Spotlight: U.S. Democrats vow to tackle economic inequality, rebuild middle class in party platform

The U.S. Democratic Party on Monday vowed to tackle economic inequality and rebuild the shrinking middle class in the party platform to appeal to working and middle class voters as a four-day Democratic National Convention kicked off in Philadelphia.

"Democrats believe that today's extreme levels of income and wealth inequality are bad for our people, bad for our businesses, and bad for our economy. Our country depends on a thriving middle class to drive economic growth, but the middle class is shrinking," said the 2016 Democratic Party Platform, which was finalized by the platform committee with 187 members and formally adopted by the Democratic National Convention on Monday.

"These trends create problems beyond insulting our sense of basic fairness. Social mobility is far lower than most believe it to be," the platform said, warning that "we all lose" unless the country invests in building a level playing field.

In the party platform of over 50 pages that outline the party's policy principles and priorities, Democrats vowed to fight against "the greed and recklessness of Wall Street" and fix the financial system as the first part of efforts to restore economic fairness.

"Banks should not be able to gamble with taxpayers' deposits or pose an undue risk to Main Street," the platform said, noting that Democrats support a variety of ways to stop this from happening, including breaking up too-big-to-fail financial institutions that pose a systemic risk to the stability of the economy.

Democrats also called on the wealthiest Americans and largest corporations to pay their fair share of taxes as a way to tackle income and wealth inequality.

"Democrats will claw back tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas, eliminate tax breaks for big oil and gas companies, and crack down on inversions and other methods companies use to dodge their tax responsibilities," the platform said, adding that millionaires and billionaires should also pay the so-called "multimillionaire surtax" regardless of the source of their income.

In terms of trade, Democrats acknowledged that the United States has signed "too many trade deals that have not lived up to the hype" over the past decades, but stopped short of opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement, a legislative priority for the Obama administration this year.

The platform stressed that any future trade agreements must reflect a set of Democratic party's principles, including supporting good American jobs, raising wages, improving national security, and strengthening labor and environment standards.

"We believe any new trade agreements must include strong and enforceable labor and environmental standards in their core text with streamlined and effective enforcement mechanisms. Trade agreements should crack down on the unfair and illegal subsidies other countries grant their businesses at the expense of ours. It should promote innovation of and access to lifesaving medicines," the platform said.

The platform also called for expanding Social Security, building the 21st century infrastructure and raising federal minimum wage to at least 15 U.S. dollars an hour from 7.25 dollars an hour to support American workers.

The platform comes at a time when the middle class is no longer the majority in the United States, and most American voters are angry at the status quo with wages stagnant for years.

Most Americans say the federal government doesn't do enough to help the struggling middle class, and neither the Republican party nor the Democratic party is widely seen as championing middle-class interests, according to a survey conducted by Pew Research Center in December.

The four-day convention is expected to formally nominate former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as the Democratic party's presidential candidate and showcase party unity to fight against Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, in general election in November.

But a newly disclosed trove of emails by WikiLeaks revealed that officials at the supposed-neutral Democratic National Committee (DNC) appeared to try to sabotage Clinton's rival Bernie Sanders's campaign during the primaries. It was unclear whether the resignation of DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz after convention would be enough to unite the party behind Clinton. Endit