30-Something Working Group

30-SOMETHING WORKING GROUP -- (House of Representatives - June 07, 2005)

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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. I am so glad to be here; and I appreciate the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi's) willingness to put this group together of the members of the 30-something, 10-year period. We each have a few more years to go.

I want to piggyback on something you were just talking about related to the eligibility bar for financial aid. I can tell you just from personal experience all of the way back to when I was entering college and my parents were applying for financial aid for me; and the calculation, even back then, as to what we were eligible for and what the formula said that my parents could afford to pay and lay out that would come out of their pocket for college costs was unbelievable then.

And now, with the changes in the financial aid formula today, I mean, even, I grew up in a middle-class family, you know, regular, average middle-class family, you know, not wealthy at all, parents who certainly did not live paycheck to paycheck but had a mortgage and car payments and credit card debt and, you know, pretty significant month-to-month bills. And none of that is taken into consideration when you calculate financial aid.

I mean, those major expenses, other than your income, have nothing to do with the formula. So when they say, and back then the numbers were something like, my parents, based on their income, could be expected to pay $16,000 a year for my college education. Now, given all of the bills that they were struggling to pay for, there was no way.

Now, fast forward to 2005; and the bar has been raised even higher. And add the credit card debt that has drastically increased, with the bar on the graph at a steep incline. You add that to parents' credit card debt, you have kids now who are starting out with credit card debt even in high school.

I mean, that was unheard of when we were in high school. I mean, kids did not start college with credit card debt. They certainly did not begin having credit card debt as early as they do now, with credit card companies literally preying on brand-spanking-new college students with offers and, you know, kids who are willing to sign up to get a credit card just to get a cool t-shirt.

These are students that are not financially sophisticated enough to make the kinds of decisions that they are going to have to make so that they will understand the ramifications for themselves financially for themselves down the road. And we have got to have policies that are going to be able to help them get along in the years to come.

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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. You talk about financial literacy. You are absolutely right. What is happening now, number one, we are not setting the example at the top of the mountain. I mean, what we are doing here is adding to our deficit month after month, year after year.

What kind of message are we sending to generations that are going to come behind us about the importance of minimizing your debt? I mean, we are deficit spending. So why would most Americans think that that is not a normal way, a responsible way to live?

Most Americans, let me not overstate it, many, many Americans live paycheck to paycheck, and they live right to their means. This is a society where, no, I cannot have that now because I cannot afford it right now, is not instilled in people from the time that they are young. That is why financial literacy is so important.

We have a Financial Literacy Caucus. I am on the Financial Services Committee, and we have begun an effort, especially on the Democratic side, to try to educate generations coming up through life that at some point you have to decide what you can afford to have, and there has to be a now and a someday and not everything can be in the now.

That is also a lesson that Congress and the President could learn, too: Not everything can be in the now. Sometimes we have to make some financial decisions that will say, well, it would be nice if we could afford that humongous tax break for the wealthiest few, but in order to be fiscally responsible we cannot have that now.

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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. I represent a district with a pretty sizable percentage of wealthy individuals. And when I am home, I cannot tell you the numbers of people who come up to me and say, you know, I would love to have a tax break, but I care about my children's education a lot more. I care about the Nation's financial and fiscal health a lot more. Keep your tax break. I barely felt it, and it really is not going to make that much difference in my life.

Many, many people who are wealthy and qualify for those tax breaks understand where their priorities are and should be. It seems that only the administration and the leadership of this Congress does not have their priorities straight.

I mean, even Mr. Obey, when we were considering the Defense Appropriations Bill in the last couple of weeks, when he offered an amendment to reduce the tax break for the wealthiest few Americans, I think it was half a percent. I think it was an incredibly small amount of money, just a little bit less of a tax break, that the wealthiest few would have received in order to expand the inspections, the percentage of inspections that we perform at our ports, for the cargo in ports, and that, even that amendment was rejected.

We chose tax breaks for the wealthy over our homeland security. Now if that is not priorities being out of whack, then I do not know what is.

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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, we cannot emphasize enough, this is just another example of how the priorities here are out of whack. We had an opportunity a few weeks ago to visit our troops who were injured in fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan at Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital. These were young men, about a dozen of them, that I had an opportunity to visit, the most heart-wrenching stories, many of whom lost their limbs, mostly lost their legs, had their limbs obliterated, defended our country. Every single one of them said to me that all they wanted to do was to go back and they were so sorry to leave their buddies behind.

These are people that when they become veterans we slap them with a disabled veterans tax. We say to them that for every dollar that they earn in disability payments, we are going to deduct a dollar from their pension. That is the reward we are giving them for serving our country and for becoming injured in the line of duty.

Then we are saying to our members from the National Guard that unless you are within, I think it is, 90 or 180 days of being activated for duty, we are not going to pay for your health care. We do not provide health care to our members of National Guard who we know now are going to be activated at some point, who we know are giving up the salaries that they earn in their regular jobs, who are sometimes covered, sometimes not covered by health insurance at their regular jobs. But one of the things that members of the National Guard have to have to worry about is how to even pay for health care for themselves and their families. Yet we are still providing tax break after tax break for the wealthiest few Americans.

I mean, it just is shocking that the top of the priority list is tax breaks and this trickle-down concept that does not ever seem to go away when it comes to the Republican leadership in this Congress, that if we give the tax breaks to the wealthiest few that somehow their investing and spending is going to flow down and help all the little people.

We are at the point in our lives where we are real live grown-ups now. Has it worked in our lifetime? It still is not working, and we are still not providing for the people who really need the help, who are defending our country. Instead, we are taking money back from them.

We talk about the death tax. We should be talking about the disabled veteran tax, because that is what we are doing to our veterans' pensions when they have been injured in the line of due, and it is absolutely unconscionable.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. The gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Taylor) offered a motion here to recommit a couple of weeks ago.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. What happened?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. A party-line vote went down. And that was on the health care side of it. That was on making sure our Guards and Reservists have coverage regardless. And the gentleman brought out the numbers and it was maybe a billion dollars, but these men and women are picking up and they are in all our districts, and they pick up and they leave their families and come back and leave and come back.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. They spent 1.8 on tax cuts.

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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. There is not a lot more that can be said other than that I think that we need to continue to come to this floor every week and I can commit to you that I will join you and make sure that we can continue to highlight the direction that they are taking this country and the increased debt and the selection of the people who need the least over the people who need the most. And I am not talking about people who are struggling to make ends meet.

You have average working families in America whose priorities include health care and quality education and just making sure that they can stay out of debt. And, instead, the wealthiest few are the priority of the leadership in this Congress.

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