[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 46 (Wednesday, March 18, 2015)]
[House]
[Pages H1750-H1755]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CONGRESSIONAL PROGRESSIVE CAUCUS: THE PEOPLE'S BUDGET
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Katko). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 6, 2015, the gentlewoman from New Jersey (Mrs. Watson
Coleman) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority
leader.
Mrs. WATSON COLEMAN. Mr. Speaker, I am here today representing the
Congressional Progressive Caucus and to discuss our budget, the
people's budget. I pray that I am not the only one that is speaking for
the 60 minutes allotted.
Yesterday, Mr. Speaker, the House of Representatives released their
budget proposal. Although they have a new chairman, they are following
the same game plan: privatize Medicare, slash spending on safety net
programs, and hope that tax cuts for the rich trickle down from top
earners to the rest of the country.
That is not what the American people need. They need a plan that
levels the playing field, that gives them an opportunity to succeed,
and puts their interests above the interests of corporations and the
wealthy. They need a budget that is of the people, by the people, and
for the people. That is what we are offering in the people's budget.
If you need a way to pay for affordable child care while you are at
your job, we have got it in the people's budget. If you need access to
quality education for your children, teachers that are trained to give
them the knowledge they need to be great, we have got it in the
people's budget.
If you worked hard to get into college but now need a way to pay for
your tuition, we have got it in the people's budget. If you can't make
ends meet, if the pay you take home barely keeps a roof over your head
and you are making important choices between food and shelter and you
are looking for a livable wage, we have got it in the people's budget.
Mr. Speaker, in the hands of the GOP, this Congress has offered tax
break after tax break after tax break after tax break for corporations
and billionaires while cutting the very programs that working Americans
rely on to pull themselves up the economic ladder that has given
generations of American families access to the middle class.
If anyone deserves a tax cut, it is not millionaires. It is the folks
that are loading the trucks, the folks that are scanning the groceries,
the folks that are cleaning the office buildings, the folks that are
working as clerks, the folks that are working as secretaries, and the
folks that are doing the important service jobs that our society so
needs.
The people's budget would invest in priorities that will keep the
American people strong, just for everyone. It offers jobs that will
restore our middle class. It addresses our Nation's most pressing
challenges, issues like climate change, aging transportation
infrastructure, access to education at every level, and good-paying
jobs.
This, Mr. Speaker, is about restoring Congress' commitment to serving
hardworking Americans who are playing by the rules but still not
getting ahead. This, Mr. Speaker, is about the lives that regular
Americans are able to live.
Some say that it is not hard to find any old job and get a paycheck,
but does that job offer a high enough wage or enough hours to pay the
rent? Can you take time off for illness or to take care of your kids?
Do you know that you will have enough to pay for child care while you
are at the job? Do you have health insurance in the event that you need
it?
My Congressional Progressive Caucus colleagues and I think that
taxpaying Americans deserve to confidently answer ``yes'' to all of
these questions, and that is what we are fighting for.
Today, we were given the distinct opportunity to present tenets of
our budget to a group of interested people--everyday working people--
people who are working for decent-paying jobs.
They are not looking for handouts. They are looking for recognition
that they are part of this American Dream, and it is our responsibility
to ensure that we are not impediments, but that we are facilitators of
that American Dream for everyone.
At this time, Mr. Speaker, I yield to my colleague, the chairman of
the Progressive Caucus, Congressman Ellison.
Mr. ELLISON. Let me thank the gentlewoman for yielding, the
Congresswoman from New Jersey, Bonnie Watson Coleman.
As I said earlier today, Bonnie Watson Coleman may have just got
sworn in as a Member of Congress a few months ago, but she is no
stranger to fighting for people.
That was on full display when she spoke at a rollout of our
Progressive Caucus budget where she talked about how you can look at
any aspect of the Progressive Caucus budget and you will find the same
thing in every place: prioritizing people, making sure people can get
their needs met in this government, making sure that workers can get
access to a job, making sure that people who are sick but who are
working can actually get a sick day so that they don't bring that
sickness back to their workplace and don't have to abandon their
children that might be sick, too.
You pointed out, Congresswoman Watson Coleman, the fact is that job
creation should be the primary metric of any budget. How are we doing
putting people back to work in good jobs? How are we helping take care
of them while they are on the job? If they are sick, can they take time
off? How are we educating people? You focused on the key elements of
the Progressive Caucus budget, and I was proud to hear you do it.
The fact is this is our fifth budget that we have put out. It is a
budget that is about working people. That is why we call it the
people's budget. We urge people to check out the people's budget online
at the Congressional Progressive Caucus Web site.
Let me name a few things about the Progressive Caucus budget that are
important to highlight. It creates 8.4 million good-paying jobs by
2018.
Now, you just take the Republican budget that was put out yesterday.
It was interesting to me that none of my Republican colleagues wanted
to tout how many jobs their budget would create, how many jobs the
economists--after looking at the Republican budget proposed--would
create because that is not what they consider to be a priority;
[[Page H1751]]
but it is a priority to the Progressive Caucus budget. Our priority is
8.4 million good-paying jobs investing in America, making sure
Americans are working again.
Now, you might correctly ask: How are you going to get all these
jobs? One way we are going to get the jobs is we are going to invest
$820 billion to repair America's rapidly aging roads and bridges and
upgrade our energy systems to address climate change, keep our
communities safe, and prepare for the next generation to thrive in our
society and workforce.
I would like to share with the Speaker that I come from a town--
Minneapolis, Minnesota--where, 6 years ago, the I-35 bridge fell into
the Mississippi River because we had not taken care of it. We had not
done adequate maintenance on this bridge.
Thirteen people died when that bridge fell. They were Black. They
were White. They were wealthy. They were low income. They were born in
America. They were born abroad. They were America. That is who lost
their lives on that bridge, and 100 more people got injured.
This Progressive Caucus investment in infrastructure repair is not
just a job creator and a productivity increaser; it is public safety to
have decent, safe infrastructure. I am very proud of that.
We also provide $945 million to help States and municipalities hire
police, firefighters, health care workers, teachers, librarians, and
other public employees.
Mr. Speaker, I have got to tell you, I met with my chiefs of police
in the Fifth Congressional District about a week ago. Of course, all of
us here tonight represent more than one city.
I met with the chiefs of police--I am very proud to represent a city
where law enforcement is dedicated--and they were asking me: What's
going on with the Byrne grants? What's going on with the JAG grants?
What's going on with the COPS grants? These things that have helped us
be a better police department have shrunk. Our ability to protect the
public is weakened by our limited resources.
{time} 1500
Well, we are going to do something about that. We are going to rehire
teachers. So if you have got a teacher with 30 second graders in the
classroom trying to keep up with all of them, we can hire a teacher's
aide who might be able to actually help that teacher do what that
teacher does most effectively.
We put $1.9 trillion in America's future by investing in the working
families. This restores and enhances funding for vital programs that
Americans rely on, like SNAP, like food, nutrition, so that young
people can be in the classroom and can be fully fed and ready to learn.
So these are just a few things about the Progressive Caucus budget.
But I wonder if the gentlewoman from New Jersey or the gentlewoman from
Michigan will yield to a question.
Mrs. WATSON COLEMAN. I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota.
Mr. ELLISON. Should a budget be a moral document which lists the
priorities of the Nation?
Mrs. WATSON COLEMAN. Thank you very much for giving me the
opportunity to respond to that question, Congressman.
As a State legislator, I spent many years in appropriations and on
the budget committee, and I came to realize that there is no other
document that represents the values and the priorities of the governing
entity than the budget statement.
So where we put our money is where we think our interests lie; where
we put our money represents our priorities; where we put our money
represents our values. And that is one of the major reasons that I am
just so proud to be associated with the people's budget as crafted by
the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
Thank you for giving me that opportunity.
Mr. ELLISON. Will the gentlewoman yield for another question?
Mrs. WATSON COLEMAN. I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota.
Mr. ELLISON. So the Progressive Caucus budget was not just written by
members of the Progressive Caucus. We didn't just sit in a room and
write up a budget. We actually pulled in our partners, like the
Economic Policy Institute, labor.
How important were our progressive partners in pulling our budget
together?
Mrs. WATSON COLEMAN. Well, I certainly would like to yield to the
gentlelady from Michigan. I just simply want to say that the
associations, the affiliations, and the organizations that you
identified just very quickly represent the interests of working class
people, represent the interests of those who wish to be part of the
middle class, and represent those individuals who are responsible for
the standards that we have that protect people in the working
environment, that protect jobs here in America, and that protect the
aspirations and hopefulness of those who recognize that things like
public education are great equalizers.
Congressman, I would very much appreciate the opportunity to yield to
the gentlewoman from Michigan, my classmate and my friend,
Congresswoman Brenda Lawrence.
Mrs. LAWRENCE. Mr. Speaker, and to my colleagues, thank you for
yielding.
I am here today to speak in my support for the Congressional
Progressive Caucus alternative budget and their fight for greater
access to affordable housing.
As you know, I was previously a mayor, and the quality of life in
America is determined by our housing options, and the CPC budget
acknowledges that.
We have an affordable housing crisis. Only one in four families
eligible for housing assistance receive it. There is a shortage of low-
income apartments and rental homes that are affordable in low-income
households.
We have seen the results of sequestration taking housing assistance
from 70,000 families, and the CPC budget moves us from trying to
preserve existing affordable housing to making significant improvements
and investments in new production.
When you are an elected official or a mayor of a community, you see
firsthand the challenges from unemployment, the challenges of jobs that
are being reduced, the unemployed, and trying to maintain housing.
It is important that we realize that in this budget we call for two
new sources for affordable housing, the National Housing Trust Fund and
the Capital Magnet Fund, to be fully funded by contributions from
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as is already required by law. This budget
gives families and communities devastated by foreclosure the resources
to renovate and resell homes and maintain overall property values.
I come from Michigan, and I represent Detroit. Here I have an article
that states: ``Downtown Detroit Tenants Rally to Demand Decent and
Affordable Housing.'' This conversation is happening all over the
country while we see some communities where families are actually being
displaced as a result of the upper class of our communities being able
to buy and push prices up while those in the bottom of our economic
class are being challenged every day to find the simple thing that we
call quality of life in America, and that is housing.
In my State of Michigan, we have a campaign to end homelessness, to
promote housing, first, through the prevention and rapid rehousing
activities.
We understand in Michigan that in order to effectively approach
homelessness, a community needs a clear, deliberate, and comprehensive
strategy. The low incomes of so many families across this country make
this increasingly difficult for them to manage the rising cost of
housing. This puts them at risk, and some lose their housing and fall
into homelessness. We may call this a homelessness crisis, but it is
primarily a housing affordability crisis.
Permanent housing subsidies like section 8 need to do a better job of
addressing the family housing crisis. However, as this body knows, such
subsidies are severely underfunded. Nationally, only one-quarter of the
need for such subsidies are being met.
Before I conclude, I want to be clear that we, as members of the
Progressive Caucus, stress strongly that we present a budget that is
funded, that will ensure that in America the American Dream and the
basic quality of life right to have a home is maintained through our
budget.
Mr. ELLISON. I represent Minneapolis, Minnesota, and I was talking
[[Page H1752]]
with my Housing Authority people who were here in town the other day,
and I bet your Housing Authority folks were in town, too. One of the
things that they said to me is that they opened up their list, and for
2,000 available units, they had 37,000 people who applied for those
positions.
Here is another separate fact which I would like you to react to, if
you don't mind. In Minneapolis, we pride ourselves on being a
progressive town. We have got 4,000 kids who leave shelters every day
to go to a public school, and those kids are asked to take standardized
tests.
How important is it for a budget, particularly a Progressive Caucus
budget, to house America's people?
Mrs. LAWRENCE. It is extremely important.
Thank you.
It is extremely important, and those of us who understand the cry of
the people for housing, and understand the impact of homelessness on
Americans today, funding of housing, affordable housing, is critical.
I served on the local government board, and one of the things we
looked at consistently is: How do we sustain the low-income or
sustainable housing for our population?
Children repeatedly, every day across this country, awaken, go to
school, and then their families, they are living in cars or they are
living in shelters, and they have to take on that responsibility, as a
child, and adjust to an environment that they can learn. We know that
this is a total distraction. Some of them, through this homelessness,
the school is the only stable place for them to go to every single day.
So now we are in a position where we are looking at cutting back on
education. We are cutting back on housing. In America, are we sending a
message through a budget that will not support sustainable housing for
American citizens who are not in the top 1 percent, who some, by no
fault of their own, are unemployed? Are we, in this country and as a
government, turning our backs on those people?
That is why we have, through the Progressive Caucus, a budget that
will awaken the minds of so many in this country and this government,
and we want our colleagues across the aisle--and all of our
colleagues--to look at this budget and say that this is the time in
America we need to step up and fund sustainable housing in America.
Mrs. WATSON COLEMAN. Mr. Speaker, can you tell us just how much time
we have left?
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentlewoman from New Jersey has
approximately 40 minutes remaining.
Mrs. WATSON COLEMAN. I appreciate the comments that have been offered
by both of my colleagues here. I think that you can certainly
understand that a lot of work went into the creation, the development,
and the evolution of this budget. We are happy to note that, over the
years, some of those issues that were identified by the Progressive
Caucus have now become part of the regular budget that is presented by
the Democratic Caucus.
I want to highlight a couple of other things, because I think we just
talked about the need for housing. And we recognize that not only did
we lose a lot of housing during the predatory lending crisis, a lot of
that housing is still vacant, and we need to figure out a way to
recapture that housing and use it for affordable housing purposes. Our
budget proposes the extension of the use of vouchers for housing
because we recognize how fundamental the need is to have safe and
secure housing.
We recognize that, over the last several years, millionaires,
billionaires, and corporations have been getting tremendous tax breaks,
that the very wealthy have received extremely generous credits.
We want to see working people get credit for work, get tax advantages
for the work that working people do, get additional child care credits
so that they can provide the kind of safety and security and healthy
environment for their families.
Everybody has the desire to have a healthy family. Everybody has a
desire to be able to participate in our society, to even pay taxes, Mr.
Speaker. They just need to have the mechanisms, the infrastructure, the
opportunity, the policies that will provide those opportunities, and
this budget does just that.
It is known that one in five children live, in the United States of
America, in poverty. One out of three African American children live in
poverty. That is unacceptable for any child to live impoverished in a
nation that is as rich and that has so much wealth concentrated in so
few hands.
To whom much is given, much is required, and it is pay now or pay
later.
We need to recognize the significance of our budget that recognizes
that education is, indeed, the equalizer here. Not only are we looking
to expand access to preschool care, but full funding of K-12.
In addition to that, we recognize that higher education is what
distinguishes our middle class from those who never can get into the
middle class. But we want to make sure that students have access to
education without being overly burdened with debt. So we want to look
at creating opportunities for students to refinance their debt.
Let's look at this country as a country of diplomacy, of
humanitarianism. Let's look at this country as a country of
peacefulness and hopefulness for goodwill for all nations. Let us move
away from the sort of cold war mentality; look at modernizing our
militaristic events; look at what we are doing with our resources;
invest our resources here in America, not overseas; seek to bring
humanitarian aid; seek to bring diplomacy. Seek, first, peace; seek,
first, coalitions; but seek, first and foremost, to invest in America.
{time} 1515
Our unemployment rate is supposedly somewhere around 5 or 6 percent,
but that is so misleading. It is so misleading on so many different
levels.
Number one, that is not true in rural areas, and that is not true in
urban areas, and that is not true for minority communities, and that is
not true for those who simply aren't looking anymore because they have
been so doggone discouraged that they don't even think that there is
any hope for them to have a job. For those people, for that cohort that
I am speaking of, unemployment is double digits. It could be 25
percent. It could be 13 percent. It is something that we really don't
even know exactly what it is, but we need to be focusing on lifting up
all of our communities.
And if we truly, absolutely want the American economy to expand, then
we need to know that we need more consumers. We need more jobs. We need
more paychecks. We need more customers. And we do that by investing in
our middle class. We do that by investing in small businesses, in new
businesses, in startups, in education, and in research and development.
This budget recognizes that if we are going to be the great America
that we are supposed to be, that we need to make these investments.
Today was monumental for me because I got to articulate and to stand
with individuals who expressed things that I have believed. Even as a
legislator in the State of New Jersey, I believed that if we are to
experience an America that really works, an America where our
communities are safe because there is full employment--so no one is
trying to rob anybody or no one is feeling a need to engage in illegal
activity simply to put some food on the table--if we are going to be
competitive globally, then we need to be investing in education. We
need to be building schools. We need to ensure that even the schools in
the poorest districts across the United States of America have all of
the 21st century technology and opportunities to learn and produce. And
we need to have high expectations. We need to have high expectations
for everyone.
So I thank you very much for this opportunity, and I will take this
moment to yield back to my colleague, the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr.
Ellison), the cochair of our Progressive Caucus.
Mr. ELLISON. I thank the gentlelady for yielding.
I was really intrigued by the things that you were saying about the
Progressive Caucus budget because I have always believed that you know
someone's treasure by how they prioritize their expenses.
You can look at a family's budget, and if you see a lot of money
being spent on television and movies and candy, you know that they care
a lot about that. And if you see people spend a lot of money on books
and education, you know they care about that.
[[Page H1753]]
What does it mean if you have the budget of a nation where the
biggest amounts of the budget are spent on helping rich people get
richer and cutting health and safety regulations? What does that mean
at a time when income inequality is at its height since the Great
Depression?
My problem with the Republican budget is that they have been acting
like rich people don't have enough money and poor people have too much
for 40 years. What it has brought us is massive income inequality. And
their answer to that is to do it some more.
It has hurt this economy to prioritize the well-to-do over everyone
else. It doesn't even help rich people very much because rich people
own stores and factories and stuff like that. If regular folks,
ordinary people don't have any money, how can they even help boost the
consumer demand?
This economy that we have, it is important to point out that the
United States is a country of tremendous resources. This is still the
richest country in the world. Not only is America the richest country
in the world but America itself has never been richer.
If you look at per capita income and you scale it on a graph and
compare it over time, you are looking at a steadily rising line. Yet
the American budget, our governmental expenditures as a proportion of
it, we have seen one of the lowest proportions of government spending
relative to GDP in a great many years.
The fact of the matter is, the reason the proportion of government
expenditure to GDP has been going down is because America has been
giving away the resources that it needs to take care of the needs of
its people. I am talking about lifesaving research in medicine. I am
talking about dealing with issues of climate. I am talking about
infrastructure investment.
One of the things that the Progressive Caucus budget does to try to
recapture some of the money that the government is due and owed is we
end corporate inversion and deferral.
What is corporate inversion? Corporate inversion is where the company
does not actually physically move anywhere, but they sell themselves to
a foreign corporation with a lower tax rate or no tax rate, thereby
escaping the payment of moneys in taxes as an American corporation but
not really moving anything. In fact, they might even increase their
physical footprint in the country that they are in.
We have had that happen in my own community. And before I went to
criticize the company that did it, I had to deal with the fact that it
is legal to do.
How are you going to blame a corporation for trying to get money when
it is legal to do? Well, I say, rather than blame the company, I will
blame Congress, you know? So we went and did something about it. We
went to the Progressive Caucus budget and we ended inversions. You
can't do that anymore.
We are also in this process of deferral, this idea that corporate
profits don't have to be paid as long as they are deferred and kept
overseas. We end this process. We end deferrals. I think that these two
things alone will bring money back to the United States Government so
we can invest in roads and bridges and infrastructure, so we can make
sure that no 5-year-old kid is leaving a shelter and going to a public
school in the morning, so we can make sure that there is enough SNAP,
that kids have a decent meal to eat, and that our seniors can actually
hope to one day be able to beat Parkinson's and Alzheimer's and all of
these kinds of diseases. These things take public investment to solve
these kinds of medical problems.
So the Progressive Caucus budget, I am very proud to be a part of it
because it is a budget that looks at the needs of the American people
and does something about it.
Let me just talk about the education side of it. We have universal
pre-K. Now, it doesn't matter if you are a conservative economist or if
you are a liberal economist; they all agree that the best return on
investment is educating little kids. You educate those little guys and
it will keep them out of trouble. It will put them on a path to college
or some form of higher education. And they will not become a government
expense; they will be a government asset. They will not be an
expenditure on the taxpayer; they will be paying taxes.
Yet the Progressive Caucus doesn't just know that, we actually do
something about it by funding universal pre-K. I am so happy about that
because, you know, those little guys are so cute, and we definitely
want to see those bright-eyed little children maximize their talents.
They are actually really smart. And if you put them in an educational
environment, an academic environment where they can do more than just
learn how to count--they can maybe even learn how to use a computer--
you never know what tremendous benefits they will bring to our society.
And we move from there.
In K-12 education, we help fund municipal and local public employees
who need that kind of help. We have placed $95 billion in that, where
we can, again, put a teacher or a teacher's aide back into the
classroom. Ever since the recession in 2008, local governments have
been shedding public employees, including teachers.
Now, what does this mean? To the average teacher, the average teacher
used to have a classroom of 28 kids, 19 kids. Well, those classes are
bigger because you have got fewer teachers. You used to be able to have
a little budget to decorate the classroom, to put inspiring messages
and notes and pictures up there.
I would actually like to ask the gentlelady from New Jersey a
question. Have you had the experience of talking to a teacher where
they tell you that they are going into their own pocket to decorate the
classroom? Have you ever heard that?
Mrs. WATSON COLEMAN. Not only have I heard it, but I have helped some
of the teachers buy the supplies for their classrooms.
Mr. ELLISON. Right. So the fact is, we need to respond to these kinds
of things.
I would also like to ask the gentlelady, What does it mean to a
police department that needs about, you know, 40 people to protect the
people of the city but only has 20 folks? What does that mean? Does
that mean the officers aren't getting out of their cars and forming
relationships? Does that mean they are just running from call to call
to call? Does that mean they may not have the equipment that they need?
What does it mean?
Mrs. WATSON COLEMAN. Thank you for that question, Congressman. It
means all of those things.
What it means for communities like the capital of the State of New
Jersey, which is the city of Trenton, it means that our neighborhoods
are unsafe. It means that police are running to situations that have
already occurred, as opposed to having the resources and the capacity
to understand what is happening out there and be proactive and
preventative in nature. So it certainly does negatively impact the
quality of life for those who live in the city--and cities
particularly--and those who work there.
I am particularly concerned about the seniors who invested in the
cities years ago when the cities where the thriving environments,
Congressman, and now they are still living there because they can't
afford to move. So they are finding themselves in communities where,
because of the housing crisis, there are vacant houses all around them.
Members of gangs have settled into some of those houses, creating
almost prison-like environments for the people who can't even go
outside and sit on their porch. And all of this has been the function
of our disinvestment in our cities.
Mr. ELLISON. The Progressive Caucus budget is trying to step up and
address these issues. When you talk to officers and firefighters,
health care workers, teachers, librarians, all of these local
government functions have been cut.
I would like to ask the gentlewoman another question:
What does it mean to see the library hours cut in your city because
the Federal assistance or the local municipalities just don't have
enough funding for the library, so the hours get cut, the library staff
gets cut. What does that mean to a local community?
Mrs. WATSON COLEMAN. I thank you for the opportunity to address this
because I know this firsthand. In the capital city in the State of New
Jersey, they have had to actually close libraries.
Now, we already experience a digital divide in urban centers and in
poor environments, and sometimes the only
[[Page H1754]]
access that students have to computers and the Internet and the
capacity to do research is in the libraries, in the local libraries. So
it has negatively impacted their ability to get the information that
they need to succeed in school.
It has also negatively impacted those who are looking for jobs, who
go to libraries to be able to research jobs on the Internet. It has had
a devastating impact on the community.
So when we look at our budget, the Progressive budget, and we
recognize that we wish to restore services, restore funding to programs
that empower our communities, it is giving them a chance, again, to
become productive, productive in the work environment, productive in
the school environment. It restores hope where hope has been taken away
for so long.
Mr. ELLISON. That is right.
If I could just say, putting workers back on the job who are
firefighters, librarians, police officers, teachers, these are very
important to the quality of life.
I would like to refer to these people as everyday heroes. They may
not wear big letters on their chest. But when I think about the people
other than my parents who helped inspire me, it was probably a teacher,
probably a cop who saw me hanging on the corner and said, Hey, man, we
know you are smart. You can do better than what you are doing.
You know what I mean? All of these people are the everyday heroes
that make neighborhoods run every single day. So I just think it is
important for the Progressive Caucus to say, We are going to prioritize
rehiring these people who have been let go in the course of this
recession.
We have seen private sector employment increase every single month.
But you know what? We have also seen public sector employment actually
go down.
{time} 1530
One of the things I would also like to get your take on, if you
wouldn't mind sharing your views on this issue, is restoring and
enhancing emergency unemployment compensation. As you know, back on
December 26, 2013, the long-term unemployed were just cast adrift by
the Republican majority. These are people who were working but just
couldn't find a job soon enough. Some people tried to imply that they
were lazy and just didn't want a job, so we had to kick them off
unemployment so they would actually look for a job.
I wonder what your thoughts are about this.
Mrs. WATSON COLEMAN. First of all, let me just say for those
individuals who, without any fault of their own, were victims of the
trickle-down economics that have failed us from 40 years ago to even
today, those individuals who but for the shift in policies and having
this negative impact because of trickle-down economics which doesn't
work except for perhaps on an essay paper, they struggled. They
struggled. They lost their homes; they lost their family; they lost
their health care; and they lost their health.
The people's budget recognizes the responsibility that government has
to those individuals. So to extend the unemployment benefits for the 99
weeks, I believe it is over a 2-year period, gives people an
opportunity, as well as gives the policymakers an opportunity to create
opportunities for these people to find jobs and to have some meager
form of income while they are looking, because they basically have been
left with absolutely nothing. So it is a further illustration that the
people's budget is a reflection of the people's needs. I am so very
fortunate to be associated with it.
One last thing I wanted to raise as it relates to our urban centers,
Mr. Speaker, right now in Washington, D.C., there is a conference of
the urban mayors from the State of New Jersey. I am going to have an
opportunity to speak to them later on this evening. I tell you, I am
very excited to talk to them about what it means to support the
Progressive budget, the alternative Progressive Caucus budget, and what
it means to their communities, whether it is for education, for
teachers, for aides, for paraprofessionals, for police, for nurses, for
hospitals, whatever. They will understand that this is a budget that
recognizes that where the majority of the people live in this country
there is a budget that acknowledges that their needs are paramount to
the success of collective success of our economy and our country.
I yield to the gentleman.
Mr. ELLISON. That's right. I thank the gentlelady for yielding back
to me.
Mr. Speaker, I just want to point out that, again, the Progressive
Caucus budget is in dramatic contrast to the Republican budget. Take
the Republican budget, for example. The Republican budget calls for
repealing the Affordable Care Act. This is a piece of legislation that
has extended health care access to literally millions and millions and
millions of people. The Republicans want to snatch health care access
out of people who now, for the first time in their life, have acquired
it; and they are doing it by saying: Oh, we want you to have freedom,
and we think ObamaCare infringes on your freedom, so now be free to be
sick with no access to health care other than an emergency room.
That is their idea of freedom, I suppose.
They want to partially privatize Medicare. Is that what we need is
privatization of Medicare?
A few years ago, the Republicans wanted to privatize Social Security.
They wanted to say: We are going to take all the money you saved, and
we are going to put it in some Wall Street account. Of course, they
will be administered for a ``reasonable fee''--I put that in quotes--
but don't worry about it. Everything will be fine.
Then we see stock market prices fall and plummet. They go up and they
go down. But when you are talking about something like Social Security,
Medicare, and Medicaid, these have to be stable and reliable, and they
want to privatize it as they have proposed to other important programs.
They want to turn Medicaid and food stamps into block grants for
States. What does that mean? In some States, maybe the Governor will do
the right thing. I am pretty confident in Minnesota our Governor would
do the right thing. Our unemployment is at a record low. In our State,
our wages have been climbing. We actually have a surplus in the State
of Minnesota. Our next-door neighbor, Wisconsin, is run by Scott
Walker. They have a big, ugly deficit, which is embarrassing, given
that he is supposed to be this fiscal conservative. But facts don't
seem to bother some people.
My point is that the Republicans want to block grant these programs.
If you block grant it in Minnesota, it will be less money. Whenever
there is a budget pinch, they will use that money for other things
other than the intended purpose. But if you send it to a State like
Wisconsin with a Governor like Scott Walker, the people who are
intended to benefit from that money may never ever see it at all. And
so this is a very important program not to block grant these programs.
Tax reforms that lower rates and eliminate any taxation on profits
reported abroad--come on. As a matter of fact, if just cutting taxes to
the bone and cutting taxes for rich people as much as we possibly can
would be good for the economy, wouldn't we have avoided the recession
of 2008? We should have more jobs than we could possibly imagine with
these guys. We should have never had any recession, and every American
should be paid, I don't know, $100,000 a year if just cutting taxes was
good for the economy. Cutting taxes is good for some people, but it is
not good for the economy overall. The evidence is all around us. The
Republicans want to turn the rest of the world into a tax haven for
multinationals.
Now, the President has been trying to set the record straight. He has
been trying to signal what an economy where there is shared prosperity
should look like. But the fact is that, if you look at the Republican
budget and you contrast it with other proposals, it certainly fails the
test of being good for the American people. The Progressive Caucus
budget, on the other hand, passes the test. We do programs that
actually help the American people: universal pre-K, robust support for
title I, and debt-free college to ensure every child gets a quality
education. When you contrast their budget and you look at our budget,
it is clear which one the American people find to be most meritorious.
So we ask people to look at the Progressive Caucus budget. We ask
people to read it; share it with your friends; offer your views on it.
We ask people to
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just support the budget that they think makes a lot of sense.
Probably we will be debating the budgets next week. Probably we will
have a vote. We think it is important for Americans to tune in to this
debate. Because if you are an American person and you are busy, you are
trying to raise kids, you are trying get to work on time, and you are
trying to earn a living, you don't have time to be plugged in to
politics like some of us who do this our whole lives. You are busy. But
you are smart and you know what is going on.
I am going to ask Americans to actually slow down and say: Hey, look,
what is going on in this budget? What does the Republican budget look
like? They want to cut taxes. They don't want overseas corporations to
return those profits and pay taxes on that. The Progressive Caucus
wants to let the little kids go to school, let the teenagers and the
young adults go to school. They want to train our workforce, and they
want to invest in our Nation's infrastructure.
I guarantee this is what the people in this country want to see.
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentlewoman for upholding the
Progressive Caucus message, and I wish you very great success in the
people's budget.
Mrs. WATSON COLEMAN. Mr. Speaker, I am thankful for this opportunity
to share the good news about the Progressive budget and to inform those
who are here as well as those who are at home what this budget
represents.
One last issue that I think I would like to address that we may not
have clearly or substantively articulated has to do with environmental
issues. This budget acknowledges the devastating impact that we have
had on the environment, and it takes concrete steps to reverse it,
forcing polluters to pay for the carbon that is causing so much of our
climate change, eliminating fossil fuel subsidies for Big Oil that,
frankly, don't need government support, and ensuring EPA has the
resources it needs to help reduce our carbon footprint.
We have spent this last 45, 50 minutes--I am thankful for this
opportunity--sharing the good news about the people's budget, the
Progressive budget, and I hope that anyone who has a need for
additional information will seek this information out online.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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