[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 54 (Tuesday, March 25, 2025)]
[House]
[Pages H1260-H1267]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
ECONOMIC POPULISM
(Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2025, Mr. Deluzio
of Pennsylvania was recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the
minority leader.)
GENERAL LEAVE
Mr. DELUZIO. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members
have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include
extraneous material on the subject of my Special Order.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentleman from Pennsylvania?
There was no objection.
Mr. DELUZIO. Mr. Speaker, I am
=========================== NOTE ===========================
On page H1260, March 25, 2025, in the third column, the
following appeared: minutes as the designee of the minority
leader.) Mr. DELUZIO. Mr. Speaker, I am
The online version has been corrected to read: minutes as the
designee of the minority leader.) GENERAL LEAVE Mr. DELUZIO. Mr.
Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5
legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include
extraneous material on the subject of my Special Order. The
SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentleman from Pennsylvania? There was no objection. Mr. DELUZIO.
Mr. Speaker, I am
========================= END NOTE =========================
honored and proud to represent the people of Pennsylvania, good,
hardworking, patriotic people who are pretty frustrated. We are not
living in normal times.This should not be a normal run-of-the-mill
Special Order hour. What I
[[Page H1261]]
will convene today, my colleagues on the Democratic side of the aisle,
who you will hear from, these are people who know how to fight for
their people. They know how to win. They are not shy or afraid about a
righteous fight. They are Members of Congress in this Chamber from
across the country, across the idealogical spectrum, and may not agree
on everything. Certainly we don't, but we agree that too many in our
party have lost their way, and it is time to wake the heck up.
Now, don't misunderstand me. This administration and those helping
them are wreaking havoc on so much of our country. We see Social
Security, and Social Security Administration workers' abilities to
deliver the hard-earned benefits that seniors have worked their whole
lives for, under attack. We see VA employees on the chopping block,
fired, contracts scrutinized and then cut. We see the promise of this
country to care for veterans betrayed. We see cancer research,
lifesaving medicine trials, and clinical trials interfered with,
threatened, with funding on the chopping block.
The American people are mad. They should be mad. This
administration's approval ratings are in free fall. The American people
are rejecting much of what we see, but too many of our side of the
aisle aren't giving a strong enough alternative, a bold enough
alternative.
While the President's numbers may be in free fall, we also see
favorability of the Democratic Party at record lows, the lowest CNN has
seen since 1992. There has not been a strong enough vision from
Democrats on this side of the aisle when we have something to say.
Our party needs to change, and economic populism and patriotism
should be where we go, standing up for people to revive the American
Dream.
Democrats should be fighting hard against corruption and the giant
corporations who fund so much of that. We should be fighting against
anyone else, any force, any company, you name it, that has made life a
rip-off for our people.
Folks are mad and they should be. It is justifiable anger. The
American Dream is gone for too many people, people who work hard, who
play by the rules, and yet can't catch a break, who see life as too
expensive.
People are right. The American people understand our economy has been
rigged against so many. I say the American Dream hasn't slipped away;
it has been ripped away.
I am 40 years old. My generation and those younger than me, the first
generation in a long time, since World War II, have grown up and don't
expect to be better off than their parents.
That is what the American Dream is all about. It didn't just happen
on accident. There are villains here. Corporate power and corruption
have been eating away at the American Dream.
Hedge funds, speculators buying up houses, jacking up the cost of
that housing are becoming lousy landlords, pricing people out of what
could be a nest egg for their retirement, their home.
Monopolies are jacking up prices and killing small businesses every
chance they can get. Pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, are raising
the cost of medicine and killing local pharmacies. The list goes on and
on.
This President and others on the other side have capitalized on this
anger and used it to get power, now lift up their efforts to let robber
barons plunder this government, to attack the fundamental bargain with
our seniors and veterans and so many others.
Democrats need to wake up and stop defending elites and the
establishment. They have failed the American people. Across both
parties, those who have been in power have failed at the fundamental
task of protecting and strengthening the American Dream.
Today, a group of us are coming forward, coming to the floor,
proposing a new way ahead for Democrats, a new way ahead for this
country. We need a fighting spirit of economic populism. It is
patriotic. We need this patriotism to be at the heart of this fight and
our fight against corruption and anyone else that is in the way of our
people and who has wrecked the American Dream.
What does this mean, this economic populism? In a sentence, it is
fighting for a life that people can afford. It is bringing corporate
power to heel. It is taking on the corruption that pervades this town,
Washington.
The economy and what life costs people should never be an
afterthought for anyone who serves in a chamber like this. It ought to
put the people who work their butts off front and center of what our
government does and who we think about every day and every action. It
is fighting for a life that people can afford, and it is bringing
corporate power to heel.
As we know, out-of-control corporate power leads to higher costs, it
leads to worse safety, and it leads to lower quality. We see it play
out across so much of our economy. It has weakened our defense
industrial base, and, thus, it has weakened our military. It has hurt
small businesses across Main Streets all over our districts. It has
crushed workers. It has led to rising costs that we all live with. We
should take on corruption no matter where we see it, no matter the
party.
The last thing that we need is a bunch of wimps looking for a win-win
every time. Not every fight is going to have a win-win.
There are villains in this story, in this society of ours, who have
made life miserable for so many. You can call them robber barons or you
can call them oligarchs, whatever you want. We have got to be willing
to take them on.
This embrace of economic populism might sound and look different
depending on where in the country or who the messenger is. For me, I am
a Navy guy. I served at sea. I served in Iraq. To me, this is a
patriotic and righteous fight.
I am from western Pennsylvania, the rust belt, a place where we saw
the rich and powerful plot to strip us for parts. We are the people who
made the steel that built America. We have always answered this
country's call. Those efforts to strip us, to wreck our way of life,
are no more.
You will hear from Members across the idealogical spectrum and
Democratic side today who are united in this: The era of a spineless
Democratic Party must end. Now is not the time for wimpy concessions
and then call it a win-win, not when the American Dream has been killed
for so many people in America.
Now is not the time to shy from a fight against corruption. Our
people see it, and they know that our government has allowed the
economy to be rigged against people.
Those villains, that corruption, want you to think the problem is
some woke college kid or some trans kid who wants their liberty, wants
their freedom. That is not why your prescription drugs are expensive.
It is not why housing is expensive. It is that corruption and those
villains who want you thinking that when they are the ones who made
life terrible for people.
We know the real root of the problem is corruption and corporate
power run amok. Too many have been pathetic at talking about corruption
and showing that they are up for this fight.
Some on this side of the aisle have been complicit in helping
corporations plunder this country. That should end. We have to be
willing to go to the mat for an economy that works for people who work
hard, who play by the rules, and who want the American Dream back.
The roots of this party, that I am proud to be a part of, go back to
the New Deal. It is a working-class party at its core. Allowing
somebody else to fake economic populism and win power is real and
dangerous, and we are living through the cost of it right now.
Again, the people you will hear from today work hard and fight hard
for their districts. They get this. They are not faking populism, and
they know how to win in places where you have got to win. I am proud to
start.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms.
DeLauro).
Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, let me just say a thank-you to my colleague
from Pennsylvania, who at his roots understands the plight of working
Americans, middle-class families, working families, and the vulnerable
and stands tall on their behalf and wants to utilize the good offices
of this institution to make sure that it does what the Founding Fathers
intended it to do, and that is to provide opportunity for people in
this Nation. That is what my friend, Congressman Deluzio, is all about.
One thing about this current administration is clear. They are doing
nothing about the cost-of-living crisis in
[[Page H1262]]
this Nation, which is getting worse. President Trump said he will fight
for the working class, but instead put Elon Musk and billionaires in
charge of our government.
I applaud, again, Representative Deluzio for hosting this Special
Order about economic patriotism, taking on corporate power, as well as
for all his work supporting the right to organize, creating well-paying
union jobs here in America. High prices are devastating the middle
class, working class, and the vulnerable.
{time} 1615
Since my very first day in the Congress, I have been focused on
lowering the cost of living for Americans who struggle to get by, and I
am appalled by how many families are struggling to afford basics while
corporations get bigger, richer, and more influential over our lives
than ever.
President Trump, as I said, campaigned on lowering prices and pledged
to bring food costs down on day one.
Instead, the opposite has happened. Food costs are rising. His own
USDA, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, recently reported egg prices
could rise 41 percent over the next year. Since taking office, he has
done nothing to help families struggling at the grocery checkout.
As a result, big corporations are consolidating, creating monopolies,
and making unbelievable profits. Cal-Maine, which controls about one-
fifth of the domestic egg market and is the largest producer and
distributor of shell eggs in the United States, has reported that its
profits through the second quarter of the 2025 fiscal year are 342
percent higher than the same period last year.
Instead of doing anything to address this cost-of-living crisis, the
President has stacked his Cabinet with billionaire after billionaire,
empowering them to slash the programs American families rely on with no
oversight and no disclosures about the conflicts of interest. Elon
Musk, the unchecked billionaire leading the efforts to end Social
Security as we know it, owes the success of his company to billions in
Federal contracts and huge factories in China. Yet he refuses to answer
any questions from Congress about his investments.
These issues concern every American. Democrats are standing up for
them. We are standing up against the blatant corruption of this
administration, the giant corporations padding their profits at the
expense of the middle class and the working class. The Republican focus
is to rip away programs like Social Security and Medicaid.
The fact is that American families today are living paycheck to
paycheck. Some of the biggest corporations in the country are taking
advantage of it, all while Americans are paying more for less due to
corporate price gouging and shrinkflation while the CEOs of the
Nation's largest grocery stores and supermarkets rake in record
salaries.
I just came from a congressional hearing of our Democratic Steering
and Policy Committee on food prices and food stamps. I listened to the
stories of working Americans with families who are hard-pressed and
were frightened to death of a $230 billion cut to the Food Stamp
program which would end that lifeline for themselves and for their
families.
Last year, the FTC identified that large grocery store chains
exploited the product shortages due to the pandemic by raising prices
significantly more than needed to cover their added costs, and they
have continued to increase their profits.
What is the Republicans' response to this cost-of-living crisis
driven by corporate consolidation and power?
Why, it is to give out even more corporate tax cuts, of course, $4.5
trillion worth of them to be precise, paid for by slashing Medicaid
which serves nearly one-third of all Americans.
Enough is enough. It is time for this Congress and it is time for
Democrats to act to rein in this habitual price gouging from massive,
massive corporations, rein in the unchecked billionaires enriching
themselves while Americans suffer, and rein in Republican spending
while targeting Social Security and Medicaid.
If the Trump administration continues to prioritize tax cuts for the
rich over price cuts for the middle class, then I will continue to
stand with my colleagues as we call out their broken promises and fight
back against their disastrous policies.
There is another path forward, one which Democrats and Republicans
could take together. It is a path of economic patriotism where we take
on corporate monopolies and the self-serving billionaires who are
squeezing the middle class, the working class, and the vulnerable. It
is a path that listens to the American people and protects programs
like Medicaid and Social Security while lowering the cost of living
through proven policies like the expanded child tax credit which lifted
one-half of our children in this Nation out of poverty, lowered the
hunger rate, and provided a path forward in economic security for
millions of families in the United States.
That is the path that I am taking. It is the path that I know my
colleague, Congressman Deluzio, is taking, and I hope that my
colleagues on both sides of the aisle will join us in this effort.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for organizing this effort.
Mr. DELUZIO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Connecticut
not just for joining us today but for her long commitment to dignity in
work, for fighting for people, for better trade policy, and so much
else.
I am honored now to welcome in a colleague from California who has
strong Pennsylvania roots.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Khanna).
Mr. KHANNA. Mr. Speaker, I thank Representative Deluzio for his
leadership and for convening this group and focusing us on an agenda of
economic patriotism.
The reality is in this country, and as you know in western
Pennsylvania, we have watched industry after industry leave the country
for China and Mexico.
Western Pennsylvania won us our freedom. They produced more steel
than Japan and Germany combined in World War II, and yet today we have
got 4 percent of the world's steel. China has 50 percent of the world's
steel.
Aluminum left, paper left, and textiles left. Town after town in this
country was hollowed out since 2000, and 90,000 factories have closed.
That doesn't just mean jobs leaving. We have all heard the stories of
people whose families were destroyed. The reality is that these
factories left and people faced suicide. One of the folks in Warren,
Ohio, told me 13 people, because of these plant closures, took their
lives or faced severe depression. Our country has watched for 50 years.
Rosa DeLauro didn't watch. She was speaking out against these bad trade
deals.
However, for most of American history in the last 50 years we have
watched the hollowing out of these communities, and we watched wealth
pile up in districts like mine in Silicon Valley and New York. My
district has $14 trillion of wealth. The income inequality in this
country soared.
So one of the things this group wants to do is to renew economic
revitalization in advanced manufacturing in these communities and to
have a real plan for new semiconductors, new robotics, advanced steel,
advanced automobiles, and have new factories and new industry come up.
Now, the President and JD Vance understood that the country was
hollowed out, and they understood that people were angry, legitimately
angry, and they understood that the ship of America had a huge hole in
it.
The problem is they get here and their plan to solve this is to hand
the reins to a number of headstrong billionaires who are libertarians.
I have known these folks. I have known Elon for 15 years. I don't know
what Elon knows about Johnstown, Pennsylvania, or Farrell,
Pennsylvania, or Youngstown. He is going to go out and make deals with
the UAE, and they are supercharging the private-sector deals. The
problem is that is not going to build the communities that have been
hollowed out.
We know what builds communities from Hamilton to Lincoln to FDR. We
need a government that says: If you make it in America then we will buy
it. That is what we did, by the way, for SpaceX. That is what we did
for Intel. That is what we did in World War II. We need a government
that says: If you skill the factories here we will help finance it. We
need a government that
[[Page H1263]]
says that we are going to work to invest in the plumbers, electricians,
and machinists so we can actually have a workforce that builds the new
factories we need.
We need to say that we are going to have housing in this area to have
economic revitalization. We need a national economic development
strategy, and Senator Rubio and I actually coauthored a bill on that.
That is not what the White House is doing. Instead, they think that
just having these billionaires cut deals with the private sector is
going to help the working or middle class. It will help my district. We
will make more money with AI. It will help more of the financial and
technology elites.
I will tell you what it is not going to do, Mr. Speaker. It is not
going to rebuild the communities that have had a raw deal in America.
What economic patriots believe, even though we have different
ideologies, is that it is ordinary Americans who built this country and
it is working-class Americans and middle-class Americans who built the
country. The genius lies not with billionaires and technologists. It
lies with hardworking Americans. We are going to build this country
back from the bottom up. That is our belief.
I appreciate Representative Deluzio's leadership on this.
My friend, Fareed Zakaria, had this whole spiel on how manufacturing
doesn't matter. I like Fareed usually, but on this he is dead wrong. He
cited Japan and Germany as countries that did manufacturing and missed
the tech boom. So he said: Well, we should do the tech boom and the
finance boom, and we don't need to do manufacturing.
He did cite one country that did a bit of both, China. China did a
lot of manufacturing. They took all of our manufacturing. America needs
to understand if we are going to innovate, then yes, we should innovate
on technology, and yes, we should innovate on finance. However, we also
have to have advanced manufacturing in this country to remain the world
superpower.
People say comparative advantage, but comparative advantage is you
get to choose what your comparative advantage is in, Mr. Speaker. If
China had just done comparative advantage, then they would have been
growing rice for 30 years. That was their comparative advantage. They
said: No, we want to build things.
It is time America realizes we want to be building things and
realizes the value of advanced manufacturing. Representative Deluzio
certainly gets it. He is one of the brightest voices in Congress.
I also want to recommend his op-ed. It is the best piece written on
trade policy in the last 30 years of any that I have read.
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's leadership, and I
appreciate his convening this.
Mr. DELUZIO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California who
understands deeply what we need to do on this economic patriotism. The
gentleman understands what it means for manufacturing and what it means
for communities who saw these jobs not leave but be taken away. They
were taken away by this ideology on Wall Street and the politicians
around here who helped them, which says that all that matters is
chasing the cheapest labor, the weakest labor rules, and nonexistent
environmental rules. They made them citizens of nowhere. They didn't
care about this country or the communities and the people who worked
hard to make them rich, whether they made the steel or anything else as
we did in America.
It is a stain on our story in this country, and, frankly, it is not
too patriotic.
Our side of the aisle and our party thinks we ought to be dominating
the fight to supercharge American manufacturing and jobs, not peddling
this crap of telling industrial workers to go learn to code or
something. That is nonsense. Let's invest in the jobs here to make
stuff. Let's have a more muscular trade and industrial policy. That is
how we get back on the road of economic freedom for people.
Members on both sides of the aisle here, both parties, have long
embraced this wrong-for-decades neoliberal disaster of unlimited and
free trade. I think it has been a failure of government across the
board. We should push back on these lousy trade deals. We trade. We
trade with our friends, and we trade with others, but we do it on fair
terms.
What is not fair is seeing American workers undercut by governments
like Communist China that use the power of the state to dump
artificially cheap products on our markets. Let's circumvent our trade
rules that let the workers be exploited. We have got to beef up trade
enforcement on Communist China and others like them. There have to be
meaningful consequences. Let's have tariffs be part of that but let's
be smart and strategic.
What we have seen this administration do has been chaotic and
reckless. Businesses cannot plan. There is no certainty day to day of
what the trade environment will be, and it is absent from any full
strategic industrial policy that is the heart of economic patriotism.
To make more stuff in America, Mr. Speaker, you have to have a full
policy that is centered by workers, industrial policy.
One of my colleagues who gets this idea of economic patriotism deeply
is Mr. Ryan. He is a West Point graduate. I won't hold that against him
too much. He deeply understands the fight that we need and understands
that our core of economic patriotism is what we are all about.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Ryan).
Mr. RYAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, Mr. Deluzio, for his
leadership on this and for bringing this group together to remind us
that as Americans who love this country, we need that strong, muscular
economic patriotism to serve my constituents in my district, which is
the Hudson Valley of New York State, and across this country.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today because I love this country. I believe it
is the greatest country in the history of the world. I believe it is
worth fighting for, and we must fight for it now.
I also believe when you see something that isn't working, Mr.
Speaker, you stand up and you do everything in your power to fix it.
Our country and our party are at a crossroads. It is up to us, the
people who have the incredible honor to stand on the floor of the
United States House of Representatives in this Chamber, to forge the
path forward.
{time} 1630
Unlike some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, I won't
try to deny the outcome of the election in November 2024.
Too many Americans felt Democrats had become the party of the elites
and had stopped meeting people where they are, not understanding the
pain that they are feeling in their lives and their families at their
kitchen tables when they get up go to work and come home exhausted at
night.
Democrats need to learn from their mistakes. This moment is not
ideological. It is about who fights for the people and who fights for
the elites.
I believe first and foremost that if you are using labels like
``moderate'' or ``progressive,'' you are missing the entire point. I
gave former President Biden hell for failing to secure our border. I
think that is a nonpartisan issue. That doesn't make me a moderate. I
campaigned with my colleague AOC against big corporations screwing over
my constituents and polluting the Hudson River in my district. That
doesn't make me a progressive.
If the last election made anything clear, it is high costs and
economic pain are first and foremost on our constituents' minds.
Donald Trump promised to help with that. He has not unequivocally. In
fact, everything he has done in office has helped his billionaire
cronies, who, by the way, gave hundreds of millions of dollars to his
campaign at the expense of families like the ones that I represent in
my district across the Hudson Valley.
Trump's failure to bring down costs is handing Democrats the answer
on a silver platter. Our response cannot stop at Donald Trump who works
for the wealthy though, which is true. It must go further.
Donald Trump works for the wealthy, and Democrats work and fight for
you, the working class and middle class of this country, the economic
patriots of the United States of America.
Just over a year ago, I stood on this very floor and ultimately
successfully
[[Page H1264]]
called on the CEO of a local utility monopoly in my district which had
been screwing over my constituents, robbing them blind, literally
emptying their dwindling savings accounts due to a failure of their
billing practices. I called on that CEO to resign, and he was held
accountable, and he did. That company ultimately paid $62 million back
to my constituents in the form of accountability.
Now, Optum, the healthcare company, which is a subsidiary of
UnitedHealth Group, the single largest health insurer in our country
and really one of only three companies in the United States of America
that controls the entire healthcare market has been buying up medical
practices across my district.
Just a few weeks ago, I launched a community inquiry. Thousands of my
constituents and my neighbors and friends who have been hurt by Optum
have responded detailing horrific stories of declining healthcare
quality, erroneous billing, and we are continuing to gather this
evidence, the voices of the people, the American people, and to
ultimately hold this big corporation who has been making record-
breaking profits quarter after quarter accountable.
Here is another example. For months, broadcast companies, big
telecoms in New York were in a deadlock fight over streaming rights
that left over a million New Yorkers, paying customers, staring at
blank screens trying to watch sports games to take their mind off of
all the pressures in their lives. Knicks fans and Rangers fans who paid
couldn't see games. As one of those fans, I was mad as hell that I had
paid and couldn't watch a game while a multibillion-dollar corporation
kept raking in more profits and didn't seem to care at all about their
paying customers.
Thankfully, under pressure, that blackout has ended, and we are now
demanding Optimum, the telecom, the main perpetrator of this, pay back
the customers who were harmed.
I have also introduced something called the Stop Sports Blackout Act
so if this ever happens again, there won't be a question that a company
has to pay and give customers the refunds for games they couldn't
watch.
Whether in their utility bills, their healthcare bills, or just
trying to watch a sports game, that is putting money back in people's
pockets when pressure is so high, and that matters.
In closing, there is so much power now in the voices of our
communities, but only if we, their elected Representatives, listen and
act and elevate it. That is economic patriotism.
I am proud that as a Democrat our party stands with law enforcement
and police officers, stands with small businesses, stands with
veterans, stands with hardworking families, with nurses, teachers, and
truck drivers. Democrats stand with our constituents, whether they
voted for us or not, and, yes, we stand against Donald Trump and his
harmful policies, but we stand for so, so much more.
A group of patriots unyielding and unwavering in their dedication to
fighting for the people and against anyone who would do them harm, that
is the Democratic Party that I am proud to be a part of, and that is
our path out of this moment.
Mr. DELUZIO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New York for his
fight and his stiff spine in this.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr.
Magaziner), who knows how to take on a good fight and win one.
Mr. MAGAZINER. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Deluzio for bringing us
together and helping us have an important conversation about how we
restore the mantle of fighting for working people.
I was born and raised in the most patriotic town in the country,
Bristol, Rhode Island. We have the oldest and longest running Fourth of
July celebration in the country. I learned from a young age to be
patriotic, but I also learned that patriotism is not just about parades
and parties and barbecues, it is about believing in a country where
anything is possible for those who are willing to work hard. I know
that because it is my family's story.
At the turn of the last century, my mother's family came to America
from Ireland and Poland. My grandfather fought in the Pacific then came
home and worked in a factory that made airplane parts. His wife, my
grandmother, worked in a department store. Their jobs weren't
glamorous. They weren't anything special, but they earned enough to buy
a house, to raise four kids, and to build a stable, middle-class life.
My father's side of the family had a similar story. They came from
Eastern Europe and settled in New York City. My great-grandfather got
involved in labor organizing, and my grandfather was a bookkeeper at a
company that sold fruit.
They all came of age during the New Deal era, and they voted Democrat
because they knew that the Democratic Party had the backs of working
people.
Then my parents met, and they started a small business together. They
were successful, and now here I am in the United States Congress thanks
to the hard work of the generations that came before me.
Today, in Rhode Island, I meet working people every day who remind me
of my grandparents: factory workers, house cleaners, nurses, kitchen
workers. They are grinding out a living, believing that if they work
hard and do the right thing that better days lie ahead.
The more I hear from the working people I represent, they are
frustrated with politics. They don't think either party represents
them. They are working harder than ever and are having a hard time
paying their bills. They certainly can't afford to save money.
They see billionaires on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley get richer
while they can't afford everything on their grocery list. They see Elon
Musk, the richest man in the world, gleefully cutting services for
seniors and veterans while Donald Trump pushes yet another tax cut for
the very rich.
They see a Republican Party hell-bent on taking away people's
healthcare and a Democratic Party that means well but tries to be all
things to all people and too often fails to deliver.
Our grandparents knew a Democratic Party that not only had good
intentions but that knew how to get things done. The working people I
represent don't want a handout, but they do expect a level playing
field and a fair shot, and they want a Democratic Party with a real
plan.
What does that look like? It looks like making billionaires like Elon
Musk pay their fair share so that we can give tax relief to the middle
class. It looks like passing the PRO Act so that workers in retail and
fast food can join a union and earn a ticket to the middle class like
my grandfather did in his factory. It looks like universal preschool
and affordable childcare, not just because it is good for kids, but
because it helps parents work and build their savings. It means passing
my bill to guarantee 10 days of paid vacation for all workers because
Americans work hard, and they deserve to take some time off every once
in a while and enjoy their lives without losing their jobs or their
income.
For too long the system in this town has been rigged for the wealthy
and well-connected, but that does not have to be our future. There is a
new generation rising, people who are tired of being left behind and
are ready for something better.
We don't need the Democratic Party to be all things to all people. We
just need to reclaim our position as the party for working people. That
work begins now, and I thank my colleagues who are here tonight who get
it. I thank Representative Deluzio for bringing us together. I am ready
to roll up my sleeves alongside of you.
Mr. DELUZIO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Rhode Island for
his comments. He gets it, and this is not some hypothetical problem. We
are living through the cost of losing and what it is to see the chaos
and harm that comes from it. The Democratic Party has to do better.
I am honored to introduce a colleague from the other side of the
country who has been a bulldog in the fight against monopolies and so
much else, a former chair of the Progressive Caucus.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Washington (Ms.
Jayapal).
Ms. JAYAPAL. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for leading this
conversation about how we can stand up
[[Page H1265]]
for our people and unrig the economy. That is economic patriotism.
I want to be very clear. Our economy has been rigged by giant
corporations and the wealthiest for way too long, and as these
corporations consolidate more power, the rich get richer, and everyone
else is just struggling to get by just on the basics. They need
groceries, housing, healthcare, basic medications.
Private insurance companies are now buying up your local healthcare
clinics and doctors' offices. In my home State of Washington, a handful
of healthcare systems control 90 percent of hospital beds. What does
that mean? It means that people are seeing their costs triple while the
quality of care goes down all so that Big Pharma and corporate CEOs can
pad their already overflowing pockets.
Mergers are pushing independent grocery stores out of business.
Today, just a few supermarket chains control all of the grocery stores
in the country. Albertsons and Kroger, two of the big grocery chains,
actually tried to merge, and I was so proud to lead the amicus brief
with other Members of Congress to actually oppose that merger. Thanks
to Democrats and the FTC under Lina Khan, we were able to stop that
merger because we know and we have seen that when these mergers happen,
corporations shut down stores, they fire workers, and they raise
prices.
Look at the housing market. When rents are sky high and there
literally is not a single place in the country where someone can afford
rent on minimum wage, private equity is coming in to buy up the
apartments and colluding to drive up the rents so it is even more
unaffordable to keep a roof over your head.
It wasn't always this way.
From World War II to the late 1970s, we actually rigorously enforced
our antitrust laws to ensure that mom-and-pop businesses had a chance
to compete against these megacompanies. Consumers had choices, and
workers had good jobs. You know what? Our economy actually grew.
Starting with Republican President Ronald Reagan, that antitrust
enforcement dwindled down, and large corporations took over. Today,
income and wealth inequality are higher than they have been in a
century.
Mr. Speaker, 2 months into the Trump administration, wages are still
low, and prices are still high. It does not need to be this way. In the
richest country in the world we do not suffer from scarcity, we suffer
from greed, and we have to be willing to take that on. We must take on
corporate power and corruption and make a meaningful difference in the
everyday lives of working people.
We have to lower prices so that everyone can have a roof over their
heads, put food on their table, send their kids for an education, and
retire with dignity. We have to have living wages for every worker, and
we have to tax the billionaires so that they just pay a little bit more
of their fair share like everyone else is doing.
We can and have to break up the largest corporations so they can't
keep screwing regular people. We have got to stand up and fight back
against corruption, against greed, against consolidation, and for the
American people to have that American Dream.
That is economic patriotism. That is what we are going to fight for,
and I am so grateful to my colleague from Pennsylvania for making sure
we put that out there.
Mr. DELUZIO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Washington for
her remarks. She is spot on.
I am reminded of a quote from President Franklin Roosevelt who faced
the same kind of complaints from then who he called the economic
royalists. We can call them robber barons, oligarchs, you name it. They
complained and said that FDR was trying to overthrow the institutions
of America. President Roosevelt said: ``What they really complain of is
that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American
institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power.'' Here we
are again.
I think we can no longer allow anyone over here to play footsies with
the corporate overlords and robber barons who have their heels on the
necks of the American people. We need to restore competition and break
the monopolies.
My colleague from the Granite State gets this, having worked in the
Justice Department to take on monopolies. She has been in the trenches
in the fight against this kind of corporate power run amok.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from New Hampshire (Ms.
Goodlander).
{time} 1645
Ms. GOODLANDER. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Pennsylvania
(Mr. Deluzio) for bringing us together this afternoon.
Economic patriotism--we are coming from all across the country. We
are coming from different backgrounds with different ideas, but we are
united by things that are really powerful. We are united by a love of
our country, by a belief in our country, and by a belief fundamentally
in the American people.
Mr. Speaker, I was born and raised in the greatest State in the
Nation, the State of New Hampshire, the State that made the Nation. We
were the ninth to ratify the Constitution.
I was born and raised down the road from the family farm that my
great-grandfather built when he came to this country. He was 16 years
old. He didn't speak a word of English, but he believed in the American
Dream. He raised my grandfather, Sam, on that farm.
My grandfather, Sam, was an economic patriot. He really believed that
your word is your bond. He believed that hustle was the name of the
game. He milked cows, bailed hay, and got his start as a businessman
selling airplane rides at the Nashua Airport. His slogan was: ``A $1
million thrill for a $1 bill.''
He went on to become a door-to-door salesman for Electrolux vacuum
cleaners. He worked hard because he believed in the American Dream. He
was a lifelong Republican who loved one of our great Presidents with
his whole heart, I think maybe the greatest economic patriot we have
seen in the White House, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
I was reminded today of a great speech that President Roosevelt gave
81 years ago. ``The Economic Bill of Rights,'' it has been called. He
talked about economic rights that are self-evident, but, as with all
self-evident rights that we know in this great document, our
Constitution, they aren't self-executing.
I want to focus for a moment on one of the rights that President
Roosevelt talked about. He said that there is a right of every
businessman--businesswoman, too--large and small, to trade in an
atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by
monopolies at home or abroad.
It has been said on the floor of this House and on the floor of the
United States Senate that monopolies are inconsistent with our form of
government. It is true.
The antimonopoly spirit is as old as America. It is rooted in the
simple idea that power has to be checked. Just like political power,
economic power has to be checked, too, but the fact is that big
corporations and monopolies have too much power in America today. I see
it everywhere I go.
I come to Congress having worked in the Department of Justice in the
Antitrust Division. It is a division full of patriotic men and women,
many of them nonpartisan, who come to this work with the basic belief
in this country and in the power that must be checked by government.
What do we mean? What kind of power are we checking?
Every day on this job, as I have traveled around the State of New
Hampshire, I hear about how big agricultural corporations are screwing
family farmers like the family farm I grew up down the road from. I
hear about big health insurers who are charging people more for less,
big health insurers who are rolling up the entire industry, from
providers to hospital beds and to the prescription drugs that people
rely on for their lives. I hear about big tech companies that are using
your valuable data for their own gain. The list goes on.
As we look across our consolidated economy, we see that corporate
power has reached its apex in industries big and small, from door locks
to the defense industrial base.
We have always found common ground in this country around the basic
idea that, just like political
[[Page H1266]]
power has to be checked, economic power has to be checked, too.
Mr. Speaker, I am so grateful to my colleague from Pennsylvania (Mr.
Deluzio) for bringing us together today.
Our antitrust laws are alive and well, but they could use an update,
and I look forward to working with everyone here today and in the days
ahead to make that dream a reality because it is core to the American
Dream.
Mr. DELUZIO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from New Hampshire
(Ms. Goodlander) for her comments.
Mr. Speaker, this corporate power we feel in so much of our economy
is also what we feel corrupts this place, our Nation's Capital.
We see it with the unlimited money that runs through our elections,
unlimited super-PAC spending that corporations can dump in to buy the
favors that they get from politicians.
The people who we represent--Democrat, Republican, Independent, you
name it--hate this corruption. They see it. They smell it. They know it
is crooked.
It is why you have pharmacy benefit managers extracting profits on
the backs of people's medicine, killing pharmacies.
It is why you can't even fix your own stuff and why we even have to
fight for the right to repair. What can be more American than the idea
that you can fix your own stuff, whether it is a tractor, a car, an ice
cream machine, you name it? This right to repair goes to the heart of
this.
It is why you see housing costs out of control, with Wall Street
buying up housing and then buying influence down here.
It is also why you see the obscene practice of people getting rich in
Congress, trading stock on information that they may learn in their job
serving the people in Congress. It is corrupt. We ought to end it.
Mr. Speaker, I yield now to a colleague of mine who gets this fight
against corruption, who has organized workers, and who leads the
Congressional Progressive Caucus, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Casar).
Mr. CASAR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I am Greg Casar. I am proud to represent the heart of
Texas in the United States Congress and to chair the Congressional
Progressive Caucus.
Before all of that, I started my career as a labor organizer, and I
saw up close how corporate lobbyists and corrupt politicians would
trade campaign contributions for corporate tax breaks and how they
would trade lower wages for workers for fatter paychecks for CEOs and
their political friends.
They thought that working people could do nothing about this. They
thought their workers were too divided to push back. On construction
sites, guys who spoke different languages and who came from different
places were pissed off, and they were willing to put their differences
aside to come together and fight back, stop the corruption, and demand
a fair paycheck.
We didn't win by going on bended knees and begging big corporations
for better treatment. We did it by unifying working people around some
central ideas that Americans deserve good pay for a full day's work and
that taxpayer dollars are meant for the common good, not for corporate
welfare.
Those ideas brought workers together to win historic wage increases
and better benefits in the heart of Texas. This is what we need today
in America. This is what we need the Democratic Party to be all about.
The central goal of the Democratic Party should be to break the
unholy alliance between corporate greed and corrupt government. We
can't just beg CEOs to please bring down prices. We have to break up
the giant monopolies that are screwing over consumers and small
businesses alike.
We can't just beg big CEOs to please be nicer to us. No. We have to
get big money out of politics so that the ultrarich don't have a bigger
say in this country than the everyday person.
We cannot just beg corporations to give people a raise. We have to
unionize workplaces and pass laws that protect the American worker and
the American worker's wages.
To get there, we have to transform the Democratic Party into a party
that fights for working people first no matter what and into a party
that is willing to stand up to the powerful special interests that are
screwing over working people because, if we love our country, we have
to be willing to fight for the people who make it work.
Mr. DELUZIO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr.
Casar) for his comments.
Mr. Speaker, if you want to respect hard work, you have to respect
the people who do that hard work. That is at the core of this, and
respecting the labor movement is so central.
I am from western Pennsylvania, which is sacred ground in that labor
movement, where people bled for the right to organize. That fight
continues.
Mr. Speaker, I yield now to a colleague from Oregon who gets this,
who understands about the dignity of work and fighting for our people,
the gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Hoyle).
Ms. HOYLE of Oregon. Mr. Speaker, I am Val Hoyle, and I represent the
central and south coasts of Oregon. I am a proud third-generation union
member with a background in sales and international trade, and I came
to Congress to fight for working people.
My family's path to the middle class was made possible because of the
labor movement. My grandfather emigrated from Ireland and worked as a
union laborer building bridges. It was hard work in unsafe conditions.
Those conditions are significantly better because of the building
trades unions.
My father was a firefighter and became president of his union to
fight for better wages and safer working conditions. The contract that
he and his team negotiated while management tried and failed to break
his spirit took his members from poverty wages to a family-wage job.
IAFF Local 789 is still working under that contract 40 years later.
Mr. Speaker, I grew up going to union halls and picket lines and with
my father fighting to elect proworker candidates. Naturally, I became a
member of UNITE HERE Local 26 as a union waitress during the AIDS
crisis, where fellow union members had the dignity of healthcare and
death benefits when they needed them because we belonged to a union. I
am proud to say that my son is a Teamster.
I understand what is at stake for the working people of this country
and my district because it is my story, too, and I came to Congress to
fight for everyday people to have a fair shot, live in dignity, and
make a fair wage while they work hard to provide for their families.
That is why I believe in economic populism, which is not just about
talking at people. It is about listening to them and truly representing
them. The fact is that workers feel left behind and that the two-party
system doesn't represent them.
Republicans have tied in with billionaires and restricted the rights
of workers to organize and have union representation wherever possible
while they are telling them that their enemy is their neighbor.
Too many Democrats show up on a job site seemingly from a sense of
noble obligation with wonky academic explanations about why everything
is fine, even when everyday Americans can't make ends meet. I had an
operating engineer tell me last week that he thinks that both parties
are pissing on his leg and telling him that it is raining.
We have to understand that working people do not want a handout. They
want a good job, a pathway to the middle class, and a comfortable
retirement. Those opportunities have slipped away for too many people.
When people tell us that they are struggling to afford prescription
medications, we can't turn around and tell them that they are wrong. We
need to listen to them and hold Big Pharma accountable.
When people tell us that they see government as overly bureaucratic
and complex, we can't dismiss that experience and say that it is all
fine. We need to ensure that taxpayer dollars are spent responsibly.
Of course, addressing waste, fraud, and abuse is important. We also
need to make sure that our veterans, our seniors, and the most
vulnerable among us receive the benefits that they have earned and not
break government under the guise of efficiency.
Democrats are the party that champion and protect the things that
working people rely on, like the Affordable
[[Page H1267]]
Care Act, Social Security, stronger unions and workplace protections,
the 40-hour workweek, overtime pay, public education, and strong
consumer protections. However, we need more Democrats whose filter for
what they do in Congress is: Will this help working people, as opposed
to giving lipservice in some disconnected way?
We should all be fighting hard against corruption and for a real path
to the middle class. Young people want to be able to work one job and
afford to buy a home and raise a family, and that is not the reality
for too many Americans.
That is what Democrats should stand for and be working for every day.
Our party must embrace economic populism and fight to revive the
American Dream, standing up for working people and giving them a chance
to succeed.
Mr. DELUZIO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms.
Hoyle) for her comments.
Tonight, we have heard from Members from my side of the party,
Democrats from across the country representing a lot of different
districts, but we are all speaking out on ways that we are fighting
corruption and the excess of corporate power and the ways that the
Democratic Party ought to move forward, not for Democrats but for
everyone in this country.
I thank my colleagues for joining me here today to say loud and clear
that things need to change. Economic populism and patriotism ought to
be where we go, standing up for our people, without apology, to revive
the American Dream.
Mr. Speaker, I have the honor of representing a battleground,
competitive district in western Pennsylvania. In my time here in
Congress, I have been dead set on lowering costs, battling corruption,
and confronting corporate power. That means promoting competition and
taking on monopolies, giving small businesses a shot to compete, and
fighting against these lousy trade deals that stripped communities for
parts. It means making more stuff in America, cracking down on junk
fees and price gouging, and standing up without apology for the union
way of life.
These are economic priorities to bring down costs, and they are good
policies. The American people support them. We know that.
Everybody hates getting ripped off. Everybody hates working hard yet
still not seeing a life that you can succeed in.
If you want American capitalism to succeed, you have to have
competition in our economy. There is a tendency by some in politics to
try to please everybody. You should take pride in when they get the bad
guys--the villains who are screwing over your people are your enemy--it
means you are doing something right.
I am sick and tired of folks in Washington or the think tanks or
wherever else looking for a win-win when there is a villain hurting our
people. If a railroad sends a toxic fireball into the sky over your
community, you don't look for a win-win. You fight them for your
people. When PBMs are killing pharmacies and jacking up drug costs, you
fight them.
{time} 1700
Sometimes, there is a bad guy. There is not a win-win because our way
of life is on the line. Our safety is at risk. We have to stand up for
our people. You don't cower like wimps. You don't go beg for donations
from the people hurting yours.
The goal is simple and popular here. It is to make life better and
less of a rip-off and to take on the corporate power and corruption
that is hurting people. That is the path back to the American Dream.
This is our vision of economic patriotism and populism, and it is a
winning one. It is one that can resonate from the Rust Belt to the Sun
Belt and everywhere in between in this great country.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
____________________