Economic Populism

Floor Speech

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Mr. Speaker, I am =========================== NOTE ===========================

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The online version has been corrected to read: minutes as the designee of the minority leader.) GENERAL LEAVE The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Pennsylvania? Mr. Speaker, I am ========================= END NOTE ========================= honored and proud to represent the people of Pennsylvania, good,

hardworking, patriotic people who are pretty frustrated. We are not

living in normal times.This should not be a normal run-of-the-mill Special Order hour. What I will convene today, my colleagues on the Democratic side of the aisle, who you will hear from, these are people who know how to fight for their people. They know how to win. They are not shy or afraid about a righteous fight. They are Members of Congress in this Chamber from across the country, across the idealogical spectrum, and may not agree on everything. Certainly we don't, but we agree that too many in our party have lost their way, and it is time to wake the heck up.

Now, don't misunderstand me. This administration and those helping them are wreaking havoc on so much of our country. We see Social Security, and Social Security Administration workers' abilities to deliver the hard-earned benefits that seniors have worked their whole lives for, under attack. We see VA employees on the chopping block, fired, contracts scrutinized and then cut. We see the promise of this country to care for veterans betrayed. We see cancer research, lifesaving medicine trials, and clinical trials interfered with, threatened, with funding on the chopping block.

The American people are mad. They should be mad. This administration's approval ratings are in free fall. The American people are rejecting much of what we see, but too many of our side of the aisle aren't giving a strong enough alternative, a bold enough alternative.

While the President's numbers may be in free fall, we also see favorability of the Democratic Party at record lows, the lowest CNN has seen since 1992. There has not been a strong enough vision from Democrats on this side of the aisle when we have something to say.

Our party needs to change, and economic populism and patriotism should be where we go, standing up for people to revive the American Dream.

Democrats should be fighting hard against corruption and the giant corporations who fund so much of that. We should be fighting against anyone else, any force, any company, you name it, that has made life a rip-off for our people.

Folks are mad and they should be. It is justifiable anger. The American Dream is gone for too many people, people who work hard, who play by the rules, and yet can't catch a break, who see life as too expensive.

People are right. The American people understand our economy has been rigged against so many. I say the American Dream hasn't slipped away; it has been ripped away.

I am 40 years old. My generation and those younger than me, the first generation in a long time, since World War II, have grown up and don't expect to be better off than their parents.

That is what the American Dream is all about. It didn't just happen on accident. There are villains here. Corporate power and corruption have been eating away at the American Dream.

Hedge funds, speculators buying up houses, jacking up the cost of that housing are becoming lousy landlords, pricing people out of what could be a nest egg for their retirement, their home.

Monopolies are jacking up prices and killing small businesses every chance they can get. Pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, are raising the cost of medicine and killing local pharmacies. The list goes on and on.

This President and others on the other side have capitalized on this anger and used it to get power, now lift up their efforts to let robber barons plunder this government, to attack the fundamental bargain with our seniors and veterans and so many others.

Democrats need to wake up and stop defending elites and the establishment. They have failed the American people. Across both parties, those who have been in power have failed at the fundamental task of protecting and strengthening the American Dream.

Today, a group of us are coming forward, coming to the floor, proposing a new way ahead for Democrats, a new way ahead for this country. We need a fighting spirit of economic populism. It is patriotic. We need this patriotism to be at the heart of this fight and our fight against corruption and anyone else that is in the way of our people and who has wrecked the American Dream.

What does this mean, this economic populism? In a sentence, it is fighting for a life that people can afford. It is bringing corporate power to heel. It is taking on the corruption that pervades this town, Washington.

The economy and what life costs people should never be an afterthought for anyone who serves in a chamber like this. It ought to put the people who work their butts off front and center of what our government does and who we think about every day and every action. It is fighting for a life that people can afford, and it is bringing corporate power to heel.

As we know, out-of-control corporate power leads to higher costs, it leads to worse safety, and it leads to lower quality. We see it play out across so much of our economy. It has weakened our defense industrial base, and, thus, it has weakened our military. It has hurt small businesses across Main Streets all over our districts. It has crushed workers. It has led to rising costs that we all live with. We should take on corruption no matter where we see it, no matter the party.

The last thing that we need is a bunch of wimps looking for a win-win every time. Not every fight is going to have a win-win.

There are villains in this story, in this society of ours, who have made life miserable for so many. You can call them robber barons or you can call them oligarchs, whatever you want. We have got to be willing to take them on.

This embrace of economic populism might sound and look different depending on where in the country or who the messenger is. For me, I am a Navy guy. I served at sea. I served in Iraq. To me, this is a patriotic and righteous fight.

I am from western Pennsylvania, the rust belt, a place where we saw the rich and powerful plot to strip us for parts. We are the people who made the steel that built America. We have always answered this country's call. Those efforts to strip us, to wreck our way of life, are no more.

You will hear from Members across the idealogical spectrum and Democratic side today who are united in this: The era of a spineless Democratic Party must end. Now is not the time for wimpy concessions and then call it a win-win, not when the American Dream has been killed for so many people in America.

Now is not the time to shy from a fight against corruption. Our people see it, and they know that our government has allowed the economy to be rigged against people.

Those villains, that corruption, want you to think the problem is some woke college kid or some trans kid who wants their liberty, wants their freedom. That is not why your prescription drugs are expensive. It is not why housing is expensive. It is that corruption and those villains who want you thinking that when they are the ones who made life terrible for people.

We know the real root of the problem is corruption and corporate power run amok. Too many have been pathetic at talking about corruption and showing that they are up for this fight.

Some on this side of the aisle have been complicit in helping corporations plunder this country. That should end. We have to be willing to go to the mat for an economy that works for people who work hard, who play by the rules, and who want the American Dream back.

The roots of this party, that I am proud to be a part of, go back to the New Deal. It is a working-class party at its core. Allowing somebody else to fake economic populism and win power is real and dangerous, and we are living through the cost of it right now.

Again, the people you will hear from today work hard and fight hard for their districts. They get this. They are not faking populism, and they know how to win in places where you have got to win. I am proud to start.

DeLauro).

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Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Connecticut not just for joining us today but for her long commitment to dignity in work, for fighting for people, for better trade policy, and so much else.

I am honored now to welcome in a colleague from California who has strong Pennsylvania roots.

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Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California who understands deeply what we need to do on this economic patriotism. The gentleman understands what it means for manufacturing and what it means for communities who saw these jobs not leave but be taken away. They were taken away by this ideology on Wall Street and the politicians around here who helped them, which says that all that matters is chasing the cheapest labor, the weakest labor rules, and nonexistent environmental rules. They made them citizens of nowhere. They didn't care about this country or the communities and the people who worked hard to make them rich, whether they made the steel or anything else as we did in America.

It is a stain on our story in this country, and, frankly, it is not too patriotic.

Our side of the aisle and our party thinks we ought to be dominating the fight to supercharge American manufacturing and jobs, not peddling this crap of telling industrial workers to go learn to code or something. That is nonsense. Let's invest in the jobs here to make stuff. Let's have a more muscular trade and industrial policy. That is how we get back on the road of economic freedom for people.

Members on both sides of the aisle here, both parties, have long embraced this wrong-for-decades neoliberal disaster of unlimited and free trade. I think it has been a failure of government across the board. We should push back on these lousy trade deals. We trade. We trade with our friends, and we trade with others, but we do it on fair terms.

What is not fair is seeing American workers undercut by governments like Communist China that use the power of the state to dump artificially cheap products on our markets. Let's circumvent our trade rules that let the workers be exploited. We have got to beef up trade enforcement on Communist China and others like them. There have to be meaningful consequences. Let's have tariffs be part of that but let's be smart and strategic.

What we have seen this administration do has been chaotic and reckless. Businesses cannot plan. There is no certainty day to day of what the trade environment will be, and it is absent from any full strategic industrial policy that is the heart of economic patriotism. To make more stuff in America, Mr. Speaker, you have to have a full policy that is centered by workers, industrial policy.

One of my colleagues who gets this idea of economic patriotism deeply is Mr. Ryan. He is a West Point graduate. I won't hold that against him too much. He deeply understands the fight that we need and understands that our core of economic patriotism is what we are all about.

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Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New York for his fight and his stiff spine in this.

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Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Rhode Island for his comments. He gets it, and this is not some hypothetical problem. We are living through the cost of losing and what it is to see the chaos and harm that comes from it. The Democratic Party has to do better.

I am honored to introduce a colleague from the other side of the country who has been a bulldog in the fight against monopolies and so much else, a former chair of the Progressive Caucus.

Jayapal).

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Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Washington for her remarks. She is spot on.

I am reminded of a quote from President Franklin Roosevelt who faced the same kind of complaints from then who he called the economic royalists. We can call them robber barons, oligarchs, you name it. They complained and said that FDR was trying to overthrow the institutions of America. President Roosevelt said: ``What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power.'' Here we are again.

I think we can no longer allow anyone over here to play footsies with the corporate overlords and robber barons who have their heels on the necks of the American people. We need to restore competition and break the monopolies.

My colleague from the Granite State gets this, having worked in the Justice Department to take on monopolies. She has been in the trenches in the fight against this kind of corporate power run amok.

Goodlander).

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Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from New Hampshire (Ms. Goodlander) for her comments.

Mr. Speaker, this corporate power we feel in so much of our economy is also what we feel corrupts this place, our Nation's Capital.

We see it with the unlimited money that runs through our elections, unlimited super-PAC spending that corporations can dump in to buy the favors that they get from politicians.

The people who we represent--Democrat, Republican, Independent, you name it--hate this corruption. They see it. They smell it. They know it is crooked.

It is why you have pharmacy benefit managers extracting profits on the backs of people's medicine, killing pharmacies.

It is why you can't even fix your own stuff and why we even have to fight for the right to repair. What can be more American than the idea that you can fix your own stuff, whether it is a tractor, a car, an ice cream machine, you name it? This right to repair goes to the heart of this.

It is why you see housing costs out of control, with Wall Street buying up housing and then buying influence down here.

It is also why you see the obscene practice of people getting rich in Congress, trading stock on information that they may learn in their job serving the people in Congress. It is corrupt. We ought to end it.

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Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Casar) for his comments.

Mr. Speaker, if you want to respect hard work, you have to respect the people who do that hard work. That is at the core of this, and respecting the labor movement is so central.

I am from western Pennsylvania, which is sacred ground in that labor movement, where people bled for the right to organize. That fight continues.

Hoyle).

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Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Hoyle) for her comments.

Tonight, we have heard from Members from my side of the party, Democrats from across the country representing a lot of different districts, but we are all speaking out on ways that we are fighting corruption and the excess of corporate power and the ways that the Democratic Party ought to move forward, not for Democrats but for everyone in this country.

I thank my colleagues for joining me here today to say loud and clear that things need to change. Economic populism and patriotism ought to be where we go, standing up for our people, without apology, to revive the American Dream.

Mr. Speaker, I have the honor of representing a battleground, competitive district in western Pennsylvania. In my time here in Congress, I have been dead set on lowering costs, battling corruption, and confronting corporate power. That means promoting competition and taking on monopolies, giving small businesses a shot to compete, and fighting against these lousy trade deals that stripped communities for parts. It means making more stuff in America, cracking down on junk fees and price gouging, and standing up without apology for the union way of life.

These are economic priorities to bring down costs, and they are good policies. The American people support them. We know that.

Everybody hates getting ripped off. Everybody hates working hard yet still not seeing a life that you can succeed in.

If you want American capitalism to succeed, you have to have competition in our economy. There is a tendency by some in politics to try to please everybody. You should take pride in when they get the bad guys--the villains who are screwing over your people are your enemy--it means you are doing something right.

I am sick and tired of folks in Washington or the think tanks or wherever else looking for a win-win when there is a villain hurting our people. If a railroad sends a toxic fireball into the sky over your community, you don't look for a win-win. You fight them for your people. When PBMs are killing pharmacies and jacking up drug costs, you fight them.

Sometimes, there is a bad guy. There is not a win-win because our way of life is on the line. Our safety is at risk. We have to stand up for our people. You don't cower like wimps. You don't go beg for donations from the people hurting yours.

The goal is simple and popular here. It is to make life better and less of a rip-off and to take on the corporate power and corruption that is hurting people. That is the path back to the American Dream.

This is our vision of economic patriotism and populism, and it is a winning one. It is one that can resonate from the Rust Belt to the Sun Belt and everywhere in between in this great country.

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