Jobs
Floor Speech
Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, thank you very much for the opportunity to take this hour together with my colleagues to discuss jobs in America. I think we know from our recent visits back to our districts that there's a great deal of pain in America. Americans want to go to work, and yet the jobs are not available.
Our President has proposed the American Jobs Act, a program that would put perhaps 1.9 million Americans to work as soon as the Congress of the United States were to pass that legislation. And so that's the subject matter of this hour, how to get Americans back to work and how to pay for it.
I'm going to start with the pay-for, a word that's used around here but perhaps not readily understood by Americans. Pay-for is how are we going to pay for the Federal programs.
Let's start with an analysis of the distribution of income in America. There's been more and more discussion about this in recent weeks, and appropriately so because what has happened over the last 25-30 years is a skewing, a wide separation of wealth in the United States to a point where it is now perhaps the widest separation between the very wealthy and the middle and poor people in America that has ever occurred in our history. Here's a pretty good description of it. If you take the top 1 percent, we've seen an enormous growth in their income, about 350 percent.
If you take the middle, the other 99 percent of the American population, you see very, very modest growth. And in the case of the poor, you've actually seen a decline in their income over the last two decades. And that's what's happened, this enormous separation between the very wealthy and the middle class, the working men and women of America. It's not that the real rich don't work; just not that many of them. But they sure have got a big share of the money.
Let's take, for example, the top executives of the oil industry. If we were to take the top executives of the big five oil companies and compare them to a firefighter, a firefighter averages about $47,000 a year. An executive, a CEO of an oil company, would have 307 times that amount of income. And if you take a teacher at say $53,000 a year, the CEO would have 273 times the amount of income of a teacher. So what you're seeing here in just the oil industry--and this is repeated certainly in the banking and the Wall Street industries, the financial industries--you see this enormous separation. Thirty, 40 years ago, this was in the range of 40 times, maybe 50 times. But now we're talking 300 to, in the lower 300s, a separation of the super wealthy and the working middle class, the men and women that are out there constructing schools, making our schools or teaching our kids or protecting us, police and firefighters.
I put those graphs up because it provides us with a solution. Before I get to the solution, let's just take one more look at the way this income distribution is occurring here in the United States. The rising inequality since the 1970s saw a very sharp break in the prosperity from an earlier era. From 1946 to 1976, the top 1 percent actually had a very small portion of the total wealth. From 1976 to 1990, we've seen enormous growth in the average income--not the wealth but the average income--of the top 1 percent so that now it dwarfs the rest of the population. So this is why you see Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Oakland, and the other cities talking about the 99ers, the 99 percent. The 99 percent are the rest of us, and the 1 percent are the CEOs, the Wall Street barons and those that have made enormous amounts of income over the last 20 years.
In the last decade, that's become even more apparent with the Bush tax cuts that occurred in 2001 and 2003. They basically significantly lowered the tax rate for the super wealthy and allowed them to keep even more of the extraordinary growth in their salaries and their income.
So how does that relate to American jobs? Well, very, very directly. The American jobs program that the President put forth called the American Jobs Act would provide very substantial opportunities for employment. And what I'd like to talk about is small businesses here. The small businesses of America are given a very substantial tax break in two different ways if they are to hire new people. For example, small businesses with less than $5 million of payroll are able to not pay their payroll tax, in other words, keep that money and go out and hire people. In addition to that, with Veterans Day coming up in just 1 week, we ought to be thinking about the veterans. We know that we have more than 1.5 million Americans that have been overseas fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and a few other places around the world. As those veterans come back, they have become the highest proportion of unemployed in America.
It would seem to me that since we are asking so much of those men and women that have served in our Armed Forces, particularly those that have served in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, we ought to be looking to their interest very directly and making certain that our programs are focused on them. Well, this is not lost on our President. In the American Jobs Act, he deals very directly with this by providing employers with a very powerful incentive to hire veterans. So with Veterans Day coming up, let's take a look at that. Let's take a look at what the President is proposing for the 877,000 unemployed veterans, the men and women that were out there fighting for this country, protecting us and doing what has been asked of them in an extraordinary way. More than 6,000 of them have given their lives, and over 40,000 have been seriously wounded. Of that 40,000, a very large proportion are permanently, permanently damaged in many difficult and extraordinary ways. And 877,000 of them are unemployed. And the President, looking at the necessity of building jobs in America, said, let's take care of those people.
So what he has proposed, and I think this is a terrific idea, is that small businesses, in fact, any business that is out to hire a veteran will be given an immediate $5,600 tax credit so that the taxes owed by that business or that employer would automatically be reduced for every veteran hired by $5,600. Hire an unemployed veteran, and you can reduce your taxes by $5,600. Even more so, if that veteran happens to be among those that have been wounded--and as I said, that is over 40,000--if you were to hire one of those wounded veterans, one of the seriously wounded that is connected with their service disability, the tax credit increases to $9,600. That's a very, very powerful incentive for businesses to hire our veterans. So with Veterans Day 1 week away, it's incumbent upon the 435 of us here in the United States Congress to not just talk the talk, but begin to vote to provide the veterans with the services that they need.
Now why did I start off with this graph? Why did I start off with this, showing the income disparity in the United States? Because this is how we should be paying for it--those Americans that have done extraordinarily well. And we're not talking about just extraordinarily well; we're talking about extraordinarily extraordinarily well. They have seen their income rise to a point of astronomical figures in some cases. And certainly it's seen on Wall Street. It's time for them to push aside the George W. Bush tax cuts. These tax cuts allowed them to keep a very large portion of their income. Taxes went down on income over $250,000 for joint filers, it went down from 39 percent to 35 percent. And do keep in mind all of the tax writeoffs that they're able to take advantage of that most Americans can't get. But nonetheless, since they've had 11 good years, 11 good years where they have received a significant tax cut, I think it's time for them to share and help our veterans get a job.
And so the President has proposed, as part of his American Jobs Act, which is fully paid for, that those men and women whose annual adjusted gross income after deductions--adjusted gross income after deductions--is $1 million or more, we're not talking about mom and pop on Main Street here, we're talking about those folks on Wall Street and those CEOs from the energy industry and the oil companies, those folks, it's time for them to come back and help America. It's time for them to stop shipping jobs offshore, stop playing all the Wall Street gambling games that got us in such trouble, and it's time for them to share in a fair way to pay for an American Jobs Act that would put veterans back to work by providing businesses in the United States with a tax credit when they hire one of those 877,000 unemployed veterans that have been out there keeping this country safe.
So if you earn more than $1 million adjusted gross income after all of your deductions, yes, 5.6 percent of that income over and above would be surcharged, and it would go back up to just about 40 percent.
Is that going to hurt anybody? No. Is it going to help somebody? Oh, yes. Oh, yes, it's going to help Americans go back to work. And it's not just in the area of veterans, although we certainly ought to be focusing on this. My plea to my Republican colleagues here on the floor is, let's not just talk about veterans and how we honor them next week. Let's vote this week while we are here to put the American Jobs Act out of this House, or at least put this part of the American Jobs Act out of the House and pay for it with a surcharge on those very fortunate Americans who have worked hard, been lucky, or whatever. Allow them the opportunity to pay for putting our veterans back to work. So let's get with it.
Now I know you're going to go back to your districts, and you're going to go to the veterans parades and you're going to talk all the talk. But here's where the walk occurs: in this House, in this week, we have the opportunity--in fact, we have the obligation--to really help our veterans, to really help them by putting them back to work; and this is one way to do it.
Let me talk for a moment about another way of doing it, and I think I'll deal with this one. Not only are there 877,000 veterans unemployed, but well over 9 million, 12 million Americans, and another 12 million that are underemployed. The President, in his jobs act, says for small businesses, if you hire an unemployed person who's been unemployed for 6 months or more, you can have a $4,000 tax credit. So veterans, $5,600; a wounded veteran--one of our returning heroes--$9,600; and for a long-term unemployed American, hire somebody and you can reduce your tax burden by $4,000. That's a pretty good deal.
In addition to that, if you're a small business with a payroll of less than $5 million, you can write off, not pay the payroll tax at all. For individual families, the President has proposed--and we all talk about the need for individual families to have additional money in their pocket, so the American Jobs Act said, for individual families, tell you what, half of the payroll tax that you're presently paying--about 6 percent--you don't have to pay it; you can keep that money. It's over $1,500 a year in the pockets of average Americans out there.
So the President has put together a program here, the American Jobs Act, to deal with unemployed--some 6 million have been unemployed more than 6 months; hire them, get a $4,000 tax credit. Hire an unemployed veteran and you can get a $5,600 tax credit. Or if that veteran happens to be one of the wounded warriors, one of America's true heroes, it's $9,600.
So it's time for us to act. It's time for the American public to tell Congress we can't wait. We can't wait. We can't take any more of this unemployment. Pass a real jobs program.
I know my colleague here, a few moments ago, was talking about the 15 bills that went over to the Senate. If you take a look at those bills, not one of them was a real jobs bill. What they did was basically gut the environmental regulations of this Nation so that our children can have a little more arsenic, a little more mercury, a little more pollution, and a little more polluted water. That's not a jobs bill. There is no economist in this Nation that will tell you that by gutting the environmental regulations you're going to produce jobs. What you're going to produce is sickness, ill health, cancer, and the rest. So those are not real jobs bills at all. The real jobs bill is the American Jobs Act, and we're going to be talking about that with my colleague from Ohio in just a few moments.
I want to share with you a piece of legislation that I've introduced. All of us are paying taxes--or at least I think most every American pays some sort of tax, a payroll tax or perhaps an income tax. That tax money is used for a variety of things. It's used for our military; it's used for our Social Security and Medicare and the like. It's also used to subsidize a variety of programs. Today at a press conference, we talked about the $12 billion a year of subsidies that we pay to the oil companies. That's right, you and I pay our tax money to the oil companies so they can have a little more. Keep in mind that this year their profits are up 100 percent. In the last decade, they've had $1 trillion of profit. They don't need our tax money. But there is a program for clean solar and wind. Those kind of programs are our tax money being used to subsidize green energy.
We also use our tax money to build highways, bridges, trains, light rail systems. This bill, H.R. 613, simply says that if our tax money--in this case, the gasoline tax money--is going to be used, it must be used to buy American-made equipment, so that that Amtrak train out there is made in America. We're paying for it. It's our tax money; it ought to be American made. This is part of the Make It In America agenda. If you want to put a solar panel on your roof and you want the Federal tax credit, terrific, buy American-made solar panels. If
you don't like American-made solar panels, use your own money, buy whatever you want; but don't use our tax money to buy a Chinese panel. Help American jobs; make it in America.
The same way with these wind turbines we're seeing all around the United States. It's our tax money that's subsidizing that, and that's good. What's not good is if that wind turbine is made in China or Europe. American made. You want the tax credit, buy American made credit.
Now joining us from the great State of Ohio is Congresswoman Betty Sutton. I know that you've been involved in this for a long time, the Make It In America agenda.
I yield to the gentlewoman to share with us her thoughts.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. How correct you are. Thank you very much, Ms. Sutton, and thank you for bringing up the issue of infrastructure. Infrastructure's a problem all across this Nation.
I spoke earlier about the use of our tax dollars to support infrastructure so that we buy American, so that we can make it in America. And those are middle class jobs. Once we start making things in America, we start making middle class jobs.
The American Jobs Act has the potential of putting 2 million Americans back to work, many of them construction. Those are not just temporary things that are going to be built. Those are permanent foundations upon which the economy will grow in the future. So it's a sanitation system; it's a water system; it's a highway. That is a solid investment that gives the American economy a foundation upon which it can build, and immediate jobs.
What does it take?
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Mr. GARAMENDI. I want to come back to your Don't Let American Jobs Go Down the Drain Act. I love that title. But even more so, I like what it tries to accomplish. I'm going to come back to it.
Our colleague from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky) has also joined us here today.
If you could share with us your thoughts. You're not too far from Ohio. You must have similar issues in that great Midwest.
I yield to the gentlewoman.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. George Washington's inaugural suit, I'm going to use that. That is a wonderful, wonderful story.
I understand the canal system, that was a way of transportation. Infrastructure also came about at that time. I know here in the Potomac River canal, George Washington started that at about the same time, and then the Erie Canal. All of these were transportation systems that were right back at the very beginning of our country.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. As I recall, there are 35,000 schools that could be renovated--classrooms, playgrounds, roofs, painting, bathrooms, laboratories--35,000 schools across this Nation.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. You're quite correct about smoke and mirrors.
When you brought up education, in the American Jobs Act, the President has proposed a better deal for America. And part of it is this education piece. It's right here.
In the American Jobs Act--fully paid for; we're not adding a nickel to the deficit--fully paid for is a huge and important education piece. We talked about the renovation of schools. Just the environment in which kids will learn. If you have a good learning environment, it's clean, it's healthy, well lit, the electrical system is working, you have air conditioning and the rest, kids are going to learn much, much faster in a better situation.
But you also need a teacher. Now, I know in California, I know from my daughter and son-in-law, both of whom are teachers, the layoffs that have occurred in their school and the increase in their class size. My daughter went from 22 or 23 to 32 or 33 students in her class because of layoffs. The President in his American Jobs Act has proposed that 280,000 teachers across this Nation go back into the classroom, that they don't have a pink slip, that they're not unemployed. That they're actually teaching our kids.
And as you said, the most important investment a society makes is in the education of their children. Infrastructure, critically important. Security, national security, military, critically important. But if you don't have a well-educated workforce, all the rest will fail.
So let's put those teachers back in the classroom. Let's use a fair tax policy: Those that have done so extraordinarily well in the last two decades, the top 1 percent, let them help the rest of the 99 percent by paying 5 1/2 percent more on income over and above a million dollars. It works. It's fair. And 280,000 teachers will be back in the classroom in my own State. Some 30,000 teachers will be back in the classroom. And there will be police and firemen in the street to help protect us. What's wrong with that? Why are we not doing it?
In the Senate last week and again this week, a Republican filibuster was used to stop the progress of the American Jobs Act, and here in the House of Representatives, it's not even heard before committee. The Republican leadership will not even allow it to be heard.
So let's get on with it. Let's put Americans back to work.
I yield to the gentlewoman from Ohio.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. I am so proud of what you and others are doing in Ohio, fighting back against an extraordinarily unfair law that takes away the ability of people to come together and collectively voice their concerns. That's what it's all about.
You can say it's unions, and yes, but it's also the ability of people to say, Wait a minute--we're all working here at this school. We're the workers. We're the teachers, and we should have a voice in what is going on here. Not just in our pay and in our benefits, but also in the way this is working.
So you're fighting back, and you're making progress. Hopefully, that proposition will pass, and we'll begin to set a new model.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. We need to also understand where the power has shifted. The power has shifted here.
This is the average pay of the CEOs of the five biggest oil companies--$14.5 million. That's 307 times the pay of a firefighter, 273 times the pay of a teacher, 263 times the pay of an average police officer, and 218 times the average pay of a nurse.
So what we have seen--and part of this has to do with collective bargaining--is that the power has shifted to the CEOs, to the extraordinary wealthy, and that it has resulted in this situation: where the middle class and the poor in America have seen virtually no change in their incomes over the last 20, 25 years. They've been flatlined--basically the same level of income. They're just making it.
This particular line is the next highest 20 percent. The only reason they've seen their incomes grow is that both husband and wife are now working. Back there, back in the seventies, mostly just one or the other was working; but now both are working.
But look here: this is the top 1 percent. Here are the 99ers. Here is the 99 percent down here at the bottom and the 1 percent up here. What we're saying is let's put Americans back to work with the American Jobs Act, and let's have a Fair Tax, not the George W. Bush tax cuts that gave this group even greater wealth, a greater annual income by cutting their taxes, but rather to restore that tax rate and allow that money to be used to hire the unemployed veteran.
There are 877,000 unemployed veterans. These are the men and women who fought for us in Iraq. These are the men and women who fought for us in Afghanistan. These are the men and women who came back without their legs, with their minds jumbled because of an IED--877,000 of them. Give them a chance by this group that has been so extraordinarily successful, in part, because of their own work and, in part, because of the tax cuts that they've enjoyed for the last 11 years.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Exactly.
As we begin to wrap up our hour here, Veterans Day is one week away. There are 435 of us here in this House who are representing the American people, and we have an opportunity. All of us will be out there on November 11. We'll be doing our parades, and we'll be giving our speeches about how wonderful the veterans have been in America; 877,000 of them have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan and have served this country in an extraordinary way. They're unemployed. They need a job.
The American Jobs Act will provide every employer in the United States with a $5,600 tax reduction, not a tax credit, that is, their taxes will be reduced by $5,600 for every unemployed veteran they hire. If they hire a veteran who has been wounded, one of the returning American heroes, it's a $9,600 reduction in that employer's tax.
Why are we not doing this? It's fully paid for. It's paid for with a small tax increase by those who have been so extraordinarily successful in the last decade. Why are we not helping our veterans find a job?
Because, in this House, the Speaker and the Republican Party refuse to address this issue. No hearings have taken place on the American Jobs Act that the President has put before this Congress. You can talk the talk. You can talk the talk forever. You can go home and you can talk the talk; or you can be here this week, and you can give our veterans a real opportunity. It's not just those who have returned from the war. There are veterans out there who fought in the previous wars, who served this country in Vietnam and in the first gulf war. They're unemployed or they are retired and they're receiving Social Security.
So, here on this floor, proposals have been put forth; and in the supercommittee, again proposals have been put forth to reduce the Social Security benefits, to reduce the foundation for retirement in this Nation so that the 1 percent don't have to pay their fair share of the taxes. Something is desperately wrong. Those seniors and those veterans are dependent upon Medicare for their health when we consider that it was Medicare that took more than 50 percent of the seniors out of poverty in the 1960s and gave them the health care that they needed to stay alive. Yet the proposal put forth on this floor that was voted on three times by our Republican colleagues would destroy Medicare and put every senior at risk, and those who are 55 and younger would never receive Medicare. They'd be thrown to the mercy of the private insurance companies.
Why would we ever allow that to happen? Because apparently some want to continue the tax breaks for the superwealthy.
But here we are one week away from Veterans Day--and a lot of talk. I want some action. America can't wait. These 877,000 veterans can't wait for a job. In Ohio and in California and in every other State in this Nation, this is the reality faced by veterans. This House has an obligation, this Speaker has an obligation to put the legislation before this House and to let us speak, to let us represent the people who elected us.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. And thank you so very much for so ably representing Ohio and your constituents.
We've got work to do. We've got veterans to care for, and they need help. Americans want jobs, and the American Jobs Act is there. If we were to bring that up today or tomorrow instead of the foolish little bills that have been going on around here for the last month and a half, Americans could go back to work, and it would be fully paid for with a fair tax. We have work to do.
I ask the Speaker of the House and my Republican colleagues to give Americans a chance to go back to work. Put the American Jobs Act up for a vote; put that tax up for a vote, and let's pass it. I think we'd vote it out of here in half a moment if we had a chance. But right now we don't even have that chance.
With that and hope for the future and thanksgiving for those men and women that have been out there protecting this Nation, the veterans, young and old, able and disabled, we thank them.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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