Sometimes, I have to swallow my pride, get rid of my mostly fabricated Philadelphia accent and tell the truth: I grew up near Rockford, Ill.

After splitting my two years in college between Madison and suburban Philly, far away from the city that has grown to embody recession-era America, I’ve finally come to terms with my roots. It happened this weekend, when Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, called President Barack Obama’s plan to introduce a “millionaire tax” class warfare.

“Class warfare may make for really good politics, but it makes for rotten economics,” Ryan said on Sunday, after Obama revealed the proposal. “We don’t need a system that seeks to prey on people’s fear, envy and anxiety.”

If I had lived five miles north of my former home in Illinois, Paul Ryan would have been my representative in Congress. He speaks for a city, Janesville, almost equally as depressed as Rockford. Headlines in Rockford and Madison throughout the last decade have been dotted with mostly bad news about the auto industry; General Motors’ plant in Janesville stopped making Chevy Suburbans years ago, and a report in Monday’s Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel says the plant remains on standby.

Of course, Ryan can’t single-handedly fix these problems; that would be expecting too much out of someone who is just a legislator. But he can actually represent the views of his constituents, a group of hardworking, dare I say middle class, Wisconsinites.

Because of the similarities between Rockford and Janesville, I’d assume many of Ryan’s constituents are folks like a close friend of mine from Rockford who I’ll refer to as Larry. Larry and his peers are conservative former members of the middle class who have been shut out of the national economic conversation and unemployed for years because businesses, both big and small, including the government, have failed them.

Since he’s a Fox News Republican, I’ve seen Larry, a significant person in my life, endorse some conservative policies that make me shudder. But he’s never pledged allegiance to the Tea Party, a title which Ryan proudly flaunts. That’s because after years of unemployment after a successful business career, Larry knows he needs a little help.

Ryan has called for the ending of the kind of welfare programs that keep Larry afloat in tough times. If Ryan had his way at a national level, Larry’s kids probably wouldn’t be lucky enough to have state insurance, since neither he nor his wife can support their children’s health insurance costs. And what happens if Larry, a smoker who will turn 58 next year, doesn’t get a job with retirement benefits?

Luckily, Obama has finally proposed a tax on millionaires that could help keep those welfare programs afloat. It would benefit the working class as well as white collar, middle management workers like Larry. But Tea Party figures, including Ryan, opposed the measure even before Obama formally announced the plan.

Aside from helping me feel in touch with my Rockford roots again, Ryan has helped me realized something important about the Tea Party movement that I initially refused to believe: They don’t represent the views of even the most conservative Republicans who are unemployed.

Although Republicans in 2009 began a conservative grassroots resurgence because of Wall Street bailouts, the Tea Party’s control of the party has dissolved into the same pandering to the rich and safely-employed that many conservatives hated in the first place. We only need to look as far as Ryan and Gov. Scott Walker to see that phrases like “unemployed” and “job creation” have become rhetorical devices, not basis for policy-making.

Even worse, our generation is also used as a rhetorical device. “Why would we leave our children with mounting debt!” is often cause for rejecting even the most friendly spending proposals.

I’m not a spokesperson for my generation, nor do I want to be. But at this point in American history, I’m a little more worried about seeing my family and families like mine get back on their feet again. The taxes to pay off the rising debt are an inevitability.

I’m glad if introducing a new tax on wealthier Americans is class warfare. Larry, and even my own family, could use someone fighting for them these days.

The Tea Party and its leaders like Ryan aren’t doing it.

Ryan Rainey ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in journalism and Latin American studies.