Lou Dobbs was on my radio program recently to talk about his new book, Upheaval. One of the themes in his book is how disconnected members of Congress are from the rest of us.

Let’s start with their personal wealth. Nearly half (47%) of all members of Congress are millionaires. Sheila Krumholz at the Center for Responsive Politics says, “Few Americans enjoy the same financial cushions maintained by most members of Congress—or the same access to market-altering information that could yield personal, financial gains.” That last point is also significant. Lou Dobbs and I talked about the number of men and women who came to Congress without great financial resources yet left as multimillionaires.

Members of Congress also reward their financial friends. One study found that of stimulus grants and contracts awarded by Congress, the Washington, D.C. region received almost ten times more money per capita than the national average.

Of course it isn’t just members of Congress that seem out of touch with America. Here’s another number of Lou Dobbs: 459,016. That is the number of federal workers who earn more than $100,000 per year. “Proportionally, that amounts to about one in every five federal workers. By comparison, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median salary in the United States at large was $40,144.”

Consider this number: 5.5 percent. That was the unemployment rate in the Washington, D.C. region in early 2012. In fact, the unemployment rate was less than 4 percent for workers with a bachelor’s degree. By contrast the national unemployment rate at that same period of time was 8.2 percent.

Government is a booming business, while the rest of us around the country are struggling to makes ends meet. It is not surprising that most members of Congress seem to be paying more attention to big business, big labor, and various lobbyists. They don’t seem to be paying attention to America’s middle class.