[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 86 (Monday, June 21, 2004)]
[House]
[Page H4622]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          MIDDLE CLASS SQUEEZE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from California (Ms. Solis) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. SOLIS. Mr. Speaker, tonight I rise to bring attention to how 
priorities of our hard-working American families are being crushed 
under this administration's policies.
  When President Bush first took office, he had a $236 billion budget 
surplus, there had been 22 million jobs created in the previous 8 years 
under President Clinton, and this country was experiencing the biggest 
drop in child poverty in our history. But what has changed in the past 
4 years since Bush took office? Well, today there are 8.2 million 
Americans who are looking for work, and unemployment rates in many 
parts of our country are at a higher rate, almost 30 percent higher, 
than they were 4 years ago. And in my district alone, embarrassingly, 
some rates are as high as 9 percent. Plus, today's job market has lost 
economic value and too many positions that are being created are only 
part-time.
  What this administration has not said when it talks about jobs it has 
created is that 90 percent of these new jobs since August 2003 are in 
industries that pay an hourly wage that is less than the national 
average. About 1.3 million of these jobs make an average wage of $15 an 
hour. That is 40 cents less than the national average. And it is an 
embarrassment that our own Federal minimum wage has not been increased. 
Imagine a family trying to survive on making $5.15 an hour, and that 
wage has not gone up for many years.
  Clearly, it is not the struggling middle class families benefiting 
from the Bush administration's economic policies. Take a look at 
California. There have been 214,000 people who have lost their jobs in 
my State, and 346,000 were in manufacturing jobs alone, good paying 
jobs that left. Plus, the jobs that are being created in California are 
paying less than the jobs that are being lost and are less likely to 
even offer health benefits.
  At a time when American families are struggling to pay for health 
care, when they are struggling to send their kids to college and get 
food on the table, we are sending billions of dollars to the very 
wealthy, 2 percent of our population.
  Let us not also forget that the cost of gasoline has increased by 62 
percent under the Bush administration. Californians will spend $2.35 
billion more for gas this summer. That means per family $210 just for 
driving around in the summer. Gas in my district is now being sold at 
$2.39 a gallon. But instead of doing things to help working families, 
the Republican-led Congress spent last week debating energy bills that 
will do nothing to help working families cope with these outrageous 
energy costs, including trying to negotiate lower gas prices.
  This administration even said that because of the bill's passage last 
week on so-called energy relief, our gasoline prices will actually go 
up by 3 cents. The administration would rather try to hide its 
relations with the oil industry than seek real productive ways to help 
our consumers. In California, gas prices went up faster than the 
Federal Trade Commission anticipated they could and companies rolled in 
the dough. Exxon Mobile reported a 125 percent increase in profits for 
the first 3 months of this year.
  When the Bush administration claims they are concerned about the 
financial pressures of middle-income families, I would ask them, what 
are they doing to address the fact that the price of gasoline has 
increased 62 percent under this administration? Across the board, 
Americans are spending more on food, on health care, on education and 
gas. President Bush has done nothing to change his economic policies to 
consider the real needs of the American public.
  Let us start fighting for a real plan that is just, that is 
Democratic.

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