[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 75 (Wednesday, June 2, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H3690-H3691]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        A TALE OF TWO ECONOMIES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. EMANUEL. Mr. Speaker, during the past 3 years, we have seen a 
tale of two economies and an unprecedented redistribution of wealth in 
this country resulting in one economy for the middle-class families and 
one for the special interests. While there have been profit booms for 
corporations and a compensation boom for CEOs, there is a growing wage 
and benefits recession for the middle class of this country.

                              {time}  1915

  To those who say redistribution of wealth is wrong, I agree. Whether 
you redistribute wealth to the top 1 percent or the bottom 25 percent, 
that is wrong. Middle-class families are dealing with an economy that 
has a wage-and-benefit recession, all the while they have increasing 
health care costs, college costs, job insecurity, and retirement 
uncertainty associated with their savings.
  While this administration creates tax loopholes for corporate jet 
use, leaving the taxpayers to pay for billions of dollars in corporate 
jet use, they have frozen college assistance to middle-class families. 
This is the essence of class warfare. As famed investor Warren Buffett 
once said, ``If class warfare is being waged in America, my class is 
winning.''
  A report last month by Bloomberg in the Chicago Tribune showed U.S. 
corporate profits increased by 87 percent in the last 2 years. Average 
CEO pay got a big boost of 8.7 percent, while salaried employees saw 
the most anemic wage growth since World War II, 1.7 percent.
  Bill McDonough, former chairman of the New York Fed and now chairman 
of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, describes the gap 
between CEO and worker pay as ``grotesquely immoral.'' I think we can 
all agree that the former chairman of the New York Fed is not exactly a 
flaming socialist or liberal. He also noted that, in 1980, CEO pay was 
40 times higher than the average worker's. Today, it is 400 times 
higher. I think he sums it up best, ``I know a lot of CEOs from the 
1980s, and I know a lot of CEOs from 2000, and they are not 10 times 
better than the CEOs of 1980.''
  At every turn, this administration tells us the economy is humming 
along. That may be true in the executive suites and the boardrooms, but 
the other economy has created the largest income disparity since the 
turn of the century, and today middle-class families are facing a 
harder time to pay for college costs, health care costs, and retirement 
security at the very time in

[[Page H3691]]

which they have had nothing but an anemic wage growth.
  David Rosenberg, chief economist at Merrill Lynch, said, ``The income 
from the recovery has been locked up in the corporate sector. We have 
had a redistribution of income to the corporate sector.''
  The concentration of wealth has been accelerated by the President's 
economic and tax policies. A study cited by New York Times found that 
Americans are being taxed more than twice as heavily from earnings from 
work as they are from investment income, even though more than half of 
all investment goes to the wealthiest 5 percent of taxpayers.
  While this administration has been cutting taxes for the wealthy, the 
rest of America have been literally going from paycheck to paycheck. 
Health care costs have gone from $6,500 for a family of four to $9,000 
in less than 2 and a half years. College tuition costs increased in the 
year 2001 by 10 percent; 2002 by another 11 percent; and last year, 14 
percent, all the while Pell Grants and other assistance for college 
have been frozen. $180 billion has been lost in 401(k) net worth and 
savings plans, and we are putting a squeeze on middle-class families.
  What we face today is the end of the middle class as we know it. We 
ended welfare as we know it because it was a failed system. This 
administration has an economic policy that is ending the middle class 
as we know it. As President Bush seeks reelection, he can say he has 
kept his commitment to the wealthiest of America, and the other 99 
percent has made out just as he planned.
  This administration has two books, two sets of values, two sets of 
priorities, a single economic strategy that divides a country along 
class lines. If we want to live in a country without class divisions, 
we cannot deny middle-class families the same dreams of affordable 
health care, quality education, and a safe place to live that the most 
fortunate in this country have today. A government that pays no heed to 
that gap between the rich and the middle class does so at its own 
peril. To quote Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, ``We can either 
have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated 
in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.''

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