[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 188 (Thursday, November 29, 2018)]
[House]
[Page H9695]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            TOXIC CAPITALISM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Massachusetts (Mr. Kennedy) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. Speaker, on Monday, GM went to bed with a record 
$3.2 billion in profits last quarter alone. Its shareholders went to 
bed with a 5 percent surge in stock prices, plus the $10.6 billion the 
company has spent on buybacks since 2015. Meanwhile, 14,000 GM workers 
spent a sleepless night wondering if their jobs and livelihoods would 
still be there for them the next morning.
  There is no better snapshot of our country's current, toxic brand of 
capitalism, where we are operating in a system that demands that 
workers labor harder and harder to meet basic human needs but refuses 
to share even a slice of the success that they helped create.
  For those of us in this Chamber this morning, it is about more than 
one company or one balance sheet. It is about 50 years of giving the 
private sector explicit permission to cast workers aside. It is about 
an economy that has become the antithesis of what our country stands 
for: equity, decency, justice, and hard work.
  President Trump has made his response to these economic inequities 
very clear. His is a country of bitter rivalry between fellow citizens 
forced to endlessly spar over the scraps of that system: ``My wages 
can't go up unless your food stamps are taken away.'' ``Your medical 
bills can't fall unless my insurance goes.'' So Americans spend their 
days fighting each other over economic crumbs while our system quietly 
delivers the entire pot to those at the top.
  That is the reality that our new Democratic majority must address for 
the coal miner in Kentucky, the daycare worker in New York, the fifth-
generation farming family in Ohio, the first-generation immigrant 
family in Massachusetts, the mostly White towns in West Virginia 
devastated by an opioid epidemic, and the communities of color across 
our country terrorized by the war on drugs.
  Forget where they are from or what they look like or how they vote. 
All of these Americans face an economy that does not operate for them. 
They live in cities and towns that are likely to be medically 
underserved, educationally ostracized from today's job market, plagued 
by inadequate infrastructure, and burdened by crumbling homes or houses 
that no one can afford.
  They disproportionately shoulder the hard words that can make life 
hurt: ``eviction,'' ``addiction,'' ``bankruptcy,'' and ``violence.''
  They hail from the places where polling locations disappear, where 
the biggest economic engine is a payday lender, where lead poisons 
their children's water, and where injustice and insufficiency fester 
for generations before a government thinks to step in.
  This is the challenge of our time. It is the injustice that we have 
to solve not just because of our politics, but because our system will 
not survive if we don't.
  I believe in that system.
  American capitalism has done great good for a great number of people. 
It has given the average American a better standard of living than 
anywhere else in the world, lifted millions out of poverty, and powered 
our globe. But its current iteration is badly broken, and the sooner we 
admit it, the sooner we can strip it to the studs and build something 
better.
  A moral capitalism is judged not just by how much it produces, but by 
how widely it shares, how much good it does for how many, and how well 
it takes care of each and every single one of us.

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