The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“EQUAL OPPORTUNITY IN AMERICA” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Labor was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H209-H215 on Jan. 14, 2014.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
EQUAL OPPORTUNITY IN AMERICA
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Cook). 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, it is good to be back on the floor once again as we have for most every week to talk about jobs in America, to talk about the unemployed, to talk about those who are less fortunate and those who need a strong Federal program to create jobs.
I often start with this because it is kind of the compass, the touchstone of what, at least, I would like to think we ought to be doing.
This is from Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This is actually on one of the marble slabs at his memorial here in Washington, D.C. It reads this way:
The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much. It is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.
All across America today there are far too many that have too little. A couple of weeks ago, I did a jobs fair in Fairfield, California. It was about 38 degrees outside that day, and we had just under 1,000 people come to that jobs fair--there were about 50 employers--and maybe 50-70 people actually got jobs.
This is a picture of the men and women that were lined up waiting to get in to have a very quick interview with one or more of those 50 potential employers.
I have used this photo before here on the floor to point out the need for a jobs program here in America. The President 2 years ago in his State of the Union put forth a proposal. It had several elements--and we will probably cover some of those today--but it has not been enacted. The Republican leadership in this House has refused to pass even one of those jobs programs. There was infrastructure, education, reeducation; there were programs to provide for the opportunity for men and women to get jobs here in the United States.
But I was looking at this photo just today and I said, I am going to use this again, because in this photo approximately half of the people lined up, 1,000, just under 1,000 were women. It caused me to think about another program that the Democratic minority here in the House has been working on for some time, that is, the issue of women in the American economy.
I know that in my own district there is this issue of equal pay for equal work. A woman doing stenography work next to a man doing stenography work would be paid 85 cents while the man is paid $1. So it is 85 cents when a man would have the same job, same skill set, same tenure, would get $1. That is wrong. It is one of the issues we want to address.
Also we know that many of the women that are searching for work here are going to be finding minimum-wage jobs. Now, California is different. We have already passed a minimum-wage law in California that in another year and a half will be $10 plus a little. But the national is still at $7-plus; way, way under what anybody working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year could possibly support a family on. So the minimum wage is another issue for women, as it is for men; but I dare say more so for women than for men.
There is a multitude of issues that we need to consider as we talk about jobs, employment, increasing the employment opportunities in the United States for these people; men and women, and particularly women, that are lined up wanting to get a job.
Joining me tonight is an extraordinary group of people who have been working on this issue of women and jobs, employment, equal employment opportunities, daycare, family care programs.
I would like to start with Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, who has been one of the leaders throughout this entire Nation, often seen on television speaking to this issue and the issue of opportunity in America.
Jan, would you care to start us off on this 1-hour and talking about women and jobs.
Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Thank you, Representative Garamendi, for coming to the floor and talking about the community. And it really is ``the economy stupid'' for most Americans who feel a sense of growing insecurity. Wages haven't gone up for decades.
But the leader, our leader, Nancy Pelosi of our leadership, has launched a campaign on behalf of women in America saying, when women win, America wins, and highlighting the issues that really affect women day to day, calling for things like affordable child care, an increase in the minimum wage, paid leave, which it turns out is a major priority of women.
I see you have got a sign there.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Would you like to have it?
Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. No. Why don't we just turn our attention to that sign.
Ending the gender pay gap, which actually is 77 cents to the dollar that men earn; paid sick leave; permanent child tax credit; improve diagnosis and care for Alzheimer's patients; and on and on.
But we have been bolstered by an incredible new effort that has turned into a remarkable book called: ``The Shriver Report.'' It is a co-effort, and it is a study by Maria Shriver and the Center for American Progress called: ``A Woman's Nation Pushes Back from the Brink.''
The idea here is to give a voice to women. It has got all the facts and figures one would want; but it also has the stories, the actual voice of women who feel so pressured by this economy, but also feel that their voices aren't being heard.
It is a really important book. I wanted to read on the back there are kind of some of these ``wow'' facts that are there that everyone should keep in mind about the status of women in our economy:
One in three women in America is living in poverty or teetering on its brink. That's 42 million women plus the 28 million children who depend on them.
The second bullet:
The American family has changed. Today, only one in five families has a homemaker mom and working dad. Two out of three families depend on the wages of working moms who are struggling to balance caregiving and breadwinning.
Three:
The average woman continues to be paid 77 cents for every dollar the average man earns. The average African American woman earns only 64 cents and the average Latina only 55 compared to White men.
The fourth bullet:
Closing the wage gap between men and women would cut the poverty rate in half for working women and their families and would add nearly half a trillion dollars to the national economy.
Five:
Women are nearly two-thirds of minimum wage workers, and a vast majority of these workers receive no paid sick days. Not one.
When they did a survey of what is the number one thing that you want, women said: sick days for themselves and to go home and take care of their children.
Six:
More than half of the babies born to women under the age of 30 are born to unmarried mothers, most of them White.
Seven:
Nearly two-thirds of Americans and 85 percent of millennials believe that government should adapt to the reality of single-parent families and use its resources to help children and mothers succeed, regardless of family status.
So the American people, two-thirds say government does, in fact, have a role.
Eight:
An overwhelming 96 percent of single mothers say paid leave is a workplace policy that would help them most, and nearly 80 percent of all Americans say the government should expand access to high-quality, affordable child care.
That is a worry that so many mothers have every single day.
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Nine, women living on the brink overwhelmingly regret not making education a bigger priority.
Ten, the trauma and chronic stress of poverty are toxic to children, making them two-and-a-half times more likely to suffer as adults from COPD, hepatitis, and depression.
So actually, poverty is dangerous to the health of children as they grow into adulthood in very dramatic and particular ways.
And so when we think about poverty in America, when we think about extending unemployment benefits, when we talk about the SNAP program, and when we push to raise the minimum wage, one of the important lenses to look through is how is it affecting the women, one-third of whom are on the brink or actually living in poverty.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Those statistics are a wake-up call for America. More than half the population are female, and yet our policies are not women-friendly policies. Our laws are not women-friendly laws, and we need to change that.
I would like now to yield to my colleague from California, Janice Hahn, a longtime city councilwoman in the City of Los Angeles, a woman who knows these issues from her experience representing the communities in that area and now an outstanding Member of the Congress.
Ms. HAHN. Thank you. I appreciate you taking this first hour tonight to focus on women and jobs. It is certainly an issue that we women are very aware of and have worked on a lot in our jobs, in our districts, in our homes, but it is nice when our men are enlightened.
Mr. GARAMENDI. If I might interrupt for a moment.
I am highly motivated. My wife of almost 48 years now and my five daughters keep my constantly abreast of this issue.
Ms. HAHN. Good for them.
I think, as Jan Schakowsky talked about, Nancy Pelosi and Rosa DeLauro, we have had this incredible campaign called When Women Succeed, America Succeeds. The point is it is good to help women in this country because this will really help America to succeed. And we no longer have the kind of families that many of us watched on television in the fifties. In fact, the American family has permanently changed, and women head up more families on their own. More than half of the babies born to women ages 30 and younger are born to unmarried women--by the way, most of them White.
We have got women who are heading their families. We have got women who are trying to take care of their families. They are now the sole breadwinners in their family. They are not necessarily the second income or the income that helps out with the man having the major income.
The statistic, I think, out of the Shriver Report that was really eye-opening for me, when we talk about the minimum wage, is that two-
thirds of the workers who earned a minimum wage in this country are women. And if we could raise this minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, how many more women that would lift out of poverty. And not just the women, their families. We have too many families, children, who are living on the brink, and this is so important.
To talk about women wanting sick days, it is unbelievable to me how many women who work in these minimum wage jobs don't get sick days. Do you know how many women have the painful choice of either putting their sick child on the bus to go to school or staying home and losing a day's wages to take care of their sick child because we don't have the kind of child care in this country that can accommodate children who are not well enough to go to school? We have women choosing between missing a day's work--possibly if they have too many of those, they are going to lose their job--or putting a sick child on the bus to go to school.
We need to raise the minimum wage. We need to have affordable child care. We need to make sure that women have sick days that they can use either for themselves--mostly it is never for yourself when you are a mother. You forgo being sick as a mother and you spend those days for your children.
How many women are taking care of their parents? Even though many women have brothers in the family, it usually falls to the woman to take care of her parents when they become ill or need help being taken care of. We have got to really focus on women making sure they have good jobs.
By the way, our women veterans--our women veterans in this country--
have the highest unemployment rate. That is terrible to think that our women who have put their lives on the line for this country come home and cannot find good jobs to take care of themselves or their families.
I am glad we are doing this tonight. I think it is an important message. I think the Shriver Report that was just released really sheds light on how many women in this country are near or on the brink of living in poverty.
Thank you for doing this tonight.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Representative Hahn, thank you so very, very much.
This chart here, When Women Succeed, America Succeeds, picks up a handful of the bills that have been introduced by the Democratic Caucus, many of these bills by women, a few men along the way. These are the kinds of things that we really ought to be dealing with here as we move--or, unfortunately, fail to move--legislation.
Paycheck fairness, this is the issue of that 77 percent in California, my district being about 85 percent.
The minimum wage, which we talked about here. The issue you raised Representative Hahn about paid sick leave and the problems that occur. Make permanent the child tax credit, which is exceedingly important in providing that income necessary to support the kid. The education issues, and I notice one of my colleagues, Mike Honda, will talk about that in a few moments.
I would like now--and we will pick up the rest. This one down here is one really at the bottom, Alzheimer's, and you mentioned this. The children are now taking care of their parents. Of course, the children are now in their fifties, sixties, and the parents are in their seventies and eighties and beyond. And this issue of Alzheimer's, an overwhelming tidal wave is coming on us.
I know in our own home, the last 2 years of my wife's mother's life was spent in our home. She and I, my wife had night care taking care of her. Fortunately, we were able to have day care come in. This is a huge, growing issue, one in which we need to find ways to support the children taking care of their parents in their homes.
I would like now to turn to another colleague from Ohio, one who has often joined me here on the floor. And thank you so very, very much, Marcy, for joining us, Marcy Kaptur, who has a great deal to do with the appropriations process. Congratulations on the omnibus bill just coming up.
Ms. KAPTUR. Thank you, Congressman Garamendi. Thank you for bringing us together as you so often do. We are so fortunate that you are here and bringing us together as voices from the heart of America here in our Nation's Capital to talk about what is on the minds of the vast majority of the American people, and that relates to their family life, how they are going to survive in this economy.
In listening to the statistics that Congresswomen Schakowsky and Hahn were relating, what has happened to family life in this country, because many times if you read articles, you see families can't hold it together. Why? Because of money, because of their inability to hold the household together because the jobs just vaporized. And when you have trade deficits for 30 years in our country, and we have an average of 15 factories closing every day, jobs vaporize. It doesn't matter where you live--whether it is Ohio, California, Florida, New York--American people have felt directly the impact of this global economy, and many times they can't hold the social unit of the family together.
Many, many of the women who are supporting their children now have done so because of fallout in the economy. What you say about the gender pay gap is absolutely there.
I was very surprised to learn in Ohio, as a result of a study done by Progress Ohio, that, in fact, one of the major companies, I think the largest company in our country, Walmart, employs about 4,500 people in Ohio. And of their employees, those employees that work for minimum wage, or probably less if they are part-time, they apply for food stamps, for SNAP assistance. So they are trying to support their families. Just those in Ohio are using $23 million in Federal food support because they can't earn enough to feed their families. And this type of corporate behavior is repeated over and over and over again, so essentially what is happening is the Federal Government ends up subsidizing low wages because the workers can't earn enough to support their families.
I am fortunate enough to come from a working class family. Our mother worked; our grandmother worked. Thank God for Franklin Roosevelt, because I think what our family has lived represents the story of a vast numbers of Americans.
Our grandmother could hardly speak English. She worked in hotels, in kitchens, peeling carrots and potatoes and so forth, washing dishes, paid the immigrant workers the very least. And then her husband always out of work, taking in tenants in their home. And they lived in 13 different places because they could never manage to own anything, trying to just hold it together with a sick daughter and a husband who often lost his job. So that was Grandma on one side of the family.
Then our mother, who became the sole support of her parents--and five children in that family--working at age 13, going across town to clean homes and so forth, it wasn't until the Democrats under Roosevelt passed the minimum wage that she began earning something more than she earned before.
Do you know what happened in the first place she worked, which was a little luncheonette on Broadway in Toledo, Ohio? When the minimum wage was passed initially, her boss, who wasn't such a nice guy, would cash her check and then pocket the difference between what she used to earn and what she then earned in the workplace. That was before we had the Department of Labor fully developed and we had inspectors on the job and so forth.
This is what American working women have dealt with for generations. And so I have to say, I am so proud I am standing on the shoulders of families like my own to be a voice for these women and these families whose economic struggle is excruciating. It is excruciating. Many of them don't have cars.
Our own mother, she was brilliant. She should be here, not me. She never got her high school equivalency until after she went on Social Security. And there were two things she had in her billfold when she died. One was her library card because she was brilliant, but the other one was her Social Security and Medicare card--because of Democrats. Because of Democrats, she could die with dignity.
I think about the families across this country, and I am so proud to be a voice for them here. I want to thank you very much for standing up for a raise in the minimum wage so that people who are struggling out there don't have to be on food stamps and EBT coupons because they are trying to earn their way forward. They should earn a decent wage, that working family life, paid sick leave.
I took care of our mother when she was ill. I know how hard it was to try to work and to care for someone who was so ill.
I just left a funeral home over the weekend in Ohio where a former county engineer, George Wilson, lost his beautiful wife, Pat, to Alzheimer's. And what were you saying, Congressman Garamendi, what this took for that family and that working daughter to try to hold everything together. It is such a cruel illness. So any help for caregivers across this country, for making caregiving a profession where you earn a decent wage, however we figure out how to do that, we are going to need it in the coming years.
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So I support my colleagues in their efforts to raise the minimum wage, to close the gender pay gap, to make sure that there is paid leave, to make sure that we work as a society to find ways to care for those who are ill. I know that with men such as yourself and those who are on the floor this evening, and with women who have now been educated and able to fully participate in this society and to express the needs from coast-to-coast, we will change this country for the better.
Thank you so very much for coming down here this evening. I agree with you that when women succeed, America succeeds, but we can't do it without our men.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you so very much for your work on the appropriations and pushing these issues along.
Representative Mike Honda from California has been working on the issues of education for many, many years and has some insights into how this issue of women and equality are taken up in the educational area.
Mr. Honda, if you would like to proceed.
Mr. HONDA. Thank you, Congressman Garamendi, for putting these evening discussions on the board here.
I want to also rise to join you and other colleagues of mine in commemorating the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson's declaration of the war on poverty, and, as you had mentioned, President Franklin Roosevelt's effort to close the income gap. The inequities that we have faced and we are still facing are growing even larger today because of the gender pay gap, because of the unpaid portions where people have to leave their work in order to take care of their children or their families. Also, to be able to address the child care issues that became very prominent in the seventies, when both parents started to work and wondered how they were going to be addressing child care.
Also, we have the caregiver support, where adult children are taking care of their parents. We are seeing that this is a necessity that has crept up on our society and our community, almost very quietly, and become an issue because of different kinds of situations our parents are facing, not only because of the physical illness but because of the mental health illness that they have faced.
So all these things play a part in drawing down the resources of middle-income families trying to take care of their own responsibilities, raising their own family, and also the responsibility of their parents who are aging.
In the area of universal pre-K education and early childhood education, both President Roosevelt and Johnson knew that education is an important tool in this war on poverty and closing the income inequity gap.
Last week, I read an article in the Lexington-Herald Leader about two schools in east Kentucky, just hours apart from each other--Anchorage and Barbourville, two communities of about 3,000 in population.
The median household income in Anchorage is more than 3.5 times larger than the median income of that of Barbourville. Yet Barbourville spends only $8,000 per student, while Anchorage spends approximately
$20,000 per student. Equal size population, only a couple hours apart.
The question comes up: Why is it that this country, our communities, continue to refuse to recognize the inequities in funding in our public schools? Why is that?
The quality of education that our children receive should not be dependent on or determined by the ZIP Code in which they live or in which they were born. Each and every child should receive support according to their needs, not according to the ZIP Code in which they reside--each and every child.
In the fifties, when we realized that the States were responsible for education, we interpreted it as the States' constitutional responsibility to move forward on education, and we found that some States had a principle of separate but equal. In the fifties, we realized that that was not supportable, not constitutional, and this became an issue in our current time when we were able to bring this issue to the living rooms of our country through technology--
television. Upon this country and the States becoming more aware of what was going on, on a Federal level we moved the communities to correct this inequity, the unconstitutionality of separate but equal in our education systems and other policies in our different communities and different States.
Today, we have come to a point where we understand that equal opportunity for all children is a necessary principle, but I think, having studied education a little bit more, we should refine that principle into another principle, to wit: each and every child should receive support according to their needs, not according to the ZIP Codes or the median income of their parents.
One of the more important steps to accomplish this and achieve equity in funding for our youngsters in the preschool and early childhood education arena is to fully fund Head Start for each and every child. So we must encourage States to adopt a more equitable funding formula to ensure that each and every child receives the necessary financial and human resources required.
President Obama declared that he has an initiative that addresses universal preschool education. The Governor of California, Jerry Brown, passed a bond that said that we want more equitable funding for children in the State of California. We passed a bond that increased the funding for education to achieve more equitable funding for each and every child. It is the first step. It is the right direction, but we have miles and miles to go.
This journey for equitable funding for each and every child is a journey that we must continue and start now, in order to achieve the civil rights of each and every child in this country.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Representative Honda, thank you so very much.
Among the many pieces of legislation that the Democratic Caucus has put forward on this issue of when women succeed, America succeeds is the issue of universal pre-K. Head Start is one part of that. There are many other kinds of programs, but it is absolutely clear that if we have universal educational opportunities before kindergarten and beyond that the chance of a kid making it in this economy is going to be substantially greater.
This is just part of the agenda over the next several months. We will be talking about the remaining portions of the agenda that we are putting forth.
We know that if this Nation is to succeed, we better make sure that the majority of our population, the women in our society--girls young and old--have every opportunity to succeed. There are barriers, some legal, some historic, and some custom, that make it very difficult for women to have an equal chance in our economy.
So we are going to address those. We would like to have the Republican side of the House work with us on those issues. We know that one of the major parts of that is the minimum wage issue. That is front and center.
I would like now to turn to my colleague from New York, who has joined me all so often, but never quite enough, on the floor.
Representative Tonko, you have been on this issue of economic development for so long. I think it is almost 4 years now we have been dealing with this, not every week, but often talking about jobs in America, economic growth, and what we can do.
Why don't you pick it up and carry the ball for a while, and then we will see where we are.
Mr. TONKO. Thank you to the gentleman from California for yielding.
I want to thank you, Representative Garamendi, for leading us in an hour of very important discussion which highlights the efforts of the Democratic Caucus within the House of Representatives. I, for one, am very proud to serve with a group of leaders, women and men, within that Democratic Caucus who have a vision of where they want to take this Nation, how we can address the inequality, how we can empower our economy by reaching to individuals and families across this Nation with an order of economic justice. That, I think, is the moral compass that guides us in that Caucus. I believe that many of these ills within our economy can be resolved.
I, with great interest, listened to the opening of this hour of Special Order, where discussion on the economy began with your quoting President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. As you cited within that quote the contrast between those who have an abundance and those who have little, we know that in that historic time President Roosevelt guided this Nation with a program, and we had reference to his administration being that of a New Deal.
Today, many of the workers, many working families, women, those who struggle in our economy, are given a bad deal. The bad deal is intolerable. The bad deal needs to be discontinued.
So we work, in very progressive format, here on the House floor offering a Democratic agenda, making certain that all people are embraced, are brought into an inclusive sort of politics where we engage in the ills of the past and correcting those ills of the past, studying them, understanding where the empowerment is required.
Certainly, when you look at some of the issues today, there is this greater impact on women in many measurable ways. We have the minimum wage issue, with two-thirds of those working in minimum wage being in a category of women.
So we need to address that minimum wage. America stands behind that concept. They understand that if you work hard and are trying to raise a family, you need to do it with great remuneration, with social and economic justice, again, and the appropriateness of enabling people to have just pay for the work that is done.
We can address that with a minimum wage agenda here in the House. I believe that those dollars are recirculated into the economy. People earning a minimum wage are going to spend on the basic essentials of life for themselves and for their family members. So it, I believe, is a way to strengthen regional economies, State economies, and this national economy, by being fair to workers and working families.
There was also talk about the efforts to provide for family leave time, for sick leave, and the worthiness of providing for that and removing of the stress factor within families. It is critical. It is important to quality of life, and it is the right thing, the fair thing to do.
Also, I find very incredibly important the discussion routinely on this House floor about the extension of emergency unemployment insurance. Well, that is something that has received a lot of attention of late, but the leadership of the House is rigid in not addressing the extension of emergency unemployment insurance.
Well, let me tell you that that denial of unemployment insurance has impacted women particularly hard, but both women and men, and families in general.
Let me tell you about two discussions I had this weekend. I gathered with some folks from my district who are communicating with us about the need to have this done. Two individuals--they happen to be women--
Laurie, Lisa, and I, and others, had met, along with a local assembly member, Pat Fahey, from the Albany region of New York. We heard their stories.
They have been without work for nearly a year. They have been actively pursuing work, sending out resumes, indicating wherever a job is possible that may fit their skill set, and they are not getting the response they require.
So they have talked about it. We wanted to get a personal saga here, a story. We wanted to relate really well so we could be a stronger voice here on the House floor.
Both Laurie and Lisa brought to my attention the fact that their children are watching this. They are watching this whole episode, and they can't understand the insensitivity, the callousness, the cold-
heartedness. They thought that government would be there at a time when their parents were struggling for work. They want to work. Unemployment insurance means people have paid into that concept. So when you stumble across hard times, somebody will be there to assist you. They are not getting that assistance.
You look at the discrimination, with many that are calling my office, women and men, who may have been 45, 50, 55 years of age, if not 60-
some. They are feeling age discrimination as they go to these interviews. They are being bypassed, they believe, because of their age.
So the work out there that they require, where three people are chasing every available job, we need in this post-recession to continue to be there on their behalf. We have never not chosen to reauthorize and provide for the unemployment insurance opportunities.
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In the seven recessions that have followed since 1958, we have always extended that unemployment insurance. Why now? Why now do we say no?
We need to be sensitive. We need to understand that many people, a great number of women, require this reauthorization. A number of people are feeling age-discriminated against, and so the right thing to do is to empower these families.
The dollars come right back into the economy. In fact, it has been stated that for every dollar of unemployment insurance that is paid to individuals out there, $1.52 is realized in the local economy, and so it more than pays for itself.
And when the theories out there, when the many institutes, the economic policy institutes, measure the impact of not doing this, we understand full well that it sets back the economy. Some 400,000 jobs are lost. $400 million was lost in the early stages of not doing the unemployment insurance reauthorization.
So there are many ills that come with a lack of action here. There are many ills that need to be undone that have been decades long, generations long in their impact on women, making certain that, as we empower women, as we empower them, we empower families, we empower this Nation.
There are many things that need to be done, and I, again, am so proud to work with the Caucus that understands it, that gets it, that is trying to be out there speaking the progressive voice of policy reform that will strengthen this economy, grow the economy.
There is no more important issue today than growing our economy, and we do it by a sense of inclusion. With those inclusive politics, women and men, younger workers just entering the workforce, senior workforce members, everyone is empowered when we do the progressive order of reform that enables us to grow this economy.
So Representative Garamendi, I am certainly pleased that you are leading us in this discussion on growing the economy, on doing an order of fairness, social and economic justice that speaks to individuals out there, in many cases, the ills that are borne upon women because of a lack of fine tuning to our policy that needs to be addressed. So I am pleased that you are leading us in this discussion here this evening on the House floor so that we can express the contrast, the difference.
It is not everyone just holding back on progress. There are those who have an agenda that speaks to the common folk, the workers out there, the individuals, the families, the children that are empowered by quality daycare, child care services, that are empowered by a minimum wage increase, empowered by the extension of emergency unemployment insurance, by skills development programs.
There is a package out there, Making It In America, that has been addressed by this Caucus, by the Democratic Caucus in the House, that will grow the economy and strengthen the future and provide a sense of hope.
It has been done. We need to replicate history. We saw what happened when we engaged in issues like Social Security, Medicare, workers' rights, standing up for the individuals out there in order to provide for the remuneration that they require and deserve. That is respect, and that is providing hope for America's working families.
So let's hope we can move forward with a progressive agenda for this Nation's working families.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Tonko, I knew that I would enjoy listening to you. The passion, the knowledge, the intensity that you bring to this issue is critically important. You have worked at these issues for a long time, and I want to talk, just wrap up the unemployment insurance issue with going back to where I started here some time ago.
Again, in early December, a jobs fair in Fairfield, California, nearly 1,000 people came to it, 50 employers. More than half of the people in this line are women. I could probably go down through this line. I remember a conversation with a couple of the women here, and they were on unemployment insurance.
Now, unemployment insurance actually started with the New Deal. It was part of the effort to deal with poverty in America, and it was an insurance program, a program into which the employer and the employee pay for insurance for the employee should there be a layoff, should they be unemployed, should that individual be unemployed. It is an insurance program. It is not a welfare program. It is an insurance program.
But if I were to go back down this line and talk to each one of these individuals, probably, maybe, 15 percent of them have lost their unemployment insurance because the House of Representatives has refused to extend the long-term unemployment insurance.
So where are they today?
They are without a job because, as you said, Mr. Tonko, for every job available in America today, there are three people looking for that job. So two are going to go without the employment.
Minimum wage doesn't count because they yet don't have a job. We need to develop a jobs program, and we need to extend that unemployment because these women are mothers of children that now have a family with no income, no unemployment insurance.
The food stamps, the proposal on this floor by our colleagues was to cut the food stamp program by $40 billion. So where will the food come from? Not from SNAP, which is the new name for the food stamp program, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. That is going to be cut.
Hunger in America among children--one in four children go hungry, and we are adding to it. We are adding to that number today by the refusal to extend the unemployment insurance.
Some 72,000 people will lose their long-term unemployment insurance each month as this rolls along--each week.
Thank you, Mr. Tonko. You are welcome to interrupt me whenever, and we can have a dialogue here. So thanks for the lipreading.
Each week 72,000 people. At the end of the year, another 3\1/2\ million will have lost their unemployment insurance. Will they have a job? They could have a better opportunity for a job if we carried out the President's jobs program.
I think we have got about 10 minutes or so. Let's spend some time on that.
I am going to put up one of my favorite and often-used charts here. Mr. Tonko, you will recognize this.
Mr. TONKO. Absolutely.
Mr. GARAMENDI. It is the Make It in America chart. It is the revitalization of manufacturing in the United States. And I could probably give your speech on the industrialization of the State of New York. I will let you do it, however.
But these are the issues that we think are critical. We have spent most of this night talking about this one--labor. Last week I said we would pick this up, and we are, and particularly focused on women in the labor force. But here it is, trade policies, international trade.
I gave a speech this morning on the maritime industry, the decline of the maritime industry, the necessity of maintaining it. We are a maritime Nation. We have oceans surrounding us, whether it is the Arctic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, the Caribbean, or the Atlantic Ocean.
So it is trade issues.
Tax policies, why do we continue to subsidize the wealthiest industries in this world? The oil industry, why do we continue to subsidize the oil industry? Energy policy. Fortunately, we are having a good run on the energy issues, and we will come back and talk about that.
Mr. Honda talked about educational policy, research and infrastructure. These are the elements of the Make It In America agenda. And when we use our tax money to buy American-made equipment, really good things happen. Americans go to work.
In my district, or just on the edge of my district, in Sacramento, Siemens, that huge German manufacturing company, opened a manufacturing plant to build 100 percent American-made locomotives for the first time in generations because, in the stimulus bill, a sentence was added to the support for Amtrak, and that sentence said these locomotives will be 100 percent American-made.
A German company said, oh, $600, $700 million contract, we will make them in America. And so all across this Nation, manufacturing companies are now participating in the construction of 100 percent American-made locomotives using American taxpayer money.
That is the key here. Mr. Tonko, I know you get really excited about this issue, as you were about poverty and equality in America just a moment ago. Why don't you pick this up and carry it for a while?
Mr. TONKO. Sure. And I thank, again, the gentleman from California for yielding.
The Make It In America program, the concept of that, is a very strong domestic agenda. In and of itself, it has great merit. But let's put that into the context of the bigger picture, and that is the international sweepstakes for the economy, for landing jobs.
Many of us can recall the global race on space in the sixties, and it was critical to win that race. We had come off a failing moment with Sputnik, dusted off our backside and said never again.
So this Nation committed, with passionate resolve, that we would win that global race on space. That was just two nations, U.S. vs. USSR. Who would land on that Moon, stake their flag first? We were determined it was going to be the United States. And a rather youthful President led the Nation, again, with passionate resolve, so that we had dollars for training, for research, for education, for equipment, and we were going to win that race, and we did.
In my first year in Congress, in 2009, we celebrated the 40th anniversary. Neil Armstrong was here to shake the hands of many Members of Congress, thanking him for the poetry of the moment in that July of 1969. It was more than the one small step for man, one giant step for mankind, the poetry of the moment. It was the unleashing of untold amounts of technology that impacted communications, energy generation, health care. Across the gamut of job creation, technology entered in.
Fast-forward to today. A rather youthful President is asking again that we embrace, with passion, our entry into a global race, this time on innovation and clean energy and high tech. But this time, dozens of competitors.
So Make It In America is noble in and of its own right, but it is critical when we place it into the bigger picture of a global race on innovation. And it is not our choice to determine if we are going to enter the race. Our choice ought to be how prepared, how strong, how competitive will we be as we enter that race.
That requires education, higher education, skills development, energy costs, innovation of all sorts. That comes with the passion of reform. So we need an agenda like that presented with Make It In America that addresses the needs of the workers, that speaks to the empowerment that comes with research which equals jobs. For us to have that pioneer spirit, which I believe is in the DNA of America and her workers, we need to embrace that pioneer spirit and move forward.
Now, Representative Garamendi is going to joke that I always talk about the donor area that the 20th Congressional District of New York is and was to the development of the Industrial Revolution in this Nation. But the Erie Canal made a port out of a little town called New York, and then developed into the birthing of a necklace of communities called mill towns that became the epicenters of invention and innovation.
We need that same spirit to be embraced today with this out-of-the-
box thinking, where we can bring about the best of America and provide hope for workers, for families across this Nation, and do it in a way that allows us to win this given race, this global race on innovation.
Whoever wins this race, as the President, President Obama, has been quoted oftentimes, will be the kingpin of the international economy. That is an important assignment to this House, the House of Representatives. It is an important assignment to Congress. It is an important challenge to all of us, as Americans, to commit to that agenda of investing, investing in America so that our best days lie ahead. I am convinced that with this sort of progressive thinking, our best days lie ahead, and that we deliver hope to the doorsteps of individuals and families across this Nation with a vision of how we can win this next quarter of global competition.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Representative Tonko, once again, you have laid it out very, very clearly, the challenge that we have. There are 435 of us here in the House of Representatives. I think we are a little lower than that because of some retirements, but let's just say 435, and 100 Members of Congress. Together with the President, we set the national policy. We set the national agenda. And frankly, at the moment, the agenda is one that has stalled out. Really, we have been prevented from pushing forward an aggressive agenda such as you have described. Those elements, research, education, manufacturing, infrastructure, the role of labor, particularly the role of women in the labor force, those issues are roadblocked.
{time} 1845
There is a stop sign that has been put up here in the House of Representatives that basically says we shouldn't do any of that, that government has no role in any of those issues. I would challenge that philosophy. I would challenge that philosophy with the Founding Fathers.
Our colleagues on the right often talk about we ought to do what the Founding Fathers did. Well, one of the things that George Washington, one of the Founding Fathers, did was to turn to Alexander Hamilton and say, Develop a strategy for American manufacturing, for building the American economy. So Hamilton went off, probably talked to a few people, and came back with a lengthy report, which you would never see nowadays, which was like 30 pages. And in that document, he laid out a strategy for building the American economy.
Interestingly, guess what he talked about. He talked about trade. He talked about infrastructure. Among the infrastructure that was specifically in the plan that Hamilton presented to George Washington, who then presented it to the Congress, was canals. And shortly thereafter, about 30 years later, the Erie Canal.
Here in Washington, the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, the canal on the Potomac River. It also talked about roads. It talked about ports. Those were the infrastructure projects of the day. The Constitution, by the way, says that the Federal Government must maintain and build postal roads. Infrastructure, we talk about that nearly all the time we are here.
Research. At that period of time, Thomas Jefferson--not exactly in league with the representatives from New England, but nonetheless--was pushing forward the research agenda and the education agenda. Go back to the Founding Fathers, pick up those elements of economic growth that they put on the American agenda in the very earliest days of this Nation, and carry those forward.
We are not a shy country; but if one would look at the policies emanating from the Congress today, you would think that we are a country that does not envision the necessity of grabbing the strength of the past and using those elements that have created the economic growth and pushing them forward.
We can, and we must, do this. And as we do it, I want to go back to where we started today's discussion, and that is, we started this discussion with the role of women in our economy. 77 cents. Equal pay? No, no. A man will earn $1; and a woman at the same job, same skill sets, same tenure on the job will earn 77 cents across this Nation. In my own district, it is 85 cents.
A woman working full time at minimum wage cannot earn enough money in this Nation to feed her child and pay the rent. A woman in this Nation with a child, she has a job, the child gets sick: she is faced with a dilemma.
We need to address these issues; and we must keep in mind the Make It In America agenda, the jobs agenda that we push forward; and we must always remember that when women succeed, America will succeed.
And with that, I thank my colleagues Mr. Tonko, Mr. Honda, the three women that joined us earlier, Ms. Kaptur, Ms. Hahn, and Ms. Schakowsky, for bringing this message to the American people and to our colleagues here on the floor.
And I yield to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Tonko) to wrap up.
Mr. TONKO. I will just indicate that not far from the 20th Congressional District in upstate New York is the Women's Hall of Fame. And just recently, our leader, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, was inducted into that hall of fame. We think of the stories of women in the chronicles of American history, the women who embraced sacrifice and struggled to make a difference. Think of what happens when we empower the inexorable outcomes that they have journeyed through over the course of our history. Think of the empowerment that comes. So with the vision of progressive orders of reform, our best days lie ahead; and we can deliver that hope that we are challenged to deliver.
So it has been tremendous speaking with you and our colleagues on the floor here this evening. Let's move forward and provide that hope to America's working families.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I thank you for the hour, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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