[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 223 (Thursday, December 31, 2020)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1217-E1219]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        CARING FOR AMERICANS WITH SUPPLEMENTAL HELP ACT OF 2020

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                        HON. SHEILA JACKSON LEE

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                       Monday, December 28, 2020

  Ms. JACKSON LEE. Madam Speaker, as a senior member of the Committees 
on the Judiciary, on Homeland Security, and on the Budget, I rise in 
strong support of H.R. 9051, the ``Caring For Americans With 
Supplemental Help Act of 2020, or CASH Act, which provides an 
additional $1,400 in recovery payments directly to Americans, who are 
desperately struggling to get by during the twin disasters of COVID-19 
and a faltering economy.
  Because I had seen first-hand the pain and devastation caused by the 
pandemic, in March of this year, during the debate on the CARES Act, I 
advocated that the amount of direct payment should be $3,000.
  Madam Speaker, I see the disparities in the lives of so many of my 
constituents who suffer disproportionately from medical conditions that 
make COVID-19 deadly.
  They work low wage or no wage jobs to make ends meet, and they have 
no health insurance and rely on community health centers or pubic 
health services for routine care.
  I call them friends and neighbors because they are that to me.
  I am pleased to have this opportunity to vote in favor of this 
legislation that will provide them with the help they need to survive 
and recover from COVID-19.
  No one is benefiting from the COVID-19 economy.
  The U.S. poverty rate has grown at a historic rate over the past five 
months, with 7.8 million Americans falling into poverty after the 
expanded $600 a week in unemployment assistance expired at the end of 
July.
  This represents the greatest increase since the government began 
tracking poverty sixty years ago.
  In the city of Houston, nine key service sectors, accounting for 70 
percent of all jobs, hemorrhaged more 1,343,600 jobs, which to average 
folks is another way of saying that more than 1.34 million persons lost 
their livelihoods.
  Houston workers lost jobs in the following areas: Healthcare: 
391,000; Retail: 303,600; Food services: 267,000; Finance: 166,000; 
Private Education: 63,400; Arts and Entertainment: 37,400; 
Accommodations: 28,700; Air Transportation: 20,200; Other Services: 
115,800.
  In addition to these positions, jobs were also lost in other areas, 
the largest of which was the construction industry, which shut down 
30,700 jobs.
  Professional and business services followed, with 25,300 jobs lost, 
although 13,900 were in temporary and provisional jobs in employment 
services; upstream oil lost 12,300 in March/April; and non-oil 
manufacturing lost 7,700 jobs.
  Americans out of work due to COVID-19 have generated 86 million 
jobless claims, with new claims being filed in recent weeks topping 
800,000.
  Millions of Americans who lost their jobs during the pandemic have 
fallen thousands of dollars behind on rent and utility bills, a clear 
warning sign that people are running out of money for basic needs.
  If this is not enough evidence of what is happening just look at the 
miles of vehicles lined up outside of food distribution centers for 
assistance, we see nightly on our television screens and in our 
communities.

[[Page E1218]]

  Moody's Analytics warned in November 2020 that 9 million renters said 
they were behind on rent, according to a Census Bureau survey.
  The Bureau of the Census reports that twenty-one percent of all 
renters are behind on their rent, of which twenty-nine percent are 
African American families and seventeen percent are Hispanic 
households.
  According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia's analysis of 
persons who were employed prior to the pandemic, 1.3 million of these 
households are now, on average of $5,400 in debt on rent and utilities, 
after the family breadwinners lost their jobs.
  The new COVID-19 relief legislation passed last week by Congress and 
reluctantly but finally signed by the President Trump restores 
unemployment assistance, but cuts that assistance from $600 a week to 
$300 a week without consideration of the facts on the ground, which are 
that millions of Americans remain out of work due to COVID-19 public 
health policy, and have been without sufficient income since August 1, 
2020.
  Today, we have twenty million Americans who are receiving some kind 
of unemployment aid, and about 12 million of the unemployed stopped 
receiving their benefits.
  The nation is on the cusp of a recession that is in danger of 
becoming a double dip event that would plummet the economy into a 
precarious economic state that will take much more than a $2000 payment 
to each individual to overcome.
  These are the reasons why I will vote for the CASH Act--it increases 
direct payments to individuals from $600 to $2000, which will be of 
help to families struggling with the economic impacts of COVID-19.
  COVID-19 is not waning or wearying as it continues its deadly work, 
and there are new reports indicating there is a new strain that is 
seventy percent more contagious.
  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that as 
of December 23, 2020, 18.17 million cases of COVID-19, resulting in 
321,734 deaths, had been reported in the United States.
  The new year will mark a terrible milestone for the United States--
the last time we witnessed death on this scale in our nation was during 
the 1918 Flu Pandemic, which recorded a total of 675,000 deaths in the 
United States.
  What the costs will be to our nation for the over 320,000 deaths have 
yet to be fully calculated.
  It is a tragedy that too many households who have lost a member to 
COVID-19 are struggling to accept these deaths, but it is also the 
friends, co-workers, business owners, professionals, students, 
teachers, wives, husbands, brothers, sisters, aunts, cousins, and 
grandparents who also are feeling these losses because someone that 
mattered to them is no longer here.
  Each of these lives impacted dozens of other lives, too many of whom 
were not allowed to be present with them during their final moments on 
this earth, but whose suffering is too often overlooked because we 
unduly preoccupy ourselves with only the immediate family.
  My deepest concerns are for the medical professionals who are seeing 
more death day after day than our soldiers saw on distant battlefields 
in foreign lands defending our nation going back to World War II.
  Our medical professionals and health care deliverers pride themselves 
on robbing death by keeping the very ill or critically injured alive 
but they are themselves wounded by each loss in ways that we cannot 
understand.
  Too many of our medical professionals are losing the battle with 
death as they attempt to treat extremely ill COVID-19 patients because 
they do not have access to sufficient amounts of essential therapies or 
the special trained staff to administer interventions that could save 
lives .
  Medical people also have not had the universal support of political 
leaders who are willing to promote wearing of face coverings, social 
distancing and handwashing to limit the spread of severe acute 
respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) the infection that 
causes COVID-19.
  There is a hidden cost to this foolhardy disregard for the 
seriousness of this moment in American history.
  My concerns are for the economic impact and the long-term damage to 
our nation's health care delivery system .
  Today we will focus on the economic injuries caused by COVID-19, and 
I look forward to working with my colleagues on addressing the systemic 
long-term damage caused by unequal access to the health care.
  Small businesses and working men and women of this great nation, who 
are the life blood of the economy and who pay the lion's share of 
federal taxes now find themselves, through no fault of their own, in 
need of assistance in the form of direct payments that will provide a 
bridge to them and to the economy for the next few weeks so that the 
next Administration will have time to assess and craft the relief 
package needed to get the nation over the last hurdles of the 
pandemic's economic impact.
  Since the 1980s, corporate income tax revenues have become a smaller 
share of overall tax revenues paid to the federal government.
  In 2017, President Trump signed into law P.L. 115-97, the tax scam 
which substantially and permanently changed the U.S. federal tax system 
for the wealthy and large corporations.
  Most of the changes to the individual income tax system in P.L. 115-
97 for those less well-off are temporary and scheduled to expire at the 
end of 2025, after which the rates for these individuals will return to 
what it was for 2017.
  In contrast, many of the tax cuts made in P.L. 115-97 affecting 
corporations and wealthy individuals are permanent, in other words they 
will keep the drastic cut in corporate taxes.
  The facts are that working individuals and small businesses support 
the U.S. government's federal tax system.
  The largest source of revenue to the federal government is the 
individual income tax, which in 2019, generated $1.7 trillion.
  The second-largest source of federal revenue is payroll taxes, which 
is collected by employers and is often paid quarterly.
  In FY2019, payroll taxes generated $1.2 trillion in federal revenue 
or thirty-six percent of the total revenue for the federal government.
  The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that federal income 
tax revenues in FY2020 will be $1.5 trillion, and payroll tax revenue 
will be $1.3 trillion.
  In FY2020, it is projected that about 47 percent of federal revenue 
will be generated through the individual income tax.
  In FY2019, corporate tax receipts were only $230 billion, or nearly 7 
percent of federal revenue, and in FY2020, corporate tax receipts are 
expected to be $151 billion, less than 5 percent of federal revenue.
  Receipts from other sources are also projected to increase in FY2020 
to $298 billion, from $271 billion in FY2019, which will result in 9 
percent of total revenue up by from the 8 percent the previous year.
  Obligated social insurance federal program payments for Social 
Security and Medicare are paid through payroll taxes and are expected 
to generate an additional estimated $1.3 trillion, or 35 percent of 
revenue in FY2020.
  The $2,000 in payments to individuals will be used to pay bills, 
rent, utilities, car notes, or purchase needed items like food and 
winter coats, and other essentials, which will translate into income 
for small businesses.
  All of this spending will generate local, state and federal tax 
revenue as it fuels consumption and the provision of services that are 
still available through the economy.
  Overtime basic Keynesian economics has proven itself to be the most 
durable and reliable economic model and has repeatedly proven that 
money turning over in the economy makes more money.
  There is a reason why it is important to stimulate the economy during 
a deadly unchecked pandemic, chief of which is to stem the depressing 
of the national and global economies which exacerbate negative economic 
conditions.
  We know the end of the COVID-19 pandemic's grip on the economy is in 
sight with the development and distribution of a vaccine, but we are 
not there yet; we must help the American people, and our small 
businesses, endure until we reach seventy percent inoculation in the 
general population.
  The use of direct payments is the Keynesian solution that is winning 
the day across the globe for countries able to support their economies 
in this way.
  Payments to individuals allows them and not the government to make 
spending decisions on their household's essential life sustaining needs 
such as paying for housing, utility bills, food, and clothing which 
allows money they spend to circulate through the economy like blood 
throughout the body.
  The American people can and should be trusted to make decisions 
regarding how they spend the funds provided by the stimulus because 
they best know the needs of their own families.
  Consumers will spend money with small businesses who should have the 
freedom to pay their workers and suppliers, workers and suppliers will 
be free to buy goods from other businesses, and those businesses will 
pay their workers and suppliers, and so on.
  In this way, the $2,000 in spending by each individual is actually 
spent more than once as the effect of each dollar spent creates more 
spending.
  This is called the ``money multiplier'' effect: an initial increase 
in spending, cycles repeatedly through the economy and has a larger 
impact than the initial $2,000 amount spent.
  The economy needs to be inoculated against recession, which is what 
the $2,000 in individual payments will do, and it will need a booster 
in about thirty to sixty days.
  This is why the decision to provide a $600 a week addition to 
unemployment benefits is a

[[Page E1219]]

good idea for those in labor markets with high costs of living like New 
York and Washington, D.C., but may have far out stripped the going rate 
for labor where the cost of living is much lower and $600 a week 
exceeded the going rate for labor.
  The Congress may need to revisit models for future programs of this 
type and provide a formula that is based on the actual spending power 
of funds provided so the ability of meeting the cost-of-living needs 
can be more in line with the intent of the funds provided, while 
ensuring that the spending power is equal.
  This may mean that depending on where someone lived at the time a 
disaster of this nature was declared the amount, they would qualify for 
receiving may be different depending on the spending power of a dollar 
where they live.
  If the overwhelming majority of those who will receive the $2,000 
payment were planning to deposit the funds in a bank account rather 
than spend it, then this bill would not be needed, but we know this is 
not the case.
  For all these reasons, I urge all Members to join me in voting for 
H.R. 9051, the CASH Act, to increase individual payments from $600 to 
$2,000.

                          ____________________