The Congressional Black Caucus
Floor Speech
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Ms. MOORE. Well, thank you so much for yielding, and thank you, Mr. Speaker, during this hour.
I want to thank the Congressional Black Caucus members and the women of the Congressional Black Caucus for joining me here today. The Congressional Black Caucus has always been known as the conscience of the Congress because we understand budgets, and these initiatives to break the collective bargaining agreements are being presented to us in the context of a budget. And we all know that budgets are not about numbers, and this is proof of that. It's about values. And where you place your money is where you place your heart.
And so I'd like to talk about the situation in Wisconsin.
You know, there are a few things that have been misinformation, just let me say that, around this budget. And I appreciate the fact that we have a physician here with us this evening who is an expert on the Medicaid program. We have an attorney here with the gentlelady from Ohio. And we have the gentlelady from Maryland who is an expert on all kinds of programs that deal with family issues.
So I need you to help me sort out some of the things that have been misinformation and disinformation in this campaign.
Let me say that I once served on the Joint Committee on Finance and put the budget together as a State senator in the Wisconsin Legislature. So I know that the opening balance to the budget was a $121 million surplus. Now, that's not a lot of money when you consider that $65 million is required for a statutory minimum balance in the account. But it left a cushion of $54 million in those accounts. Nothing like the $3.6 billion deficit that the Governor likes to present as his raison-d'etre for these draconian cuts in collective bargaining.
Now, what is a structural deficit? A structural deficit simply is the difference between what the agencies of the government request and what the Governor provides. And so when is the last time the agencies have gotten every dime that they've asked for? Never. So it's a phony structural deficit. But given the fact that our Governor, just like any Governor, has budget challenges, I respect the fact that, you know, sometimes you have to make unpleasant cuts.
So what the Governor proposed to do was to realize savings by requiring that State employees, except for the police and fire and State troopers, pay 5.8 percent of their pension funds and a little over 12 percent of their health care funds, and to make those contributions, generating $725 million in savings. Miraculously, the unions agreed to do that.
But the Governor said, No. No, I do not want to negotiate with you. I want to strip you of your rights to collective bargain. And the exact words of the bill were that they were prohibited from bargaining about anything related to their conditions of employment.
So I was wondering if I could yield to the gentlelady from Ohio and talk about that kind of legal jargon, that they are unable to negotiate on any conditions of employment except for the 1 percent wage within the consumer price index.
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Ms. MOORE. There are some things that I don't understand.
Now, another myth and an untruth that has abounded in this debate is that somehow these public sector employees who are very well educated--I mean, some of them are nurses, school teachers, career executives in State government. Well-educated people make less, it is true, they make less than their peers in the private sector because as part of their compensation they have accepted less in wages so that they could have a pension, so that they could have health care benefits.
And so the misinformation, the effort to gin up antagonism against public employees is totally faulty. Because the pensions, and I want you to share this with me as a lawyer and as a former chief executive, the pensions are obligations because people have already earned that money in lieu of the salary they may have received in the private sector.
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Ms. MOORE. It is very interesting that you should raise that, because in fact the governor of our State, in his previous capacity as the Milwaukee county executive, hired private security guards for the county jail. And a court just this past January ordered Milwaukee County to restore those public servants to their jobs. And in fact, they are required to do that. And it was all presented as a budgetary crisis. The Court found that the county exec, now our governor, had overstated the savings that would be realized by privatizing those county prison guards. And it's been the same tactic.
Indeed, the police and firefighters and State troopers were excluded from the collective bargaining prohibitions and the prison guards were not. And as a State legislator, and I served with our current governor, he did introduce a bill to privatize our prison system. So that's a very important insight.
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Ms. MOORE. Reclaiming my time, you know, I will tell you there are a couple of other myths I want to bust before I turn to the gentlelady, the doctor, physician in our caucus, to talk about Medicaid a little bit, because that links in with this union-busting effort. You know, Congresswoman from Maryland, you talk about trying to pit private sector workers against public workers, I am happy to say that those unions in the private sector in Wisconsin have stood firm with the public sector employees.
I am happy to report to you that the firefighters and the police, those unions that were exempted from this collective bargaining fiasco, stand firm with public employees. Why? Because they get it. They get it that the gains made by organized labor inure to all workers.
In Wisconsin in the 19th century, May 5, 1886, five people in my district, in Bay View in Wisconsin, were killed, and four were wounded, attacked by troops called on, sicced on them by the then-Governor Jeremiah Rusk, fighting for the 8-hour workday.
Workers in unions have won the weekend, safety conditions in the workplace. Workers have won these benefits, and they have inured to the private sector. And those people who are in the private sector need to respect the sacrifice, the blood and the tears.
You know, Wisconsin was a State where the first workers comp law passed, the first State to have unemployment compensation. It was the birthplace of AFSCME. This has been a progressive State.
We have 14 very brave State Senators who have left the State so that they would not have to vote on these draconian union provisions. And the governor has said that because they are leaving that there are going to be massive layoffs and firings, and it will be their fault.
Well, I just wanted to point one thing out. He revealed his budget just yesterday afternoon, and he has reduced State aid. He has reduced shared revenue to all of the counties, villages, cities, and municipalities to the tune of $6.9 million. He has reduced aid to schools, kindergarten through 12th grade and technical colleges, to the tune of a billion dollars.
So these local communities, school districts, will have to lay off snow shovelers and teachers. Teachers will find themselves in classrooms with, they predicted, as many as 60 kids in them.
They are cutting Medicaid in this State, and I will get back to that later, because they are draconian cuts.
In the meantime, we are providing $7.6 billion for roads. That's local money and Federal money together. We are providing a total, 100 percent tax relief for capital gains taxes for businesses that locate in the community for up to 5 years. We are providing, his special sessions bill provided at least $200 million worth of tax breaks at the same time we are reducing school aid by a billion dollars.
I see that the gentlewoman from Washington D.C., also a very esteemed attorney, has come to join us here. We are talking about the loss of the collective bargaining agreements in Wisconsin, something that has no fiscal impact, but that the governor insists must be a part of his budget.
I yield to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton).
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Ms. MOORE. You know, you have made a very good point. If you going to downsize and if you are going to make those sacrifices, number one, our workers have said we will negotiate that. We will try to help our State.
But if you are going to downsize at least you ought to think that you are doing it for the public good. You don't want to think that you are doing it so that could give $200 million in tax cuts so that you could privatize the nuclear power plants in the State. You would think that if you are going to pay 12.8 percent of your own health care that that would mean that at least the Governor was going to protect the most vulnerable who are on Medicaid.
But I am sorry, it's sad to be able to share with you, Dr. Christensen, that in his budget he is limiting a family care program, it's a Medicaid program to pay for in-home services for seniors and people with disabilities, to only those who are currently enrolled; all the 2,000 people on the waiting list, no services. He is going to seek permission from the Federal Government to cut eligibility standards, to cut off certain categories of nonpregnant or nondisabled adults or lower eligibility, and he is not a fan of Planned Parenthood. He wants to cut off family planning services for men.
He is expecting--right now, they are forced to continue their maintenance effort, at least until July, when the enhanced FMAP runs out. But he is again seeking those waivers so that he can cut off categories of people.
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Ms. MOORE. Backwards instead of forward, $900 million from our school system, $250 million in State aid for the University of Wisconsin system, $71.6 million from the technical college system, low-income children and families requiring women who receive TANF, temporary assistance, they are cutting them by $20 a month, 3 percent of the TANF check.
Mrs. CHRISTENSEN. And the check is not that big to begin with.
Ms. MOORE. The check is small.
There is some talk of requiring them to move from 28 hours of work a week to 30 hours of work a week and reducing the amount of child care that they can get.
Again, the theme for this budget, our Governor's budget, is that Wisconsin is open for business. Well, no State can be open for business by slamming the doors of educational opportunity and denying babies, poor people, and seniors health care. It is more a case that we're selling our State to business interests.
I would yield to the gentlelady from D.C.
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Ms. MOORE. In January, our economy nationwide gained 36,000 jobs, hardly anything to brag about. But I can tell you this: this Wisconsin State budget fires 21,600 State employees alone. And when you consider the cuts to municipalities, cities, villages and counties, there are thousands more that are going to lose their jobs. So you talk about hurting the recovery, how can you recover when people don't have jobs to consume and those who do have jobs find their income cut by 6 and 7 percent because of these givebacks in their pensions and for their health care?
Not only that, they're balancing the budget on the backs of children and on the backs of seniors, but they're also penny wise and pound foolish. I live on a Great Lake. Twenty percent of the Earth's fresh water is in those Great Lakes. And what does this budget do? It reduces the ``burden'' that municipalities have in cleaning the water. It reduces standards for water cleanliness. It ends the recycling program. So it is penny wise and is probably going to destroy the environment, reduce educational opportunity and reduce health care to the most indigent and vulnerable in our population.
But we're giving tax breaks to the wealthiest Wisconsinites to encourage them to invest, 100 percent forgiveness of capital gains taxes, $7.6 billion for roads, and we are going to privatize the nuclear power plant. One of the great contributors to the Governor's campaign happens to be in the nuclear power plant business. And we're all doing this in the name of balancing a budget.
I hope that the people in Wisconsin don't fall for this trick.
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Ms. MOORE. I thank you so much, gentlelady from the Virgin Islands, for pulling this hour together.
As my aunt used to always say, the truth will set you free. And I hope that those who have watched this debate will try to see through some of the partisan bickering that has gone on.
Just to reinforce a few points that we've made, the effort to take away the ability for union members to not only collective bargain for themselves, but when they win those rights, so-called freeloaders, the people who are not in the union, benefit from those gains. That has nothing to do with budget issues. It has nothing to do with money. Those rights are things that have something to do with your conditions of employment, your ability to relate to your employer and to negotiate with him on non-economic issues as well economic issues.
This budget crisis is a creation of this Governor. We started out with a surplus budget in Wisconsin, and the first thing he did when he came into office was to provide at least $300 million in tax benefits to the very wealthiest and then declare that we now have an emergency.
I would yield back to the gentlelady for closing.
Mrs. CHRISTENSEN. So you did say that the emergency was sort of created?
Ms. MOORE. Exactly. That is the same reason that the Governor, then-county executive, lost his case by firing those 26 guards because he is creating, once again, the same pattern, creating a false emergency.
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