Yesterday, the Drum Major Institute--a liberal think-tank--released its annual ranking of legislators based on their support for the middle class. The ranking tabulated votes on a variety of measures ranging from trade deals to tax bills. The Institute noted that 34 Senators and 199 Representatives received "A" grades while one-third of Representatives and nearly 40% of Senators received "F" grades.
While their methodology is far from perfect, especially with its rather limited understanding of class, the ranking is another useful way of tracking legislators and their voting records. The Institute defines "the middle class" in the following way:
"The middle class is more than an income bracket. Over the past fifty years, a middle-class standard of living in the United States has come to mean having a secure job, the opportunity to own a home, access to health care, retirement security, time off for vacation, illness and the birth or adoption of a child, opportunities to save for the future and the ability to provide a good education, including a college education, for one's children. When these middle-class fundamentals are within the reach of most Americans, the nation is stronger economically, culturally and democratically. Most Americans identify themselves as middle class. Yet DMI is concerned not only with those who currently enjoy a middle-class standard of living, but also with expanding the middle class by increasing the ability and opportunities of poor people to enter the middle class. The middle class is strengthened when more poor people are able to work their way into its ranks. In a nation that is increasingly polarized between the very wealthy and everyone else, DMI sees the poor and middle class as sharing many of the same interests. Simply put: what strengthens and expands the middle class is good for America."
Michigan Senators Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow both received "A" ratings, although Stabenow received an "A+" because she voted in what the Institute determined to be the middle class' interest on every vote. Levin's rating was less because he supported the Peru Free Trade Agreement.
Representative Vern Ehlers, who represents the Grand Rapids area, received an "F" ranking for the third time in a row. Ehlers voted against legislation designed to address housing prices, lower the price of college, make it easier to form unions, and to lower the price of subscription drugs. At the same time, he voted in support of the Peru Free Trade Agreement, a trade agreement that is based on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that has been devastating to the middle class.
Last year, Ehlers was named a "Public Enemy of the Middle Class" by Americans for Change.
