By Bob Audette

BRATTLEBORO -- The middle class is being squeezed and it's up to Congress to do something about it, said Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.

During a pair of town meetings in South Royalton last weekend, Sanders heard from his constituents how the current economic conditions are stretching their budgets to the breaking point.

"This is a collapse of the middle class," Sanders said was his conclusion after reading the e-mails and hosting the town meetings.

In addition to the meetings, Sanders has also been taking comments from Vermonters. While his office expected less than 100 responses, since Thursday it received more than 500.

"Tell us in your own terms what's happening in your own life, how is the middle-class squeeze impacting you," Sanders asked at the meetings and from those posting comments on his Web site.

At the meetings, Sanders was accompanied by Elizabeth Warren of the Harvard Law School and the author to the "Two Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke."

"I know the statistics about what is happening to families, but the people who are living the numbers showed up at the town meeting to tell their stories," wrote Warren,

in an e-mail to the Reformer. "A generation ago, a family could make it on one income. Mom went to work to help out in a crisis or to provide extras for a family. Today it takes two parents working full-time just to meet basic expenses. One-parent households or families that hope to keep someone at home while the kids are little can barely hang on. We're working harder and ending up with less."

"This is how it looks to people who are experiencing the collapse," Sanders told his fellow Senators Wednesday, "and what their lives are looking like now."

Many of his constituents are using credit cards to make ends meet, using them to pay for groceries for their families, to put gas in their cars and to pay other household bills, making "a bad situation worse," he said.

On the floor of the Senate, Sanders read some of the comments submitted by his constituents.

"I am unemployed and cannot get a job," wrote 57-year-old Lewis Clark of Putney. "I do not believe the unemployment statistics accurately measure the problem."

"We have had to make cuts in our weekly food budget," wrote Randee Cummings, of Bellows Falls. "Because of the shortage in corn due (to its) use in fuel manufacturing the price of basic foodstuffs has grown more than my income. I am on social security disability and it is the same each month, so every time the price goes there's less to go around."

With consumers like him having a hard time paying their bills, it also takes a toll on the local economy. "We no longer go out any more, not only to see a movie, but to have a meal out or just to go for a ride."

"Prices have gone up in everything," wrote Cliff Turpin, of West Dover. With $1,267 in expenses, he only has $40 left over each month from the $1,307 he receives from Social Security and his retirement account.

"Something has to be done about these high gas prices," wrote Turpin. "High gas prices just lead to high costs being passed on to consumers. We need in Vermont and on the federal level a full investigation on price gouging (by) the oil industry."

"I started a new position at a higher salary than I have ever made," wrote Marisa Duncan-Holley, of Brattleboro. "My goal was to pay off bills and start seriously saving for the future. Instead, I am back to the usual; paying bills and having minimal excess for savings and paying off bills. "Property taxes for our 1,100 square foot home (are) $4,000 a year and we are being reassessed. I am back to buying clothes at thrift stores. We can not save money and both my husband and I are about 13 years from retirement."

While a senator can't do a whole lot by him or herself, there is a lot the Congress can do together, said Sanders, including instituting a national health care program, changing trade policies to limit outsourcing to other nations, reducing how much interest credit card companies can charge consumers and making oil companies pay a windfall tax on excessive profits.

"Congress is going to have to take on the oil companies," said Sanders.

Congress has been unsuccessful in pushing through caps on interest rates charged by credit card and mortgage companies, because of the opposition from "every financial services organization in America."

"It is an issue that has to be fought," said Sanders.

But Congress has already helped the middle class in some ways, he said, including passage of the Higher Education and Reconciliation Act, which lowered interest rates on college loans and made more money available for grants, and increased funding for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Another way Congress is helping the middle class is with the Foreclosure Prevention Act, which passed in the Senate Thursday. The act includes $3.92 billion for communities to use in buying and rehabilitating vacant foreclosed homes. In addition, the act includes $13 billion in tax incentives meant to spur the housing market.

The act, which was sponsored by Sanders and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., has been forwarded to the House of Representatives where it will be reconciled with the House's own housing bill. If it is passed in the House and signed by the president, it would send nearly $20 million to Vermont to be distributed as part of the Community Development Block Grant program.

Sanders is also advocating for a $225 million increase in national funding for Federally Qualified Health Care Centers which would benefit the 86,000 Vermonters who depend on those center for care. The increase in funding will also expand the health care services offered in southern Vermont, he said.

A major problem in finding the funding to alleviate the squeeze on the middle class is the massive amount of money being spent to wage war in Iraq and Afghanistan, said Sanders.

"One of the real obscenities of the war," he said, is the up to $3 trillion it could cost by the time the United States decides it is done with the fight.

With $12 billion a month being spent on the war in Iraq, not to mention another $500 billion spent annually on the nation's defense budget, it's hard for Congress to find funding for health and child care, education, infrastructure and affordable housing, which Sanders described as "all the desperate needs we face as a nation."

"When you're spending that much money of the military and two wars, there's not enough left over for the people," Sanders said.

Even worse, he said, is the fact that the children and grandchildren of this generation will end up shouldering the financial burden of the conflicts. "When you look, what you find is a president who tells us how important the war is but doesn't have the political courage to ask Americans to pay for it," said Sanders.

Sanders is still taking comments from his constituents at sanders.senate.gov, said Michael Briggs, spokesman for Sanders. "There is a box in the top right corner that links to the form," he said. "It also has samples of many of the e-mails already sent to Bernie."