[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 21 (Thursday, February 2, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E260-E261]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


   INTRODUCTION OF THE JOB CREATION AND INVEST IN AMERICA ACT OF 1995

                                 ______


                          HON. MAJOR R. OWENS

                              of new york
                          HON. BERNARD SANDERS

                               of vermont

                    in the house of representatives

                       Thursday, February 2, 1995
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, we and seven other members of the Progressive 
Caucus today are introducing one of the 11 bills of the Progressive 
Caucus Alternative--The Progressive Promise--to the Republican Contract 
With America. Our legislation will create at least 1 million new jobs 
for unemployed Americans in each of the next 2 years by rebuilding our 
Nation's highways, bridges, mass transit, and other physical 
infrastructure and by investing in job training and expanded services 
for the most needy in our society.
  This major jobs bill goes to the heart of the sweeping legislative 
package that the 33 members of the Progressive Caucus unveiled 2 weeks 
ago as the only comprehensive legislative alternative brought forth in 
the Congress so far that charts a positive alternative course of policy 
action to the Republican Contract With America.
  More specifically, our ambitious jobs bill will provide $63.6 billion 
in new investments to stimulate the national economy during fiscal 
years 1996 and 1997. It is fully paid for by eliminating tax loopholes 
that reward U.S.-based multinational corporations for investing abroad 
and exporting U.S. jobs and through targeted progressive tax increases 
that will fall principally upon the unearned income of upper-income 
Americans.
  Beginning in the 1940's and reaffirmed by the Humphrey-Hawkins Act in 
1978, Federal law has deemed 4 percent unemployment as the hallmark of 
a strong and stable economy. But now we are confronted with a 
Republican welfare reform plan that abandons our national commitment to 
training and providing jobs for millions of unemployed Americans who 
desperately want to work and attain some small measure of economic 
security for themselves and their families.
  The members of the Progressive Caucus believe that it is cruel, 
short-sighted, and counterproductive to enact welfare reform 
legislation without providing jobs for millions of unemployed Americans 
who are ready, willing, and eager to be a part of the mainstream 
American economy.
  Furthermore, we believe that fundamental fairness dictates that 
upper-income Americans who have received the biggest tax cuts during 
the last 15 years, as well as highly-profitable multinational 
corporations that have enriched themselves by investing huge sums of 
increasingly scarce capital to manufacture overseas and to take 
advantage of cheap, unprotected foreign labor, pay their share to 
retool and rebuild our Nation to compete more effectively in the 21st 
century.
  Full employment is what America is about. It is our promise to ensure 
that every American has a job with an adequate income that enables 
individuals and families to join in the American dream. No one that is 
willing and able to work should be denied that opportunity or should 
have to work 40, 50, or 60 hours a week and still live in poverty.
  This is not a new concept. It was the centerpiece of Franklin Delano 
Roosevelt's ``Economic Bill of Rights,'' proposed in 1944 as part of 
his last State of the Union Message. In it he called for jobs for 
everyone willing and able to work. The Universal Declaration of Human 
Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural 
Rights recognize work as a basic human right.
  One in every 10 American families now puts food on the table only 
with the aid of food stamps. Tens of millions more survive on bare 
subsistence, from paycheck to paycheck. Millions have fallen into 
unemployment or underemployment.
  In more and more abandoned neighborhoods in America, a lack of jobs, 
income, education, and hope has created an extraordinary climate of 
savagery and violence surpassing that of many communities in third 
world countries.
  In 1978 with the passage of the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment and 
Balanced Growth Act, the U.S. Congress made a promise to Americans. 
Congress made a contract with America for full employment, where the 
national unemployment rate was not to exceed 4 percent.
  Before we move on the Republicans' Contract With America and balance 
the budget on the backs of poor, hard-working Americans, we have an 
obligation to carry-out a 50-year-old promise for full employment. Five 
decades ago, our national leaders recognized what is still true today: 
that there are numerous economic and social costs to the Nation without 
full employment. Those costs were stated in the Humphrey-Hawkins 
legislation. Without full-employment we are:
  Depriving our nation of the full supply of goods and services, the 
full utilization of labor and capital resources, and the related 
increases in economic well-being that would occur under conditions of 
genuine full employment;
  Lacking sufficient output of goods and services to meet pressing 
national priorities;
  Depriving workers of job security, income skill development, and 
productivity necessary to maintain and advance their standards of 
living;
  Exposing many families to social, psychological, and physiological 
costs, including disruption of family life, loss of individual dignity 
and self-respect, and the aggravation of physical and psychological 
illnesses, alcoholism and drug abuse, crime and social conflicts;
  Undermining Federal, State and local government budgets by deficits 
due to shortfalls in tax revenues and increases in expenditures for 
unemployment compensation, public assistance, and other recession-
related services in the areas of criminal justice, alcoholism, drug 
abuse, and physical and mental health.
  Depriving businesses, especially small businesses, of the production, 
sales, capital flow, and productivity necessary to maintain adequate 
profits, undertake new investment, create jobs, compete 
internationally, and contribute to meeting society's economic needs.
  These days, more people at work is bad news for the economic pundits 
and financial speculators. Declining unemployment should be good news. 
Too many of those who do have work are employed in low-wage or dead-end 
jobs. Statistics reveal that in the first half of last year, for 
instance, 27 percent of all new jobs were in the temporary-help 
industry, and a further 26 percent were part-time. Less than half of 
the new jobs were private sector, non-temporary jobs. Manpower, Inc., 
the leading provider of temporary workers, is now the largest private 
employer in America.
  If we look at wages we again see the decline in well-paying, 
permanent jobs. In the Reagan-Bush eighties, the hourly pay of four-
fifths of the American workforce declined. The typical worker was paid 
4.9 percent less than at the start of the decade. No wonder workers in 
the United States slipped from 1st to 13th 
[[Page E261]] in terms of the wages and benefits they receive.
  Today, almost a third of the Nation's workforce--31 percent--is 
employed at poverty level pay. The current minimum wage, at $4.25 an 
hour, buys 26 percent less in purchasing power than the minimum wage 
did in 1970. Is it any surprise that a recently-published study found 
that low-paid American workers are the lowest paid workers in the 
industrialized world?
  Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan insists that creating more 
jobs, and reducing unemployment, is bad for the economy. He is dead 
wrong.
  What we need is more jobs. We need to create millions of decent-
paying jobs, not encourage massive corporate downsizing. We need a bold 
and courageous Congress who will fight for the needs of the average 
American worker, not timid politicians whose vision is circumscribed by 
the campaign contributions of big money interests. It is time to 
address the jobs crisis that America, and American workers, are facing.
  The Progressive Caucus is leading the way to a brighter future and 
taking the first large step forward, and today we invite others to join 
us in this effort. We encourage our colleagues to become cosponsors of 
this bedrock bill in our Progressive Promise--The Job Creation and 
Invest in America Act of 1995.
  We call upon all Americans who want to build a stronger and more fair 
America to join in our commitment to create millions of jobs by 
investing billions of dollars to rebuild and upgrade America's physical 
infrastructure, cleanup the environment, and improve the skills of our 
workforce. In keeping with the fiscal challenge confronting our Nation 
in these times, we do not add a penny to the deficit, but pay for our 
investment program by cracking down on corporate welfare. We close tax 
loopholes for offshore production while rewarding U.S. companies that 
invest, produce, and create jobs in the United States. We require the 
wealthiest U.S. corporations and citizens to pay their fair share of 
taxes.
  Finally, let us underscore that the jobs we seek to create are good-
paying jobs. They are jobs rooted in upgrading our Nation's physical 
infrastructure and improving our Nation's human capital. They represent 
investments in restoring real, long-term, sustainable economic growth 
in America.
  Retooling our national economy and basing it upon real economic 
growth and economic justice also requires that working Americans have 
more real income to spend. In sponsoring this legislation, members of 
the Progressive Caucus are endorsing our Nation's 50-year national 
commitment to full employment. In the coming weeks and months, all of 
us who belong to the Progressive Caucus will be steadfast in offering 
low-income and middle-income Americans genuine hope for real jobs with 
livable wages and a chance to participate in the American dream.


                          ____________________