[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 15]
[House]
[Pages 20892-20895]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        MAJORITY MAKER FRESHMEN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Boyda). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Ellison) 
is recognized for 23 minutes, half the time until midnight, as the 
designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. ELLISON. Madam Speaker, today is a good day. The Majority Maker 
Freshmen are here tonight at this late hour to celebrate the increase 
in the minimum wage for the first time in 10 years. The minimum wage, 
the amount of pay that the lowest paid workers in our country receive, 
now will be able to claim an increase in pay.
  Madam Speaker, I am joined today by our colleagues, Mr. Ron Klein of 
Florida and Mr. Paul Hodes of New Hampshire, to talk about this 
question of economic justice, this issue of a shared prosperity in our 
economy and in our country. And I can think of no more important and no 
better topic to kick off the conversation than a send-up and salute to 
the hardworking folks of this country who do it on minimum wage every 
day.
  Today, Madam Speaker, there is a mom who can say to her son, ``Yes, 
son, you can go on that field trip because Mom has the money. Here you 
go.'' There is a dad who can say, ``Honey, yes, you can go in and play 
softball this summer because we can work it out.'' There is an aunt who 
can afford to buy her nephew or niece maybe a birthday present which 
she just couldn't afford before.
  There is a hardworking mother and father who do not have to rely upon 
the goodness of charity, which we admire that, but everybody also wants 
to earn their way, don't they? And they are not going to have to go to 
those food shelves, although I am glad that those food shelves are 
there because we need them. But this week they don't have to go because 
the minimum wage has been increased, and the hardworking people, the 
people who make this country really go, have gotten the edge up.
  And so I just want to yield, take it to one of our fellow new members 
of the Majority Makers, and talk about this idea of a shared prosperity 
of America, and how the Democratic Congress is going to return our 
country to a time when everybody can feel that you can really make it, 
you have a real shot in the American economy not just for the few, but 
for the many.
  Mr. KLEIN of Florida. I thank the gentleman. It is good to be here as 
part of our freshman class, the Majority Makers. It is an honor and 
privilege, as it always is, to be here in Congress and to talk about 
some of the things that we have been doing, Madam Speaker, over the 
last number of weeks that hopefully will really impact people's lives.
  The thing I think that to me is so important about the minimum wage 
discussion was the fact that it was a discussion that not only dealt 
with the average family, the people putting food on the table, but also 
dealt with the small businesses, because there was concern by some 
people that our small businesses might be impacted, and there is only 
so much that a small business can absorb when compared to other 
businesses, because the bigger businesses probably pay more than 
minimum wage, but sometimes small businesses pay the minimum wage.
  The great thing about this package is that it not only provided that 
increase, and two more increases to follow, which will amount to $4,400 
a year when this is fully implemented additional compensation to 
people. Think

[[Page 20893]]

about what you can do with $4,400 a year for a person who is earning 
minimum wage right now. We know that the problem all along has been 
minimum wage does not put food on the table and a roof over the house 
or the place that you live. So we are contributing to that.
  But also, on the small business side there are some tax breaks that 
went along with it to help the small businesses absorb this, some tax 
breaks to help small businesses thrive. We are a small-business country 
by and large. I am from Florida. Most of our businesses are small 
business. Some are of the definition small businesses being 200 
employees or less, but most small businesses are 5 people, 10 people. 
It really is that corner store that really makes the difference.
  So we want those small businesses to thrive because they do create 
jobs. At the same time, we want the people that work in those jobs to 
be able to care for their families, to be able to put their kids 
through school, maybe to go to college if that is what they choose; 
certainly we live in a world economy where we want kids to go to 
college; pay for health care expenses, and at least move in the right 
direction.
  So I am pretty excited that the minimum wage increase has finally 
been implemented, 10 years of this country lagging behind, and at the 
same time we are helping our small businesses compete and be 
successful.
  I will just turn over to Mr. Hodes to give his thoughts on how this 
affects people in New Hampshire.
  Mr. HODES. I thank you both for being here tonight to talk about what 
is really a critical issue, the increase in the minimum wage which took 
effect on July 24, 2007, so we are actually celebrating it tonight. It 
is not just an important economic issue that will affect nearly 13 
million people across this country, 5.3 million people who will 
directly benefit immediately and 7.2 million people who will indirectly 
benefit as a result of a new wage floor, but it is an example of what 
we are taking on really as a moral imperative in this new Congress. 
Because when you think about waiting 10 years for a rise in the minimum 
wage, Madam Speaker and my friends, you cannot imagine how, in a period 
of growing income inequality, those who need a reasonable minimum wage 
the most have been left behind so much.
  I have next to me a chart which has a mathematical equation about 
what has happened in terms of our national debt over the past few 
years. And what you can see is that, from 2001 to 2006, we have had a 
huge increase in the national debt. In other words, we as a Nation have 
gone deeper and deeper into debt as we have borrowed to make ends meet.
  So I want to set the context for the importance of this minimum wage, 
because while we as a Nation have borrowed to make ends meet for things 
like our war and tax breaks for those at the very top, we have had 
growing income inequality.
  The three of us are on the Financial Services Committee, and recently 
we held some hearings with the chairman of the Federal Reserve, and we 
discussed a startling new report that was put out by a group called 
Financial Services Forum. The Financial Services Forum is a Wall Street 
group that was dealing with the effects of globalization and income 
inequality, and they pointed out some startling statistics.
  One of the things they pointed out is that, over the past 5 or 6 
years, corporate profits in this country have doubled. Corporate 
profits have doubled, and productivity is way up. And what that means 
is people are working much, much harder to make corporate productivity 
and corporate profits go up, but where have those benefits gone?
  What we have learned in this report which was prepared by Wall Street 
CEOs is that the benefits have largely gone to the top 3 percent in 
this country, and that 97 percent of people in this country, including 
highly educated people, from folks who are making an awful lot of 
dough, you would think, people with college educations, master's 
degrees, even Ph.D.s, right down to the lowest rungs, for 97 percent, 
over the past 5 years, real wages, real income have slipped. So 3 
percent have made out, and for 97 percent real wages have gone down.
  Now, what does that mean for those at the very lowest rungs of the 
economic ladder? It means that those who have been getting along with 
$5.15 as a minimum wage, their real earning power has slipped even 
faster. As prices have gone up for gas, just to put gas in your car to 
get to your minimum-wage job, you have to work a whole day.
  So what we have done, what we have done here in the Democratic 
Congress finally, after 10 long years, is to honor those who work hard, 
honor those who play by the rules, honor those who need just a little 
bit of economic fairness, and help bring them up to the benefit of 
everybody in society, because as we raise the minimum wage, folks can 
now afford to be part of our society. They can afford to go out and 
maybe go out to a movie. They can afford to go out and buy that pair of 
eyeglasses or get that haircut or do something for their kids that they 
weren't able to do before. And that helps us all.
  So I am very proud, as a new Member of Congress, to have made good on 
the pledge that we talked about during our campaigns, to come to 
Congress and make sure that as one of the first and most important 
things we did, we would raise the minimum wage. So it is a great day.
  Mr. ELLISON. The minimum wage is a good thing. We all three of us 
feel good about it, and we all three are members also on the Financial 
Services Committee, so we are focused on these issues.

                              {time}  2345

  But there have been some other things that have happened here in this 
Democratic Congress that have really helped improve the lives of 
average working Americans. I have in mind the bill that was passed 
recently, the Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill. Is there 
anything in there that you think the American people ought to know 
about or the Speaker ought to know about?
  Mr. KLEIN of Florida. Absolutely. And I'm glad you pointed it out 
because I know that you personally took a lead on a number of the 
educational issues. I think all of us as Americans understand the 
importance of education and so many of the achievement issues that have 
been brought up in our individual States at the Federal level, there's 
concern. There's concern that America's not keeping up. We're not 
achieving. We're not where we need to be and we see some of the other 
countries of the world, whether it's China or some of the Far East 
countries that really are moving ahead with their economies, with their 
job creation. It's not just call centers in Bangalor. It's high tech 
jobs. And I think there's a big commitment by this Congress this year 
with Democratic leadership, and I'm glad to see Republicans joining us 
because this is not a partisan issue. This is the right thing to do.
  There was a big commitment to invest in children, and it was 
everything from investing in schools to investing in college 
scholarships, Pell Grants. For those of you who don't know what Pell 
Grants are, those are the scholarships that help students go through 
college and provide access to college. We've worked on the interest 
rate, reducing the interest rate so that more kids can, again, go to 
school.
  There are lots of kids in our country that have disabilities and we 
have invested in education for children with disabilities. As a matter 
of fact, we put $509 million additional dollars in.
  And the last thing I'll mention, because this is something that I 
know that both my colleagues, Mr. Hodes and Mr. Ellison are very 
involved in their local communities and that's expanding medical 
research. This is such an important issue. And whether you believe in 
stem cell, which I firmly do, or any other type of medical research, we 
have millions of people in our country, not just seniors, but families 
with children and adults that have serious medical disease issues. And 
unfortunately, the last number of years, Federal grants for research 
have been declining. It's called the NIH, National Institute of Health 
grants. And they've been declining. Unfortunately, the recommendations 
from the President have

[[Page 20894]]

been less and less, and Congress has put less and less in.
  Yet, there's been a demand for the public to say help us, help us 
find cures. And I'm so proud about the fact that there's going to be 
well over a billion dollars of additional research over and above what 
the President even asked for. And this will allow for an additional 545 
competing medical research programs to go forward. And I don't even 
have to mention the names of the diseases because Americans understand 
what's going on here. It's not just Alzheimer's; it's so many other 
things.
  So, Mr. Ellison, thank you for mentioning that because one of the 
things that I came to Congress for was to work on education, making 
sure our children can compete and our adults can compete, and medical 
research. And I think that this bill, in particular, has so much in it 
and it's so exciting. I'm looking forward to seeing the President 
hopefully sign this bill as soon as possible.
  Mr. ELLISON. I know these bills are all separate, Madam Speaker. 
There are different bills that go through to appropriate monies for the 
different category areas. But I think it's important for the American 
people, Madam Speaker, to understand them as a whole. As we increase 
minimum wage, as we increase funding for health research for education, 
this is a general approach to help the average, working American, the 
average working family, do better, be more prosperous, reach their 
goals, help their children be prosperous and have a secure and good 
retirement.
  I wonder, would you yield to a question, Mr. Hodes?
  Mr. HODES. Absolutely.
  Mr. ELLISON. Given that we have about 37 million people who are in 
poverty in America today, and looking at some expenses, you know, we 
see that bread prices have risen 25 percent, health insurance costs 
have risen 97 percent, and the price of regular gasoline has jumped 149 
percent.
  Are the folks who are in poverty in America today, who are some of 
these folks? Are these hardworking folks, or are those folks who don't 
work so hard? Who are the people who we categorize as poor today, this 
37 million?
  Mr. HODES. Mr. Ellison, it's a great question because what we've got 
today in America really is a large body of people, 37 million people, 
mainly, who are working poor. These are folks who, a lot of them are 
single parents; many of them happen to be single moms. And a lot of the 
folks, the working poor in this country who are struggling to make ends 
meet, are not just working one job. They're working two jobs; they're 
working three jobs to make ends meet. They generally are without health 
insurance, many of them. They don't have people to help take care of 
their kids. They struggle every day.
  And I just want to expand on some of the points that Mr. Klein made, 
because as we moved in Congress to appropriate money for the Labor and 
Health and Human Services portion of the budget, it's important for the 
American people to understand that we did so in an absolutely fiscally 
responsible way, and to understand that we are making investments in 
America's future.
  The President, in his budget, proposed cutting Health and Human 
Services and education programs by $7.6 billion below 2007, after 
adjusting for inflation. We knew that we had to come and make fiscally 
responsible investments in our future. So we rejected the President's 
damaging cuts, and we proposed a very modest increase, about 3 percent 
over 2007, after adjusting for inflation, so that our final bill was 
still $2.9 billion below the 2005 level for the appropriations for 
Health and Human Services and Education. So we actually came in below 
where we were a couple of years ago, and we did it in a way that is 
responsible because we adopted PAYGO provisions. We have to balance any 
increase with a responsible cut in another area. So we're being 
fiscally responsible in the overall picture.
  And some of the things we did for the working poor are really 
important. One of the important things we did was we started to address 
the problem of 47.7 million uninsured people in this country. And we 
expanded access to health care for the uninsured. And we did that by 
funding several initiatives to provide health care for more than 2 
million uninsured Americans. For instance, our bill provides $200 
million, or 10 percent, more than 2007, and the President's request for 
community health centers enabling these centers to serve an additional 
1 million uninsured Americans.
  We also included $50 million for an initiative to assist States in 
providing high-risk insurance pools to support affordable insurance for 
almost 200,000 people who are medically high risk. So we are beginning 
to move in a big way on health care, which is a vital economic and 
national interest, especially for the working poor in this country.
  I'll throw it back to you.
  Mr. KLEIN of Florida. If I can just throw something in, Mr. Ellison. 
One of the things that Mr. Hodes is pointing out is that the people 
that we're talking about are working families. We're not talking about 
necessarily people that aren't working. We're not only talking about 
what people in this country may think of as destitute people, poor. 
There are a lot of those people also that we're trying to, as 
Americans, give a helping hand which we're always, of course every one 
of us is committed to doing.
  But we're talking about a lot of middle-class people. And there's so 
many issues out there today. And if I can ask you a few questions. If 
you can elaborate for us some of the things we've been working on 
housing and some of the foreclosure issues, you know, transportation. 
These are things that this Congress has been working in this last week 
on putting together a bill for the first time in about a decade to 
really take a look at what's happening to working families and what we 
can do to give them a hand up, not a hand out, but a hand up, and 
empower them. So if you can just elaborate on some of those, Mr. 
Ellison.
  Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Klein, it's an important point you make, and I just 
want to add to this idea that for so many of the working, the people 
who are in poverty, we are talking about working poor folks, folks who 
are really struggling hard every day. And you know, Mr. Klein, housing 
as you well know is one of the most central things that everyone needs.
  Poor, inadequate housing leads to a lot of serious problems. I'll 
list a few of those, but then we'll get to what we did. Children who 
don't have stable and adequate housing tend to move around a lot. As 
they move around, they are having their lessons disrupted in their 
school district every time they move, which means they fall further and 
further behind, which has an implication for how they're being 
educated.
  Health issues, whether it be exposure to lead, mold, all kind of 
things that are inadequate housing, very serious issue for young people 
and for families. Poor housing has a significant impact on health.
  Of course, issues of crime and exposure to violence has a lot to do 
with where you live and the quality of the housing that you may happen 
to live in. And so because these problems are so important in order for 
families to be prosperous, in order for families to grow and do well, 
this Congress has taken on some important initiatives. One is section 8 
vouchers. The President's inadequate budget for section 8 would have 
been, would have forced between 40 to 80,000 families and individuals 
to lose their housing vouchers. The bill that we dealt with provides 
for an increase above the President's budget of $330 million for 
tenant-based vouchers and nearly $667 million for projected base 
vouchers in order to renew all current section 8 vouchers so no one 
that has a tenant-based voucher will lose it.
  It's important also to talk about how we were making good strides on 
housing for seniors. We've seen increases. We've seen seniors 
struggling with housing, and we're making strong commitments, seniors 
will benefit from the increase in section 8 vouchers as well.
  And also I just want to say that we're looking at, we had a lot of 
discussion in the Financial Services Committee about what we're going 
to do about the foreclosure crisis. As you know, about

[[Page 20895]]

20 percent of the mortgages, subprime mortgages are going to result in 
foreclosure. That's a tremendous amount. And what it means is that 
people who thought they had the American Dream ended up in the American 
Nightmare with these foreclosures. And we've been talking in the 
Financial Services Committee about what we're going to do to stave off 
these kinds of predatory loans so that people can have a fairer, more 
realistic loan they can get into, so that when these loans, these 228s, 
327s, these kinds of loans that adjust upward in a dramatic way, that 
people will have better information, that there'll be greater 
responsibility on the mortgage originators, that there'll be greater 
standards applied to these originators and that people can be able to 
keep their homes or will be able to be in a mortgage they can actually 
afford.
  So housing is a critical issue. This Congress we're dealing with it, 
and it's something I'm very proud to be associated with.
  So we have about five more minutes left, and I think that we've had 
kind of an abbreviated evening this evening. But we've been talking 
about issues that are of vital concern to the average American working 
person. I think it's important for each one of us to take about 1\1/2\ 
minutes to just talk about what we feel we want the American people, 
Madam Speaker, to go away with as we wrap up this important Special 
Order by the majority freshman class.
  Why don't we kick it to you, Mr. Klein. About 1\1/2\ minutes. What do 
folks really need to go to bed with tonight as we think about this 
powerful middle class that fuels our American economy and life?
  Mr. KLEIN of Florida. Well, it's been a full day for us. I know I'm 
going to get a good night's sleep tonight. But what I think we should 
all be proud of as Americans is the fact that we're moving forward. And 
there are some very positive things that are happening. Obviously, at 
home people are very concerned about their livelihood, putting up a 
roof over their head, being able to afford health care, putting their 
kids into college and pursuing the American Dream. And I think a lot of 
things that we have discussed in this brief time tonight about 
improving education and really putting some muscle behind it, not just 
throwing money at it but changing the policies to make sure that we 
give teachers the tools and the kids the incentives to be successful, 
the minimum wage, just giving people a working wage so they can go 
forward and do well and giving the tax benefits to the businesses that 
create the jobs. It's a great combination on both sides.
  You know, the research which I know all of us feel so strongly about 
and finding the cures, these are things that Americans think about 
every day when they get up and go to work and think about their 
parents, their grandparents, their kids. It's about the future of our 
families and our country. So I'm very excited and I know I'm going to 
sleep well tonight knowing we got good work done today. And we are 
going to continue working on this over the next number of weeks and 
months as we continue to move America forward.
  Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Hodes, parting words, sir.
  Mr. HODES. Well, you know, I'm glad to be here even though it's late 
at night. We're working hard for folks, and one of the things I think 
that's important for the American people to understand is that we have 
taken the task of reversing drastic cuts to important programs that 
have gone on under this President and the Republican Congress for many 
years. And we're doing it in a way that is fiscally responsible. We've 
introduced pay-as-you-go rules so that when we expand in one area, 
we're going to make sure that we're matching it with appropriate cuts 
in other areas. It's a vital, vitally important new thing that we're 
doing here in this Congress to make sure that we are stewards of the 
public trust, and that we are taking care of the people's money, we're 
not just pending it willy-nilly.
  Now, unfortunately, we're dealing with a President who threatens 
vetoes, who has proposed drastic cuts in programs that are important 
investments for all Americans whether it's Community Development Block 
Grants or the HOPE VI program or section 8 or any program that really 
helps bring those at the lower levels up into the middle class and 
helps those in the middle class. This President has proposed to veto 
and he's proposed drastic cuts. We understand that we're going to make 
the right kind of investments to move this country forward. So I'm very 
proud of what we're doing.
  Mr. ELLISON. Madam Speaker, this is going to conclude our Special 
Order hour. The difference-makers are going to be on the job for the 
American people. We can be counted on to make that difference that we 
were brought here to make. And, Madam Speaker, I just think it's 
important for the American people to know that this Democratic caucus 
will be standing up for them. So with that, thank you all.

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