[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 31 (Thursday, March 3, 2011)]
[House]
[Pages H1563-H1568]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE EPIC STRUGGLE OF PUBLIC SERVANTS
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich) is recognized
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Speaker, today in the State of Ohio, the State of
Wisconsin and the State of Indiana there are epic struggles underway
where those who serve the public, who teach
[[Page H1564]]
our children, who police our streets, who fight the fires and who
perform a myriad of services at a State, county and municipal level,
are under attack. Their wages are under attack and their benefits,
pensions and working conditions are under attack. And these public
workers are being made the scapegoats in all of the budget challenges
which States face. They are now blaming the workers.
Our whole economy has been turned into a somewhat efficient engine
that takes the wealth of the American people and accelerates the wealth
to the top. That, after all, is what our tax system is about. That's
what Wall Street is about. That's what banking is about. That's what
our energy policy is about, taking the wealth of millions and giving it
to a few oil companies. If you examine every area of our economy,
you'll see that we're at a time in the history of America where the
rich truly are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and the
middle class is getting destroyed.
Enter public workers, people who have dedicated their lives to public
service, people who are truly public servants in the truest sense of
the word, people who were told that if they agreed to public service
that they would have certain guarantees. And so they dedicated their
lives.
{time} 1550
Ohio has a new Governor, a person who I served with in this House,
and from the moment he has come into office, he and his supporters,
have run an agenda that is aimed at vitiating the rights of public
workers. This resulted yesterday in the passage by a single vote in the
Ohio Senate of S.B. 5, a bill that will strip collective bargaining
rights just about across the board from public workers, that would take
away public employees' right to strike, that would make the penalty for
a strike removal with replacement workers that will open the door to
privatization of services.
Now, my read of what is going on in Ohio, which is my home State, is
this: That by attempting to crush public workers, by telling them you
will not have any ability to negotiate your benefits, you will not have
any ability to negotiate your working conditions, your health benefits,
your pension, these provisions are not subject to discussion; the
number of people working with you at any time, not subject to
discussion. What has happened is that we have seen accomplished an
economic attack on workers which will lead to them working for less,
but opening the door to privatization schemes which, Mr. Speaker, works
like this: You make public workers the issue. You say that they are
paid too much when I have here a matter for the record from the
Economic Policy Institute which says that Ohio public sector workers
are undercompensated compared to private sector counterparts. But
facts, unfortunately, mean little in this debate.
But you tell the public that these public workers are overpaid. And
this new law, Senate Bill 5, would enable the State of Ohio to do this,
you then say we are going to privatize this section of the workforce.
We are going to put the work out for bids. We are going to get a
private company in here to do it. And oh, we promise it will be done
more efficiently.
While the taxpayers then go to sleep, they wake up one day and they
discover that what has happened is that they have permitted a
privatization of their services and they end up inevitably paying more
and getting less. The corporations walk away with the profits; the
privatized workers get paid less in order to enable the corporations to
make more money.
So ultimately what Senate Bill 5 in Ohio will do is end up costing
the State government even more. There is not going to be any savings
when you set the stage for a weakening of workers, when you set the
stage for making it illegal for them to strike and then knocking them
out with replacement workers and then setting things on a path to
privatization. That is what this bill is about.
You look in Wisconsin, and I believe it was Paul Krugman and others
who pointed out that in Wisconsin, there was a provision in the
Wisconsin budget from the Governor of Wisconsin's bill, it says sale or
contractual operation of State-owned heating, cooling, and power
plants, saying that the department may sell any State-owned heating,
cooling, and power plant, or may contract with a private entity in the
operation of any such plant, with or without solicitation of bids.
So you can have a private contractor just give it away without any
bids at all. They are power plants that serve facilities in the State
of Wisconsin. These are the kinds of thing that we can expect in Ohio,
except in this case we are talking about the privatization of public
services. Now, the privatization of public services in a way is well
established already, unfortunately.
The AFL-CIO Public Employee Department produced a paper which talks
about when you get into privatization, the public ends up having really
little accountability on the question of public funds. They point out
that private business has no business allocating public funds or
monitoring the use of public funds. It is a question of fiscal
accountability.
Look, we know when there are massive amounts of money available that
goes from the public sector to the private sector, let's take Iraq or
Afghanistan with respect to contracts, billions of dollars disappear,
get wasted. It ends up being a racket. Reduce it to a State level, and
you have the potential for fraud. You have the weakening of the
community's ability to assert collective interests. And as I said, the
resulting savings that taxpayers are being told will occur are actually
directed to the corporations so they get higher profits. Privatization
is inevitably a racket.
As a Member of Congress in my home district in Cleveland, the Defense
Finance Administration wanted to privatize a number of accounting jobs
in Cleveland. Mr. Speaker, I had a 7-year battle with the Defense
Finance Administration where we proved that the taxpayers were getting
taken for a ride in this privatization plan that was being promoted by
our government to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. We reversed
the privatization. Privatization is at the core of this battle in Ohio
because the assets of the State are worth countless billions of
dollars.
You can take a workforce that is over 300,000, about 350,000 public
workers in Ohio, that would be affected by S.B. 5. There is not a
service that can't be privatized, but then the public doesn't have any
control over it. They can't call up their elected official and complain
about a service that is privatized. They have to call up the
corporation. And they end up paying more in taxes. People need to
understand that. States have budget difficulties they have to deal
with. I've got that. I understand that. States need a revenue-sharing
plan from the Federal Government, but the Federal Government doesn't
have the money right now. Why doesn't the Federal Government have the
money? Well, how about the fact that the Federal Government is spending
trillions of dollars on wars, one of which is based on lies, the other
one based on a misreading of history.
Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize winning economist, in his book with
Linda Bilmes, it's called ``The Three Trillion Dollar War,'' has stated
that the cost of the work in Iraq will run between 3 and $5 trillion,
just to U.S. taxpayers; the cost of the war in Afghanistan is already
over half a trillion dollars. The long-term cost of that, since we are
still in a period of acceleration of that war, will certainly go into
the trillions of dollars.
We saw a couple of years ago Wall Street come to this Capitol.
Suddenly, the waves parted: $700 billion in loans when Wall Street was
flagging. That could have been anticipated that Wall Street would
create incredible speculation when Glass-Steagall was effectively
repealed when they took down the wall that separated commercial from
investment banking. Those who were the cops on the beat kind of walked
away while this bubble was building on mortgage-backed securities,
hedge funds, speculating, inflating the bubble, it burst, and all
Americans got hurt. But all Americans didn't get made whole. Most
Americans have experienced a 30 percent drop in the value of their
mortgages while Wall Street is enjoying record profits once again,
while Wall Street, once again, is experiencing high salaries and high
bonuses.
Not on Main Street, though. On Main Street, they have 15 million
unemployed, 12 million underemployed, 50
[[Page H1565]]
million people without health insurance, and 10-12 million people whose
homes are or have been in jeopardy.
So then you go back to the State level where States are pressed, but
States are pressed in part because of the mismanagement of the national
economy and because we have a monetary policy that has worked for Wall
Street but it certainly hasn't worked for Main Street. So by the time
this debate gets down to a State level, those executives who are more
inclined towards a corporate point of view are saying, look, easy,
we'll just knock out the public unions.
{time} 1600
But there are serious implications to this type of thinking, because
what we are actually doing is setting aside an entire struggle that has
been part of America's history that we should all be proud of. The
civil rights movement is part of America's history we should be proud
of: the civil rights movement which resulted in constitutional changes;
which recognized the rights of all citizens as being equal, truly
equal; the civil rights movement which accorded women an equal place in
our society, of course with the exception of pay; but nevertheless, the
potential for an equal role in our society is something we should be
proud of.
With that civil rights movement, the labor movement moved the pace,
and that labor movement was about lifting everyone up, not just those
who were members of unions. Unions came about because workers were
being crushed; they were working in awful working conditions; they were
subjected to forms of slave labor; they were working long hours and
were paid very little; they were working under conditions that put
their lives in jeopardy. America had a tradition of child labor at one
time. All that changed with the laws that were passed in this Chamber.
We should be proud of what America has been able to accomplish in
lifting up the status of working people in our society so that you
could have an 8-hour day, so that you could have a safe workplace--so
much so that today we understand that intimately linked to the very
nature of our democracy is the right to collective bargaining, which is
the very right that is under attack in Ohio and Wisconsin and Indiana
and other States across this Union.
The right to collective bargaining is being able to assert a First
Amendment right of association. It is being able to assert that workers
have a sense of agency and to know, in a society where capital can be
amassed in tremendous sums, that one individual has the right to be
able to assert his or her rights because they have representation,
because there is a law that says they have the ability to be able to
have an influence on how much they are paid and on what their benefits
and their working conditions will be.
That's the essence of what it means to be a democracy: that workers
have a say and that it's not top-down.
This isn't a dictatorship. Yet S.B. 5 sets the stage for a kind of
dictatorship, top-down. These are your working conditions. Take it or
leave it. These are your benefits. Take it or leave it. Don't ask any
questions. Shut up and go to work.
When did America buy into that? The minute we buy into that kind of
mentality, how does that separate us from what's happening in China? I
want people to focus on this for a minute. We passed a trade agreement
with China, China Trade, which I voted against, which had no provisions
for workers' rights, human rights or environmental quality principles.
A month ago, I had some paper workers in my office from Washington
State, and they showed me how many jobs in their industry have moved
out of Washington and how many plants for their industry have opened up
in China. It's amazing to look at a map and see, well, they were here
once, and now these same jobs are in China.
In China, workers don't have any rights. There is no right to
collective bargaining in China. That's not part of the discussion. The
government of China is run under a different philosophy. Workers don't
have a right to strike in China. There's no right to decent wages or
benefits. Oh, yes. It's called Communist China. Excuse me.
As part of a democracy, we assert--and have a right to assert--that
workers here do have a right to collective bargaining, that they do
have a right to join a union, that they do have a right to strike, that
they do have a right to decent wages and benefits, that they do have a
right to a secure retirement, that they do have a right to a safe
workplace, that they do have a right to be able to challenge legally an
employer who maintains an unsafe workplace. They have the right to
participate in the political process.
So many of these rights are under attack at the State level today,
and this has an effect not just on public workers but on all workers,
because if America begins to take down the hard-earned rights of
workers, whether it's in the public sector or the private sector, and
if we try to justify it, here is what we can look forward to:
We can look forward to lower wages; we can look forward to people
having zero health benefits; we can look forward to people having zero
pensions; we can look forward to workplaces becoming less safe; and we
can look forward to becoming a little bit like our trading partner in
China, which, by the way, has about a $200 billion trade advantage with
the United States out of a trade deficit that is in excess of $450
billion.
So are we exporting our democracy? Are we importing values that are
estranged from a democratic society? That's really the question that we
have to ask ourselves if we think that what happens in Wisconsin
doesn't relate to us or if we think that what happens in Ohio is none
of our business.
Mr. Speaker, I went to Columbus, Ohio, and stood with thousands of
workers. I stood with firemen and policemen and teachers. I stood with
people who care for children and seniors. These people are people who
have dedicated their whole lives to public service. They have a middle
class standard of living because they have that dedication. They are
people who are not our enemies. They are our friends. They are our
neighbors--and they serve us.
Since when are we now faced with looking at those who serve us as
being opposed to us? How did our country get that way? Why can't we
come to an understanding? We have a collective interest here. Why can't
our Governors tell the truth about what's really happening?--which is
that States are getting strangled because of policies at a Federal
level that are making it much more difficult for States to be able to
get any assistance at all.
I have not run into any single labor leader who said that they did
not want to negotiate the issues that are at hand. I've not run into
any labor leader who didn't understand that State budgets are tight and
that they want to make sure that States can meet the needs of all the
people. But this top-down approach, this political approach to
dictating what the conditions are and what the rights are for State
workers, sets the stage for an estrangement of people from their own
government.
So we have to look at the issue of collective bargaining. In the
State of Ohio, we have to understand that the fact that they have
collective bargaining makes strikes less likely. This law was passed in
1983 in Ohio, and collective bargaining actually provides for the
public's health, safety and welfare. This bill, Senate Bill 5, is aimed
at eliminating collective bargaining. It would not only prohibit the
State from being involved at this point in collective bargaining for
the purpose of benefits and working conditions, but it would also
prohibit counties, cities, and other local government employers from
continuing to negotiate employee benefit plan coverage and also to set
community-based standards for public employment.
{time} 1610
What of home rule? I mean, at a State level, cities that are home
rule should be able to make these decisions. This flies in the face of
a constitutional right which cities have for home rule.
Senate bill 5 is really an attack on quality public service. It
represents a destructive undermining of the compact between government
and their workers. It changes the whole relationship. And it cannot do
anything--cannot do a thing to improve the quality of service.
Look at some of the biggest industrial corporations in America. They
had their battles with labor, but they
[[Page H1566]]
also understood that by having a workforce they could work with--the
steelworkers work with the steel industry to produce a quality steel
product, the autoworkers work with the auto industry to produce a
quality car. In aerospace, we have some of the best technology in the
world, and the industry works with unions.
The whole idea about being able to negotiate for your wages, to be
able to negotiate for your benefits is so that you can elevate the
condition of your family and yourself. These aren't selfish people;
they're people just trying to make a living. They just want to continue
to do their work, to have an opportunity to negotiate their pay, to be
able to negotiate their benefits--to have benefits--so that then they
can go home and put food on the table and maybe be able to send their
children to a decent college and maybe be able to put a few dollars
aside, maybe be able to save a little bit for their retirement in
addition to a pension plan that they have at work. When has that become
asking for too much?
I think it was Rachel Maddow the other day had something that was a
joke on her show where she talked about--I'll paraphrase it: people sit
down at a table and you've got a CEO sitting at a table and you've got
workers and a tea party member sitting at a table and there's 12
cookies on a plate. The CEO grabs 11 of those cookies and then the
worker goes to get that remaining cookie and the CEO says to everybody
at the table, Better watch that person, he's trying to take your
cookie. This is what's going on in State after State.
And this is actually what's happening in our economy, where it's
working people who are the target of this attack. And it's not only at
a State level. Every worker in America understands the downward
pressure on wages unless you're on Wall Street. Every worker in America
knows that if they don't have job security they can't plan for
anything.
There are so many people in America who are a single paycheck away
from losing their home, from losing everything they ever worked a
lifetime for. And in this economy, where corporations have
extraordinary power, where because of our trade agreements they can
move out of this country like that, we're going to further weaken the
ability of workers to have a voice at a State level, or anyplace at
all? Come on, America, wake up.
We have to understand the implications of what's happening in Ohio
and Wisconsin. We have to understand that our very way of life is at
risk here, that if corporations can use their influence to get State
leaders to knock down workers' rights, it won't be long before every
worker in America is reduced to a form of peonage.
People can laugh and say, well, that can't happen. Well, you know
what? I want to quote to you from a book by Robert Scheer called ``The
Great American Stickup.'' And the subtitle of it, so that you know that
I'm not partisan here, Mr. Speaker, the subtitle of it is, ``How Reagan
Republicans and Clinton Democrats enriched Wall Street while mugging
Main Street.'' I won't get into that too much, but I do want to quote
from Mr. Scheer's book.
He talks about how two University of California economists, Emmanuel
Saez and his colleague, Thomas Piketty, they analyzed U.S. tax data and
other supporting statistics, and they concluded that the boom of the
Clinton years and afterwards primarily benefited the wealthiest
Americans.
During Clinton's tenure, from 1993 to 2000, the income of the top 1
percent shot up at an astounding rate of 10.1 percent per year while
the income of the other 99 percent of Americans increased only 2.4
percent annually. In 2002 to 2006, the next surge of the boom that
Clinton's policies unleashed, the numbers were even more unbalanced.
The average annual income for the bottom 99 percent increased by only 1
percent per annum while the top 1 percent saw a gain of 11 percent each
year. Further, just as the good times of the Bush years saw almost $3
out of every $4 in increased income go to the wealthiest 1 percent, the
GOP cut taxes for the richest brackets.
So as I said at the beginning, the whole economy is being converted
to an engine that takes the wealth of America and puts it in the hands
of a few. How can you maintain a democracy that way? An economic
democracy is a precondition of a political democracy.
The minute we start attacking what people make, the minute we start
putting pressure on people's wages--and keep in mind, it's okay with
Wall Street to have 15 million Americans out of work. Why? Because that
creates a big labor supply, which does what? Keeps wages down. So
instead of having a full-employment economy--which really ought to be
what we should expect in a democracy, that everyone who wants to work
has a place--we have 15 million workers out of work, 12 million
underemployed, but Wall Street keeps making more and more money.
We're being told there's a recovery, but it's a jobless recovery. And
so in this morass we see an attack on public workers. You have to
recognize exactly what's going on here. This is still another attempt
to grab more assets from the people and put it into the hands of a few.
Just think what can happen in Ohio if the State legislature goes ahead
and passes S.B. 5. If the State house passes it, the Governor signs it
into law, we will just set the stage for massive privatization which
will reduce service, increase its cost, and put money into the hands of
private corporations; more wealth going to the top, less ability for
workers to defend their interests. And these are people working for us.
State workers, city, county workers, they're the government. They are
the ones who provide service.
I served at a local level, Mr. Speaker. I was a councilman. I served
as a mayor. I served at that local government where government is
really close to people. It provides an opportunity where people can get
on the phone and say, hey, Mr. Councilman, we need somebody who's going
to fix this street. Take care of it. Well, there's political
accountability. You get enough calls, it's not taken care of, you won't
be reelected.
But that control that comes from people in the neighborhoods to city
hall, when you break unions and you set the stage for privatization of
their jobs, you break that, you break the tie.
{time} 1620
Then it's the government at the top that has to do with the
corporations to make sure their workers are doing right by the people.
The essence of democracy is accountability. The essence of democracy
is that people have the ability to be able to contact their government
and be able to change conditions if they don't like it. And also the
essence is service. People pay taxes, they should get something in
return.
And yet the public workers who are being attacked in Ohio and
Wisconsin and other places are the focal point of a great debate over
whether or not we will continue to have something that we call
government of the people.
All across this country, Mr. Speaker, there are Governors who are
facing budget shortfalls, and they're watching events very carefully in
Ohio and Wisconsin to be able to determine how far they're going to go.
We're looking at cutbacks in pension benefits, cutbacks in health
benefits--some of which the representatives of the workers are actually
agreeing on in order to keep the jobs.
But we're also looking at this parallel attempt to knock out
bargaining rights. What does one have to do with the other? If people
don't have the right to collective bargaining, they don't have a right
to a sense of agency in dealing with governments, they're just reduced
to nothing.
Why do we do that to people who serve us? Why should we do that? And
why shouldn't we be calling into accounting those public officials who,
by and large, will be representing corporate interests or corporate
thinking?
There are those who think that the interests of corporations and the
government are one in the same. Oh no they're not. Government exists to
provide service. Corporations exist to make a profit. Fine. But let's
make sure we understand there's a difference.
Government does not exist to make a profit, but it does provide a
service. And when government's resources are starting to be eroded, we
have to ask why. I'll give you an idea, Mr. Speaker.
We're being told that there's just not enough money anymore. Let's
look for
[[Page H1567]]
a moment at our monetary system itself.
When you go to a bank and you take out a loan, the bank will book
that as an asset. Banks for years and years have been using a device
known as a fractional reserve where they're able to create for every
dollar they book as cash that they claim to have. They're able to
create another $9 or even $10, maybe more. And that device, known as a
fractional reserve, has given our banking system essentially the money
to create--the ability to create money out of nothing.
Now, there's some people who are okay with that. They say, well,
banks have to have this ability; but when banks have that ability, we
also know that banks have been prone to being able to make transactions
when they got involved, as a bank in Cleveland did on mortgage-backed
securities and they began investing heavily, actually investing money
they didn't have. When the market collapsed, the bank collapsed.
So this device of fractional reserve actually in this economy has
ended up helping to fuel speculation.
And what about the Fed? The Fed, which this Congress has tried many
times--and I've worked with Mr. Paul on this--the Fed has virtually no
controls whatsoever, limited accountability. When the Federal Reserve
Act was passed in 1913, it really took out of the hands of this
Congress the ability to have control over the monetary system.
Now, this Constitution of the United States, which I carry with me,
article I, section 8, Congress has the ability to coin money. Now, to
coin money doesn't mean just to make coins. It actually means to create
money, to publish money.
That was a foundational principle of the ability of Congress to have
a role in the money system. We basically sent that over to the Fed with
the 1913 Federal Reserve Act. So the Fed, through another device known
as quantitative easing--I want everyone to remember this--quantitative
easing. What does it mean? It means the Fed has the ability to create
money out of nothing to the tune of trillions of dollars--$4 trillion
in this most recent economic crisis.
Now, we're told that unless the Fed can do this, our economy would
collapse. I think it's time we started to look at these institutions
which we've created and ask if this isn't the time for us to take
control on behalf of the American people to critically analyze the
fractional-reserve system and see if it has any more viability, if it
doesn't really expose us to more problems than it ends up creating.
I personally think that it's time to challenge the fractional-reserve
system to the point of where you let banks loan the money that they
actually have on deposit instead of creating money out of nothing, and
then if the bank goes down, we have to bail them out.
I think it's time for us to take the Fed, which has been out of our
reach, and put it under the control of Treasury again. And then if the
government needs to invest money, and we do, then we invest the money,
then we spend it into circulation. We're told right now we don't have
any money. We don't have any money to fix our roads. There's over $2
trillion of infrastructure needs. States don't have any money. That's
what we're told. That's why we're told they're having these conflicts
with the workers; they're out of money. We don't have any money to fix
up our roads.
Well, FDR figured out what to do in the New Deal. You just create a
WPA. You put millions of people back to work; you rebuild America.
We're apparently not going to go in that direction. But why not? We're
told we don't have the money. What, we have to borrow it from banks?
Who's holding our securities?
If we can borrow money from Japan and from China and from the UK, and
from the Cayman Islands to manage our economy, well, if we can borrow
money to keep wars going, hello, why can't we spend the money into
circulation, take back the power--which inherently is in the
Constitution--and invest in the creation of jobs again and put those 15
million Americans back to work? Create a revenue sharing program for
the States so States aren't faltering any more. Have a national health
care system so you don't have to worry about health care being on the
bargaining table. Absolutely make Social Security solid so there's
never a question about a partial privatization--which is another agenda
some people would like to run here.
It's not like we don't have within our grasp an ability to change the
conditions in which we're operating.
But, instead, we have this poverty mentality which rivets us to
control by corporate interests who are making money hand over fist, who
we're being told all of America's poor except Wall Street. Huh? How did
that happen? With our money nonetheless? How did that happen?
Why isn't unemployment a problem on Wall Street? Think about this.
Why is Wall Street doing better than ever? Why do we hear these dark
tales about speculations happening again? Are we getting ready for
another pump-and-dump scheme where we'll be back here in a few years
having to bail out Wall Street again?
Meanwhile, Main Street's infrastructure crumbles; Main Street's
workers are hungry for work; Main Street's wages are getting depressed;
Main Street's struggling for health care; Main Street's worried about
its pension; Main Street's worried about whether they're going to have
a home or not.
What's happening in Ohio and Wisconsin is relevant because every
single economic issue that is facing this Nation today is part of that
debate.
{time} 1630
Why should we accept an economy where people are told they have
limited expectations? This is America. We have shown the world the
ability to create untold wealth. But if we keep shipping it offshore .
. .
Why shouldn't people who have an education, who have strived to
achieve a middle class standard of living, why shouldn't they expect
that their government will stand next to them? It's time for people to
understand that we need to take a strong stand in favor of the rights
of workers.
Now, how do we do that? Let's look at our trade agreements, Mr.
Speaker. Every trade agreement needs to be renegotiated. We need to
renegotiate NAFTA, and the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade, and
China trade, and we need to say that every single trade agreement has
the right to collective bargaining. We're going in the wrong direction
in the States. Every agreement we have should have the right to
collective bargaining, the right to join a union, the right to strike,
the right to decent wages and benefits, the right to a safe workplace,
the right to be able to sue an employer if they maintain an unsafe
workplace, the right to a secure retirement, the right to participate
in the political process.
If we had those in our trade agreements, if in our trade agreements
we had prohibitions on child labor, slave labor, prison labor, if in
our trade agreements we had the protection of the air and the water,
then these corporations wouldn't be running to China or anywhere in the
world in order to have the people of that country subsidize their
profits through dirty air, dirty water, low wages, slave labor, child
labor. Think about it. That's why we need to go back to the trade
agreements.
We need to elevate the condition of workers in our society. We need
to think in terms of raising people's standard of living. We need to
think in terms of helping people save their homes. We need to think in
terms of more competition in our economy. We need to think in terms of
how do you create wealth in our society, not just how do you create
debt. Because right now, Mr. Speaker, our whole economic system is
money equals debt. And as long as we're locked into that mentality of
money equals debt, then all we're going to have is debt no matter where
we look. And our ballooning debt keeps getting larger and larger, and
we're told, well, we have to pay off that debt before we can deal with
our problems. Baloney. We don't have to do that.
What we have to do is to start looking at what can be done to prime
the pump of our economy, to get America back to work. We have the
resources. And if we have to change the way that we handle our money
system, we should do that. The Fed has not been responsive. The private
sector isn't creating jobs. They're getting rid of jobs.
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If the private sector created jobs, then right after we gave hundreds
of billions of dollars to Wall Street we should have seen millions of
people go back to work. That did not happen. We are in at least a
double-dip recession. We have Americans struggling to survive, and they
could read the daily reports about how great Wall Street is doing.
Let's go back to Ohio and support those workers. Let's support those
who teach our children, who police our streets, who put out the fires,
who serve our elderly, who take care of our children, the people who
perform the services at the myriad of State offices and at county and
city offices. Let's respect and honor those who are in public service,
as we ourselves would want to be honored for taking the path that we
chose in our careers. The people who chose the civil service, the
people who chose to do that day-to-day work of being involved in a
community, they are no less important than we are as individuals. We're
part of the same tissue that makes up a democracy.
And so I want to appeal to my colleagues to look at this moment in
history, to understand the deep threat which the breaking of collective
bargaining represents to our democracy, to understand how urgent it is
that we support workers everywhere, that we express our appreciation to
them, that we understand that in this House there are many different
points of view.
We have different points of view about the amount of power we would
like concentrated into fewer and fewer hands. But we should have no
difference of opinion, there should be total solidarity on protecting
those who serve the public and on protecting workers whose basic rights
are cardinal principles of a democratic society.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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