[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 178 (Thursday, December 3, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H13501-H13505]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        THE PROGRESSIVE MESSAGE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Ellison) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Speaker, my name is Congressman Keith Ellison, and I 
am here to claim the time on behalf of the Progressive Message which 
comes to the American people every Thursday night to discuss critical 
issues and a progressive perspective on these same issues. The 
Progressive Message is put on and organized by Progressive Caucus 
members who happen to represent one of the largest caucuses in the 
Congress.
  The purpose of this message is to focus on critical issues from a 
progressive perspective. That means a perspective that all Americans 
are welcome and included; that we need civil rights, human rights; we 
need economic justice for working people and working families; we need 
to address poverty; and we need to address peace in the world; the idea 
that America, a country blessed, could help bestow blessings on other 
people in the world through example and not through imposition; the 
idea that the United States, a country blessed, can help demonstrate 
through an example what human rights can do, what respect for the rule 
of law can do, what respect for human rights, women's rights can do. 
The Progressive Caucus is an instrument through which progressive ideas 
are shared.
  Tonight what we want to talk about, Mr. Speaker, is jobs. Absolutely 
that's the topic tonight. Jobs is what we will be talking about. I 
would like to hear from anyone who might be listening later on what 
their perspective is on the jobs picture and what we can do about it.
  Mr. Speaker, the unemployment rate is 10.2 percent at this time. It 
could well climb higher by the end of the year. The fact is we have a 
jobs crisis, we have a jobs emergency, and we must do something about 
it now.
  It's important to point out that as much as people who are unemployed 
need jobs, and they do, other people who are employed also need the 
unemployed to get jobs. It's important to bear in mind that when people 
are not working, their income goes down, their purchases at the store 
go down, their ability to consume and buy things that they need goes 
down, and if the store isn't selling, then the store can't put on more 
workers; they may even have to lay some off.
  So this unemployment problem actually puts downward pressure on 
demand which puts other businesses who do have employees on the payroll 
in a position where they have to reconsider that.
  Not only is the lack of a paycheck detrimental to the family that is 
not employed, but it also creates generational problems and it creates 
problems for the person who's unemployed, because when the economy 
turns around and they can get back in a position where they can maybe 
find that job, the employer is going to ask, Hey, what was going on 
with you over the last 3 years? Or 2 years? Or 6 months? And that hole 
in the resume has real consequences for that worker which may extend 
over the course of that person's lifetime.
  Obviously, when unemployment is chronic and people are out of work 
for long stretches of time, their children sometimes are impacted by 
this and have to not only go with lower family income, which is 
obviously harmful to their development, but still are in a position 
where they have seen a parent go jobless for quite a long time which 
disadvantages them in terms of their ability to know how to access the 
job market and their hope, prospect and optimism as it relates to 
getting work. So unemployment is a problem, we've got to do something 
about it, and it is time to act.
  Though the Democratic Caucus and Congress did not create the 
situation, and it certainly wasn't created overnight, it does need to 
be fixed very soon. Ten months of the new leadership of the White House 
cannot eclipse that of nearly 10 years of George Bush and the 
Republican Congress who bankrupted the public trust.
  After nearly a decade of handing over middle-class tax dollars to the 
wealthiest 1 percent, we've now got to take real action for working 
Americans. After nearly a decade of a policy that encouraged 
multimillion-dollar CEO bonuses over raises for American workers, we've 
got to do something about the job picture in America.
  The economic policies of the last 10 years put President Obama and 
this Congress in a situation where it may not have been a situation of 
our making, but it is a problem that we have responsibility to correct. 
We're not going to say that, Yeah, we got handed two wars; yeah, we got 
handed hundreds of billions of dollars of debt, a crumbling 
infrastructure, a home mortgage foreclosure crisis--one out of eight 
mortgages is in default--a global climate crisis, and a financial 
sector ravaged by greed and lax regulation.
  We're not going to rely on any excuse. We're going to get after the 
problem, and we're going to do it now. In short, the greatest economic 
and financial crisis since the Great Depression is visiting the 
American economy right now and people are feeling it, and it's time to 
do something about it.
  This is why we are proposing, and I am proposing, and I am 
encouraging other people to support a jobs bill that would do a few 
things: American jobs. Invest in transportation and schools. Schools 
all over America are crumbling. Schools all over America have old 
pipes. Schools all over America are drafty and need windows replaced 
and the paint is peeling in many of them, not all of them but many of 
them. And any school teacher, any principal or any school kid can tell 
you that.
  We need people to do the work. We have people who are willing to do 
the work, and we have things that need to be worked on. What we have to 
do is bring the two together: invest in transportation, including 
transit, urban transportation, light rail, and schools. This is an 
urgent problem, it needs fixing, and people need work. Let's pay them 
to do it.
  State and local government relief. All over this country, States and 
cities and localities are having to cut back on services that they 
provide to their citizens. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has taken the 
public circle and said without the stimulus package, a hundred thousand 
teachers in California would be out of work. So that was an example of 
a good thing. But it's not nearly enough.

  We need more to be done, because in this era and in this time, we see 
local governments having to lay off police officers, firefighters, 
public works people, teachers. We can't allow this to happen. State 
governments and local governments around the country are facing serious 
deficits and the Federal Government should step in to help.
  We also need to strengthen safety nets. During times of economic 
downturn, there's greater pressure on our food shelves, greater 
pressure on our clothing shelves; and we need to understand that when 
unemployment runs

[[Page H13502]]

out, a lot of families are just left without. What are we going to do 
about it? We need to extend unemployment benefits, food stamps and 
programs like that; and I just want to let folks know that this is 
economically, from an economic standpoint, it's not just good work, 
it's not just charitable, it's not just the right thing to do.
  It also is very, very important to stimulate the economy. Because 
when you give somebody food stamps, they take that and they go right to 
the store and they purchase groceries for their family. What does that 
do for the grocery store that is receiving that coupon that can redeem 
that for money? It's helping that grocery store. What is that doing for 
that grocer who is thinking about whether he or she has to lay off a 
few workers because people just aren't coming in and buying like they 
used to because the economy is down? Well, it helps them keep those 
people on the job. And if we do well enough, it might even actually 
help them add some people on the job.
  What happens if that store has to lay off a few folks and we don't 
come through with some of these basics? What happens is they have to 
lay off some folks, and now you've got more people on unemployment 
insurance. If they can't find a job within the right amount of time, 
then those people are just without, and they are putting pressure on 
the food pantries and the food shelves and they're just really 
suffering. These things have a ripple effect.
  What I am saying is if you can think of a coupon, a food stamp 
coupon, as not a piece of paper that can get you some food, think of it 
as a rock that you throw into a pond. I'm saying that that food stamp 
coupon and that unemployment insurance has a ripple effect that is very 
strong, and the multiplier effect of that is good because it gets right 
into the economy. It gets right into the economy to help people make 
their basic needs and also helps fuel the retail sector and then all 
the way back to the wholesale sector.
  This is basically just a few things that we could do right now to 
alleviate real pain people are suffering all over this country. We've 
got to act, we've got to do something about it; and we cannot say that 
things that were done in the past, although a lot of bad decisions, 
economic decisions, were made over the last 8 years, and the Obama 
administration and this Congress are trying to fix it. We can't rely on 
that. We've got to do something about it now. The American people 
deserve answers, especially the people who have been chronically 
unemployed.
  Today the White House is hosting, or has hosted already, an economic 
summit to discuss how to move the economy forward. This is good news. 
It's the President taking responsibility for dealing with the needs of 
Americans. I admire that tremendously. The fact is we do need more 
public jobs.

                              {time}  1545

  There's broad support and work moving to respond to the need for 
American jobs. I want to commend the Campaign for America's Future, the 
AFL-CIO, SEIU, and other labor organizations and groups that come 
together to help people, but also many employers and many small 
businesses who are out there concerned about employment.
  This era that we're in, which I believe can fairly be called the 
``great recession,'' has wreaked havoc on American communities, as I 
just mentioned. And I just want to point out we face a period of 
extended unemployment if we don't act now.
  Now, some people think, okay, the economy goes up and the economy 
goes down. But the fact is that the economy is a social institution, 
and unless people in society do something about it, the business cycle 
won't necessarily go up and include more jobs. We've got to do that. 
That's something that we need to work on. So we need to help small 
businesses get greater lending. We need to invest in public jobs. We 
need to invest in public infrastructure. We need to make these kinds of 
investments so that Americans can get back to work and the economy can 
get moving again.
  Many of you watching television and watching the nightly business 
news may note that, well, Wall Street seems to be kind of moving in the 
right direction. That's good for them. But the fact is the average 
American worker is under tremendous anxiety because they know that they 
might be next. And as one former Republican President once said, a 
recession is when your neighbor's out of work; a depression is when you 
are out of work. And for 10.2 percent of American workers, this is a 
depression, and we need to get on that and deal with it right away.
  Let me point out just a few other things. This has precedent in the 
United States. This is not something new for our country. We have 
stepped forward in the past. In fact, I was in my beautiful State of 
Minnesota after I enjoyed the great victory over the Chicago Bears by 
the Minnesota Vikings. And I went for a walk, and I saw that there was 
a picnic table that had written on it ``WPA 1934.'' Americans in the 
past have stepped forward and dealt with American crises. In the 1930s 
and again in the 1970s we responded to extraordinary hardship by adding 
jobs, jobs, to the array of programs and services designed to help our 
people and to help the economy move out of recession.
  The program that we envision today would provide work to the jobless 
and meet the needs in our communities by helping people meet their 
everyday needs and boost demand, which would help speed economic 
recovery. A new jobs program would be run by local elected officials 
who are closest to communities and best understand their needs. Local 
communities best understand the needs of the local community. So it 
wouldn't be Congress saying this many jobs for Head Start, this many 
jobs for that. It would be Congress sending funds to State and local 
governments that then those local governments could use to determine 
what is needed. And, of course, there are a lot of things that are 
needed.
  Some of the projects that are needed are paint and repair of schools, 
as I mentioned before. Peeling paint, community centers and libraries. 
You would be surprised what you might find if you went to a local 
library. You might find some local libraries are not in good repair. 
That's because they were built years and years ago and are in need of 
an upgrade.
  We need to clean up abandoned and vacant properties to alleviate the 
blight that's been caused by the foreclosure crisis. As everyone knows, 
we went through a major foreclosure crisis, and it's not over. But 
what's the reality of this situation? The reality is you have abandoned 
houses which people could live in if these places were maintained and 
upgraded. But some of them have seen the copper stripped out. Some of 
them have seen the grass grow long. Some of them have seen the windows 
knocked out. Unemployed people could be hired to help maintain these 
properties through a jobs program. This is important all over the 
country. Even if you want to make sure that these buildings are secured 
and boarded until somebody can buy them, these are things that are 
important.
  Remember, whenever there is a foreclosure on a property, two bad 
things happen. One is, somebody is out of their house, and those people 
are not paying property taxes like they used to in the past. But not 
only is the city not just getting property tax income anymore, the city 
now also has to pay out in order to maintain that property. So they 
don't just lose money, they actually now have an expense that they have 
to deal with when you have a foreclosure. That's why we need people to 
get employed to maintain these properties, and this is something that 
local communities might have to do with this money.
  We need to expand emergency food programs and reduce hunger and 
promote family stability. Did you know, Mr. Speaker, that one in five 
children in America are in poverty? In America one in five children in 
poverty. Children of all colors, children of all cultures, children of 
all faiths. This is something our country has to respond to. And for so 
many of these children in poverty today in this massive recession we're 
in, these are children who may not have parents who are in a union, 
which would probably guarantee them a higher wage, and that's why I 
support unions, or our public employees like teachers and police 
officers.
  Many of these folks are just the hardworking folks out there who keep 
the playground safe and clean, who keep the city in good repair. Folks 
who work at the Head Start and people who

[[Page H13503]]

do child care and people who do these tough jobs every single day. Some 
of these folks, they may not have a big degree or a big certificate, 
but they need to earn good money. They need to have a good job. And 
maybe that job is the one thing that could keep and lift that family 
out of poverty so that one of those children who is among the one in 
five in poverty won't have to be in poverty for too long.
  We could augment staffing at Head Start, child care, early childhood 
education programs, senior centers, and promote school readiness and 
early literacy. We could renovate and enhance maintenance of parks, 
playgrounds and other public spaces, as I just said. The program we 
envision could place special emphasis on delivering job opportunities 
and needed services to low-income communities and communities of color 
suffering depression-level unemployment and distress.

  Everybody in this economy is hurting. Well, not everybody. Some of 
these Wall Streeters are getting big bonuses. They're not hurting. But 
the rest of us are really fighting out here, and it's not easy. Small 
business owners, a lot of folks are getting hurt. But as nearly 
everybody is feeling the pain in this economy, it's important for us to 
remember that there are some folks who are feeling it even more 
painfully than the average. I want to point out that unemployment among 
African Americans in August was not the 15.2 percent that I mentioned 
for the general economy, but it was 15.7 percent. That's serious. A 
very serious problem. Unemployment for people who are of Hispanic 
background is 13.1 percent. If you're talking about young people, 
African American and Latino young people who are between the ages of 16 
and 30, we're talking about unemployment upwards of 35 percent.
  So we've got to do something in these chronically marginalized 
communities where people are just left out there and are often a second 
thought when we form public policy to address serious issues. We've got 
to deal with this. And that's why we need a program, yes, to build up 
infrastructure. Let's get those union guys back out there on the field 
making our roads, making our infrastructure, building those things up. 
And absolutely let's get those public employees back in. Let's not let 
the teachers and the cops get laid off. But let's not forget about that 
young teenager of color who is out there without any prospect. We don't 
want young people turning in the wrong direction; we want them staying 
in the right direction.
  While I mentioned statistics for African American and Hispanic young 
people, don't think for a minute that young white people in rural 
communities and even in urban communities are not having elevated 
unemployment rates as well. The youth are being unemployed at higher 
rates than other people regardless of background, and we've got to step 
up and do something about it. And we can do something about it. We 
still have over $200 billion of TARP money and stimulus dollars, and 
these need, I think, to be directed to employment programs similar to 
what we did in the 1930s and in the 1970s when Americans were out of 
work.
  I want to say that, yes, it's true that one in five, or about 20 
percent, of all young people in America are living in poverty, but one 
in three African American young people are living in poverty. A serious 
issue. Their parents need work, and we've got to do something about it. 
If we act quickly, a jobs program like this could put hundreds of 
thousands of people of various skill levels to work during the next 
year, 2010, and will continue to provide job opportunities for several 
years as our economy recovers. People paying taxes, which can help 
lower the deficit. People who are paying child support or are just 
paying the monthly expenses of their family. This is all very 
important. The time to act is now. I propose, and I think we should all 
support, a program that could create 1 million American jobs in very 
short order if we put about $40 billion into it.
  The time to act is now, to make that investment. We need to make this 
investment if we want to lower the deficit. We need to make this 
investment if we want to increase demand. We need to make this 
investment if we want to keep people from being chronically unemployed.
  Let me now turn to another important part of what I believe any job 
recovery program must include, and that is the need for critical 
infrastructure development. I have been talking about lower-wage 
workers so far. Now I want to talk a little bit about infrastructure 
development. Do you know that if you look across America, you look 
across the roads and you look across the bridges, you look across 
transit and you look across some of these aging sewer lines and even 
fiber optic, and if you look at the needs of rural communities across 
America who need to get wired in on broadband, we're looking at well 
over about $3 trillion of infrastructure needs in our country.
  And the beautiful thing about spending this kind of money to invest 
in American infrastructure is that it stays here. These are not jobs 
that are going abroad. These are going to be American jobs because you 
can't lay fiber-optic cable in America in some other country. It's 
going to be here. That person's going to be paid here. That person's 
going to be employed here. And that money is going to go into the 
United States and be funneled back to Americans. This is important to 
understand--that infrastructure investment is critical to lifting our 
economy out of this very difficult economic situation, and we have to 
do it anyway.
  I'm very excited about this idea of investing in infrastructure in 
broadband in rural communities. You know that it was in the 1930s when 
visionary political leaders like Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, You 
know what, there's no reason why rural America should be in the dark. 
Rural electrification, an idea conceived when the United States was in 
a depression. Now, some people who think that bold action could only be 
taken when things are good economically, they have to contend with the 
fact that bold action was taken when we had a depression in the 1930s, 
bold action like rural electrification. And what rural electrification 
did was it brightened up rural communities all over the United States. 
We put up the telephone lines all across this country so that you could 
flick on a light in rural America.
  What it did was it absolutely improved the economic viability of 
rural America. People no longer had to move into the crowded city when 
they could do their business in the electrified rural areas. This is 
important to bear in mind. It's critical to bear in mind that critical 
jobs in infrastructure have been built in America even during times of 
economic downturn. Very important.
  Community infrastructure programs creating over a million jobs, a 
million jobs at the community and neighborhood level, is what we need 
now. We need these kinds of programs so we can create immediate 
opportunity, so we could create infrastructure.
  I just want to tell you I'm from the city of Minneapolis, and from my 
great city of Minneapolis, we had on August 4, 2007, a bridge collapse 
into the Mississippi River. Thirteen Minneapolitans died and a hundred 
had injuries like spinal cord injuries as they fell 65 feet from the 
bridge to the water. Now, at the end of the day, this crisis and this 
tragedy occurred because we did not maintain that infrastructure well 
enough. Now, I'm not saying it's anybody's fault. I'm sure everybody 
did the best they could. But the fact is if we would have had a 
stronger infrastructure commitment that would make bridges around this 
country a priority to repair and to fix and to rebuild, this tragedy 
may not have happened. But it did happen.

                              {time}  1600

  But it did happen, and so we put out a clarion call for 
infrastructure development in our country. And I say, we need to do 
this anyway. We need to develop infrastructure so we can avoid horrible 
tragedies like the one that happened in my city. But more importantly, 
or as importantly, we need to do it now to put Americans back to work.
  During the first 6 to 9 months, if we can pass a good, solid 
community infrastructure program, the program could develop a fast 
track for jobs. Projects could be limited to certain activities such as 
key priorities. And within a short amount of time, we could see these 
infrastructure developments paying great dividends for Americans.

[[Page H13504]]

  You know, I want to talk to you about some of the things that we have 
been seeing in our economy that really do cause a tremendous amount of 
pause, and I think it is something that we need to really, really pay 
some close attention to. These are trends in our economy that I just 
feel that we need to pay some greater attention to, and this is not in 
a way of just describing what we should do, but it is kind of talking 
about what we have done.
  In the course of the last few weeks, we have seen people be highly 
critical of the stimulus package. I think we need to take a look back 
at what the stimulus package did. Some people, because it has not 
stopped the increase in unemployment, say that it didn't work. I say 
this is an incorrect analysis. I believe the Recovery Act has actually 
helped a lot of people stay employed and actually stopped this economic 
crisis from getting worse and slowed the rate of unemployment. But we 
need to do more. But let's just say what the Recovery Act did do.
  The Recovery Act created over a million jobs. That's what it did do. 
It created over 250,000 education jobs. As I said, it was Governor 
Arnold Schwarzenegger who said that but for the stimulus, over 100,000 
teachers would be out of work. Thirty thousand jobs were created or 
saved by businesses that have received Federal contracts from just a 
small fraction of the Recovery Act. That is very important.
  Let me say that half a million homeowners have signed up for 
foreclosure prevention programs, reaching an important early goal. And 
the program that was launched last March aimed to help these half a 
million borrowers by November 1, with the ultimate goal of helping 4 
million borrowers before it expires.
  Here is a number for you. The Dow Jones industrial average surged to 
over 10,000, passing the 10,000 point level much faster than expected 
and racking up a 53 percent gain in the last 7 months. That is an 
improvement in the economy that has helped some but has not helped 
enough. But it just shows that if we do invest in our economy, it does 
help. It improves the lives of people. It is not money that we 
shouldn't have spent. Things would be much worse if we didn't spend 
that stimulus money and make those important public sector investments.
  The number of road and bridge projects already approved under the 
Recovery Act, which creates jobs, is 8,000. The number of roads and 
bridges projects, 8,000 roads and bridges projects already underway 
because of the stimulus. And the percentage of spending that is now 
obligated under the Recovery Act, this money in the pipeline ready to 
be spent is about half, and this 50 percent mark exceeds the 
Congressional Budget Office's initial projection for the program, 
showing that investment is going out quickly to help boost the economy 
right away.
  But still we have a job crisis, and still we have to do something 
about this jobs crisis. And let me tell you a little more about how the 
Recovery Act has fared so far, because there has been a lot of 
disinformation about the Recovery Act. A lot of people have said that 
the President said it was going to stop unemployment at 8 percent, and 
it went up by 2 more percent. Leading economists say it would be 12 
percent if the Recovery Act were not put in place. So let me just talk 
a little bit more about what this economic recovery has done, economic 
stimulus has done so far, and make a case for what more needs to be 
done.
  A recent report from the Council of Economic Advisers shows that the 
Recovery Act and other policy actions have saved or created over a 
million jobs while only about a quarter of the Recovery Act spending 
has been able to get into the economy. But many projects are in the 
pipeline and are on their way. The report, this report by the Council 
of Economic Advisers, estimates that the Recovery Act has had 
particularly strong effects in manufacturing, construction, retail 
trade, and temporary employment services. The employment effects are 
distributed across States with larger effects in States more severely 
impacted. So States like Michigan, Ohio, even my own State of 
Minnesota, but others as well, are getting this important economic 
recovery money so that we can turn our economy around.
  According to Jared Bernstein, who is the chief economist, Office of 
the Vice President, ``All signs--from the private estimates to this 
fragmentary data--point to the conclusion that the Recovery Act did 
indeed create or save about 1 million jobs in its first 7 months, a 
much needed lift in a very difficult period for our economy,'' which is 
something that I think we must pay attention to and cannot ignore.
  I just want to talk a little more about the success of the Recovery 
Act, not that it has completely succeeded. We would like to see 
unemployment headed down, not just the rate of unemployment slow down. 
But just to make sure that we understand that providing economic fiscal 
stimulus does help our economy, it is important to review the facts.
  The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board--and as you know, 
we didn't just spend money out, we got a transparency board to look at 
it all--released its first report on the portion of the Recovery Act 
spending that shows that recipients have reported that so far, the act 
is helping to get Americans back to work. As I said, Mark Zandi of 
Moody's Economics said 2 percent, we would have 2 percent greater 
unemployment but for the Recovery Act which is so important.

  According to this report issued by the Recovery Accountability and 
Transparency Board, the act shows that businesses that received Federal 
contracts from stimulus spending reported creating or saving about 
30,000 jobs. The board released a more extensive report last month, 
which I will get to in a moment.
  Now, I would like to talk a little bit now and just move on about 
this unemployment figure. I brought a graph with me that I would like 
to share with you, Mr. Speaker, and just show folks what we are looking 
at.
  It is important that we talk about creating these jobs, as I just 
mentioned, the economic recovery and jobs that we are creating or 
working on. What this chart shows is that part of our strategy for job 
creation must be infrastructure, as I mentioned, and must also be 
creating public sector, public works jobs, which is important. But a 
third aspect is clean energy and green jobs. This is the visionary, 
forward-looking kind of job proposal that we need to pay attention to.
  Investing $150 billion in clean energy will create a net gain of 1 
million jobs and improve opportunities for low-income families. These 
are jobs for the future. These are jobs for the next period. These are 
jobs for now and into the future. Clean energy jobs. Clean energy jobs 
created, 2,500 to 10,000 jobs across America, places in rural areas. 
And 10,000 to 50,000 jobs in these more darkly shaded areas where 
people live, sparser population but people need to work, and more than 
50,000 jobs in the darkly shaded areas. As you can see, these are our 
industrial manufacturing sectors, places like Indiana, Michigan, and 
places like Illinois and Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Georgia, South 
Carolina, places like Florida, Texas, and California. This is a very 
important chart because a part of our conversation must revolve around 
what our job strategy is and what we expect to do in this period to 
create jobs for Americans.
  You know, the thing is that jobs, having a job is one of the most 
important things that any person can do. A job is not just income, but 
a job also gives you pride and dignity. A job also is something that 
allows you to feel that you are making a contribution to society. A 
job. A job is something that you can go to and you can come home and 
look your kids in the eye and say, you know what, I put in, I am 
productive. This is what I have done to help you and to help our 
society be better.
  It is important to do something about the millions of unemployed 
today, the people who are in the ranks of that 10.2 percent of 
unemployed, the people who are among the ranks of the 34 percent of 
minority teenagers and young adults who are unemployed. Those children, 
1 in 5 children in America in poverty, 1 in 3 African American children 
in poverty in America today, below the poverty line, we can do 
something about it, and the time to do something about it is now. We 
cannot sit idly by while our fellow Americans are in an economic 
malaise. We have to have ideas that are designed to work, and we have 
to remember what has worked in the past, and we can't be afraid to 
reach for what can work now.

[[Page H13505]]

  The fact is that we are asking Americans, Mr. Speaker, to step 
forward and support a real jobs package, one that will work, one that 
is new and innovative for green jobs, one that preserves and improves 
our infrastructure, and one that puts people to work and one that keeps 
State and local governments from having to lay off public employees. 
These programs will work. We need to do something for small businesses 
who are often the biggest job generators of all, and we need to do it 
now.
  Mr. Speaker, I just want to say that this has been another hour of 
the Progressive message, another hour of the Progressive Caucus. Our 
email is cpc.grijalva.house.gov. We want to hear from the public, Mr. 
Speaker. We want to know what is on the public's mind, and we want to 
know how people are feeling. And we just want to remind people of the 
importance of the dignity of work and the obligation and responsibility 
of Americans who are in Congress to do something about this dismal job 
picture out there. I want to let the people know, Mr. Speaker, that we 
hear them. I want them to know that we haven't forgotten them, and I 
want to let them know that we are here to do something about the very 
difficult circumstances that people are facing.
  So this will conclude the Progressive hour and the Progressive 
message. We will see you next week. Happy holidays, and enjoy.

                          ____________________