Report of 30-Something Cacus
REPORT OF 30-SOMETHING CAUCUS -- (House of Representatives - May 04, 2004)
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. MEEKS of New York. I felt compelled to join. I wish I was part of the 30-Something Club. I just joined the 50-Something Club. But just sitting here listening, I want to compliment those who are members of the 30-Something Club because America really is dependent upon you. Therefore, it becomes important for those of us in Congress to make sure that life is better for our children than it was for us.
Now, I sit here as a Member of Congress, as the gentleman indicated. I have three daughters, two of whom are in college. As the gentleman said, they are going to be all right. But their father can relate to what you are talking about, because I come from a very poor home. I grew up in public housing, and my parents understood that in order for my family to be better that education was the key. But they could not afford it, so when it was time for me to go to college, the only solution for me was to take out school loans.
Guess what? Even that was not enough. So my parents, my father, took a second job, my mother went back to work, and they had to borrow personal money themselves.
Now, the point I am trying to make is that then when I graduated, I went on and was one of those guys that was ambitious. It was not only 4 years of undergraduate school, but, as some people know today, you do not stop simply with a BA necessarily. But if you want to go on to do other things, if you want to go to graduate school, in my case it was law school, there was an additional 3 years of student loans that I had to take and sacrifice that my parents had to make.
So when I was able to leave school and took a prominent job as an assistant district attorney, when you look at the salary that I was making, equal to my companion, one would think, but I had these tremendous school loans that I had to pay back. So while they could go on and live in a decent apartment, I had to go back to live with my parents, for two reasons: number one, I had to pay my loans; number two, I had to help them pay for their loans that they took out for my education.
So for the first almost 7 years of my adult life working as a prosecutor I was still living at home, simply because of economics, simply because I had to help myself and at the same time help my parents who made the kind of sacrifices they made.
We should do better than that in Congress. We should not want to continue that burden or give an extra burden to our young people. We are, in fact, the richest country on the planet; and then we give tax cuts just to the richest 1 or 2 percent of Americans and say to our young people, we are not going to think about you. Or we know, as the gentleman
said, that we are $7.1 trillion in debt, and guess what? Those of us who are 50-something, we are not really going to have to pay it. We are going to leave those burdens to you guys who are 30-something and 20-something. So you are going to inherit the debt. But on top of the debt, you are going to inherit from this country, we are going to pile on school loans, so you can never get out of it.
Or are we trying to set up a system where you have an elitist class, where only the top 1 or 2 percent can afford to send their kids to college? Why? They will not have to take out any school loans, because their parents are able to afford it and pay for it all.
So this work becomes important, what you are doing. I take my hat off to our leader, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), for what she is doing; and I take my hat off to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan), the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Meek), and to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Linda T. Sánchez), who was here, because they are leading America, and America only changes when young people move.
That is why I hope people get into these Members' e-mail and start e-mailing and commenting and giving some comments, because to me the future of America lies only with the young people; and we need these people and their involvement and their ideas.
I will tell you as an older individual who just entered the 50-Something Club that you will have an ally in me and many others in this Democratic conference, particularly, that will push to make sure that your America is a better America for all than it is today.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. MEEKS of New York. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield further, I will add to that, if I may, initially, you can go back to my time and before, we
were competing with individuals within our State or individuals within our tri-state region or even just individuals within our Nation. But the gentleman is so right. Right now our students have to compete with other students all across this globe because of the global economy and how it is now all intersected and interconnected.
What we are really talking about here is the national defense of America, and the national defense of America depends upon the education of our young people. If we close that opportunity down by making it unaffordable to them, then we are really putting our country in a great, great danger of not being able to continue the greatness that we have thus far.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. The great investment of the GI Bill, which sprang our economy into the world domination we now have. I look at my grandparents' generation, who many accessed the GI Bill, doctors, lawyers and engineers.
The space program, it was not just about going to the Moon; it was about getting mathematicians and scientists and engineers and physicists. They were not all going to work for NASA, but they went out into the private sector and drove this economy forward throughout the '50s, '60s, and '70s when we had a lot of success. We need to make those investments again.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. MEEKS of New York. Mr. Speaker, that has a lot of residual effect, actually, just on that, particularly for somebody who may come from a very poor neighborhood. Because what happens with a lot of those summer jobs, I am again being one of them and I could talk about some of my constituents, et cetera, they get exposed to different things they may never be exposed to by that summer job, and that summer job gives them the motivation to continue to go to school to do something.
But one of the other things I wanted to say that the gentleman from Ohio indicated which is very important, which I think that a lot of those of us who are, especially the 60-somethings and the 70-somethings now, should have institutional memory, because the gentleman from Ohio touched upon the fact that when they went to school on the GI Bill, et cetera, that they were able to become doctors and lawyers and accountants, et cetera.
Well, let us take New York State, for example. Many of them back then had nothing to pay for school. Because if you went to the City University of New York or the State University in New York, tuition was free. That is what made us progress so quickly from the 1940s to the 1960s, because we began and understood the importance in investing in education of our young people and we made higher education in public institutions free.
And now, the gentleman gave the statistics or the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Linda T. Sánchez) gave the statistics earlier on, how every year the percentage on tuition rates are going up in our public institutions, and we will not have any money to help subsidize our public institutions. Why? Because we are $7.1 trillion in debt. So, therefore, we cannot help anybody who cannot do anything, because there is not going to be any money.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. MEEKS of New York. Mr. Speaker, I would love to hear about the books, because I could tell my colleagues, I happen to be able to help my daughter, but I know what the cost of the books are, because I have to pay for them and I have to go into that billfold that the gentleman from Florida went into. Sometimes mine is empty, but it is empty because I have to pay for those books. I want to hear about the cost of books.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. MEEKS of New York. Mr. Speaker, it is interesting that the gentleman should say tax credit, very interesting, because this country, as we talked about earlier, about helping the rich, but showing the direction that we could move in.
I want my colleagues to listen to this. JOHN KERRY has what he calls a "college opportunity tax credit." What this simply says, it will make 4 years of college affordable for all Americans. We are talking about all Americans here. He will provide a credit for each and every year of college on the first $4,000 paid in tuition, and that is the typical tuition cost and fees at our public institutions and universities. Senator Kerry's tax credit will be refundable to our most economically-vulnerable students and for those who receive other credits. That is the direction that we should be moving in.
That is why the gentlewoman from California (Leader PELOSI) was here leading the 30-Something hour. That is why I think that we have the gentleman from Ohio here and the gentleman from Florida here and the gentlewoman from California who was here and others that are involved, that is the direction of continuing the greatness of America by investing in our young to make sure that their tomorrow is brighter than our today.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. MEEKS of New York. Just what we are talking about, showing that you have a plan and moving away, Senator Kerry talked about his College Opportunity Tax Credit, but he also understands the deficits that the universities are having. So he also has a plan. It is called the State Tax Relief and Education Fund where Senator Kerry will help States struggling to bridge deficits resulting from the Bush economic policies with $25 billion to stop educational cuts and tuition increases across the country.
So it seems to me we are moving in the right direction. He also is talking about service for college so that if, in fact, he will initiate an offer to Americans to earn the chance of the equivalent of the State's 4-year public college tuition in exchange for 2 years of service. Senator Kerry will set a goal within the next decade of enlisting 500,000 young people a year in service for college. Steps in the right direction. Educating our young people, making it affordable for them and strengthening our country. This is what America is all about.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
END