decline.

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