They think they are Middle Class

That's a laugh.

Politicians' Middle-Class Delusions

Jonathan Schwarz at Tom Paine:

In a New York Times profile last year, (Sen. Rick) Santorum moped about the difficulty of supporting his large family on his senatorial salary of $162,100:

''We live paycheck to paycheck, absolutely,'' he says. Does he have money set aside for college? ''No. None. I always tell my kids: 'Work hard. We'll take out loans. Whatever.'"

In fact, continued Santorum, his parents "send a check every now and then. They realize things are a little tighter for us.''

According to Santorum's 2005 financial disclosure documents, his parents recently did more then send a check: They gave him two condominiums near Penn State. And while his children may be sad about their lack of a college fund, hopefully they take solace in the fact their family now owns five condominiums total as investments—each valued between $100,000 and $250,000.

Then there's Leiberman

The day before the Connecticut primary, Joe Lieberman was getting down with the folks in a restaurant in Southington, a small town near Hartford. As the American Prospect reported, a longtime state employee named Paola Roy told Lieberman she felt the middle class has been forgotten by the federal government. Lieberman responded that he shared her concerns, and for good reason: “I came out of the middle class," he said, "and, being a senator, I haven’t gone much beyond the middle class.”

...Could anything better sum up the way American politicians seem to have relocated en masse to a new planet, and forgotten how things are back on Earth? In 2005, Lieberman and his wife Hadassah—a lobbyist at D.C. powerhouse Hill & Knowlton—together made $366,084. This places them securely in the top 1 percent of U.S. households. In fact, just the money they receive each year for supervising family trusts would likely put them in the middle quintile of American families. Moreover, they have financial assets —i.e., over and above their homes in Connecticut and Washington—worth somewhere between $465,000 and $1.9 million. The comparable amount for the average U.S. family is about $30,000.

And this is saying nothing of the perks... The healthcare benefits alone are enough for the real, Middle Class guy to sell his soul for.

As the commoners said during the English Revolution in the mid-1600s:

It will never be a good world, while Knights and Gentlemen makes us laws, that are chosen for fear, and do but oppress us, and do not know the people's sores. It will never be well with us till we have Parliaments of Country-men like ourselves, that know our wants.

Read the whole thing.