The Economy

THE ECONOMY -- (House of Representatives - April 02, 2008)

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Mr. ELLISON. Let me thank my friends from New Hampshire, Kentucky and Florida.

My dad likes to say, ``people respect what others inspect. If you don't inspect, you are not going to get any respect.'' So it is important that we have oversight. It is important that we have a regulatory system.

The market and the public sector should work in a balanced way, should compliment each other. That has not happened, and, as a result of the lack of regulation, as a result of deregulation, Gramm-Leach-Bliley in 1999, and I would like to talk about that in a moment, we have got ourselves into quite a situation.

Let me share with you what the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities issued recently. You probably would not be surprised to know that between 2005 and 2006, the average income of the top 1 percent of households increased by $73,000, after adjusting for inflation, while the average income of the bottom 90 percent, that is us based on our pay here, increased by $20. I am talking about a twenty-spot. You know, bam, that is your pay increase between 2005 and 2006 if you are in the bottom 90 percent of the income distribution.

Now, you might be thinking, gee, that is not good. But let me just tell you, what this means is that the share of the Nation's income flowing to the top 1 percent has increased sharply, as a matter of fact rising from 15.8 percent in 2002 to 20.3 percent in 2006. That means that people in the top 1 percent of our income distribution make one-fifth of the money. That is not good.

Now, you might be thinking, that is kind of bad there. But the fact is that it hasn't been this bad since.

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