[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 8 (Tuesday, January 14, 2014)]
[House]
[Pages H209-H215]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
EQUAL OPPORTUNITY IN AMERICA
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Cook). 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. Mr. Speaker, it is good to be back on the floor once
again as we have for most every week to talk about jobs in America, to
talk about the unemployed, to talk about those who are less fortunate
and those who need a strong Federal program to create jobs.
I often start with this because it is kind of the compass, the
touchstone of what, at least, I would like to think we ought to be
doing.
This is from Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This is actually on one of
the marble slabs at his memorial here in Washington, D.C. It reads this
way:
The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the
abundance of those who have much. It is whether we provide
enough for those who have too little.
All across America today there are far too many that have too little.
A couple of weeks ago, I did a jobs fair in Fairfield, California. It
was about 38 degrees outside that day, and we had just under 1,000
people come to that jobs fair--there were about 50 employers--and maybe
50-70 people actually got jobs.
This is a picture of the men and women that were lined up waiting to
get in to have a very quick interview with one or more of those 50
potential employers.
I have used this photo before here on the floor to point out the need
for a jobs program here in America. The President 2 years ago in his
State of the Union put forth a proposal. It had several elements--and
we will probably cover some of those today--but it has not been
enacted. The Republican leadership in this House has refused to pass
even one of those jobs programs. There was infrastructure, education,
reeducation; there were programs to provide for the opportunity for men
and women to get jobs here in the United States.
But I was looking at this photo just today and I said, I am going to
use this again, because in this photo approximately half of the people
lined up, 1,000, just under 1,000 were women. It caused me to think
about another program that the Democratic minority here in the House
has been working on for some time, that is, the issue of women in the
American economy.
I know that in my own district there is this issue of equal pay for
equal work. A woman doing stenography work next to a man doing
stenography work would be paid 85 cents while the man is paid $1. So it
is 85 cents when a man would have the same job, same skill set, same
tenure, would get $1. That is wrong. It is one of the issues we want to
address.
Also we know that many of the women that are searching for work here
are going to be finding minimum-wage jobs. Now, California is
different. We have already passed a minimum-wage law in California that
in another year and a half will be $10 plus a little. But the national
is still at $7-plus; way, way under what anybody working 40 hours a
week, 52 weeks a year could possibly support a family on. So the
minimum wage is another issue for women, as it is for men; but I dare
say more so for women than for men.
There is a multitude of issues that we need to consider as we talk
about jobs, employment, increasing the employment opportunities in the
United States for these people; men and women, and particularly women,
that are lined up wanting to get a job.
Joining me tonight is an extraordinary group of people who have been
working on this issue of women and jobs, employment, equal employment
opportunities, daycare, family care programs.
I would like to start with Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, who has been
one of the leaders throughout this entire Nation, often seen on
television speaking to this issue and the issue of opportunity in
America.
Jan, would you care to start us off on this 1-hour and talking about
women and jobs.
[[Page H210]]
Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Thank you, Representative Garamendi, for coming to
the floor and talking about the community. And it really is ``the
economy stupid'' for most Americans who feel a sense of growing
insecurity. Wages haven't gone up for decades.
But the leader, our leader, Nancy Pelosi of our leadership, has
launched a campaign on behalf of women in America saying, when women
win, America wins, and highlighting the issues that really affect women
day to day, calling for things like affordable child care, an increase
in the minimum wage, paid leave, which it turns out is a major priority
of women.
I see you have got a sign there.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Would you like to have it?
Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. No. Why don't we just turn our attention to that
sign.
Ending the gender pay gap, which actually is 77 cents to the dollar
that men earn; paid sick leave; permanent child tax credit; improve
diagnosis and care for Alzheimer's patients; and on and on.
But we have been bolstered by an incredible new effort that has
turned into a remarkable book called: ``The Shriver Report.'' It is a
co-effort, and it is a study by Maria Shriver and the Center for
American Progress called: ``A Woman's Nation Pushes Back from the
Brink.''
The idea here is to give a voice to women. It has got all the facts
and figures one would want; but it also has the stories, the actual
voice of women who feel so pressured by this economy, but also feel
that their voices aren't being heard.
It is a really important book. I wanted to read on the back there are
kind of some of these ``wow'' facts that are there that everyone should
keep in mind about the status of women in our economy:
One in three women in America is living in poverty or
teetering on its brink. That's 42 million women plus the 28
million children who depend on them.
The second bullet:
The American family has changed. Today, only one in five
families has a homemaker mom and working dad. Two out of
three families depend on the wages of working moms who are
struggling to balance caregiving and breadwinning.
Three:
The average woman continues to be paid 77 cents for every
dollar the average man earns. The average African American
woman earns only 64 cents and the average Latina only 55
compared to White men.
The fourth bullet:
Closing the wage gap between men and women would cut the
poverty rate in half for working women and their families and
would add nearly half a trillion dollars to the national
economy.
Five:
Women are nearly two-thirds of minimum wage workers, and a
vast majority of these workers receive no paid sick days. Not
one.
When they did a survey of what is the number one thing that you want,
women said: sick days for themselves and to go home and take care of
their children.
Six:
More than half of the babies born to women under the age of
30 are born to unmarried mothers, most of them White.
Seven:
Nearly two-thirds of Americans and 85 percent of
millennials believe that government should adapt to the
reality of single-parent families and use its resources to
help children and mothers succeed, regardless of family
status.
So the American people, two-thirds say government does, in fact, have
a role.
Eight:
An overwhelming 96 percent of single mothers say paid leave
is a workplace policy that would help them most, and nearly
80 percent of all Americans say the government should expand
access to high-quality, affordable child care.
That is a worry that so many mothers have every single day.
{time} 1800
Nine, women living on the brink overwhelmingly regret not making
education a bigger priority.
Ten, the trauma and chronic stress of poverty are toxic to children,
making them two-and-a-half times more likely to suffer as adults from
COPD, hepatitis, and depression.
So actually, poverty is dangerous to the health of children as they
grow into adulthood in very dramatic and particular ways.
And so when we think about poverty in America, when we think about
extending unemployment benefits, when we talk about the SNAP program,
and when we push to raise the minimum wage, one of the important lenses
to look through is how is it affecting the women, one-third of whom are
on the brink or actually living in poverty.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Those statistics are a wake-up call for America. More
than half the population are female, and yet our policies are not
women-friendly policies. Our laws are not women-friendly laws, and we
need to change that.
I would like now to yield to my colleague from California, Janice
Hahn, a longtime city councilwoman in the City of Los Angeles, a woman
who knows these issues from her experience representing the communities
in that area and now an outstanding Member of the Congress.
Ms. HAHN. Thank you. I appreciate you taking this first hour tonight
to focus on women and jobs. It is certainly an issue that we women are
very aware of and have worked on a lot in our jobs, in our districts,
in our homes, but it is nice when our men are enlightened.
Mr. GARAMENDI. If I might interrupt for a moment.
I am highly motivated. My wife of almost 48 years now and my five
daughters keep my constantly abreast of this issue.
Ms. HAHN. Good for them.
I think, as Jan Schakowsky talked about, Nancy Pelosi and Rosa
DeLauro, we have had this incredible campaign called When Women
Succeed, America Succeeds. The point is it is good to help women in
this country because this will really help America to succeed. And we
no longer have the kind of families that many of us watched on
television in the fifties. In fact, the American family has permanently
changed, and women head up more families on their own. More than half
of the babies born to women ages 30 and younger are born to unmarried
women--by the way, most of them White.
We have got women who are heading their families. We have got women
who are trying to take care of their families. They are now the sole
breadwinners in their family. They are not necessarily the second
income or the income that helps out with the man having the major
income.
The statistic, I think, out of the Shriver Report that was really
eye-opening for me, when we talk about the minimum wage, is that two-
thirds of the workers who earned a minimum wage in this country are
women. And if we could raise this minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, how
many more women that would lift out of poverty. And not just the women,
their families. We have too many families, children, who are living on
the brink, and this is so important.
To talk about women wanting sick days, it is unbelievable to me how
many women who work in these minimum wage jobs don't get sick days. Do
you know how many women have the painful choice of either putting their
sick child on the bus to go to school or staying home and losing a
day's wages to take care of their sick child because we don't have the
kind of child care in this country that can accommodate children who
are not well enough to go to school? We have women choosing between
missing a day's work--possibly if they have too many of those, they are
going to lose their job--or putting a sick child on the bus to go to
school.
We need to raise the minimum wage. We need to have affordable child
care. We need to make sure that women have sick days that they can use
either for themselves--mostly it is never for yourself when you are a
mother. You forgo being sick as a mother and you spend those days for
your children.
How many women are taking care of their parents? Even though many
women have brothers in the family, it usually falls to the woman to
take care of her parents when they become ill or need help being taken
care of. We have got to really focus on women making sure they have
good jobs.
By the way, our women veterans--our women veterans in this country--
have the highest unemployment rate. That is terrible to think that our
women who have put their lives on the line for this country come home
and
[[Page H211]]
cannot find good jobs to take care of themselves or their families.
I am glad we are doing this tonight. I think it is an important
message. I think the Shriver Report that was just released really sheds
light on how many women in this country are near or on the brink of
living in poverty.
Thank you for doing this tonight.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Representative Hahn, thank you so very, very much.
This chart here, When Women Succeed, America Succeeds, picks up a
handful of the bills that have been introduced by the Democratic
Caucus, many of these bills by women, a few men along the way. These
are the kinds of things that we really ought to be dealing with here as
we move--or, unfortunately, fail to move--legislation.
Paycheck fairness, this is the issue of that 77 percent in
California, my district being about 85 percent.
The minimum wage, which we talked about here. The issue you raised
Representative Hahn about paid sick leave and the problems that occur.
Make permanent the child tax credit, which is exceedingly important in
providing that income necessary to support the kid. The education
issues, and I notice one of my colleagues, Mike Honda, will talk about
that in a few moments.
I would like now--and we will pick up the rest. This one down here is
one really at the bottom, Alzheimer's, and you mentioned this. The
children are now taking care of their parents. Of course, the children
are now in their fifties, sixties, and the parents are in their
seventies and eighties and beyond. And this issue of Alzheimer's, an
overwhelming tidal wave is coming on us.
I know in our own home, the last 2 years of my wife's mother's life
was spent in our home. She and I, my wife had night care taking care of
her. Fortunately, we were able to have day care come in. This is a
huge, growing issue, one in which we need to find ways to support the
children taking care of their parents in their homes.
I would like now to turn to another colleague from Ohio, one who has
often joined me here on the floor. And thank you so very, very much,
Marcy, for joining us, Marcy Kaptur, who has a great deal to do with
the appropriations process. Congratulations on the omnibus bill just
coming up.
Ms. KAPTUR. Thank you, Congressman Garamendi. Thank you for bringing
us together as you so often do. We are so fortunate that you are here
and bringing us together as voices from the heart of America here in
our Nation's Capital to talk about what is on the minds of the vast
majority of the American people, and that relates to their family life,
how they are going to survive in this economy.
In listening to the statistics that Congresswomen Schakowsky and Hahn
were relating, what has happened to family life in this country,
because many times if you read articles, you see families can't hold it
together. Why? Because of money, because of their inability to hold the
household together because the jobs just vaporized. And when you have
trade deficits for 30 years in our country, and we have an average of
15 factories closing every day, jobs vaporize. It doesn't matter where
you live--whether it is Ohio, California, Florida, New York--American
people have felt directly the impact of this global economy, and many
times they can't hold the social unit of the family together.
Many, many of the women who are supporting their children now have
done so because of fallout in the economy. What you say about the
gender pay gap is absolutely there.
I was very surprised to learn in Ohio, as a result of a study done by
Progress Ohio, that, in fact, one of the major companies, I think the
largest company in our country, Walmart, employs about 4,500 people in
Ohio. And of their employees, those employees that work for minimum
wage, or probably less if they are part-time, they apply for food
stamps, for SNAP assistance. So they are trying to support their
families. Just those in Ohio are using $23 million in Federal food
support because they can't earn enough to feed their families. And this
type of corporate behavior is repeated over and over and over again, so
essentially what is happening is the Federal Government ends up
subsidizing low wages because the workers can't earn enough to support
their families.
I am fortunate enough to come from a working class family. Our mother
worked; our grandmother worked. Thank God for Franklin Roosevelt,
because I think what our family has lived represents the story of a
vast numbers of Americans.
Our grandmother could hardly speak English. She worked in hotels, in
kitchens, peeling carrots and potatoes and so forth, washing dishes,
paid the immigrant workers the very least. And then her husband always
out of work, taking in tenants in their home. And they lived in 13
different places because they could never manage to own anything,
trying to just hold it together with a sick daughter and a husband who
often lost his job. So that was Grandma on one side of the family.
Then our mother, who became the sole support of her parents--and five
children in that family--working at age 13, going across town to clean
homes and so forth, it wasn't until the Democrats under Roosevelt
passed the minimum wage that she began earning something more than she
earned before.
Do you know what happened in the first place she worked, which was a
little luncheonette on Broadway in Toledo, Ohio? When the minimum wage
was passed initially, her boss, who wasn't such a nice guy, would cash
her check and then pocket the difference between what she used to earn
and what she then earned in the workplace. That was before we had the
Department of Labor fully developed and we had inspectors on the job
and so forth.
This is what American working women have dealt with for generations.
And so I have to say, I am so proud I am standing on the shoulders of
families like my own to be a voice for these women and these families
whose economic struggle is excruciating. It is excruciating. Many of
them don't have cars.
Our own mother, she was brilliant. She should be here, not me. She
never got her high school equivalency until after she went on Social
Security. And there were two things she had in her billfold when she
died. One was her library card because she was brilliant, but the other
one was her Social Security and Medicare card--because of Democrats.
Because of Democrats, she could die with dignity.
I think about the families across this country, and I am so proud to
be a voice for them here. I want to thank you very much for standing up
for a raise in the minimum wage so that people who are struggling out
there don't have to be on food stamps and EBT coupons because they are
trying to earn their way forward. They should earn a decent wage, that
working family life, paid sick leave.
I took care of our mother when she was ill. I know how hard it was to
try to work and to care for someone who was so ill.
I just left a funeral home over the weekend in Ohio where a former
county engineer, George Wilson, lost his beautiful wife, Pat, to
Alzheimer's. And what were you saying, Congressman Garamendi, what this
took for that family and that working daughter to try to hold
everything together. It is such a cruel illness. So any help for
caregivers across this country, for making caregiving a profession
where you earn a decent wage, however we figure out how to do that, we
are going to need it in the coming years.
{time} 1815
So I support my colleagues in their efforts to raise the minimum
wage, to close the gender pay gap, to make sure that there is paid
leave, to make sure that we work as a society to find ways to care for
those who are ill. I know that with men such as yourself and those who
are on the floor this evening, and with women who have now been
educated and able to fully participate in this society and to express
the needs from coast-to-coast, we will change this country for the
better.
Thank you so very much for coming down here this evening. I agree
with you that when women succeed, America succeeds, but we can't do it
without our men.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you so very much for your work on the
appropriations and pushing these issues along.
Representative Mike Honda from California has been working on the
issues of education for many, many
[[Page H212]]
years and has some insights into how this issue of women and equality
are taken up in the educational area.
Mr. Honda, if you would like to proceed.
Mr. HONDA. Thank you, Congressman Garamendi, for putting these
evening discussions on the board here.
I want to also rise to join you and other colleagues of mine in
commemorating the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson's
declaration of the war on poverty, and, as you had mentioned, President
Franklin Roosevelt's effort to close the income gap. The inequities
that we have faced and we are still facing are growing even larger
today because of the gender pay gap, because of the unpaid portions
where people have to leave their work in order to take care of their
children or their families. Also, to be able to address the child care
issues that became very prominent in the seventies, when both parents
started to work and wondered how they were going to be addressing child
care.
Also, we have the caregiver support, where adult children are taking
care of their parents. We are seeing that this is a necessity that has
crept up on our society and our community, almost very quietly, and
become an issue because of different kinds of situations our parents
are facing, not only because of the physical illness but because of the
mental health illness that they have faced.
So all these things play a part in drawing down the resources of
middle-income families trying to take care of their own
responsibilities, raising their own family, and also the responsibility
of their parents who are aging.
In the area of universal pre-K education and early childhood
education, both President Roosevelt and Johnson knew that education is
an important tool in this war on poverty and closing the income
inequity gap.
Last week, I read an article in the Lexington-Herald Leader about two
schools in east Kentucky, just hours apart from each other--Anchorage
and Barbourville, two communities of about 3,000 in population.
The median household income in Anchorage is more than 3.5 times
larger than the median income of that of Barbourville. Yet Barbourville
spends only $8,000 per student, while Anchorage spends approximately
$20,000 per student. Equal size population, only a couple hours apart.
The question comes up: Why is it that this country, our communities,
continue to refuse to recognize the inequities in funding in our public
schools? Why is that?
The quality of education that our children receive should not be
dependent on or determined by the ZIP Code in which they live or in
which they were born. Each and every child should receive support
according to their needs, not according to the ZIP Code in which they
reside--each and every child.
In the fifties, when we realized that the States were responsible for
education, we interpreted it as the States' constitutional
responsibility to move forward on education, and we found that some
States had a principle of separate but equal. In the fifties, we
realized that that was not supportable, not constitutional, and this
became an issue in our current time when we were able to bring this
issue to the living rooms of our country through technology--
television. Upon this country and the States becoming more aware of
what was going on, on a Federal level we moved the communities to
correct this inequity, the unconstitutionality of separate but equal in
our education systems and other policies in our different communities
and different States.
Today, we have come to a point where we understand that equal
opportunity for all children is a necessary principle, but I think,
having studied education a little bit more, we should refine that
principle into another principle, to wit: each and every child should
receive support according to their needs, not according to the ZIP
Codes or the median income of their parents.
One of the more important steps to accomplish this and achieve equity
in funding for our youngsters in the preschool and early childhood
education arena is to fully fund Head Start for each and every child.
So we must encourage States to adopt a more equitable funding formula
to ensure that each and every child receives the necessary financial
and human resources required.
President Obama declared that he has an initiative that addresses
universal preschool education. The Governor of California, Jerry Brown,
passed a bond that said that we want more equitable funding for
children in the State of California. We passed a bond that increased
the funding for education to achieve more equitable funding for each
and every child. It is the first step. It is the right direction, but
we have miles and miles to go.
This journey for equitable funding for each and every child is a
journey that we must continue and start now, in order to achieve the
civil rights of each and every child in this country.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Representative Honda, thank you so very much.
Among the many pieces of legislation that the Democratic Caucus has
put forward on this issue of when women succeed, America succeeds is
the issue of universal pre-K. Head Start is one part of that. There are
many other kinds of programs, but it is absolutely clear that if we
have universal educational opportunities before kindergarten and beyond
that the chance of a kid making it in this economy is going to be
substantially greater.
This is just part of the agenda over the next several months. We will
be talking about the remaining portions of the agenda that we are
putting forth.
We know that if this Nation is to succeed, we better make sure that
the majority of our population, the women in our society--girls young
and old--have every opportunity to succeed. There are barriers, some
legal, some historic, and some custom, that make it very difficult for
women to have an equal chance in our economy.
So we are going to address those. We would like to have the
Republican side of the House work with us on those issues. We know that
one of the major parts of that is the minimum wage issue. That is front
and center.
I would like now to turn to my colleague from New York, who has
joined me all so often, but never quite enough, on the floor.
Representative Tonko, you have been on this issue of economic
development for so long. I think it is almost 4 years now we have been
dealing with this, not every week, but often talking about jobs in
America, economic growth, and what we can do.
Why don't you pick it up and carry the ball for a while, and then we
will see where we are.
Mr. TONKO. Thank you to the gentleman from California for yielding.
I want to thank you, Representative Garamendi, for leading us in an
hour of very important discussion which highlights the efforts of the
Democratic Caucus within the House of Representatives. I, for one, am
very proud to serve with a group of leaders, women and men, within that
Democratic Caucus who have a vision of where they want to take this
Nation, how we can address the inequality, how we can empower our
economy by reaching to individuals and families across this Nation with
an order of economic justice. That, I think, is the moral compass that
guides us in that Caucus. I believe that many of these ills within our
economy can be resolved.
I, with great interest, listened to the opening of this hour of
Special Order, where discussion on the economy began with your quoting
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. As you cited within that quote the
contrast between those who have an abundance and those who have little,
we know that in that historic time President Roosevelt guided this
Nation with a program, and we had reference to his administration being
that of a New Deal.
Today, many of the workers, many working families, women, those who
struggle in our economy, are given a bad deal. The bad deal is
intolerable. The bad deal needs to be discontinued.
So we work, in very progressive format, here on the House floor
offering a Democratic agenda, making certain that all people are
embraced, are brought into an inclusive sort of politics where we
engage in the ills of the past and correcting those ills of the past,
studying them, understanding where the empowerment is required.
Certainly, when you look at some of the issues today, there is this
greater impact on women in many measurable
[[Page H213]]
ways. We have the minimum wage issue, with two-thirds of those working
in minimum wage being in a category of women.
So we need to address that minimum wage. America stands behind that
concept. They understand that if you work hard and are trying to raise
a family, you need to do it with great remuneration, with social and
economic justice, again, and the appropriateness of enabling people to
have just pay for the work that is done.
We can address that with a minimum wage agenda here in the House. I
believe that those dollars are recirculated into the economy. People
earning a minimum wage are going to spend on the basic essentials of
life for themselves and for their family members. So it, I believe, is
a way to strengthen regional economies, State economies, and this
national economy, by being fair to workers and working families.
There was also talk about the efforts to provide for family leave
time, for sick leave, and the worthiness of providing for that and
removing of the stress factor within families. It is critical. It is
important to quality of life, and it is the right thing, the fair thing
to do.
Also, I find very incredibly important the discussion routinely on
this House floor about the extension of emergency unemployment
insurance. Well, that is something that has received a lot of attention
of late, but the leadership of the House is rigid in not addressing the
extension of emergency unemployment insurance.
Well, let me tell you that that denial of unemployment insurance has
impacted women particularly hard, but both women and men, and families
in general.
Let me tell you about two discussions I had this weekend. I gathered
with some folks from my district who are communicating with us about
the need to have this done. Two individuals--they happen to be women--
Laurie, Lisa, and I, and others, had met, along with a local assembly
member, Pat Fahey, from the Albany region of New York. We heard their
stories.
They have been without work for nearly a year. They have been
actively pursuing work, sending out resumes, indicating wherever a job
is possible that may fit their skill set, and they are not getting the
response they require.
So they have talked about it. We wanted to get a personal saga here,
a story. We wanted to relate really well so we could be a stronger
voice here on the House floor.
Both Laurie and Lisa brought to my attention the fact that their
children are watching this. They are watching this whole episode, and
they can't understand the insensitivity, the callousness, the cold-
heartedness. They thought that government would be there at a time when
their parents were struggling for work. They want to work. Unemployment
insurance means people have paid into that concept. So when you stumble
across hard times, somebody will be there to assist you. They are not
getting that assistance.
You look at the discrimination, with many that are calling my office,
women and men, who may have been 45, 50, 55 years of age, if not 60-
some. They are feeling age discrimination as they go to these
interviews. They are being bypassed, they believe, because of their
age.
So the work out there that they require, where three people are
chasing every available job, we need in this post-recession to continue
to be there on their behalf. We have never not chosen to reauthorize
and provide for the unemployment insurance opportunities.
{time} 1830
In the seven recessions that have followed since 1958, we have always
extended that unemployment insurance. Why now? Why now do we say no?
We need to be sensitive. We need to understand that many people, a
great number of women, require this reauthorization. A number of people
are feeling age-discriminated against, and so the right thing to do is
to empower these families.
The dollars come right back into the economy. In fact, it has been
stated that for every dollar of unemployment insurance that is paid to
individuals out there, $1.52 is realized in the local economy, and so
it more than pays for itself.
And when the theories out there, when the many institutes, the
economic policy institutes, measure the impact of not doing this, we
understand full well that it sets back the economy. Some 400,000 jobs
are lost. $400 million was lost in the early stages of not doing the
unemployment insurance reauthorization.
So there are many ills that come with a lack of action here. There
are many ills that need to be undone that have been decades long,
generations long in their impact on women, making certain that, as we
empower women, as we empower them, we empower families, we empower this
Nation.
There are many things that need to be done, and I, again, am so proud
to work with the Caucus that understands it, that gets it, that is
trying to be out there speaking the progressive voice of policy reform
that will strengthen this economy, grow the economy.
There is no more important issue today than growing our economy, and
we do it by a sense of inclusion. With those inclusive politics, women
and men, younger workers just entering the workforce, senior workforce
members, everyone is empowered when we do the progressive order of
reform that enables us to grow this economy.
So Representative Garamendi, I am certainly pleased that you are
leading us in this discussion on growing the economy, on doing an order
of fairness, social and economic justice that speaks to individuals out
there, in many cases, the ills that are borne upon women because of a
lack of fine tuning to our policy that needs to be addressed. So I am
pleased that you are leading us in this discussion here this evening on
the House floor so that we can express the contrast, the difference.
It is not everyone just holding back on progress. There are those who
have an agenda that speaks to the common folk, the workers out there,
the individuals, the families, the children that are empowered by
quality daycare, child care services, that are empowered by a minimum
wage increase, empowered by the extension of emergency unemployment
insurance, by skills development programs.
There is a package out there, Making It In America, that has been
addressed by this Caucus, by the Democratic Caucus in the House, that
will grow the economy and strengthen the future and provide a sense of
hope.
It has been done. We need to replicate history. We saw what happened
when we engaged in issues like Social Security, Medicare, workers'
rights, standing up for the individuals out there in order to provide
for the remuneration that they require and deserve. That is respect,
and that is providing hope for America's working families.
So let's hope we can move forward with a progressive agenda for this
Nation's working families.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Tonko, I knew that I would enjoy listening to you.
The passion, the knowledge, the intensity that you bring to this issue
is critically important. You have worked at these issues for a long
time, and I want to talk, just wrap up the unemployment insurance issue
with going back to where I started here some time ago.
Again, in early December, a jobs fair in Fairfield, California,
nearly 1,000 people came to it, 50 employers. More than half of the
people in this line are women. I could probably go down through this
line. I remember a conversation with a couple of the women here, and
they were on unemployment insurance.
Now, unemployment insurance actually started with the New Deal. It
was part of the effort to deal with poverty in America, and it was an
insurance program, a program into which the employer and the employee
pay for insurance for the employee should there be a layoff, should
they be unemployed, should that individual be unemployed. It is an
insurance program. It is not a welfare program. It is an insurance
program.
But if I were to go back down this line and talk to each one of these
individuals, probably, maybe, 15 percent of them have lost their
unemployment insurance because the House of Representatives has refused
to extend the long-term unemployment insurance.
So where are they today?
[[Page H214]]
They are without a job because, as you said, Mr. Tonko, for every job
available in America today, there are three people looking for that
job. So two are going to go without the employment.
Minimum wage doesn't count because they yet don't have a job. We need
to develop a jobs program, and we need to extend that unemployment
because these women are mothers of children that now have a family with
no income, no unemployment insurance.
The food stamps, the proposal on this floor by our colleagues was to
cut the food stamp program by $40 billion. So where will the food come
from? Not from SNAP, which is the new name for the food stamp program,
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. That is going to be cut.
Hunger in America among children--one in four children go hungry, and
we are adding to it. We are adding to that number today by the refusal
to extend the unemployment insurance.
Some 72,000 people will lose their long-term unemployment insurance
each month as this rolls along--each week.
Thank you, Mr. Tonko. You are welcome to interrupt me whenever, and
we can have a dialogue here. So thanks for the lipreading.
Each week 72,000 people. At the end of the year, another 3\1/2\
million will have lost their unemployment insurance. Will they have a
job? They could have a better opportunity for a job if we carried out
the President's jobs program.
I think we have got about 10 minutes or so. Let's spend some time on
that.
I am going to put up one of my favorite and often-used charts here.
Mr. Tonko, you will recognize this.
Mr. TONKO. Absolutely.
Mr. GARAMENDI. It is the Make It in America chart. It is the
revitalization of manufacturing in the United States. And I could
probably give your speech on the industrialization of the State of New
York. I will let you do it, however.
But these are the issues that we think are critical. We have spent
most of this night talking about this one--labor. Last week I said we
would pick this up, and we are, and particularly focused on women in
the labor force. But here it is, trade policies, international trade.
I gave a speech this morning on the maritime industry, the decline of
the maritime industry, the necessity of maintaining it. We are a
maritime Nation. We have oceans surrounding us, whether it is the
Arctic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, the Caribbean, or the Atlantic Ocean.
So it is trade issues.
Tax policies, why do we continue to subsidize the wealthiest
industries in this world? The oil industry, why do we continue to
subsidize the oil industry? Energy policy. Fortunately, we are having a
good run on the energy issues, and we will come back and talk about
that.
Mr. Honda talked about educational policy, research and
infrastructure. These are the elements of the Make It In America
agenda. And when we use our tax money to buy American-made equipment,
really good things happen. Americans go to work.
In my district, or just on the edge of my district, in Sacramento,
Siemens, that huge German manufacturing company, opened a manufacturing
plant to build 100 percent American-made locomotives for the first time
in generations because, in the stimulus bill, a sentence was added to
the support for Amtrak, and that sentence said these locomotives will
be 100 percent American-made.
A German company said, oh, $600, $700 million contract, we will make
them in America. And so all across this Nation, manufacturing companies
are now participating in the construction of 100 percent American-made
locomotives using American taxpayer money.
That is the key here. Mr. Tonko, I know you get really excited about
this issue, as you were about poverty and equality in America just a
moment ago. Why don't you pick this up and carry it for a while?
Mr. TONKO. Sure. And I thank, again, the gentleman from California
for yielding.
The Make It In America program, the concept of that, is a very strong
domestic agenda. In and of itself, it has great merit. But let's put
that into the context of the bigger picture, and that is the
international sweepstakes for the economy, for landing jobs.
Many of us can recall the global race on space in the sixties, and it
was critical to win that race. We had come off a failing moment with
Sputnik, dusted off our backside and said never again.
So this Nation committed, with passionate resolve, that we would win
that global race on space. That was just two nations, U.S. vs. USSR.
Who would land on that Moon, stake their flag first? We were determined
it was going to be the United States. And a rather youthful President
led the Nation, again, with passionate resolve, so that we had dollars
for training, for research, for education, for equipment, and we were
going to win that race, and we did.
In my first year in Congress, in 2009, we celebrated the 40th
anniversary. Neil Armstrong was here to shake the hands of many Members
of Congress, thanking him for the poetry of the moment in that July of
1969. It was more than the one small step for man, one giant step for
mankind, the poetry of the moment. It was the unleashing of untold
amounts of technology that impacted communications, energy generation,
health care. Across the gamut of job creation, technology entered in.
Fast-forward to today. A rather youthful President is asking again
that we embrace, with passion, our entry into a global race, this time
on innovation and clean energy and high tech. But this time, dozens of
competitors.
So Make It In America is noble in and of its own right, but it is
critical when we place it into the bigger picture of a global race on
innovation. And it is not our choice to determine if we are going to
enter the race. Our choice ought to be how prepared, how strong, how
competitive will we be as we enter that race.
That requires education, higher education, skills development, energy
costs, innovation of all sorts. That comes with the passion of reform.
So we need an agenda like that presented with Make It In America that
addresses the needs of the workers, that speaks to the empowerment that
comes with research which equals jobs. For us to have that pioneer
spirit, which I believe is in the DNA of America and her workers, we
need to embrace that pioneer spirit and move forward.
Now, Representative Garamendi is going to joke that I always talk
about the donor area that the 20th Congressional District of New York
is and was to the development of the Industrial Revolution in this
Nation. But the Erie Canal made a port out of a little town called New
York, and then developed into the birthing of a necklace of communities
called mill towns that became the epicenters of invention and
innovation.
We need that same spirit to be embraced today with this out-of-the-
box thinking, where we can bring about the best of America and provide
hope for workers, for families across this Nation, and do it in a way
that allows us to win this given race, this global race on innovation.
Whoever wins this race, as the President, President Obama, has been
quoted oftentimes, will be the kingpin of the international economy.
That is an important assignment to this House, the House of
Representatives. It is an important assignment to Congress. It is an
important challenge to all of us, as Americans, to commit to that
agenda of investing, investing in America so that our best days lie
ahead. I am convinced that with this sort of progressive thinking, our
best days lie ahead, and that we deliver hope to the doorsteps of
individuals and families across this Nation with a vision of how we can
win this next quarter of global competition.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Representative Tonko, once again, you have laid it out
very, very clearly, the challenge that we have. There are 435 of us
here in the House of Representatives. I think we are a little lower
than that because of some retirements, but let's just say 435, and 100
Members of Congress. Together with the President, we set the national
policy. We set the national agenda. And frankly, at the moment, the
agenda is one that has stalled out. Really, we have been prevented from
pushing forward an aggressive agenda such as you have described. Those
elements, research, education, manufacturing, infrastructure, the role
of labor, particularly the role of women
[[Page H215]]
in the labor force, those issues are roadblocked.
{time} 1845
There is a stop sign that has been put up here in the House of
Representatives that basically says we shouldn't do any of that, that
government has no role in any of those issues. I would challenge that
philosophy. I would challenge that philosophy with the Founding
Fathers.
Our colleagues on the right often talk about we ought to do what the
Founding Fathers did. Well, one of the things that George Washington,
one of the Founding Fathers, did was to turn to Alexander Hamilton and
say, Develop a strategy for American manufacturing, for building the
American economy. So Hamilton went off, probably talked to a few
people, and came back with a lengthy report, which you would never see
nowadays, which was like 30 pages. And in that document, he laid out a
strategy for building the American economy.
Interestingly, guess what he talked about. He talked about trade. He
talked about infrastructure. Among the infrastructure that was
specifically in the plan that Hamilton presented to George Washington,
who then presented it to the Congress, was canals. And shortly
thereafter, about 30 years later, the Erie Canal.
Here in Washington, the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, the canal on the
Potomac River. It also talked about roads. It talked about ports. Those
were the infrastructure projects of the day. The Constitution, by the
way, says that the Federal Government must maintain and build postal
roads. Infrastructure, we talk about that nearly all the time we are
here.
Research. At that period of time, Thomas Jefferson--not exactly in
league with the representatives from New England, but nonetheless--was
pushing forward the research agenda and the education agenda. Go back
to the Founding Fathers, pick up those elements of economic growth that
they put on the American agenda in the very earliest days of this
Nation, and carry those forward.
We are not a shy country; but if one would look at the policies
emanating from the Congress today, you would think that we are a
country that does not envision the necessity of grabbing the strength
of the past and using those elements that have created the economic
growth and pushing them forward.
We can, and we must, do this. And as we do it, I want to go back to
where we started today's discussion, and that is, we started this
discussion with the role of women in our economy. 77 cents. Equal pay?
No, no. A man will earn $1; and a woman at the same job, same skill
sets, same tenure on the job will earn 77 cents across this Nation. In
my own district, it is 85 cents.
A woman working full time at minimum wage cannot earn enough money in
this Nation to feed her child and pay the rent. A woman in this Nation
with a child, she has a job, the child gets sick: she is faced with a
dilemma.
We need to address these issues; and we must keep in mind the Make It
In America agenda, the jobs agenda that we push forward; and we must
always remember that when women succeed, America will succeed.
And with that, I thank my colleagues Mr. Tonko, Mr. Honda, the three
women that joined us earlier, Ms. Kaptur, Ms. Hahn, and Ms. Schakowsky,
for bringing this message to the American people and to our colleagues
here on the floor.
And I yield to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Tonko) to wrap up.
Mr. TONKO. I will just indicate that not far from the 20th
Congressional District in upstate New York is the Women's Hall of Fame.
And just recently, our leader, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, was
inducted into that hall of fame. We think of the stories of women in
the chronicles of American history, the women who embraced sacrifice
and struggled to make a difference. Think of what happens when we
empower the inexorable outcomes that they have journeyed through over
the course of our history. Think of the empowerment that comes. So with
the vision of progressive orders of reform, our best days lie ahead;
and we can deliver that hope that we are challenged to deliver.
So it has been tremendous speaking with you and our colleagues on the
floor here this evening. Let's move forward and provide that hope to
America's working families.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I thank you for the hour, and I yield
back the balance of my time.
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