The American Dream
Floor Speech
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Madam Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to spend a few moments this evening talking about things that are on my mind, and I suspect on the mind of the American public. There's certainly a lot of news recently about collecting data on American citizens. Having attended a conference this afternoon, I can tell you that I think the great majority of the 435 Members of this House share the deep concern of the American public about our civil liberties perhaps being taken away from us in the process of data collection. I would expect that this House of Representatives and a couple of our committees, the Judiciary and the Intelligence Committees, will be spending time over the next few weeks going into this in great detail trying to assess whether we all made a mistake when we voted for the various laws that have allowed the National Security Agency and the other agencies to collect data on all of our phone calls and more. I would hope that's the case.
We need to know exactly what's happening, how it has happened and what impact it may have on our civil liberties. One of the most precious things given to us in the Bill of Rights is that freedom, freedom from an oppressive government. So we'll see what happens here. For my own part, I want those hearings to take place right away. I have great concerns about all of this, and we'll see how it all plays out.
As to people stealing secrets, yes, that's against the law and there ought to be a punishment, and I suspect they will very quickly find that punishment available for those have who have stolen these pieces of information.
Now, moving on, I wanted to talk this evening about the American Dream. I think it was probably best put forth by President Clinton, although down through the ages and for generations and generations, the dream has been pretty much the same. But since he has the most recent quote that I could find on this, I think I'll just use it. He said:
If you work hard and play by the rules, you'll have the freedom and opportunity to pursue your own dreams and leave your kids a country where they can chase theirs.
I like that. In fact, I like President Clinton and the way in which he was able to articulate some of our most fundamental values. In this case, he so very well laid out the essence of the American Dream: if you work hard and you play by the rules, then you ought to be able to have a good life in America. You ought to be able to see progress for yourself and for your families.
This issue was brought to my attention at a recent town hall that I had in my district. A gentleman in the town hall, not a Tea Party, not a liberal or whatever, he just said:
I've got a question for you, Congressman. I've got two kids. My wife and I both work, and we've worked all our lives. I'm in my mid- to late forties now, and I have to tell you, we're not getting ahead. We still have those student debts from our children. We still have our home, but it's a modest home, we don't own a big boat, or any boat for that matter. We just can't seem to get ahead. What's happened? What's happened to the American Dream?
I went on to cite a few things that I thought were the essential elements of that. I want to cover some of those tonight. This is not going to be an exhaustive description of the issue. I want to save that or come to that in subsequent Special Order hours that my colleagues and I will take up in the coming weeks. But just a couple of things that came across over the last weekend that I think really exemplify some of this. The ideal: education is open to everyone. In America, everyone can get a great public education. The reality is different. In 2007, one-half of the children from the wealthiest households completed their college education. Only 9 percent of the children from low-income families completed their college education. That's a gap that has never been wider since 1989. So with regard to that ladder of success, education, if you happen to be poor or in the lower income, chances of your completing your college education is one out of ten.
How about being able to have freedom from want, one of the four freedoms that Franklin Delano Roosevelt so beautifully articulated during the Great Depression? But as a result of the Great Recession in 2010, a total of 46.2 million Americans were below the poverty line. That was the highest number in 52 years. And as best I could find more recently--the last 2 years--that number has not really changed very much. So we're looking at 46 million Americans that are living below the poverty line. So freedom from want may not be readily available to a very, very large percentage of Americans.
How about the land of opportunity? We all believe America is the land of opportunity. Well, not really. On average, it takes five to six generations, five to six generations, that's 125 to 150 years, for a child from a poor background to rise to the middle class--not to the upper class; to the middle class. I looked at that, and I said, clearly, that has to be an inaccurate analysis. But it's not. So for a child from a poor background--that's those 46 million Americans in poverty--they could wait five to six generations on average--that's not everybody, obviously some will do it faster, and others won't do it at all--to get to the middle class.
That is interesting, sad and challenging for us.
Income inequality, this is what some people like to call--well, I won't use that right now. But income inequality, you work hard and you do okay. I think that's what President Clinton said, if you work hard and play by the rules. Hmm. Really? The United States ranks 93rd in the world on income equality, behind Great Britain, Australia--and here's one that caught my attention, Nigeria, Argentina, and Japan.
What income inequality means is the distribution of wealth within the economy. When you have income inequality, the share of the pie that is available to the wealthy is significantly greater than the share of the pie to the great mass of the population. That's income inequality.
Fascinating statistics. Statistics are kind of the basis for many of our arguments. There are many more statistics along this line that we ought to be paying attention to. Over the next couple of weeks, we are going to be speaking to these as we pursue the reality of the American Dream and what we can do to rebuild the American Dream.
A couple of notions that I have right at the outset that I'd like to share as we go through this shortened 1 hour: first of all, the American Dream very much depends upon a job. If you don't have a job--and we've got maybe some 12 million Americans that don't. They would like to work, but in some cases they've given up and in other cases they simply haven't been able to find a job. So you've got to have a job.
There are ways that we can create jobs in this Nation. Certainly, we depend upon the private sector; but down through the decades of this democracy, beginning with our very first President, there has been a common bond, if you will, a partnership between the government and the private sector in creating jobs.
In his very first days in office, George Washington asked Alexander Hamilton, his Treasury Secretary, to develop a program, policy on manufacturers, which is another word for manufacturing. Alexander Hamilton came back, I guess, a couple of months later with a report on manufacturers--very, very interesting and instructive to us today in that our very first President and very first Treasury Secretary said that the Federal Government has a significant role in developing the economy, manufacturing. We did then, and we do today.
Alexander Hamilton said: George Washington, here's what we need to do. We need to use the purchasing power of the government, that is, the tax money that's spent by the government, to buy American-made goods and services. Now, there's a good idea. We've had the Buy in America policy in the United States for many, many years all often ignored by the various agencies that are supposed to oversee the purchasing. Right now we have a problem with the military that is supposed to go green to develop alternative power sources that they can depend upon if the grid goes down.
However, they're routinely ignoring the Buy America requirements that the law has because they're purchasing these massive solar arrays as though they are available in Home Depot. I don't think so. But, nonetheless, it's an example of how the various arms of the U.S. Government in one way or another ignore the purchasing requirement of Buy America--literally using our tax money to buy American-made goods and services to employ Americans.
It turns out that this is part of what I like to call the Make It in America agenda, a series of proposals that my Democratic colleagues and I are putting forth to build the American manufacturing sector. For example, the Department of Defense obeying the law and buying American-made solar panels for those large arrays that they are putting up on various military bases or the private sector is putting up for the military. Buy America, Make It in America, use our tax money to buy American-made equipment. By the way, I've got a bill that I have introduced on this for the last to 2 years now that simply increases that purchasing content to 85 percent.
I didn't have time to bring up another photo, but I'll tell you about it. In the American Recovery Act--otherwise known as the stimulus bill--there was a provision for Amtrak to have $480 billion to purchase new, advanced, efficient locomotives for the Northeast Corridor. These would be electric-power locomotives--I think 7,000 horsepower machines. Somebody--and I'm not sure who it was--wrote into that requirement that these had to be 100 percent American-made. Now, nobody in America was making 100 percent American locomotives; in fact, very few locomotives were made in America anyway.
But, nonetheless, contractors, manufacturers of locomotives said, half a billion dollars, hmm, have to be made in America. So a German company--one of the largest manufacturing companies in the world--said, oh, we could do that. So in Sacramento, California, just outside the edge of my district, Siemens--who already had a factory manufacturing light rail cars and streetcars--said, hmm, let's expand this factory, and we're going to build one hundred percent American-made locomotives.
Three weeks ago, the first of those 70 locomotives rolled onto America's rail tracks--now being tested in Colorado, shake-down crews. We can look forward to thousands of jobs in America as a result of that--200 specifically at that new manufacturing plant in
Sacramento; and then the supply chain, all the people that are supplying those American-made parts to that locomotive are going to have jobs. Now, that's a good thing. That's part of our Make It in America agenda. And here's back to the first point: those jobs are middle class jobs.
One of the fellows I met at that ceremony when this locomotive was rolled onto the tracks was telling me about himself. He was about, I don't know, maybe 35, 37 years old. I asked him, How long have you been here? He said, I've been here 5, 6 years. I said, Really? What are you doing? He said, Well, that's my train; I built that train, along with my coworkers. I was responsible for building that train. I said, Wow, you must have a lot of experience. He said, No, 5 or 6 years. I said, 5 or 6 years and you know how to build that? He said, Yeah, I was trained by the Germans, who came over here and helped us understand how to build it, but now I'm responsible.
I said, What did you do before this? He said, Well, I finished high school and messed around for a while and wasn't going anywhere, so I hired on here at the lowest-paying job.
He is now firmly in the middle class, taking pride in his work, taking pride in building it in America. That's a lesson for us here in Congress. We really ought to take that lesson and put it into law, into a law that says we're going to use our taxpayers' money to purchase American-made goods and equipment.
Think about the infrastructure in America, and let me give you an example. It's kind of interesting when you have a long airport flight like I did today from Sacramento to Washington to read the newspaper. Occasionally, you can find some interesting things in the newspapers. Oh, here it is, yes. California could use $44.5 billion to fix an aging water system over the next two decades, according to a Federal survey by the Environmental Protection Agency. Oh, that's California. We have the greatest need, $44.5 billion. And Texas, who likes to think it's going to be bigger than California--maybe in size, but certainly not better, with apologies to my Texas colleagues--$34 billion; New York, $22 billion. And that doesn't include repairing from Sandy.
It turns out that these are repairs to investments that were made by our fathers and mothers and grandfathers and their fathers and mothers. So these are water systems that have been built over the last--in California, over the last maybe 120, 130 years; in New York, it probably goes back a couple hundred years. These are water systems that were investments by previous generations that we have been living on, literally consuming these investments, and not repairing and replacing and upgrading. Shame on us. It's as though you go to the supermarket once a year and you fill your pantry and freezer and refrigerator with all the food and you simply sit there and you consume and you consume. Eventually, the refrigerator is empty, the pantry is empty, and you go really hungry. That's what we've been doing here in America. We have been consuming the investments of previous generations. Here we are with this new report that's out for my State, California, $44.5 billion; for Texas, $34 billion; and for New York, $22 billion, just for the water systems.
That doesn't include sanitation systems. That doesn't include the road systems, bridges, highways.
We're living off the investments that were made by previous generations, and we can see the result of that. We've had bridge collapses recently. Hello? I-5, Washington State, we had bridge collapses. Anybody been on the interstates and notice the disrepair? I have, and I suspect most Americans have.
So we're going to have to once again invest in our basic infrastructure. And when we do, do you know what happens? Americans go back to work in middle class jobs. So that perhaps that average American that will never in five generations get out of the bottom poverty level can jump up into the middle class by getting one of those solid construction jobs, which across America are middle class jobs.
We have enormous needs. And, by the way, we're going to have to pay for it. I remember when I was in college buying gasoline at about 19 cents a gallon, 20 cents a gallon. That was a long time ago in the 1960s. And one day I was out buying gas--I don't know, I had some time because my car was empty and it was slow to fill--and I looked at the sticker on the pump and it said, 12 cents of that 18 cents was tax, an excise tax, State and Federal. So two-thirds of the total cost of that gasoline at that time, and that was in 1964, was for taxes. Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness.
Is the American public aware that it's been since 1990 since the excise tax on gasoline has been raised? It's about 18 1/2 cents on gasoline, a little higher for diesel. What is the cost of gasoline in the United States today? $3.50, average? Do you want to do that mathematics? It's not two-thirds, not at all. So you wonder, where's the money for investments?
We have decided to consume the investments that were made in the '60s when the general public--at least in California--was willing to pay two-thirds of the cost of a gallon of gasoline in taxes. So today we consume, and we pay the price: we pay the price in congestion; we pay the price in safety; and we pay the price in jobs.
This is something we're going to have to consider here in Congress. We're going to have to look at ourselves and we're going to have to take up our courage and say: What are we doing here? Are we going to be consumers or are we going to be investors? Are we going to consume the investment of our fathers and mothers or are we going to invest in that infrastructure so that our children can have the kind of modern, necessary infrastructure that they need upon which their economy will grow?
We're going to have to deal with this because the Surface Transportation Act has to be renewed this session of Congress. Not likely to occur this year, but before we end our work in January of 2015, we must deal with this issue. And so the American Dream, if you work hard and you play by the rules, you will have the freedom and opportunity to pursue your own dreams and leave your kids--and leave your kids--a country where they can chase theirs.
Let's just say this is the opening of what I hope will be many sessions in the evening--or following our session in the afternoon or evening--in which we engage in a discussion on the American Dream, a discussion about really the future of America, a discussion that--I see one of my colleagues has decided to join us this evening.
Welcome. Share with us your thoughts. We're pursuing infrastructure and the American Dream, jobs, how we can deal with creating opportunities in America.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. The President wanted to do two things in this area: one, the normal programs--the surface transportation program, the water resources bill, which we're going to be working on--but he also wanted to add on top of that $50 billion of infrastructure investment and create an infrastructure bank, which you so well described in your discussion here. None of that has been done, which is to the detriment of the American worker.
For example, of the water programs that I was talking about early on--the $44 billion that's needed in California--for every $1 billion that you spend on a water project, you put 28,000 people to work with good middle class jobs, and I think the numbers would probably be similar for highways and bridges and the like. This is the great tragedy--that we're not moving in a direction of creating the fundamental investments. Rather, we are disinvesting--we are consuming--and that doesn't last very long, as you so well said.
So what are we going to do about it?
Hopefully, this House will undertake the same process, find the same wisdom of the House of Representatives and the Senate when Dwight D. Eisenhower, President Eisenhower, brought to the Congress a proposal for a national defense highway system, which we now call the interstate system.
I'm sure you've got some examples that you'd like to share with us. Let's go back and forth, and we'll kind of toss the ball here.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. A combined sewer system. That's the stormwater that flows into the sewer, and it's not disconnected from the sanitation--toilets and the like; is that correct?
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Mr. GARAMENDI. That's how we deal with the deficit. You put Americans back to work, and automatically the tax revenues increase; and we then have a very solid, good way to deal with the deficit. On the other hand, as you suggested, cuts alone don't do it. What cuts do is to create unemployment, and we've seen that.
We've talked about this extraordinary investment that we need to make in rebuilding our existing systems. Yet in looking at the budget that passed this House, which was the Ryan Republican budget, they have an unallocated $886 billion cut in these kinds of programs over the next 10 years. More than $80 billion a year would be taken out of these kinds of investment programs that we're talking about here so that what we do instead of investing for our own generation and the next generation is we actually increase the consumption of yesterday's investment, leading us nowhere but to more bridges falling, more sewers backing up, more levees breaking, and more highway congestion.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. I am so pleased that you have brought that subject up, because it is critical. It is absolutely critical for the future economy of this Nation and, really, for solving problems of the world. Those investments are critical.
You did leave out agriculture. I happen to represent the University of California at Davis, which is, by my argument, the largest, best agricultural research program in the world. We know the population of the world is going to grow, so we're going to have to continue the agricultural research. Yet in the budget proposals that have passed this House and in sequestration--let me just put it this way: in sequestration alone, there is a reduction of $45 million of research in agriculture at the University of California at Davis.
Now, with health research, I was talking to the former dean of the medical school at the University of California at Davis last week, and she was talking about the significant reduction in health research, which is affecting projects that are already under way. As for research programs that were going along, suddenly the money is gone, and that's sequestration, which is also part of this.
We can solve America's problems by getting government out of it, by reducing the role of government. As I said at the outset, George Washington didn't believe that. He believed in inserting government into the economy as a partner in growing it, in growing the economy.
We talk about Thomas Jefferson and education and how he believed that education--education and research--go together. These are fundamental investments along with infrastructure. Yet, in this House, there's an unwillingness by the majority party to address this fundamental axiom of economic growth: education, research, infrastructure, manufacturing the things that come from that, building the middle class, building the economy.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Let me give you an example.
Today, in the Daily Republic newspaper in Fairfield, they ran a story that's exactly on your point. I'm just going to take a second and read some of this.
This is a program that EDF Renewable Energy, which operates wind turbines between Rio Vista and Fairfield and Suisun City in my district--we have a big wind farm there--they are funding a program at Rio Vista High School for this year as a way to promote job training in green industries.
Jim Bard is the instructor in the renewable energy class, which emphasizes wind energy. So it's exactly what you said. This private company that has these numerous wind turbines--I think several hundred wind turbines on this big wind farm--needs workers. So they've gone to the local high school, and they're creating what I suppose at one time was called a vocational education class. It's getting the kids educated and prepared to take jobs in their own neighborhood.
So here you see the green technology--wind energy--coupling up with education to provide middle class jobs. It's a great example. My congratulations to EDF and their renewable energy program, to Jim Bard and to the folks in Rio Vista at the Rio Vista High School, which I proudly represent.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you so much for bringing that out.
Back to George Washington. I like to talk about the Founding Fathers because it's often used on the floor to disparage one or another programs. But I'd like to talk in a positive way.
He also said the Federal Government has a fundamental role in infrastructure development, and he cited three different things: ports, roads and canals.
The very first President of this Nation was doing what we continue to do to this day, although at a much lower level than our Nation needs today. So this is a long tradition of America, and it's one that really works.
Education, research, infrastructure and manufacturing, you tie those together and then you build the foundation for economic growth and a just and equitable society so people have a chance to climb the economic ladder, to go as high as they want to. You're giving them the tools that they need to succeed.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you for raising that, my colleague from the great manufacturing sector of, I guess, the eastern part of the middle west. Is that fair enough?
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Mr. GARAMENDI. This is an interesting chart that I came across a while ago. It talks about income growth, the issue you were just talking about: How does an individual rise and climb the economic ladder and what kind of success do they have?
This is the income growth from 1996 to 2011. I kind of displayed this on a football field. Years ago I played football with some modest success.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. I did wear a helmet, and I don't recall any concussions.
The bottom 90 percent of our population has seen an income growth--this is adjusted for inflation--of $59 over this period, 1966 to 2011. That's some 55 years.
Basically, 90 percent of the population has stalled out and is not able to climb the ladder. That's about 1 inch. I guess that's even a referee's error if they pull the chains out.
The top 10 percent of the population has gone half the football field, and they've seen their income growth expand by $116,071 over this same period of time. So 90 percent of the population has seen $59 in growth, and the top 10 percent have seen a little over $110,000.
The 1 percent of the population, the very tip-top--these are not the 3 percenters. This is the 1 percent. They have gone 2 1/2 football fields in comparison, and they've seen their income grow at over a half-million dollars a year, $628,817.
Now, even a smaller group, one-tenth of 1 percent of the American population, have seen their income grow by 72 football fields compared to the bottom 90 percent. They have seen their annual income grow by $18 million a year.
So what's happening here in the United States--and I talked about it earlier before you arrived--and maybe this is a reasonable place to leave it because we are going to run out of time. This is not class warfare. This is economic reality. This is where the middle class and the lower income poverty class have been static. And the very tippy top, the top 10 percent and above, have seen significant income growth over that period of time.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Wall Street was taken care of, but not Main Street. That's what happened.
This is not just the result of just a free market system operating. This is a result of specific government policy over the last 50 years that has resulted in a skewing of the wealth of America, a skewing of that wealth from the great majority of Americans, as many as 90 percent, to the very tippy top of the income class.
And so over the next, I don't know, 3, 4 weeks, maybe 2 months, I want to take this issue up of: What happened to the American Dream? What happened to it?
When you see these kinds of statistics that children live in poverty and it takes four or five, five to six generations before a child that is in poverty today, their successor generations will be able to rise to the top of the middle class, almost 150 years, five, six generations before a person in poverty can climb the economic ladder, that's incredible, and that speaks to something terribly wrong here in America.
When education, when half of the children from the wealthier families graduate from college and only 9 percent of the children from the low-income classes are able to graduate from college, these are problems that exist.
If you want to take one more shot at a closing statement, then I'm going to end by quoting Bill Clinton.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. I thank you, Mr. Ryan, for that analogy. I really like that one.
I'm going to end with this by President Bill Clinton:
If you work hard and you play by the rules, you'll have the freedom and opportunity to pursue your own dreams and leave your kids a country where they can chase theirs.
That's our goal. We're going to talk about these things, about the American Dream, what happened to it and what we need to restore it, and how we can make things in America and how we can rebuild the American economy.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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