[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 97 (Tuesday, June 11, 2019)]
[House]
[Pages H4397-H4398]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          OUR ECONOMY IS SICK

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Massachusetts (Mr. Kennedy) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. Speaker, this administration continues to tell us 
that our economic recovery is chugging along, that it has even been 
hypercharged under President Trump.
  They say there is well over 7.5 million unfilled jobs and 6 million 
people looking for work, that wages are beginning to pick up. The stock 
market has reached record highs and the unemployment rate, record lows.
  So why aren't our constituents celebrating, saving, and spending at 
equally historic rates?
  Mr. Speaker, everyone in this Chamber knows what I am talking about. 
They can feel it. Why does it all seem so fragile, like this country is 
walking on economic eggshells?
  Because that is how it feels to American families every single day. 
Because in today's America, you can work a 12-hour shift, 7 days a 
week, year after year--get in one car accident on your way home from 
work and end up bankrupt.
  Because the cost of a college education is leaving a generation of 
graduates with a high-interest mortgage without the house.
  Because the cost of childcare is becoming even more unaffordable than 
that college degree.
  Because the cost of a two-bedroom apartment swallows up the income of 
a full-time minimum wage worker in every single neighborhood in our 
country.
  Because nearly 40 percent of Americans can't afford an unexpected 
$400 medical bill, and skyrocketing pharmaceutical costs are forcing 
families to open GoFundMe pages to keep their kids alive.
  Just over a decade after hitting rock bottom, our economy is still 
sick for a very simple reason: We haven't correctly diagnosed the cause 
of that illness.
  We are comforted by the improvement of external symptoms, like stock

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prices and unemployment rates; meanwhile, our economy's heart is in 
dire straits. Small businesses are shuttered, factories are fleeing, 
family farms are closing, and once-prosperous American towns are barely 
scraping by.
  To blame for this chronic illness is a system that has whittled away 
protection, opportunity, justice, and dignity for the American worker.
  Our workers rise like their parents before them--early. They work 
hard to provide for their family for well into the night; they skip 
lunch breaks; they defer vacation; they trade with coworkers to take an 
overtime shift--all to care for the ones they love. And yet the jobs 
that they hold won't even allow for that.

  The whole point of a job is to earn a living and make a life, to 
contribute to something purposeful, to be able to provide for your 
loved ones in return.
  If American jobs can't meet the needs of Americans, then what is the 
point? How will the greatest economy in the world possibly endure if 
its people can't keep up.
  Mr. Speaker, I read a story a few weeks ago about a few local Home 
Depot employees who built a walker for a little boy whose parents were 
not certain that insurance would cover a proper one. And just 
yesterday, news sites blasted a story of a 9-year-old little boy in 
California who used his own allowance to pay off the lunch debts of his 
classmates.
  The goodness of those workers, of those children is incredible, and 
thank God we have people like them among us. But a moral, a just, a 
fair, an accountable, and a decent economy wouldn't call those stories 
heartwarming but heartbreaking, a damning indictment of a system that 
bars countless Americans of basic necessity, particularly in their 
moments of deepest need.
  A moral capitalism would put quality on the same page as quantity. It 
wouldn't just ask for integrity and decency from the public and private 
sectors running our economic show, it would demand it, with laws that 
work in tandem to guarantee that when our kids get sick, we can take 
care of them; when our roof falls, we can repair it; when our stomachs 
ache, we can fill them; and when we tire, we can rest.
  Mr. Speaker, that shouldn't be too much for anyone to ask.

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