[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 82 (Tuesday, June 11, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H3274-H3279]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE AMERICAN DREAM
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 3, 2013, the gentleman from California (Mr. Garamendi) is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Madam Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to spend
a few moments this evening talking about things that are on my mind,
and I suspect on the mind of the American public. There's certainly a
lot of news recently about collecting data on American citizens. Having
attended a conference this afternoon, I can tell you that I think the
great majority of the 435 Members of this House share the deep concern
of the American public about our civil liberties perhaps being taken
away from us in the process of data collection. I would expect that
this House of Representatives and a couple of our committees, the
Judiciary and the Intelligence Committees, will be spending time over
the next few weeks going into this in great detail trying to assess
whether we all made a mistake when we voted for the various laws that
have allowed the National Security Agency and the other agencies to
collect data on all of our phone calls and more. I would hope that's
the case.
We need to know exactly what's happening, how it has happened and
what impact it may have on our civil liberties. One of the most
precious things given to us in the Bill of Rights is that freedom,
freedom from an oppressive government. So we'll see what happens here.
For my own part, I want those hearings to take place right away. I have
great concerns about all of this, and we'll see how it all plays out.
As to people stealing secrets, yes, that's against the law and there
ought to be a punishment, and I suspect they will very quickly find
that punishment available for those have who have stolen these pieces
of information.
Now, moving on, I wanted to talk this evening about the American
Dream. I think it was probably best put forth by President Clinton,
although down through the ages and for generations and generations, the
dream has been pretty much the same. But since he has the most recent
quote that I could find on this, I think I'll just use it. He said:
If you work hard and play by the rules, you'll have the
freedom and opportunity to pursue your own dreams and leave
your kids a country where they can chase theirs.
I like that. In fact, I like President Clinton and the way in which
he was able to articulate some of our most fundamental values. In this
case, he so very well laid out the essence of the American Dream: if
you work hard and you play by the rules, then you ought to be able to
have a good life in America. You ought to be able to see progress for
yourself and for your families.
This issue was brought to my attention at a recent town hall that I
had in my district. A gentleman in the town hall, not a Tea Party, not
a liberal or whatever, he just said:
I've got a question for you, Congressman. I've got two
kids. My wife and I both work, and we've worked all our
lives. I'm in my mid- to late forties now, and I have to tell
you, we're not getting ahead. We still have those student
debts from our children. We still have our home, but it's a
modest home, we don't own a big boat, or any boat for that
matter. We just can't seem to get ahead. What's happened?
What's happened to the American Dream?
I went on to cite a few things that I thought were the essential
elements of that. I want to cover some of those tonight. This is not
going to be an exhaustive description of the issue. I want to save that
or come to that in subsequent Special Order hours that my colleagues
and I will take up in the coming weeks. But just a couple of things
that came across over the last weekend that I think really exemplify
some of this. The ideal: education is open to everyone. In America,
everyone can get a great public education. The reality is different. In
2007, one-half of the children from the wealthiest households completed
their college education. Only 9 percent of the children from low-income
families completed their college education. That's a gap that has never
been wider since 1989. So with regard to that ladder of success,
education, if you happen to be poor or in the lower income, chances of
your completing your college education is one out of ten.
How about being able to have freedom from want, one of the four
freedoms that Franklin Delano Roosevelt so beautifully articulated
during the Great Depression? But as a result of the Great Recession in
2010, a total of 46.2 million Americans were below the poverty line.
That was the highest number in 52 years. And as best I could find more
recently--the last 2 years--that number has not really changed very
much. So we're looking at 46 million Americans that are living below
the poverty line. So freedom from want may not be readily available to
a very, very large percentage of Americans.
How about the land of opportunity? We all believe America is the land
of opportunity. Well, not really. On average, it takes five to six
generations, five to six generations, that's 125 to 150 years, for a
child from a poor background to rise to the middle class--not to the
upper class; to the middle class. I looked at that, and I said,
clearly, that has to be an inaccurate analysis. But it's not. So for a
child from a poor background--that's those 46 million Americans in
poverty--they could wait five to six generations on average--that's not
everybody, obviously some will do it faster, and others won't do it at
all--to get to the middle class.
That is interesting, sad and challenging for us.
Income inequality, this is what some people like to call--well, I
won't use that right now. But income inequality, you work hard and you
do okay. I think that's what President Clinton said, if you work hard
and play by the rules. Hmm. Really? The United States ranks 93rd in the
world on income equality, behind Great Britain, Australia--and here's
one that caught my attention, Nigeria, Argentina, and Japan.
{time} 1940
What income inequality means is the distribution of wealth within the
economy. When you have income inequality, the share of the pie that is
available to the wealthy is significantly greater than the share of the
pie to the great mass of the population. That's income inequality.
Fascinating statistics. Statistics are kind of the basis for many of
our arguments. There are many more statistics along this line that we
ought to be paying attention to. Over the next couple of weeks, we are
going to be speaking
[[Page H3275]]
to these as we pursue the reality of the American Dream and what we can
do to rebuild the American Dream.
A couple of notions that I have right at the outset that I'd like to
share as we go through this shortened 1 hour: first of all, the
American Dream very much depends upon a job. If you don't have a job--
and we've got maybe some 12 million Americans that don't. They would
like to work, but in some cases they've given up and in other cases
they simply haven't been able to find a job. So you've got to have a
job.
There are ways that we can create jobs in this Nation. Certainly, we
depend upon the private sector; but down through the decades of this
democracy, beginning with our very first President, there has been a
common bond, if you will, a partnership between the government and the
private sector in creating jobs.
In his very first days in office, George Washington asked Alexander
Hamilton, his Treasury Secretary, to develop a program, policy on
manufacturers, which is another word for manufacturing. Alexander
Hamilton came back, I guess, a couple of months later with a report on
manufacturers--very, very interesting and instructive to us today in
that our very first President and very first Treasury Secretary said
that the Federal Government has a significant role in developing the
economy, manufacturing. We did then, and we do today.
Alexander Hamilton said: George Washington, here's what we need to
do. We need to use the purchasing power of the government, that is, the
tax money that's spent by the government, to buy American-made goods
and services. Now, there's a good idea. We've had the Buy in America
policy in the United States for many, many years all often ignored by
the various agencies that are supposed to oversee the purchasing. Right
now we have a problem with the military that is supposed to go green to
develop alternative power sources that they can depend upon if the grid
goes down.
However, they're routinely ignoring the Buy America requirements that
the law has because they're purchasing these massive solar arrays as
though they are available in Home Depot. I don't think so. But,
nonetheless, it's an example of how the various arms of the U.S.
Government in one way or another ignore the purchasing requirement of
Buy America--literally using our tax money to buy American-made goods
and services to employ Americans.
It turns out that this is part of what I like to call the Make It in
America agenda, a series of proposals that my Democratic colleagues and
I are putting forth to build the American manufacturing sector. For
example, the Department of Defense obeying the law and buying American-
made solar panels for those large arrays that they are putting up on
various military bases or the private sector is putting up for the
military. Buy America, Make It in America, use our tax money to buy
American-made equipment. By the way, I've got a bill that I have
introduced on this for the last to 2 years now that simply increases
that purchasing content to 85 percent.
I didn't have time to bring up another photo, but I'll tell you about
it. In the American Recovery Act--otherwise known as the stimulus
bill--there was a provision for Amtrak to have $480 billion to purchase
new, advanced, efficient locomotives for the Northeast Corridor. These
would be electric-power locomotives--I think 7,000 horsepower machines.
Somebody--and I'm not sure who it was--wrote into that requirement that
these had to be 100 percent American-made. Now, nobody in America was
making 100 percent American locomotives; in fact, very few locomotives
were made in America anyway.
But, nonetheless, contractors, manufacturers of locomotives said,
half a billion dollars, hmm, have to be made in America. So a German
company--one of the largest manufacturing companies in the world--said,
oh, we could do that. So in Sacramento, California, just outside the
edge of my district, Siemens--who already had a factory manufacturing
light rail cars and streetcars--said, hmm, let's expand this factory,
and we're going to build one hundred percent American-made locomotives.
Three weeks ago, the first of those 70 locomotives rolled onto
America's rail tracks--now being tested in Colorado, shake-down crews.
We can look forward to thousands of jobs in America as a result of
that--200 specifically at that new manufacturing plant in Sacramento;
and then the supply chain, all the people that are supplying those
American-made parts to that locomotive are going to have jobs. Now,
that's a good thing. That's part of our Make It in America agenda. And
here's back to the first point: those jobs are middle class jobs.
One of the fellows I met at that ceremony when this locomotive was
rolled onto the tracks was telling me about himself. He was about, I
don't know, maybe 35, 37 years old. I asked him, How long have you been
here? He said, I've been here 5, 6 years. I said, Really? What are you
doing? He said, Well, that's my train; I built that train, along with
my coworkers. I was responsible for building that train. I said, Wow,
you must have a lot of experience. He said, No, 5 or 6 years. I said, 5
or 6 years and you know how to build that? He said, Yeah, I was trained
by the Germans, who came over here and helped us understand how to
build it, but now I'm responsible.
I said, What did you do before this? He said, Well, I finished high
school and messed around for a while and wasn't going anywhere, so I
hired on here at the lowest-paying job.
He is now firmly in the middle class, taking pride in his work,
taking pride in building it in America. That's a lesson for us here in
Congress. We really ought to take that lesson and put it into law, into
a law that says we're going to use our taxpayers' money to purchase
American-made goods and equipment.
Think about the infrastructure in America, and let me give you an
example. It's kind of interesting when you have a long airport flight
like I did today from Sacramento to Washington to read the newspaper.
Occasionally, you can find some interesting things in the newspapers.
Oh, here it is, yes. California could use $44.5 billion to fix an aging
water system over the next two decades, according to a Federal survey
by the Environmental Protection Agency. Oh, that's California. We have
the greatest need, $44.5 billion. And Texas, who likes to think it's
going to be bigger than California--maybe in size, but certainly not
better, with apologies to my Texas colleagues--$34 billion; New York,
$22 billion. And that doesn't include repairing from Sandy.
It turns out that these are repairs to investments that were made by
our fathers and mothers and grandfathers and their fathers and mothers.
So these are water systems that have been built over the last--in
California, over the last maybe 120, 130 years; in New York, it
probably goes back a couple hundred years. These are water systems that
were investments by previous generations that we have been living on,
literally consuming these investments, and not repairing and replacing
and upgrading. Shame on us. It's as though you go to the supermarket
once a year and you fill your pantry and freezer and refrigerator with
all the food and you simply sit there and you consume and you consume.
Eventually, the refrigerator is empty, the pantry is empty, and you go
really hungry. That's what we've been doing here in America. We have
been consuming the investments of previous generations. Here we are
with this new report that's out for my State, California, $44.5
billion; for Texas, $34 billion; and for New York, $22 billion, just
for the water systems.
{time} 1950
That doesn't include sanitation systems. That doesn't include the
road systems, bridges, highways.
We're living off the investments that were made by previous
generations, and we can see the result of that. We've had bridge
collapses recently. Hello? I-5, Washington State, we had bridge
collapses. Anybody been on the interstates and notice the disrepair? I
have, and I suspect most Americans have.
So we're going to have to once again invest in our basic
infrastructure. And when we do, do you know what happens? Americans go
back to work in middle class jobs. So that perhaps that average
American that will never in five generations get out of the bottom
poverty level can jump up into the
[[Page H3276]]
middle class by getting one of those solid construction jobs, which
across America are middle class jobs.
We have enormous needs. And, by the way, we're going to have to pay
for it. I remember when I was in college buying gasoline at about 19
cents a gallon, 20 cents a gallon. That was a long time ago in the
1960s. And one day I was out buying gas--I don't know, I had some time
because my car was empty and it was slow to fill--and I looked at the
sticker on the pump and it said, 12 cents of that 18 cents was tax, an
excise tax, State and Federal. So two-thirds of the total cost of that
gasoline at that time, and that was in 1964, was for taxes. Oh, my
goodness. Oh, my goodness.
Is the American public aware that it's been since 1990 since the
excise tax on gasoline has been raised? It's about 18\1/2\ cents on
gasoline, a little higher for diesel. What is the cost of gasoline in
the United States today? $3.50, average? Do you want to do that
mathematics? It's not two-thirds, not at all. So you wonder, where's
the money for investments?
We have decided to consume the investments that were made in the '60s
when the general public--at least in California--was willing to pay
two-thirds of the cost of a gallon of gasoline in taxes. So today we
consume, and we pay the price: we pay the price in congestion; we pay
the price in safety; and we pay the price in jobs.
This is something we're going to have to consider here in Congress.
We're going to have to look at ourselves and we're going to have to
take up our courage and say: What are we doing here? Are we going to be
consumers or are we going to be investors? Are we going to consume the
investment of our fathers and mothers or are we going to invest in that
infrastructure so that our children can have the kind of modern,
necessary infrastructure that they need upon which their economy will
grow?
We're going to have to deal with this because the Surface
Transportation Act has to be renewed this session of Congress. Not
likely to occur this year, but before we end our work in January of
2015, we must deal with this issue. And so the American Dream, if you
work hard and you play by the rules, you will have the freedom and
opportunity to pursue your own dreams and leave your kids--and leave
your kids--a country where they can chase theirs.
Let's just say this is the opening of what I hope will be many
sessions in the evening--or following our session in the afternoon or
evening--in which we engage in a discussion on the American Dream, a
discussion about really the future of America, a discussion that--I see
one of my colleagues has decided to join us this evening.
Welcome. Share with us your thoughts. We're pursuing infrastructure
and the American Dream, jobs, how we can deal with creating
opportunities in America.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I want to thank the gentleman from California for
being consistent in coming down to the House floor and always making
sure that the issues of the day are brought to the American people, but
also trying to persuade the House of Representatives to move in a
direction that, quite frankly, the case continues to be made for these
investments that you talk about with regard to infrastructure.
Now, this to me seems like a very simple proposition. There was a
great article today--I think it was today or yesterday--by Ezra Klein
talking about we've got to get away from the deficit hock issue into
the infrastructure hock issue. And I want to join the infrastructure
hock caucus, if there is one here. But this simply articulates a
position that I've held from before the American Recovery Act--and
still hold here today--that we have projects in the United States that
need to get done, that need to get built. Bridges, roads, airports,
ports, all across the country, rail, all across the country,
investments that need to be made, combined sewer systems, all over the
United States of America, that need to get done at some point.
And what I like about what Mr. Klein said is that we're talking about
what we're leaving to the next generation. Now, at some point, they're
going to be left some deficit. We have an obligation here in Congress
to make policies that are going to make investments to reduce that
deficit. In some instances, that means balancing the budget. Over the
long term, we're all in agreement that that is a moral issue for us not
to leave that huge deficit for our children and our grandchildren.
But there are also deficits in other ways that we could leave our
children, and that's if we have infrastructure all over the United
States that needs fixed and we don't fix it, that is a deficit that we
are leaving to our children and our grandchildren. That road needs
fixed, that bridge needs fixed, that sewer system needs upgraded, the
rail system needs upgraded. So if we don't make the investment now,
someone is going to have to make it down the line. And the argument
we're making is that maybe some money will have to be borrowed today in
order to do that project or do all of these projects.
The value of doing it today is twofold: One, the money we're
borrowing today is almost 1 percent in interest, if not less. So we're
borrowing money with a very, very, very, very small interest payment to
get the job done for a project that's going to have to get done anyway.
Now, 5 years from now, 10 years from now, the project is probably going
to need more work, health care costs are going to be higher, energy
costs are going to be higher, labor costs are going to be higher, so
the project is going to cost more money because we're going to have to
do it at some point.
The other factor is that we have high unemployment now, double-digit
unemployment, with the men and women in the building trades, the men
and women in the construction area, construction field. So by doing the
project today, we not only get the project done, but we're also putting
people back to work that need to go back to work that will then have
money in their pocket to go out and spend and pay taxes and to help get
the economy going again.
This is a very, very simple economic principle that we are trying and
fighting to implement here, and we keep running into roadblocks--no pun
intended--roadblocks that are preventing us from getting the economy
moving. Now, we have an obligation in this country to make sure we give
the next generation a country that is moving in the right direction.
And I think when you couple a strong emphasis on investments and roads
and bridges and rail and combined sewer overflow and waterlines and
dams all across the country, we're going to put people back to work,
not to mention high-speed Internet, which could help light up the next
generation of American workers.
{time} 2000
So I wanted to come and join my friend here, who is carrying the flag
week in and week out here on the floor, to say that we have a lot of
work to do here; and to the American people, to say there are Members
in this Chamber who are saying: make these investments.
The President had a plan. It wasn't quite as big as I wanted it to be
or as big, I'm sure, as my friend from California wanted, but he did
what he thought could, maybe, at least get through in a jobs plan. It
got shot down and hasn't gotten anywhere in this Chamber, so we've got
a lot of work to do.
Mr. GARAMENDI. The President wanted to do two things in this area:
one, the normal programs--the surface transportation program, the water
resources bill, which we're going to be working on--but he also wanted
to add on top of that $50 billion of infrastructure investment and
create an infrastructure bank, which you so well described in your
discussion here. None of that has been done, which is to the detriment
of the American worker.
For example, of the water programs that I was talking about early
on--the $44 billion that's needed in California--for every $1 billion
that you spend on a water project, you put 28,000 people to work with
good middle class jobs, and I think the numbers would probably be
similar for highways and bridges and the like. This is the great
tragedy--that we're not moving in a direction of creating the
fundamental investments. Rather, we are disinvesting--we are
consuming--and that doesn't last very long, as you so well said.
So what are we going to do about it?
Hopefully, this House will undertake the same process, find the same
wisdom of the House of Representatives
[[Page H3277]]
and the Senate when Dwight D. Eisenhower, President Eisenhower, brought
to the Congress a proposal for a national defense highway system, which
we now call the interstate system.
I'm sure you've got some examples that you'd like to share with us.
Let's go back and forth, and we'll kind of toss the ball here.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Yes. I mean, one of the things I'd mentioned a
couple times toward the end is the combined sewer systems in all major
cities in the United States. So if you take a city like Akron or
Youngstown--mid-sized cities in the industrial Midwest--you're talking
about between $500 million and $1 billion in investments that are
needed.
Mr. GARAMENDI. A combined sewer system. That's the stormwater that
flows into the sewer, and it's not disconnected from the sanitation--
toilets and the like; is that correct?
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. You want to make sure that a lot of this stuff is
not getting mixed together, and you want to make sure that it's
separated, and you want to make sure that it's up to date. So these
investments that a city or a municipality would traditionally have to
make go well above and beyond a city like Akron or a city like
Youngstown or Cleveland or Detroit or Toledo or Milwaukee--all across
the United States.
Let's make this investment. You're talking about cities that have
very high unemployment rates. Let's get people trained up. We've got
many good, solid union training programs out there that would put these
people to work, that would get this economy moving, that have state-of-
the-art transportation and infrastructure systems in the United States,
and that would inject some money into the economy on the demand side.
We've been playing the supply side game since 1980: cut taxes for the
wealthiest, deregulate Wall Street and every other sector you can
deregulate and hope the economy takes off; but that ultimately led to
the boom, bust and to the ultimate collapse in 2008.
What you're talking about and what I'm talking about is consumer
investment, the demand side: get people back to work; get some money in
their pockets. They go out and spend it, and the economy hums right
along because there are consumers out there. That construction worker
pays local taxes for the local school district, for the mental health
levy, for the libraries, and you throw some money in the basket at
church on Sunday. It just keeps going around and around and around.
Mr. GARAMENDI. That's how we deal with the deficit. You put Americans
back to work, and automatically the tax revenues increase; and we then
have a very solid, good way to deal with the deficit. On the other
hand, as you suggested, cuts alone don't do it. What cuts do is to
create unemployment, and we've seen that.
We've talked about this extraordinary investment that we need to make
in rebuilding our existing systems. Yet in looking at the budget that
passed this House, which was the Ryan Republican budget, they have an
unallocated $886 billion cut in these kinds of programs over the next
10 years. More than $80 billion a year would be taken out of these
kinds of investment programs that we're talking about here so that what
we do instead of investing for our own generation and the next
generation is we actually increase the consumption of yesterday's
investment, leading us nowhere but to more bridges falling, more sewers
backing up, more levees breaking, and more highway congestion.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. As you have talked about--and I know on other
occasions--what are the investments we need to make today, not just in
physical infrastructure, but in other things that will lead to the next
generation of employment?
The United States' comparative advantage in the world has always been
that we make these investments into the next generation of research
whether it's through the National Institutes of Health, the National
Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, the Department of
Energy. Do you know what? Sometimes it doesn't always work out, but
sometimes it does. When it does, we create new areas of the economy
that can expand and grow just like the human genome that has led to
billions and billions and billions of dollars in private investment.
Here, I think, is the important point for a lot of Americans who
probably already know we collectively as a society make investments in
the research that no one company can make on its own, this basic
research that costs tens of millions, if not billions, of dollars over
many, many, many years that no company could come in and reap the
profits of immediately. We collectively say that we're going to make
that together and then let the companies come in, pull out what they
want, and take it to the private market, get investors, and off we go.
That has been a pretty good recipe for the United States for a long
time, and we're saying physical infrastructure but also these
investments in research that have led to an explosive economy, a
dynamic economy here in the United States. Now in these budgets that
we're talking about we're paring back our investments in the National
Science Foundation and in the National Institutes of Health. Not only
does it affect Alzheimer's research and autism and these kinds of
things; it's also taking away from the next generation of ``what could
be'' in the United States.
Mr. GARAMENDI. I am so pleased that you have brought that subject up,
because it is critical. It is absolutely critical for the future
economy of this Nation and, really, for solving problems of the world.
Those investments are critical.
You did leave out agriculture. I happen to represent the University
of California at Davis, which is, by my argument, the largest, best
agricultural research program in the world. We know the population of
the world is going to grow, so we're going to have to continue the
agricultural research. Yet in the budget proposals that have passed
this House and in sequestration--let me just put it this way: in
sequestration alone, there is a reduction of $45 million of research in
agriculture at the University of California at Davis.
Now, with health research, I was talking to the former dean of the
medical school at the University of California at Davis last week, and
she was talking about the significant reduction in health research,
which is affecting projects that are already under way. As for research
programs that were going along, suddenly the money is gone, and that's
sequestration, which is also part of this.
We can solve America's problems by getting government out of it, by
reducing the role of government. As I said at the outset, George
Washington didn't believe that. He believed in inserting government
into the economy as a partner in growing it, in growing the economy.
{time} 2010
We talk about Thomas Jefferson and education and how he believed that
education--education and research--go together. These are fundamental
investments along with infrastructure. Yet, in this House, there's an
unwillingness by the majority party to address this fundamental axiom
of economic growth: education, research, infrastructure, manufacturing
the things that come from that, building the middle class, building the
economy.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I know you and I are not going to defend wasteful
government programs. They should go.
We are now in a new economy that is information-based and very
dynamic in so many ways, faster than anything that we've ever
experienced in the country. And I think there are some programs that we
historically have had that probably we don't need to have any more, and
there are also programs that need to be tweaked and changed, as far as
how we are training our workforce and how we are investing, and our new
understandings of our brain, for example.
All of this research should begin to change the way we approach some
of these investments that we've made before we had that knowledge. So
we probably do need to shift resources into areas, but clearly we
aren't making enough investments. We clearly still have 25 percent or
30 percent, in many high schools, of kids not graduating. We need to
figure out how to make, for example, school a lot more exciting. We
have programs in robotics. We have programs in Legos. We have kids that
need to do a lot more hands-on stuff to get them excited about
learning. That's going to take some investment to make.
[[Page H3278]]
Mr. GARAMENDI. Let me give you an example.
Today, in the Daily Republic newspaper in Fairfield, they ran a story
that's exactly on your point. I'm just going to take a second and read
some of this.
This is a program that EDF Renewable Energy, which operates wind
turbines between Rio Vista and Fairfield and Suisun City in my
district--we have a big wind farm there--they are funding a program at
Rio Vista High School for this year as a way to promote job training in
green industries.
Jim Bard is the instructor in the renewable energy class, which
emphasizes wind energy. So it's exactly what you said. This private
company that has these numerous wind turbines--I think several hundred
wind turbines on this big wind farm--needs workers. So they've gone to
the local high school, and they're creating what I suppose at one time
was called a vocational education class. It's getting the kids educated
and prepared to take jobs in their own neighborhood.
So here you see the green technology--wind energy--coupling up with
education to provide middle class jobs. It's a great example. My
congratulations to EDF and their renewable energy program, to Jim Bard
and to the folks in Rio Vista at the Rio Vista High School, which I
proudly represent.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. You make a good point.
I remember having a conversation with a friend of mine who is a lot
more conservative than me. We were talking about the government's role
in these different things. He said, Well, what about the phone company
and the original government investments into telephones? As the
conversation proceeded he said they weren't doing it well enough and
the private sector could do it a lot better.
My point was, Yeah, we all have fights with our cell phone companies
now on our cell phone bills, but no company was going to be able to do
at that point what the government came in and said they were going to
do. I'm not defending every government program. What I'm saying is
there is a role that has been successful in the history of our country.
Whether it was the phone company back then or green technology today,
how do we begin to incentivize these investments that are good for the
environment, that could create a whole new sector of manufacturing? How
many tons of steel go into a windmill? How many thousands of component
parts go into a windmill that may be made one day by three-dimensional
printers and additive manufacturing? This is all starting to tie
together. But while the Chinese and the Indians and other countries are
making these investments, we're sitting on our hands saying, Ah, the
private sector will do it.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you so much for bringing that out.
Back to George Washington. I like to talk about the Founding Fathers
because it's often used on the floor to disparage one or another
programs. But I'd like to talk in a positive way.
He also said the Federal Government has a fundamental role in
infrastructure development, and he cited three different things: ports,
roads and canals.
The very first President of this Nation was doing what we continue to
do to this day, although at a much lower level than our Nation needs
today. So this is a long tradition of America, and it's one that really
works.
Education, research, infrastructure and manufacturing, you tie those
together and then you build the foundation for economic growth and a
just and equitable society so people have a chance to climb the
economic ladder, to go as high as they want to. You're giving them the
tools that they need to succeed.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I want to thank the gentleman for making that a
point.
If you look at the United States as we compete against other Nordic
countries, Australia and some other countries in Europe, we do not have
the upward mobility. Meaning if you're born poor--and we talk a lot
about the American Dream and moving up the ladder. If you are born poor
in America, we rank about ninth or tenth in our citizens' ability to
climb up through that ladder and get themselves into the middle class.
That, to me, is a benchmark of how we've moved away from that
philosophy that we had for many years, up until the 1980s, where we
were going to make key investments that were going to help people climb
up that economic ladder.
That citizen has to bring initiative, has to bring ingenuity, has to
bring determination. I am not one of these people who thinks every kid
needs to get a trophy in Little League. I don't adhere to that
philosophy. Kids are going to fail, but we need to help pick them up.
At the same time, you can have policies that allow and cultivate the
ability for people to go up the economic ladder, to not have such a
disadvantage in life and an economic system that doesn't facilitate
that to ultimately where we're getting bypassed by some of these other
countries who have a different philosophy than we do.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you for raising that, my colleague from the
great manufacturing sector of, I guess, the eastern part of the middle
west. Is that fair enough?
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Fair enough.
Mr. GARAMENDI. This is an interesting chart that I came across a
while ago. It talks about income growth, the issue you were just
talking about: How does an individual rise and climb the economic
ladder and what kind of success do they have?
This is the income growth from 1996 to 2011. I kind of displayed this
on a football field. Years ago I played football with some modest
success.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Leather helmets?
Mr. GARAMENDI. I did wear a helmet, and I don't recall any
concussions.
The bottom 90 percent of our population has seen an income growth--
this is adjusted for inflation--of $59 over this period, 1966 to 2011.
That's some 55 years.
Basically, 90 percent of the population has stalled out and is not
able to climb the ladder. That's about 1 inch. I guess that's even a
referee's error if they pull the chains out.
The top 10 percent of the population has gone half the football
field, and they've seen their income growth expand by $116,071 over
this same period of time. So 90 percent of the population has seen $59
in growth, and the top 10 percent have seen a little over $110,000.
The 1 percent of the population, the very tip-top--these are not the
3 percenters. This is the 1 percent. They have gone 2\1/2\ football
fields in comparison, and they've seen their income grow at over a
half-million dollars a year, $628,817.
{time} 2020
Now, even a smaller group, one-tenth of 1 percent of the American
population, have seen their income grow by 72 football fields compared
to the bottom 90 percent. They have seen their annual income grow by
$18 million a year.
So what's happening here in the United States--and I talked about it
earlier before you arrived--and maybe this is a reasonable place to
leave it because we are going to run out of time. This is not class
warfare. This is economic reality. This is where the middle class and
the lower income poverty class have been static. And the very tippy
top, the top 10 percent and above, have seen significant income growth
over that period of time.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I would just like to say, we all say let the free
market work and all of this. But when there's a savings and loan issue
or there's a Wall Street collapse and a lot of very wealthy people in
the country are going to lose a lot of money, here comes Secretary
Paulson with his hair on fire walking around Capitol Hill saying we
need $700 billion of the taxpayers' money. You know, over and over and
over again, we've seen this in the last 30 years with this system of
heavy deregulation and heavy cuts for the top 1 percent.
So it looks like they're making a lot of money, and that's high risk
and high reward in a deregulated market; but when things collapse, here
comes the government to save the day. It's a pretty good deal. I've got
1,700 families going bankrupt in my district just on health care alone.
Nobody's rushing in to say: Oop, that shouldn't matter. It's a health
care issue, so you're not going to go bankrupt. That is, in essence,
what happened to a lot of these folks. Someone came to the rescue, and
that someone was the taxpayer.
[[Page H3279]]
Mr. GARAMENDI. Wall Street was taken care of, but not Main Street.
That's what happened.
This is not just the result of just a free market system operating.
This is a result of specific government policy over the last 50 years
that has resulted in a skewing of the wealth of America, a skewing of
that wealth from the great majority of Americans, as many as 90
percent, to the very tippy top of the income class.
And so over the next, I don't know, 3, 4 weeks, maybe 2 months, I
want to take this issue up of: What happened to the American Dream?
What happened to it?
When you see these kinds of statistics that children live in poverty
and it takes four or five, five to six generations before a child that
is in poverty today, their successor generations will be able to rise
to the top of the middle class, almost 150 years, five, six generations
before a person in poverty can climb the economic ladder, that's
incredible, and that speaks to something terribly wrong here in
America.
When education, when half of the children from the wealthier families
graduate from college and only 9 percent of the children from the low-
income classes are able to graduate from college, these are problems
that exist.
If you want to take one more shot at a closing statement, then I'm
going to end by quoting Bill Clinton.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I have one point to make. Why are we talking about
inequality and poor folks and upward mobility? The reason is we only
have 313 million people in the United States. We're competing against
1.3 or 1.4 billion in China, and 1.3 or 1.4 billion in India. We have
to have everybody on that football field playing for us economically,
wearing the jersey that says ``U.S.A.'' on it, so we can compete
economically. So we need to get innovative and we need to make these
kinds of investments if we're going to get everybody on the field,
graduated from high school, on a track to go into manufacturing or some
of these other trades so we can really have a renaissance in the United
States economy.
I thank the gentleman.
Mr. GARAMENDI. I thank you, Mr. Ryan, for that analogy. I really like
that one.
I'm going to end with this by President Bill Clinton:
If you work hard and you play by the rules, you'll have the
freedom and opportunity to pursue your own dreams and leave
your kids a country where they can chase theirs.
That's our goal. We're going to talk about these things, about the
American Dream, what happened to it and what we need to restore it, and
how we can make things in America and how we can rebuild the American
economy.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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