Majority Maker Freshmen

Floor Speech

MAJORITY MAKER FRESHMEN -- (House of Representatives - July 26, 2007)

The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Boyda). Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Ellison) is recognized for 23 minutes, half the time until midnight, as the designee of the majority leader.

Mr. ELLISON. Madam Speaker, today is a good day. The Majority Maker Freshmen are here tonight at this late hour to celebrate the increase in the minimum wage for the first time in 10 years. The minimum wage, the amount of pay that the lowest paid workers in our country receive, now will be able to claim an increase in pay.

Madam Speaker, I am joined today by our colleagues, Mr. Ron Klein of Florida and Mr. Paul Hodes of New Hampshire, to talk about this question of economic justice, this issue of a shared prosperity in our economy and in our country. And I can think of no more important and no better topic to kick off the conversation than a send-up and salute to the hardworking folks of this country who do it on minimum wage every day.

Today, Madam Speaker, there is a mom who can say to her son, ``Yes, son, you can go on that field trip because Mom has the money. Here you go.'' There is a dad who can say, ``Honey, yes, you can go in and play softball this summer because we can work it out.'' There is an aunt who can afford to buy her nephew or niece maybe a birthday present which she just couldn't afford before.

There is a hardworking mother and father who do not have to rely upon the goodness of charity, which we admire that, but everybody also wants to earn their way, don't they? And they are not going to have to go to those food shelves, although I am glad that those food shelves are there because we need them. But this week they don't have to go because the minimum wage has been increased, and the hardworking people, the people who make this country really go, have gotten the edge up.

And so I just want to yield, take it to one of our fellow new members of the Majority Makers, and talk about this idea of a shared prosperity of America, and how the Democratic Congress is going to return our country to a time when everybody can feel that you can really make it, you have a real shot in the American economy not just for the few, but for the many.

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Mr. ELLISON. The minimum wage is a good thing. We all three of us feel good about it, and we all three are members also on the Financial Services Committee, so we are focused on these issues.

But there have been some other things that have happened here in this Democratic Congress that have really helped improve the lives of average working Americans. I have in mind the bill that was passed recently, the Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill. Is there anything in there that you think the American people ought to know about or the Speaker ought to know about?

Mr. KLEIN of Florida. Absolutely. And I'm glad you pointed it out because I know that you personally took a lead on a number of the educational issues. I think all of us as Americans understand the importance of education and so many of the achievement issues that have been brought up in our individual States at the Federal level, there's concern. There's concern that America's not keeping up. We're not achieving. We're not where we need to be and we see some of the other countries of the world, whether it's China or some of the Far East countries that really are moving ahead with their economies, with their job creation. It's not just call centers in Bangalor. It's high tech jobs. And I think there's a big commitment by this Congress this year with Democratic leadership, and I'm glad to see Republicans joining us because this is not a partisan issue. This is the right thing to do.

There was a big commitment to invest in children, and it was everything from investing in schools to investing in college scholarships, Pell Grants. For those of you who don't know what Pell Grants are, those are the scholarships that help students go through college and provide access to college. We've worked on the interest rate, reducing the interest rate so that more kids can, again, go to school.

There are lots of kids in our country that have disabilities and we have invested in education for children with disabilities. As a matter of fact, we put $509 million additional dollars in.

And the last thing I'll mention, because this is something that I know that both my colleagues, Mr. Hodes and Mr. Ellison are very involved in their local communities and that's expanding medical research. This is such an important issue. And whether you believe in stem cell, which I firmly do, or any other type of medical research, we have millions of people in our country, not just seniors, but families with children and adults that have serious medical disease issues. And unfortunately, the last number of years, Federal grants for research have been declining. It's called the NIH, National Institute of Health grants. And they've been declining. Unfortunately, the recommendations from the President have been less and less, and Congress has put less and less in.

Yet, there's been a demand for the public to say help us, help us find cures. And I'm so proud about the fact that there's going to be well over a billion dollars of additional research over and above what the President even asked for. And this will allow for an additional 545 competing medical research programs to go forward. And I don't even have to mention the names of the diseases because Americans understand what's going on here. It's not just Alzheimer's; it's so many other things.

So, Mr. Ellison, thank you for mentioning that because one of the things that I came to Congress for was to work on education, making sure our children can compete and our adults can compete, and medical research. And I think that this bill, in particular, has so much in it and it's so exciting. I'm looking forward to seeing the President hopefully sign this bill as soon as possible.

Mr. ELLISON. I know these bills are all separate, Madam Speaker. There are different bills that go through to appropriate monies for the different category areas. But I think it's important for the American people, Madam Speaker, to understand them as a whole. As we increase minimum wage, as we increase funding for health research for education, this is a general approach to help the average, working American, the average working family, do better, be more prosperous, reach their goals, help their children be prosperous and have a secure and good retirement.

I wonder, would you yield to a question, Mr. Hodes?

Mr. HODES. Absolutely.

Mr. ELLISON. Given that we have about 37 million people who are in poverty in America today, and looking at some expenses, you know, we see that bread prices have risen 25 percent, health insurance costs have risen 97 percent, and the price of regular gasoline has jumped 149 percent.

Are the folks who are in poverty in America today, who are some of these folks? Are these hardworking folks, or are those folks who don't work so hard? Who are the people who we categorize as poor today, this 37 million?

Mr. HODES. Mr. Ellison, it's a great question because what we've got today in America really is a large body of people, 37 million people, mainly, who are working poor. These are folks who, a lot of them are single parents; many of them happen to be single moms. And a lot of the folks, the working poor in this country who are struggling to make ends meet, are not just working one job. They're working two jobs; they're working three jobs to make ends meet. They generally are without health insurance, many of them. They don't have people to help take care of their kids. They struggle every day.

And I just want to expand on some of the points that Mr. Klein made, because as we moved in Congress to appropriate money for the Labor and Health and Human Services portion of the budget, it's important for the American people to understand that we did so in an absolutely fiscally responsible way, and to understand that we are making investments in America's future.

The President, in his budget, proposed cutting Health and Human Services and education programs by $7.6 billion below 2007, after adjusting for inflation. We knew that we had to come and make fiscally responsible investments in our future. So we rejected the President's damaging cuts, and we proposed a very modest increase, about 3 percent over 2007, after adjusting for inflation, so that our final bill was still $2.9 billion below the 2005 level for the appropriations for Health and Human Services and Education. So we actually came in below where we were a couple of years ago, and we did it in a way that is responsible because we adopted PAYGO provisions. We have to balance any increase with a responsible cut in another area. So we're being fiscally responsible in the overall picture.

And some of the things we did for the working poor are really important. One of the important things we did was we started to address the problem of 47.7 million uninsured people in this country. And we expanded access to health care for the uninsured. And we did that by funding several initiatives to provide health care for more than 2 million uninsured Americans. For instance, our bill provides $200 million, or 10 percent, more than 2007, and the President's request for community health centers enabling these centers to serve an additional 1 million uninsured Americans.

We also included $50 million for an initiative to assist States in providing high-risk insurance pools to support affordable insurance for almost 200,000 people who are medically high risk. So we are beginning to move

in a big way on health care, which is a vital economic and national interest, especially for the working poor in this country.

I'll throw it back to you.

Mr. KLEIN of Florida. If I can just throw something in, Mr. Ellison. One of the things that Mr. Hodes is pointing out is that the people that we're talking about are working families. We're not talking about necessarily people that aren't working. We're not only talking about what people in this country may think of as destitute people, poor. There are a lot of those people also that we're trying to, as Americans, give a helping hand which we're always, of course every one of us is committed to doing.

But we're talking about a lot of middle-class people. And there's so many issues out there today. And if I can ask you a few questions. If you can elaborate for us some of the things we've been working on housing and some of the foreclosure issues, you know, transportation. These are things that this Congress has been working in this last week on putting together a bill for the first time in about a decade to really take a look at what's happening to working families and what we can do to give them a hand up, not a hand out, but a hand up, and empower them. So if you can just elaborate on some of those, Mr. Ellison.

Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Klein, it's an important point you make, and I just want to add to this idea that for so many of the working, the people who are in poverty, we are talking about working poor folks, folks who are really struggling hard every day. And you know, Mr. Klein, housing as you well know is one of the most central things that everyone needs.

Poor, inadequate housing leads to a lot of serious problems. I'll list a few of those, but then we'll get to what we did. Children who don't have stable and adequate housing tend to move around a lot. As they move around, they are having their lessons disrupted in their school district every time they move, which means they fall further and further behind, which has an implication for how they're being educated.

Health issues, whether it be exposure to lead, mold, all kind of things that are inadequate housing, very serious issue for young people and for families. Poor housing has a significant impact on health.

Of course, issues of crime and exposure to violence has a lot to do with where you live and the quality of the housing that you may happen to live in. And so because these problems are so important in order for families to be prosperous, in order for families to grow and do well, this Congress has taken on some important initiatives. One is section 8 vouchers. The President's inadequate budget for section 8 would have been, would have forced between 40 to 80,000 families and individuals to lose their housing vouchers. The bill that we dealt with provides for an increase above the President's budget of $330 million for tenant-based vouchers and nearly $667 million for projected base vouchers in order to renew all current section 8 vouchers so no one that has a tenant-based voucher will lose it.

It's important also to talk about how we were making good strides on housing for seniors. We've seen increases. We've seen seniors struggling with housing, and we're making strong commitments, seniors will benefit from the increase in section 8 vouchers as well.

And also I just want to say that we're looking at, we had a lot of discussion in the Financial Services Committee about what we're going to do about the foreclosure crisis. As you know, about 20 percent of the mortgages, subprime mortgages are going to result in foreclosure. That's a tremendous amount. And what it means is that people who thought they had the American Dream ended up in the American Nightmare with these foreclosures. And we've been talking in the Financial Services Committee about what we're going to do to stave off these kinds of predatory loans so that people can have a fairer, more realistic loan they can get into, so that when these loans, these 228s, 327s, these kinds of loans that adjust upward in a dramatic way, that people will have better information, that there'll be greater responsibility on the mortgage originators, that there'll be greater standards applied to these originators and that people can be able to keep their homes or will be able to be in a mortgage they can actually afford.

So housing is a critical issue. This Congress we're dealing with it, and it's something I'm very proud to be associated with.

So we have about five more minutes left, and I think that we've had kind of an abbreviated evening this evening. But we've been talking about issues that are of vital concern to the average American working person. I think it's important for each one of us to take about 1 1/2 minutes to just talk about what we feel we want the American people, Madam Speaker, to go away with as we wrap up this important Special Order by the majority freshman class.

Why don't we kick it to you, Mr. Klein. About 1 1/2 minutes. What do folks really need to go to bed with tonight as we think about this powerful middle class that fuels our American economy and life?

Mr. KLEIN of Florida. Well, it's been a full day for us. I know I'm going to get a good night's sleep tonight. But what I think we should all be proud of as Americans is the fact that we're moving forward. And there are some very positive things that are happening. Obviously, at home people are very concerned about their livelihood, putting up a roof over their head, being able to afford health care, putting their kids into college and pursuing the American Dream. And I think a lot of things that we have discussed in this brief time tonight about improving education and really putting some muscle behind it, not just throwing money at it but changing the policies to make sure that we give teachers the tools and the kids the incentives to be successful, the minimum wage, just giving people a working wage so they can go forward and do well and giving the tax benefits to the businesses that create the jobs. It's a great combination on both sides.

You know, the research which I know all of us feel so strongly about and finding the cures, these are things that Americans think about every day when they get up and go to work and think about their parents, their grandparents, their kids. It's about the future of our families and our country. So I'm very excited and I know I'm going to sleep well tonight knowing we got good work done today. And we are going to continue working on this over the next number of weeks and months as we continue to move America forward.

Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Hodes, parting words, sir.

Mr. HODES. Well, you know, I'm glad to be here even though it's late at night. We're working hard for folks, and one of the things I think that's important for the American people to understand is that we have taken the task of reversing drastic cuts to important programs that have gone on under this President and the Republican Congress for many years. And we're doing it in a way that is fiscally responsible. We've introduced pay-as-you-go rules so that when we expand in one area, we're going to make sure that we're matching it with appropriate cuts in other areas. It's a vital, vitally important new thing that we're doing here in this Congress to make sure that we are stewards of the public trust, and that we are taking care of the people's money, we're not just pending it willy-nilly.

Now, unfortunately, we're dealing with a President who threatens vetoes, who has proposed drastic cuts in programs that are important investments for all Americans whether it's Community Development Block Grants or the HOPE VI program or section 8 or any program that really helps bring those at the lower levels up into the middle class and helps those in the middle class. This President has proposed to veto and he's proposed drastic cuts. We understand that we're going to make the right kind of investments to move this country forward. So I'm very proud of what we're doing.

Mr. ELLISON. Madam Speaker, this is going to conclude our Special Order hour. The difference-makers are going to be on the job for the American people. We can be counted on to make that difference that we were brought here to make. And, Madam Speaker, I just think it's important for the American people to know that this Democratic caucus will be standing up for them. So with that, thank you all.

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