[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 5]
[House]
[Pages 6394-6399]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          JOBS AND HEALTH CARE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2013, the gentleman from California (Mr. Garamendi) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, once again we're back here on the floor 
of the House of Representatives to talk about what I believe is the 
most pressing problem here in the United States, and that's jobs. 
Americans want to work, Americans are capable of working, and it ought 
to be our job here on the floor of the House of Representatives to talk 
about how we can create jobs.
  We've just heard about 1 hour of discussion from our good friends on 
the Republican side, the Doctors' Caucus, about how to destroy the 
Affordable Health Care Act. For 36 times, the Republicans have put up 
legislation that would essentially gut, amend, or destroy the 
Affordable Health Care Act, which has the promise and the probability 
of providing health insurance for 50-plus-million Americans that are 
today uninsured.
  Why would you want to deny those people health insurance? I can see 
no reason for it.
  I notice that they also did not spend any time at all talking about 
their effort to destroy Medicare. Medicare was a promise made to 
seniors by the American people that when they reach 65 years of age, 
they would have a guaranteed health insurance program. Yet, for the 
last 2 years and 4 months, the Republicans have continually put up 
legislation that would end Medicare as we know it and turn Medicare 
over to the insurance companies.
  One of the last statements made here on the floor by one of our 
colleagues was decisions on medical services ought to be in the hands 
of the physician and the patient. I agree. I was also the insurance 
commissioner in California, a statewide elected position for 8 years; 
and I can assure you that under the private health insurance programs, 
it is the insurance companies that are making the decisions about what 
medical care will be given to individuals. That is wrong. We did our 
best in California to stop that. But if you turn Medicare over to the 
private insurance companies, as the Republicans want to do with their 
voucher plan, then it will be the insurance companies that will decide 
what medical services will be available, if at all, to seniors.
  I'd like to put that aside and go back to the issue that I really 
wanted to talk about, but there are some things that you just cannot 
let go, things that are said on the floor that need to be at least 
discussed in their fullness.
  Let's talk about jobs. Let's talk about the fact that over the last 
30 years we have seen the middle class in America held down. The middle 
class in America has made very little economic progress over the last 
30 years. We're going to discuss that in some detail and specifically 
what we can do here with public policy, with proposals that have been 
put forth by the Democratic Caucus in the House and our colleagues in 
the Senate, solid proposals to put Americans back to work and to 
rebuild the American Dream so that every American has the opportunity 
to put their foot on the rung of the ladder and climb just as high as 
they can do so.
  Before we get to those rungs on the economic ladder, I'd like to have 
a more full discussion about what has happened to the middle class over 
the last 30 years. Joining me in that discussion is the Representative 
from South Carolina, the Honorable Jim Clyburn.
  Jim, if you'll join us, I know you have some things you'd like to 
discuss; and I see you have your own chart there.
  Mr. CLYBURN. I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to commend my colleague, Congressman Garamendi, 
for his leadership on this very important issue.
  Just a few minutes ago, we received some breaking news: the stock 
market just closed, and for the first time in the history of this great 
country, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed over 15,000 at 15,056. 
Standard & Poor's also closed at a record 1,625. So much for a 
socialist President.
  Now, during my 20 years of service in this body, I have often 
reflected upon my experiences growing up in a church parsonage in the 
little town of Sumter, South Carolina. Early on, I internalized an Old 
Testament scripture, Micah 6:8: To do justly, to love mercy and walk 
humbly.
  Today in this great country, we are experiencing an injustice that 
continues to get worse, one which I believe demands our attention. 
Indisputable evidence continues to show that income inequality has 
worsened over the last 30 years. The Congressional Budget Office 
released a report back in October 2011 on the distribution of household 
income between 1979 and 2011.

                              {time}  1620

  On the distribution of household income during that time, you might 
remember that report came out just a few days before the so-called 
supercommittee held its first public hearing. I served on that special 
panel, and I raised concerns with the CBO director about the ever-
widening gap between America's rich and poor.
  This chart is from that CBO report, and it shows that over the past 
30 years, the wealthiest 1 percent have enjoyed income growth of more 
than 275 percent, while the lowest 20 percent have experienced only 18 
percent growth.
  Working families across the country have seen their wages stagnate 
and decline as earnings for the wealthiest few continue to soar. In 
fact, earnings for the top 1 percent during the current economic 
recovery have risen 11.2 percent, but declined for the other 99 percent 
by 0.4 percent. I'm going to repeat that.
  The 99 percent have seen a decline of 0.4 percent--that is a 
negative--while the upper 1 percent, a positive growth of 11.2 percent.
  Now, my friends across the aisle will talk about the American Dream 
and the ability of every American to work their way up to the top. But 
numerous studies have shown that there is less economic mobility in 
America than most people think. The fact is that if you work hard, play 
by the rules and take responsibility, it is currently harder to get 
ahead in America than it is in many parts of the world.
  Let me cite an example. Thirty years ago, CEOs made an average of 42 
times as much as rank-and-file workers, 42 times as much.
  Today, a newly released report confirms that last year, CEOs of the 
biggest companies in the United States made 354 times what the average 
worker made, 354 times. That is the widest pay gap in the world.
  Do most Americans believe that our CEOs work 354 times harder than 
their average employees?
  Here is another example. Over the last 45 years, average income for 
90 percent of Americans went up just $59--almost no change at all. 
That's over 45

[[Page 6395]]

years, an increase of $59. For the top 10 percent, average incomes rose 
roughly $116,000. For the top 1 percent, average income rose $628,000; 
and for the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent, the average incomes 
rose $18.3 million.
  The numbers are so staggering it's almost difficult to comprehend. So 
if we convert the dollars to distances, the vast majority of Americans, 
90 percent, saw their average income increase by 1 inch. The top 10 
percent went up 168 feet; the top 1 percent, 888 feet; and the top 1 
percent of 1 percent, their incomes rose by almost 5 miles relative to 
that 1 inch.
  We are recovering from one of the greatest economic recessions in 
American history. As I said in the beginning, the Dow Jones Industrial 
Average just a few minutes ago closed for the first time in history 
over 15,000. The stock markets are setting record highs, but working 
families continue to struggle.
  Wages have stayed low, and unemployment is still too high. It does 
not have to be that way, and it should not be that way. This Congress 
can and must take direct action to restore a just economic system for 
working people.
  We need to raise the minimum wage. We need to boost Pell Grants, Head 
Start, and other support for public education. We need to invest in 
innovation and infrastructure to create jobs now and foster broad-based 
economic growth and prosperity. And we need to pass a budget that 
reflects the values of working Americans.
  It is time to ``do justly.'' It is time to refocus on the American 
Dream, on building ladders of opportunity, on restoring fairness in our 
Tax Code, and on creating good, high-quality jobs so that every 
American who wants a job can find a job.
  I call on Speaker Boehner to appoint budget conferees as soon as 
possible so that we can get to work on a budget that puts America back 
to work.
  I thank my colleague from California.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you very much, Mr. Clyburn, for your excellent 
exposition of the problem faced by the middle class, by the working 
families of America: the fact that over the last 40 years they've seen 
virtually no progress in their economic status while those very, very 
few at the very top have seen extraordinary wealth. It's also a 
shifting of wealth, and some say that this discussion is a discussion 
of class warfare. Well, I wouldn't call it warfare, but I would say 
that the middle class of America is clearly losing, while those very, 
very few at the top are clearly winning. And the reason is the policies 
of the United States are pushing the wealth to the top and literally 
taking the wealth from the working men and women. We need to change 
those policies, and our discussion here is very, very much about that.
  Thank you for your excellent discussion.
  I see that our colleague from Washington, D.C., Eleanor Holmes 
Norton, is here. Thank you very much for joining us. And, Mr. Clyburn, 
if you'd like to stick around, we will engage in a discussion, but I 
think you have other obligations.
  Mr. CLYBURN. I do, but I appreciate the time.
  Ms. NORTON. I want to thank the gentleman from South Carolina, one of 
our leaders, and my good friend from California for his leadership, his 
almost weekly leadership on the issue of jobs. Both of my colleagues 
have discussed long-term declines in the middle class, much of it owing 
over the last decade to the policies of this Congress and the Federal 
Government.
  The last thing you would expect Congress would do in the face of a 
recovery that is still in the throes of recovery is anything to hurt 
it, so I wanted to come to the floor to discuss the early warning signs 
we are seeing of jobs loss because of the sequester so that we can do 
something about it now.
  First, let me indicate, quite unexpectedly, the best statistics I've 
seen in a long time, and how we are stepping on these statistics with 
each day of the sequester.

                              {time}  1630

  The April jobs report unexpectedly showed 165,000 workers added to 
nonfarm payroll. That was terrific news. What it tells us is that the 
private sector is making jobs, trying its best, because those jobs were 
not created in the public sector; those jobs were created in spite of 
the public sector, in spite of the fact that the Congress is 
furloughing people, cutting programs to the States and, thus, jobs.
  So the April jobs report, you might say, means maybe it's going to be 
all right after all. Early signs are absolutely not. April reported the 
first 2 months of the sequester. It's 4 months to go, and already we 
see horrific news, each day, a kind of rolling disaster on jobs and the 
economy.
  Deep cynicism spread the week before last throughout the country as 
Americans saw Congress vote to relax the sequester on the air traffic 
controllers, just as Congress was about to take a week-long recess; 
deep cynicism because nothing had been done for the American people, 
for their jobs, for their programs, but the skies were cleared.
  Actually, there was a good reason for that, and that reason was, of 
course, that the controllers, who were only doing their jobs, about 10 
percent of them had to be furloughed each week; therefore, with less 
people, there were slowdowns. That was already beginning to have a 
catastrophic effect on the economy, and that's why I think, yes, 
Congress, and even the administration, moved to correct that.
  Sequester-driven flight delays were already placing over 80,000 
American jobs at risk. And if it had gone on, if just this one sector 
had gone the full sequester, that would have lost $9 billion, one 
sector alone, in the economy. All right. One sector. One sector and 
only one sector.
  Have we shown we understand what our bottom line responsibility is?
  Whether you come here you think to reduce the deficit, or whether you 
come here as a Member of Congress you think to add revenue to grow an 
economy, both sides should agree that the best way, and perhaps the 
only way, to do that is to create jobs. People with jobs pay into the 
economy rather than requiring us to spend and add to the deficit.
  Yet, when the sequester began and the administration warned of its 
effect on jobs and the economy, howls came from my good colleagues on 
the Republican side that the claims of the administration were 
overblown, that they were exaggerated, that the President was crying 
wolf, not to mention those of us on the Democratic side.
  Here are the early signs, and I bring some examples to the floor this 
evening because there's still time to correct the sequester. I bring 
them to the floor to ask the appropriators to do what the President has 
done in his budget and correct the mistake of the sequester, 
recognizing that neither Democrats or Republicans anticipated that the 
sequester would ever happen, so neither side has to take credit or 
blame if we change it since neither side wanted it.
  But look at the early effects, and let's look at some of the effects 
that flow directly from what Congress has done:
  250 workers at the Hanford nuclear reservation laid off;
  The contractor that repairs our U.S. Naval ships, Continental 
Maritime, laid off 185 employees;
  418 contract workers laid off at the Tobyhanna Army Depot in 
Pennsylvania;
  Northrop Grumman Information Systems in Lawton, Oklahoma, lays off, 
or anticipates laying off, 270 workers.
  Those jobs add up. I'm not trying to call the roll. I'm trying to 
give examples of what the sequester directly does to jobs in the 
military sector, no less.
  U.S. Army Garrison-Rock Island Arsenal, 175 employees laid off.
  By the way, these are not furloughs. These employees are gone.
  That's how we get, I say to my good friend from California, to the 
CBO figure of the loss of 750,000 jobs. Imagine this Congress doing 
anything to cause, to be the direct cause of the loss of jobs when we 
should be trying with all our might to create jobs after the Great 
Recession.
  The examples abound. You will find them with every small business in 
your

[[Page 6396]]

district feeling the effect by laying off people or refusing to fill 
vacancies. You will find it in every sector of the country.
  Military bases are now going on a 4-week schedule for schools. 
Workers at missile testing fields are being fired.
  We're having the functional equivalent of the meat inspectors 
exception to the sequester. Remember that they were the one sector, 
because we were afraid that rancid meat would appear all over the 
country, and you have to have meat inspectors to inspect.
  Well, now the dairy farmers are saying that they can't get access to 
production information about milk and are anticipating higher prices on 
milk. So look at how that affects the farmer, whom he employs, and the 
milk, that's us, the consumer. That's how it's passed through. That's 
how it's passed on.
  You know, you'd expect some of these examples from a depression, or 
even the recession that we are just coming out of, but who would have 
expected that hospitals are now reporting that medical schools 
anticipate not taking on as many residents, not with the sequester and 
the amount of money that comes to hospitals from the Federal 
Government. And they say that means fewer residency spots and fewer 
doctors in various communities, since residents tend to stay in the 
communities where they do their residency.
  I've come to the floor when we're discussing, jobs precisely because 
the sequester cuts to jobs in the public sector and the private sector 
and speaks to whether we're going to make it in America, keeping what 
we have, much less making in America and growing what we need to have.
  The sequester itself is even affecting what was always exempted from 
cuts in the Congress, public safety cuts, even at the Federal level. 
U.S. attorneys throughout the country are cutting. We never would have 
allowed that to happen before.
  After Boston, I asked the Federal police forces to come and have a 
conversation with me. The Capitol Police, the Federal Protective 
Service, the Park Police, none of them are exempt. And to the extent 
that they are not doing furloughs, it's because they are requiring 
people to work tours of duty that no public safety officer should have 
to work if he really means to keep us safe.
  So I say to my good friend, Mr. Garamendi, whom I'm so grateful to 
for keeping us focused on jobs when every other day we're talking about 
something else, I'm grateful because these dumb cuts are, above all, 
cruel cuts.
  I haven't begun to mention their effect on the domestic programs for 
the very needy, the 70,000 children who will be off of Head Start, the 
600,000 off of the WIC program, Women, Infants, and Children. That is 
the program for the most vulnerable children, who will lose basic 
nutrition assistance.

                              {time}  1640

  I was concerned that we weren't paying any attention to this, that it 
was only crisis by crisis. After the controllers matter came to the 
floor, the very day we left I, myself, came to the floor and said, with 
the controllers, you're only moving money around. That's what we did 
with some appropriations. If we had a budget meeting or even a meeting 
of any kind of both sides, we'd probably come to a compromise where 
some of what it would take to get off the sequester might mean doing 
what we did with the controllers, just moving from one program area to 
another.
  But other ways to relieve the effects of the sequester would surely 
mean doing the kind of budget we meant to do in the first place. You'd 
want to do something with respect to matters that can only be fixed by 
some addition of funds, as, by the way, I think will be done in the 
next appropriations.
  To be sure, sequester cuts go over to the following years, but 
they'll go a full year, and you will see some funds added just because 
it will be too heartless, too impossible to otherwise begin to justify.
  So I come to have this conversation with my good friend, who focuses 
us, I think correctly, on the long term. We are forgetting to think 
about the long term when we see the sequester cuts that have a gnawing 
effect on the middle class so that, by the time we get to the point 
when we must do something about it, we will have a very steep hill to 
climb. That's what Mr. Clyburn was talking about when he talked about 
what is now an impossibly large income gap of the kind we have not seen 
in my lifetime, of the kind we are making as we speak.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. I thank you so very, very much for really bringing to 
all of our attention the extraordinary impact that the sequestration is 
having on American families. Jobs are being lost. Real jobs are 
disappearing, and Americans, working men and women, are feeling their 
paychecks being significantly reduced.
  Now, another word for sequestration is austerity budgets. Shortly 
after the Great Recession began in 2008, there was the debate about 
should the governments of the world, the United States, Europe, China 
and Japan, should they take a policy of actively engaging in the 
economy to boost demand, which would be a Keynesian model of increasing 
the purchasing power within the economy, or should there be a reduction 
in government spending because of the deficits that were created as 
people lost their jobs and as tax revenues declined?
  That debate was robustly engaged here on the floor of the House, with 
the decision being made to engage the government in increasing the 
demand. So the stimulus bill came forth, and it really worked. It 
really had an effect. Hundreds of thousands of jobs were created. The 
decline was stopped, and slowly in 2009 and 2010, the American economy 
began to recover.
  Now, Europe made a different decision. In Europe, they made a 
decision not to stimulate the economy but rather to go into austerity, 
to reduce the budgets of the governments. The result in Europe has been 
perfectly clear. They have headed into a deep, deep recession yet 
again. They never came out of it. And so the entire European economy 
has been continuing to decline over these years. Austerity has gained 
in Europe a very, very bad name. In fact, conservative magazines such 
as The Economist magazine have been for the last 2 years saying, no 
more austerity, you have to stimulate the economy. We now see policies 
in Europe that are now turning around and looking to the stimulation of 
the economy as we did here.
  China did exactly the opposite of Europe. They followed the American 
model--or we followed theirs, depending on how you want to look at 
this--and they put into place a very heavy stimulus program, almost all 
of it in infrastructure, creating enormous demand and growth in China.
  Now, unfortunately, here in the United States, our initial effort at 
stimulus was cut short. It was cut short by the 2010 election. We had a 
new Congress, and the American Government since that moment has been 
involved in an austerity program. The sequestration is but one of the 
austerity programs that have been foisted upon the American public by 
our colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle. We have had fiscal 
cliff after fiscal cliff, and every time we come up against that cliff, 
we've seen a reduction in the role of the Federal Government in so many 
ways.
  Ms. Norton, you so clearly pointed out dozens of ways in which the 
Federal Government is backing away from previously important tasks, 
tasks such as, well, flight controllers, airline flight controllers. 
Now, we passed a bill to deal with that, but nevertheless, we took 
money out of the construction of airports and the upgrading of air 
traffic systems to keep the air traffic controllers going. So the 
austerity continued even in the airline sector.
  We've seen it in my district. I've got maybe more than a thousand 
miles of flood levees. The Army Corps of Engineers, $250 million 
reduction in their ability to upgrade and to deal with the levees and 
to prevent flooding. On and on. I won't go through all the list that 
Ms. Norton put forward. But those are the continuing austerity measures 
that have been forced upon us.
  It can't continue. It cannot continue. Our task is to create jobs. 
Our task is

[[Page 6397]]

to put Americans back to work. Our task is to make sure that this 
incredible income disparity ends and that we find ways to rebuild the 
American middle class.
  Ms. NORTON. If the gentleman would yield, this has been a very 
important, it seems to me, a very clear explanation the gentleman has 
given as to how we got where we are, and particularly his description 
of the difference between the European model and the American model. 
With the European model you would think that would be all the object 
lesson we would need because Britain is one of our closest allies. And 
what austerity has done to Europe it will almost certainly do to us.
  What I don't understand, Mr. Garamendi, is why my good friends--our 
good friends--on the other side would believe that you can get 
something for nothing. Many of them believe in the economy of the 
private sector. Well, the first thing the private sector does is to 
invest. Once it invests, it hopes to yield from that investment. The 
kind of approach you're speaking about says that if you do nothing, if 
you--you, the Federal Government--step back and contribute nothing to a 
recovery, then recovery will happen.
  Well, let me tell you why I think that's impossible. The economy is 
of a piece. You can't pull an important piece out and expect the whole 
to remain whole, particularly when ours is a demand, a consumer-driven 
economy. What that means is what the Federal Government does is really 
meant to get people out there spending so that other people can make 
jobs. Well, the last thing you want to happen, if you want to make sure 
people have jobs, so that they're spending so that other people have 
jobs, is to cut back yourself on the jobs that you're responsible for.

                              {time}  1650

  The sequester does that with the furloughs. Imagine what will happen 
in their counties across the United States--3 million Federal workers--
when those workers who feed their economy go on furloughs. That's the 
equivalent of a job cut. They have got to cut back spending. That cuts 
back demand. That works its way through the entire economy.
  What we're doing is dampening demand because we're sending the signal 
to the private sector that we are cutting the programs that made jobs. 
You can look at Head Start as a program for kids if you want to, but I 
bet the thousands of teachers and other Head Start workers look at it 
as a jobs program. So if 70,000 kids are gone, imagine how many workers 
are also gone.
  It's almost as if our colleagues don't understand the way the economy 
works, that you could take one sector of it that's very important--the 
Federal sector--damp it down, and expect the rest to keep growing. And 
the operative word, my friend, is ``growth.'' We were doing almost 
nothing for growth because we had no balanced approach that allowed 
some revenue to fuel growth. What we're doing now is keeping growth 
from happening because we are deliberately cutting jobs that we need, 
which, in turn, feed the economy.
  People with jobs buy goods and services. People who make goods and 
provide services will look to see if anybody is cutting jobs. If I run 
a department store in my county and the auto plant there lays off 
people, I cut back on inventory.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Exactly.
  Ms. NORTON. Because that's how the economy works. The sequester is 
working that way, I say to my friend, and we can do something about it. 
There are 4 months left in this sequester. Before it becomes more of a 
rolling disaster with some of the examples I have given as emblematic 
of the disaster, we could, all of us, decide, let's just do a budget, a 
budget that I'm sure I would disagree with in many ways--in other 
words, it's not a budget I would want, because my good friends on the 
other side would want the things they would want. They would want some 
cuts. I would want to add some revenue, to WIC--Women, Infant and 
Children, for example. But together, at least we could stop the 
sequester and stop the catastrophic sequester cuts that drive down jobs 
as if we were creating a new recession of our own.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Well, we certainly will create a new recession. We 
know that 750,000 Americans will be unemployed, lose their jobs by the 
end of this fiscal year--that would be the first of October--as a 
result of sequestration.
  Now, it's not that we haven't tried to do a different proposal. Our 
budget proposal is one that would maintain the reduction, but push it 
forward so that it doesn't immediately dampen the American economy. The 
President has made a similar proposal, but we've had no action. Right 
now, we are calling on our colleagues and Speaker Boehner to appoint a 
conference committee so that we can actually do a budget. Please, let's 
get that budget going. Let's get this thing out of the way of America's 
job growth.
  Ms. NORTON. You remember how our colleagues said, for 3 or 4 years 
now, that the Senate refused to do a budget; and if they would just do 
a budget, then maybe the kind of meetings we've all been calling for 
would happen and we could work together? They did a budget, and still 
we get no action so that we can sit down and try to work the sequester 
out.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Well, that's exactly the problem. We need to get this 
sequestration out of the way of America's growth.
  There are many things that we can do. I'd like to remind everybody 
that the President, more than 2 years ago, put forth an American jobs 
proposal, an American Jobs Act. In that proposal--which has never been 
taken up by the leaders of the House of Representatives--those who are 
in control of the House now, our colleagues here on the right side of 
the aisle, have never taken it up.
  So what was in it? There was a $50 billion immediate investment in 
infrastructure. Well, what is infrastructure? Infrastructure is 
highways, our roads, our streets, our sanitation facilities, our water 
facilities, airports, flood levees, the kinds of things that upon which 
the economy can grow and be built. It is the foundation of the economy. 
They brushed it aside, wouldn't even consider it. One of the most basic 
things that any economy, any government must do is to make sure the 
foundation is in place.
  The President had also proposed--and it's part of our Make It in 
America--an educational program to make sure that our students are 
ready for the jobs that are part of the American economy today and to 
retrain American workers.
  A proposal that I have is that our tax dollars be spent on American-
made equipment. Oh, my, how strange would that be. But yet we go out 
and buy Chinese steel to build the new San Francisco-Oakland Bay 
Bridge. No, we don't buy American-made steel and give Americans the 
jobs; we turn the jobs over to China.
  Wind turbines, solar panels, all of the new energy systems, our tax 
money supports those systems. Shouldn't we be buying American-made 
equipment with your tax money? I believe we should. That's my 
legislation.
  The Democratic agenda, the Make It in America agenda, is about 30 
different bills dealing with rebuilding the great American 
manufacturing sector. I know that if we were to carry these policies 
forward, if they were to become law, we would see a resurgence in the 
American manufacturing sector.
  The reason that that is so important is this--Mr. Clyburn spoke to 
this earlier when he was here. I've got a little different display. 
This is what's happened to the American middle class, and beyond.
  I'm going to use a football analogy here--I played football back at 
the University of California a few years ago--actually, many years ago. 
So we can use a football analogy.
  The bottom 99 percent of America, 99 percent of every family and 99 
percent of all of the workers and men and women in America have, since 
1966, seen a net increase in their take-home pay of $59. This is in 
constant dollars. The top 10 percent have seen their income grow by 
$116,071 over that period, '66 to 2011.
  The top 1 percent--remember the 99 percent thing? Well, this is the 
top 1

[[Page 6398]]

percent--have seen their income grow by $628,817. Now, the very, very 
tippy top, that is, the one-tenth of 1 percent--we're talking the 
superwealthy billionaires here; Mitt Romney wouldn't fit into this 
category--they have seen their income grow by over $18 million 
annually.
  So what we're seeing in the American economy is a skewing of the 
wealth in this economy. Literally, the wealth in the economy is flowing 
to the very top so that the wage increases are not among the men and 
women that work every day, that put in their 40 hours a week or more. 
But, rather, it's flowing to those at the top. This is the result of 
economic policies that are put in place here in the Congress--tax 
policies, educational policies, other kinds of policies that lay the 
foundation for this extraordinary inequality.
  This has never been seen in America. During the Gilded Age in the 
19th century, this kind of wealth disparity was not in existence. 
During the Roaring Twenties, this type of wealth inequality was not 
seen in the American economy. Only now, in the last 20, 30 years, have 
we seen policies put in place that have created the most inequality 
ever in modern American history.

                              {time}  1700

  What does that mean? What does that mean to the average American 
family? It means that both mom and pop are working. It means that they 
cannot afford to send their children to school. And added on top of 
that, the Great Recession has stripped the wealth from the 90 percent. 
The wealth was stripped, mostly in the housing market collapse.
  So now we are faced with the situation, what can we do? Well, what we 
can do is to rebuild the American manufacturing sector, because this is 
where the middle class had decent wages. We are not talking about a 
$7.50 an hour minimum wage. We are talking about wages that a man or a 
woman could earn to protect and to provide for their family.
  Ms. NORTON. If the gentleman will yield on that point?
  Mr. GARAMENDI. I would be happy to.
  Ms. NORTON. The point you are making about disparities in income 
needs to be understood as you are portraying it--as a new phenomenon in 
American life. That, yes, there were recessions and there were very 
hard times, and there were times before the New Deal when government 
did not do much about it.
  The kind of policy-made disparity that we are experiencing today, not 
disparity that comes because a few wealthy people created wealth in the 
last part of the 19th century, and even then there was a need for so 
many workers the disparity was not as great as today, but disparities 
that come straight from policies like failure to raise the minimum 
wage, come straight from policies like 20-25 years of failing to raise 
the user fee so that we could build roads.
  Now, construction jobs are classic middle class jobs. If we want to 
build the middle class, we've got to go in the modern era to the post-
World War II economy. Americans who didn't have a college education 
could raise four and five children because they had good manufacturing 
jobs made in America.
  My good friend talks about how if we take the materials for bridges, 
however, and you buy them in China, we are not making it in America, 
and we're having a downward effect on our own manufacturing sector. But 
at the same time, as he points up, infrastructure--he points to the 
classic way to come out of a recession by building what you would have 
to build anyway.
  Here is the government investing in something that's never 
controversial, because building roads and bridges and water 
infrastructure are always the function of government. If you would have 
to do it anyway, the theory goes, you do it when in the process of 
doing it you can create jobs and fuel the economy.
  We are about to have to do another infrastructure bill. We did one 2 
years ago that will last only 2 years because we did not raise the user 
fee, so it goes for only 2 years at a time. And even though we had some 
of the materials from abroad--something we've got to keep from doing 
next time--every bridge had to be built by an American worker, all that 
cement had to be the work of the American middle class.
  If we have to do it anyway, construction is probably the best way to 
revive the economy in the first place, because it has an effect on all 
the rest of the economy. It wakes up the rest of the economy.
  Because we should be working right now--and I know Mr. Shuster, who's 
chair of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, does want to 
do something--we ought to be thinking about precisely the sector that 
you have mentioned, the sector that creates jobs, does what we have to 
do for the crumbling parts of our country, which turn out to be the 
parts underground where our water and sewers are and the parts above 
ground where we drive to and from work every day.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. If the gentlelady would yield for a moment, you're 
exactly right about the infrastructure. We need to build it.
  I notice that our colleague from Ohio has joined us. The last time we 
were on the floor, we talked about these issues. So if you would like 
to carry on here for awhile, please, Mr. Ryan.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I would just like to support what the gentlelady 
from the District of Columbia has been saying, that this is bread and 
butter, this is Economics 101 in how you get the economy back up and 
running. At a time when we have these high unemployment numbers for the 
building trades and the construction trades, what a shot in the arm.
  For work--and I think this is the essential point--this work needs to 
be done anyway. So it's either going to get done now or it's going to 
get done later. Why not do it now when you can get the best bang for 
your buck, to put people back to work when they need to go back to work 
and also jump-start the economy as opposed to say, Oh, we're going to 
wait, we're going to do it 5 years from now when cement is more 
expensive 5 years from now, labor is more expensive 5 years from now, 
all the other costs associated with the project and the materials are 
going to be more expensive 5 years from now. So let's get the job done 
now, let's make these investments now, let's get the economy going now.
  We are having some job growth and the sequester is hurting, but we 
have got to make these investments. Let's rebuild the country, and 
let's rebuild the way our cities look. Let's have an innovative 
approach to the way we create and invest in our downtowns and tie it 
into what we are doing in many older industrial areas where we are 
knocking down a lot of old homes. Cities like Youngstown--180,000 
people lived in that town a few decades ago, they're at 70,000 now--
were knocking down homes because of the neighborhood stabilization 
program. Now we have green space. Now we are planning urban gardens, 
urban farming, so we can get fresh foods into some of these food 
deserts because of the investments that we are making. We should do the 
same thing with bike trails and downtown redevelopment and incentives 
for investment downtown as we do the roads, the bridges, the big heavy 
infrastructure.
  Combined sewer--how many cities have hundreds of millions of dollars, 
billions of dollars, in need for combined sewer overflow? These cities 
don't have the money to do it. And if they do it, if they even can, if 
they have the bonding capacity to do it, they're going to drive rates 
up so high in their own communities they are going to further create 
sprawl, which means more new waterlines, more new sewer lines, in more 
green space, and that's counterproductive.
  Let's drive people back into the urban core, let's have urban space, 
urban farming, urban gardens, farmers' markets, fresh food for our 
young people and people who are living in our cities, at the same time 
we make these investments. When you are building roads and bridges and 
needing steel, it's going to affect manufacturing.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. If you use American taxpayer money to buy American-
made equipment, supplies and products.

[[Page 6399]]


  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Right. And you look at the supply chain with 
manufacturing and you see the six or seven or eight jobs for every one 
job that's created on the manufacturing floor.
  I love representing my district, like we all do, but I'm in northeast 
Ohio, so I could do a factory tour a day for my career and not even 
scrape the surface as to what the manufacturers are. And whether you're 
talking about the defense industrial base, whether you're talking about 
construction all the way down the line, auto, the manufacturing 
capabilities in this country, they're tremendous.
  Now we see on the defense side that maybe a lot of the defense 
industrial base isn't in America like it used to be. How do we come 
together, Democrats and Republicans, and say, well, we are spending 
this money, why don't we drive it into Youngstown, Ohio? Why don't we 
drive it into Mobile, Alabama? Why don't we drive it into Iowa? Why 
don't we drive it into some of these old industrial areas? This can be 
done.
  I want to make one last point.

                              {time}  1710

  The narrative today is that everything that the government does--
every dollar the government spends money on--is bad. Well, that's the 
narrative we're all operating on now because our friends on the other 
side, quite frankly, have won that discussion. But here we are. We 
can't get a transportation bill because that falls into government 
spending. Early childhood education, Head Start--that all somehow falls 
into this abyss of wasteful government spending when the fact of the 
matter is that these are investments that yield results and that create 
value and wealth in our society.
  I will just say that we were in the Defense Appropriations 
Subcommittee hearing today, and we were talking about the Navy. We were 
talking about the sea lanes, and we were talking about the Strait of 
Hormuz and all of these different areas that we protect, that tax 
dollars protect, so that commerce can go--government investments to 
help business thrive.
  It's a delicate balancing act, and to come up with just the bumper 
sticker slogans in order to score political points has damaged our 
ability to do what we did from post-World War II into the eighties, and 
that's to invest in research, invest in infrastructure, invest in 
American workers, and then let the free market go from there.
  So I want to thank the gentleman for his leadership on the Make It in 
America caucus--in promoting manufacturing. I thank the gentlelady from 
the District of Columbia. It's an honor to be with you.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. I want to thank the gentleman from Ohio, who knows 
what it is to rebuild the manufacturing base, and I thank you for the 
work that you've been doing.
  We have just a few seconds, Ms. Norton, if you could wrap and then 
I'll wrap, and we'll call it a day.
  Ms. NORTON. When the gentleman speaks about manufacturing, both of 
you have spoken about manufacturing in its different aspects.
  Look at what is happening today. The private sector is bringing 
manufacturing home because of the low cost of energy, and we are 
producing more of our own natural gas because of the low cost of 
energy. The government just needs to do its part. Don't countermand 
what the private sector is doing. Do what the gentleman says. Don't 
take jobs from Youngstown. Help Youngstown to rebuild Youngstown. It's 
going to be built anyway. Now is the time to rebuild it.
  So I thank the gentleman for yielding to us in this very important 
discussion every week.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. We must start thinking about what we can do rather 
than what we cannot do. This is America. This is the country that built 
the future--we really did--and we can claim the future if we reach back 
into our history and do what we did before. We were builders. We built 
the foundations.
  Mr. Ryan, as you said so very clearly, it's investment. It's 
investment in the intellectual ability of Americans--in education and 
research. It's investment in the infrastructure. It's investment in the 
business community. There is a combination of government and private 
sector. It's the history of America. It's an exciting history. It's a 
potential. Unfortunately, we are ignoring the key role that the 
governments--local, State and Federal--play in that process. We're 
builders, we're Americans, and we're going to do it. We will make it 
happen, and I will tell you this: when America begins to make it in 
America, Americans are going to make it.
  I thank my colleagues.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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