Our economy has experienced a major bounce back. It has rebounded from the loss of 7 million jobs in a single year beginning in 2008 and an unemployment rate that soared to 10 percent in 2009.
More than 11 million private sector jobs have been created in the last five years, as this chart shows, with 58 straight months of private sector job growth leading the unemployment rate to fall to 5.6%.
The economy of this country has been put back on its feet and it’s moving ahead. The stock market has climbed to record highs and the deficit as a percentage of GDP has been cut by two-thirds since 2009. The Affordable Care Act has helped to dramatically cut the percentage of Americans without insurance and health care premiums are growing at the lowest rate in 50 years.
This major reversal from deep decline to economic growth occurred despite Republican opposition to President Obama’s proposals, repeated GOP threats to default on our debt obligations and an incredibly harmful 16-day government shutdown fueled by an unending ideological opposition to the Affordable Care Act.
This year must see a different environment. It needs bipartisan action on important issues.
Among the deepest challenges facing our economy today remains one that has persisted for decades, starting in the 1980s - stagnant middle class wage growth.
This chart from the Economic Policy Institute shows the nearly flat line of wage growth that the bottom 90 percent of American workers has experienced since 1980, even as incomes have grown significantly among the very wealthiest.
In December the Washington Post chronicled the long-standing problems facing America’s middle class. They found that the average wage in a quarter of American counties is actually lower today than it was 35 years ago. That’s real stagnation in the lives of America’s middle class. And yet even immediate and much-needed steps that Democrats have promoted to address this problem have encountered an ideological roadblock from Republicans.
Efforts to increase the minimum wage and ensure that women earn the same as men for equal work have encountered fierce Republican resistance. An Obama administration proposal to require overtime pay for millions of additional white collar workers who are currently not covered has been met with strong criticism from some congressional Republicans. And financing the long-term needs of our nation’s infrastructure has taken a back seat - despite the fact that we know investments in infrastructure create jobs now and make us stronger in the future. The Committee has not held a hearing on this topic in the last four years.
I hope that in my further discussions with Chairman Ryan we can quickly reach agreement on the holding of hearings on financing of major infrastructure legislation.
Tax reform must be a central focus of this committee. Democrats believe that reforming the tax code should not center on rate cuts at the very top for the wealthiest Americans, but rather on creating a tax code that is fairer for working families, promoting economic growth and eliminating loopholes for special interests and ensuring that both individuals and businesses pay their fair share of taxes. Under any circumstances, we learned in 1986 and re-learned more recently that for tax reform to progress, it is essential that there be serious open discussions on a bipartisan basis, from the very beginning and throughout. I hope that we can proceed accordingly.
On the Trans-Pacific Partnership, negotiations are at a vital juncture with many of the key issues still unresolved. TPP is the most significant multilateral negotiation in over 20 years, involving 12 nations representing 40 percent of the world’s economy and presenting many new issues for such negotiations. How these issues are resolved is central to whether we are moving effective trade policy forward. The important challenge is not to just get it done, but get it right. Congress must be a full partner and I strongly suggest we organize on a bipartisan basis to work on the substance of TPP.
