Legislation that would have helped create American jobs was blocked Tuesday by another filibuster by Senate Republicans. The bill would have ended tax breaks to U.S. companies that ship American jobs and factories overseas.  The measure also would have given companies a 2-year payroll tax holiday for companies that bring back outsourced jobs to the United States. "One of the major reasons the middle class of this country is in decline and why the working class is being decimated and why real wages are going down for millions of American workers who are working longer hours for lower wages is that for a number of years now we have been hemorrhaging manufacturing jobs," Sen. Bernie Sanders said in a Senate floor speech. He also noted during a Capitol Hill press conference before Tuesday's vote that, the number of manufacturing jobs in the United States went from 17 million to about 12 million during the eight years of the Bush administration. As a result, the income gap between the richest and poorest Americans grew last year to its widest amount on record.

Based on newly-released data from the Census Bureau, The Associated Press reported on Tuesday that the top 20 percent of Americans with income of more than $100,000 each year received 49.4 percent of all income generated in the U.S., compared with the 3.4 percent earned by those below the poverty line.  At the top, the wealthiest 5 percent of Americans, who earn more than $180,000, added slightly to their annual incomes last year, census data show. Families at the $50,000 median level fell further behind. Overall, U.S. income inequality was at its highest level since the Census Bureau began tracking household income in 1967. The U.S. also has the greatest disparity among Western industrialized nations.

"Income inequality is rising, and if we took into account tax data, it would be even more," Timothy Smeeding, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who specializes in poverty, told AP. "More than other countries, we have a very unequal income distribution where compensation goes to the top in a winner-takes-all economy."