The Deficit and Jobs
Floor Speech
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Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. I am so happy to join you. And I thank you for coming down to the floor each week and making the point that we have choices in the United States of America.
We can put our people back to work. We can reduce our debt and our deficit, but we don't have to do it on the backs of middle class Americans, and we certainly don't have to do it on the backs of our elderly. That's exactly what the budget proposal by our Republican Budget Chairman Paul Ryan says. He said, look, the country is broke. We've got to just show courage and we've got to cut that deficit--we agree with that--and the way that we think we ought to do it is by ending Medicare as we know it, by abolishing Medicare. Instead of that guaranteed benefit that all older Americans can aspire to now, can get when they're 65 years old, that persons with disabilities would get, they know that it's there--and I cannot imagine that there is not every single Member of this House, Republican or Democrat, where people come in and say, I hope I can make it until I'm 65 and get on Medicare because I can't get insurance, and even if I could, I can't afford it right now or I have a preexisting condition. He wants to do it on the backs of senior citizens.
It's been said many times tonight that 700,000 jobs would be lost if H.R. 1--the top priority of the Republicans--were to pass, that the cuts that it would make, instead of spurring on jobs, creating jobs, putting the 15 million people that want to pay taxes--that's all they want is to go back to work and actually pay taxes, that that would be their dream come true, and it would also cut our deficit. But you know what the American people are thinking? They're thinking, We aren't broke--maybe we are, but not everyone is broke in America.
This is a sign that my staff made before I introduced a bill with an idea supported by 81 percent of Americans that it is time for millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share; 81 percent of
Americans. That means it's not just Democrats and it's not just Republicans. It's Independents, and I believe that it's Tea Party people, too. They know that they are not getting a fair shake and that the millionaires are.
Did you explain the chart?
Mr. GARAMENDI. Go ahead.
Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Well, what it says is that from 1979, at that end, to 2005, this is the growth in income over certain income categories. And you can see way down at the end there is a little bracket--even if you can't, you get the idea. There is a little sign down there that says that the bottom 20 percent of Americans over that period, almost 30 years, their income increased $200.
Let's go to the other end. The top 0.1 percent of Americans, their average income increased, actually increased, over $6 million. Their average income right now is $27 million. Get this: The bottom 90 percent of Americans--I was even shocked by this number--the average income is under $32,000 a year. Top 0.1 percent, $27 million; 90 percent of the rest of Americans, less than $32,000. This is not good for our economy and it is not good for our democracy.
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Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. One of the things that they say, that Paul Ryan says, We all have to sacrifice. Shared sacrifice. I believe in that. I think that's a good idea. But some people have been sacrificing for a long time.
If you drew another line starting at the bottom left and going to the top right of productivity increases in the United States, that line would shoot way up because we have the most productive workers in the world. Productivity has soared. And yet where have the benefits gone for our more productive workers? Right here. And it has been deliberate, and it's been based on policies that have passed in the Congress, a partnership between government that's been hand-in-hand with the wealthiest Americans. And the rest of America--and you know what, the other thing is if you started up here and tracked union membership, you would find that line going straight down.
When workers, as 62 percent of Americans agree is a good thing, have collective bargaining, they're able to help raise the middle class instead of having a disappearing middle class, which is what's happening now.
Mr. GARAMENDI. And yet we're seeing across this Nation a Republican attack on unions claiming that unions are bad. But the great history of this Nation is that the union movement, collective bargaining over these many, many decades did in fact create the middle class. And so that in the 1960s was the period of time when the middle class of America was at its peak. It had the greatest distribution of wealth. The greatest share of the income went to the middle class. It was also the time when the union movement was the strongest in America. Since that time through a variety of governmental policies, we have seen a decline in the union movement and a commensurate consistent decline in the middle class.
We're going to build the middle class. This is about making it in America. This is about rebuilding the middle class.
I want to now turn to our colleague from the great industrial--the once and future great industrial center of America, Ohio, and share with us--you've got some specific proposals that you've put forward. I'd like to talk about them. I know that our Congresslady from Illinois has, and I do, too, so we're going to talk about specific things that we're going to do to rebuild the middle class by making it in America.
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