[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

[[Page H1755]]

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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