The American people want their hard work to be rewarded with a decent, middle-class life.

Yet, for decades, incomes for most Americans have stagnated, while the costs of living have continued to rise. That leaves most people unable to afford some combination of health care, housing, child care, and higher education. In other words, they can’t afford a middle-class life.

Donald Trump talks a lot about helping workers, but his tax cuts overwhelmingly favored the wealthiest Americans. His reckless trade war is actively doing damage to our workers, farmers, and ranchers. And his relentless pursuit to take health care away from tens of millions of Americans is the exact opposite of what workers and their families need. 

We don’t hear enough on the campaign trail about how we can support the nearly 70% of Americans without a four-year college degree who are already in the workforce. We need a plan that puts workers first and ensures their hard work is rewarded.

This plan will make a historic $500 billion investment in American workers over the next ten years, including in high-quality training like registered apprenticeships. We’ll coordinate these investments across regional economies to connect workers’ skills with local demand. And we’ll support workers seeking to gain the skills and job opportunities they need to succeed in the economy.

We will drive economic security for middle-class Americans and people working to get into the middle class – through expanding the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit, enacting paid family and medical leave, and raising the minimum wage. And we will empower workers by cracking down on abuses by big corporations and supporting collective bargaining. 

Finally, we will do everything we can to prevent recessions – which hurt people living paycheck to paycheck the most – and to respond aggressively to get the economy going again when they do occur.