U.S. Census Bureau tells Virginians what we already knew: household income on the downs

The U.S. Census Bureau recently confirmed what many Virginians have felt since Republican Party political representatives began carrying out their brazen attempt to send the U.S. towards economic collapse: Virginia’s household income has been shrinking.

In 2012, Virginia’s median household income declined by more than 2 percent, “the most significant drop in the country at a time when most states saw their incomes go flat.” Add to this uplifting news the continued inexcusable antics of Congressional Republicans who are pulling America’s government towards a shutdown and you have a perfect set up for the demise of a dream that once was: America’s middle-class.

Through the thick of the b/s, rhetorical flourishes, embellishments, and outright falsehoods, there lies an undeniable outcome of America’s congressional woes: it’s crushing America’s middle-class into a non-entity and leaving the wealthy even more well off.

In Virginia, the economic consequences of the Republican Party’s never ending desire to “defund Obamacare” have been even starker than in the rest of the country. According to the director of the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University, “Virginia is very vulnerable to cuts in federal spending because roughly a third of its economy is tied to the federal government.”   And for those who didn’t lose their job as a result of the GOP’s lack of concern, they most likely took a pay cut to “offset” the less than robust economic times.

Never before in the modern history of our country has a congressional body sought to undermine the welfare of so many Americans just so it can supposedly drain the life out of a law that passed both houses of Congress and was signed by the president. If there is anything worth getting upset about, it’s watching as half-crazed demagogues tilt the most powerful country in human history towards a precipice that it may not be able to avoid going over.