Harder Yet May be the Fight

Floor Speech

Mr. AL GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, there's a lot of talk about fairness. Let me tell you what's not fair.

It's not fair for a working mother with one child who works full-time at $7.25 an hour and makes $15,080 a year. That working mother works full-time and lives below the poverty line. The poverty line is $15,180 a year. It is not fair for that working mother not to be able to afford health care for herself and for her child. This is the fairness that we are addressing.

This fight is all about working-class people, not about those who make millions and billions. One person in this country made $3 billion. That's $400 a second. It's not about this person who, by the way, paid 15 percent taxes. It's not about 1 percent raking in all of the wealth. It's about working-class people who can't get health care.

We cannot allow health care to become wealth care in the richest country in the world. One out of every 60 persons in this country is a millionaire. One out of every 11 households is worth more than a million dollars.

This is about working-class people. Harder yet may be the fight.

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