Creating Jobs in America

Floor Speech

Ms. WILSON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, it has been more than 1,000 days since I arrived in Congress, and Republican leaders have still not allowed a single vote on serious legislation to address our jobs crisis. Instead, this House has voted 46 times to defund or delay health care for people who desperately need it, wasting precious time.

Wake up, Republicans. ObamaCare is not only the law of the land; it is not only a safeguard to save the millions of people with preexisting conditions; it is an essential tool to give people the economic security and purchasing power they need to revive our economy.

People need ObamaCare. President Obama cares about the American people, and we should, too. Even a Tea Party member of my freshman class of 2010 understood this when he stood and expressed his hopes of being able to receive federally subsidized health coverage immediately upon taking office. He was incensed. He couldn't wait 30 days, but he acts as if he wants his constituents to wait forever.

People all over the world are amazed that we do not have universal health care like they do. We are a world power, and they are saying, You don't have universal health care in America?

Mr. Speaker, people want health care; people deserve health care; and, Mr. Speaker, people want jobs. No one wants to revive the Great Recession by playing dangerous games with our economy. But do you know what? That is precisely what this House is doing.

This is scary. I am nervous. I am stunned by the insensitivity. The whole world economy rests on America's Treasury bonds. Let me repeat: The whole world economy rests on America's Treasury bonds.

Mr. Speaker, when we play with fire on the debt ceiling, you threaten to burn down the buttress on which Americans' 401(k)s, mutual funds, small businesses, and stock portfolios rest. Just consider what happened the last time Republicans simply threatened to breach the debt ceiling in 2011. Government bonds were downgraded, retirement assets plummeted, and homeowners saw big hikes in their monthly payments. That was just for talking about breaching the debt ceiling.

Independent analysts have concluded that a debt default would be as bad as the global financial crisis of 2008. After that crisis, American savers lost decades' worth of wealth in their homes and 401(k)s. We are still living with massive unemployment from that crisis to this date.

While some Members of Congress may like to behave as though we have moved past our unemployment crisis, it is a different story when you look at African Americans--13 percent unemployment; the Hispanic community, 9.3 percent unemployment; and the youngest workers, 22 percent unemployment.

Across America there are nearly 12 million people officially out of work and tens of millions more who are underemployed or who have simply given up looking. America's public sector workers--our teachers, firefighters, construction workers, public health workers, medical researchers, public defenders, bus drivers, social workers, and police--have already suffered so painfully, first under the sequester, and now under the shutdown.

But a default would devastate every worker and every retiree. It would hit every 401(k), every mutual fund, every stock portfolio, every mortgage payment, every student loan, and every business loan. It is impossible to be fiscally conservatively or probusiness and simultaneously try to use this financial weapon of mass destruction against American businesses and American taxpayers. It is time for Congress to pass a clean debt ceiling bill.

Mr. Speaker, open the government. Mr. Speaker, raise the debt ceiling. Mr. Speaker, let's begin to address our real crisis: jobs, jobs, jobs.

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