[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 4 (Wednesday, January 8, 2020)]
[House]
[Pages H20-H21]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         TEPID ECONOMIC RESULTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, as we begin the new year and the new decade, 
economic results feel tepid for working communities across our country.
  The President touts and newspapers parrot his misguided belief that 
America is experiencing the greatest economy for everyone.
  No, not for everyone.
  Sure, many indicators prioritized by Wall Street and Washington 
support and reflect this statement, but speak with millions and 
millions of lower and middle-class workers, Americans across our 
country--especially in the heartland, in the Midwest--and you will find 
they feel quite differently. They are falling deeper into debt.
  Despite President Trump's exaggeration, a soaring stock market is not 
indicative of a strong economy for all. Most Americans do not have a 
significant stake in the stock market. They work paycheck to paycheck. 
They have to pay higher prices for everything.
  According to fact-checkers at PolitiFact, Americans of modest incomes 
are significantly less invested in the stock market than wealthier 
Americans.
  No surprise there.
  Other groups, including minorities and those without a college 
education, also lag in stock ownership, meaning that the stock market 
rally President Trump and the Republican Party so loudly brag about 
misses--bypasses--the large majority of Americans.
  While unemployment numbers are relatively low, tens of millions of 
Americans continue to live and work below the poverty line. If you take 
look at their paycheck, many of them have to get food support through 
the government because they can't make ends meet--working people who 
are poor, millions of them.
  Millions more are unemployed and working multiple jobs just to make 
ends meet for themselves and their families. Others have given up on 
finding work altogether, especially in towns and cities, where good 
work has simply disappeared and not been replaced. These families 
simply exist.
  Since NAFTA's passage in the early 1990s, communities across 
America--especially in our industrial heartland--have endured the 
outsourcing of living-wage, middle-class jobs to Mexico and other 
penny-wage environments where workers are exploited to produce goods 
for pennies on the dollar.
  Because of disastrous trade policies such as NAFTA and lack of 
enforcement by governments like Mexico, our young people have grown up 
in the shadows of shuttered factories they have never seen in 
operation. For too many, the pain of NAFTA's and other trade 
agreements' broken promises remain raw and real.
  So, while job creation numbers may be up in one place, one must 
wonder: What sort of jobs are being created and how many are good jobs? 
The answer is: not nearly enough.
  Many of the lost living-wage manufacturing jobs weren't only 
outsourced to Mexico; others shifted to China.
  What has the President's unpredictable posturing with China has given 
our heartland? Desperate farmers and even more pain for manufacturing 
workers.
  The 18-month-long trade war with China has undermined business 
investment. It pushed the manufacturing industry into a recession and 
cost an additional $42 billion for American consumers who have paid 
more for needed goods, according to a new Federal Reserve Bank study.
  This year brings small relief for the 7 million lucky Americans who 
live in cities and States that will see wage increases; but this is no 
thanks to the President or the Senate Republicans who still refuse to 
move the Raise the Wage Act the House passed last year for the millions 
of workers who live at the lowest level of paid wages in our country.
  Millions of American workers remain left behind by the $7.25 minimum 
wage, or $15,080 for a full year's work, because the Federal minimum 
wage remains stagnant. American workers haven't had the benefit of a 
Federal minimum wage increase in over a decade, yet the prices of 
everything have gone up--right?--medicine, housing, food, cars, local 
taxes.
  There isn't a single congressional district in our Nation where a 
full-time minimum wage worker can afford a two-bedroom apartment. How 
about that?
  Factor in the rising cost of healthcare and education, and more 
American families continue to live at the breaking point and are going 
deeper into debt. This President continues to push for the repeal of 
the Affordable Care Act, despite no plan to replace it.
  Here is another example of President Trump and Senate Majority Leader 
Mitch McConnell's failure to act to support workers: Our House passed 
the Butch Lewis Act--with bipartisan support, it passed this Chamber--
to address the worsening multiemployer pension crisis.

  Currently, there are about 1,400 multiemployer plans covering nearly 
10 million people across our country who are retired--60,000 in Ohio 
alone. These plans are certain to run out of money to support those 
retirees. It is estimated that 1.3 million retirees and workers are set 
to lose these benefits.
  Mr. Speaker, the Senate should pass the bill that we passed here for 
these retirees; and we all, as a country, should work to improve the 
economic outlook for millions and millions of working Americans who, 
frankly, are left out of this economy.

[[Page H21]]

  


             IMPROVING QUALITY OF LIFE FOR YOUNG JUVENILES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, let me, first of all, say how grateful 
we are that, as the assessment has been made, none of our brave 
soldiers lost their lives last night in the Iranian attack and that it 
is crucial this week that this Congress assert its authority, its 
constitutional authority as it relates to any declaration of war, which 
is our authority under Article I, in spite of the unfortunate 
determination made by this administration putting American soldiers in 
danger, diplomats making their families have great concern, and, 
certainly, jeopardizing the security of the American people.
  Our soldiers, most of all, we respect and honor, but we must do our 
job. As we do that, it is important, as well, to recognize that our 
work must go on.
  Over the years, I have worked on any number of responses to improving 
the quality of life of our young juveniles. On any given day, over 
48,000 youth in the United States are confined in facilities away from 
home as a result of the juvenile justice or criminal justice 
involvement. In many instances, they are not assigned a particular 
sentence and can stay incarcerated or detained until they are 21. Most 
are held in restrictive correctional-style facilities, and thousands 
are held without even having had a trial--no sentence.
  Mr. Speaker, 92 percent of youth in juvenile facilities are in locked 
facilities. According to a 2018 report, 52 percent of long-term secure 
facilities, 44 percent of detention facilities, and 43 percent of 
reception and diagnostic centers also use mechanical restraints like 
handcuffs, leg cuffs, restraining chairs, straightjackets, with 40 
percent of long-term secure facilities and detention centers isolating 
youth in locked rooms for 4 hours or more.
  In the State of Texas, we have had a long history with our foster 
care system and our detention system where young people--juveniles--
have been abused, sexually assaulted, and other indignities, altering 
them for life.
  According to selected findings from the Juvenile Residential Facility 
Census released in December 2018, 46 percent of all facilities reported 
locking youths in their rooms. Among public facilities, 81 percent of 
local facilities and 68 percent of State facilities reported locking 
young people in sleeping rooms.
  These young people are going to be the future leaders or the future 
citizens, residents of this Nation. They will have to take their 
rightful place.
  This is wrong, and so I intend to introduce an omnibus reformation of 
the juvenile justice system to reform it so that we can respond 
appropriately to these 48,000-plus and really restore their lives.
  I have already introduced legislation to ban solitary confinement, 
and locking juveniles in their rooms, lockdown, is equal to that.
  We don't know the altering factor in the development of these young 
people. Studies have shown brains are not fully developed until the age 
of 25, and yet we put on the brains of these young people under 25 in 
the juvenile justice system the kinds of stimuli that would alter their 
life forever.
  We also want to address the question of juveniles having a future, to 
ban the box of having to admit being arrested or in a juvenile 
detention center.
  Remember, most of these juveniles have not had trials. They have not 
had due process. They don't have a sentence. They can remain in that 
facility until, in many instances, the age of 21 if they came in at 12 
or 14 a for nonviolent offense.
  Then, of course, we need to find alternative places for juveniles to 
be able to have wraparound services that really restore them to being a 
full, young person who can enjoy life and get an education.
  Many times when juveniles are in juvenile detention centers, their 
educations are spotty, at best. They don't return to the school system, 
and they are isolated and prone to dropping out.
  Yes, families need help. Families wind up in the juvenile justice 
system or the family court system out of desperation because we don't 
have help for those families.
  We need wraparound services, support services, that will encourage 
and enhance family unity and the ability to address the needs of this 
young person.
  Maybe it is volatility, immaturity. Maybe it is a response to home 
life. Maybe it is because there is drug abuse in the family or criminal 
activity in the family, or maybe there is poverty in the family or one 
parent struggling to raise a number of children.
  We cannot abandon 48,000 children every year in this Nation, Mr. 
Speaker, and so I will introduce the omnibus reform bill of the 
juvenile justice system to ensure that we save and build the lives of 
our young people.

                          ____________________