Issues of the Day

Floor Speech

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Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, Mr. Garamendi, for yielding.

I welcome Congressman Garamendi back. Wouldn't I know he would be on the floor the very first moments we get back here. How fortunate the citizens of California are to have elected him.

I am very proud to stand with the gentleman this evening for A Better Deal for the American people. And because it has been Labor Day week and we are celebrating Labor Day this week, I thought it important to link my remarks to his, and I will be very brief.

As we celebrated Labor Day this week, we recall that it actually was declared Labor Day by a Republican president back in the 1890s. So this is an historic moment by any measure, but this past weekend, the President and Republican congressional leaders in this chamber chose to criticize, to vilify labor unions and their leaders, while the Republicans have failed to deliver on a living wage for America's workers.

Wages are stuck, while many in the top 1 percent get very handsome bonuses and pay increases. And the Trump administration is actually increasing, and the record shows, job outsourcing, shipping out our jobs, by doling out, get ready for this, $50 billion in new Federal contracts to companies that continue to close down factories here and move them abroad.

In fact, the President's trade antics can't hide the fact that with China--I remember how China feted him--can't hide the fact that China is drowning us in imports and we can't move an equal amount into that vast marketplace.

The President actually tried to say he is renegotiating NAFTA, but it is funny that in that proposed agreement, he does end runs around the labor standards and living wage issues.

More than 133,000 Americans have a certified trade-related job loss since this President took office, 133,000 people, and only 4 percent of the workers Congressman Garamendi talked about will receive an increase from the GOP's big tax giveaway to the top 1 percent.

So for most Americans, real wages are falling and the middle class is a dream for tens of millions of people who can't seem to get there. Any pay raise people have earned is, in fact, now being eaten up, and I heard this at my meetings all across the district, as their costs of healthcare go up, the cost of medicine goes up, the cost of education for their family goes up.

President Trump on Labor Day weekend announced that he is going to cancel pay raises for 2 million Federal workers, people who work in Homeland Security, people in our air control towers, people who are caring for the sick, people who are ministering to our veterans. How about that: cancel any cost of living.

The pay increase is actually a cost-of-living increase. And for those that work in the capital city areas across our country, we know how expensive it is to live in these places.

Americans' labor history shaped the American economic dream and grew the middle class, which is what you and I want to get back to. And following our 124th national Labor Day, the power and worth of hard work is worth fighting for, it is an earned status, and we must never diminish the value of hard work or, in fact, we will lose its value completely.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Congressman Garamendi for being here tonight. Americans deserve a Congress and a President that gives them A Better Deal and stands up for the true value of hard work for the people, always for the people, especially when Labor Day has been celebrated for the 124th time in our Nation's history, over a century and nearly a quarter.

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