"The issues that matter to me are the social safety nets for people, health care, and middle-class concerns. We need to take care of the middle class and the poor in our country"
About this Quote
The intent is to normalize a set of priorities that, in today’s discourse, get treated like partisan flags. By leading with “the issues that matter to me,” he personalizes policy, shifting it from a party platform to a values statement. He also links “the middle class and the poor” in one breath, a subtle rebuke to the political habit of pitting them against each other. The subtext: the middle class is precarious, the poor are not “other,” and the same systems (health care costs, wages, instability) threaten both. “Take care” is doing heavy lifting here - it’s an appeal to decency, not redistribution rhetoric.
Context matters: this is celebrity speech calibrated for maximum empathy and minimum backlash. McGraw isn’t trying to sound radical; he’s trying to sound familiar. The power of the quote is its refusal to treat compassion as a niche identity. In a genre that often performs self-reliance, he’s quietly insisting that real self-reliance still needs a net - especially when the floor keeps dropping out.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
McGraw, Tim. (2026, February 16). The issues that matter to me are the social safety nets for people, health care, and middle-class concerns. We need to take care of the middle class and the poor in our country. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-issues-that-matter-to-me-are-the-social-156108/
Chicago Style
McGraw, Tim. "The issues that matter to me are the social safety nets for people, health care, and middle-class concerns. We need to take care of the middle class and the poor in our country." FixQuotes. February 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-issues-that-matter-to-me-are-the-social-156108/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The issues that matter to me are the social safety nets for people, health care, and middle-class concerns. We need to take care of the middle class and the poor in our country." FixQuotes, 16 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-issues-that-matter-to-me-are-the-social-156108/. Accessed 17 Feb. 2026.

