Middle Class Economics

Floor Speech

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Mr. TONKO. I thank the gentleman from California for leading us on
middle class economics and on infrastructure and on growing the jobs
and growing the economy. That can be--must be--our top priority, making
certain that the dignity of work and the strength of drawing a paycheck
are the American Dream that we want to help individuals and families
across this country tether so they can move forward, utilizing their
skills and talents and passions in order to be able to maintain a
household, raise a family, and provide for the American Dream. It is
always a pleasure to join you when we are speaking on these issues so
forcefully, and to know there is a solution out there. There is a way
to grow this economy, and looking at some of the items mentioned in the
budget is important, and we should pay respect to that.

Certainly infrastructure that you just made mention of, and thank you
for leading us in a recent motion to recommit to make certain that
those who will staff those boats, transporting that cargo of LNG,
create American jobs. We need to be very much disciplined in how we
create a working agenda for America's families, and that is one step in
the process.

But to the greater issue of infrastructure, I would suggest that we
are well beyond that deadline when we should have responded to
America's needs. We have a very deficient infrastructure. There are
many bridges in this country that are rated deficient and weak. There
are a number of situations with the grid system that was designed for a
monopoly setting, and we now know that we transmit, we deliver
electrons not only from region to region, former monopoly region to
monopoly region, but State to State and country to country. It requires
an upgrading in investment in our electric utility grid and certainly
broadband. For our communication's sake, we need to wire neighborhoods
in remote areas in communities across the country to enable us to
strengthen the outcome, the commerce end of it all, to give businesses
those needs that are so important.

Let me just close with this, because I see our friend, the
gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) has joined us. I believe it is the
Ninth District of Ohio.

I recently held a press conference at home after a week of being on
the floor here, and it was about the child care and dependent child
care credit, tax credit, and it was amazing to hear the real-life
stories of parents who struggle, trying to work. They need two incomes
and are impacted by the high cost of child care, quality child care.
They need that comfort zone to know that as a coparent, in a way, with
the given agency that they are in a secure setting, so that they can be
productive at work and know that their children are well cared for.

And it brings great benefits. There are social and cognitive and
educational skill sets that are introduced into the lives of those
toddlers and children that makes them all the more ready for that pre-K
to K to elementary setting, so it has great benefits. But when you
think about the fact that the average cost is $10,000 per year for
child care, and when toddlers can be as high as $16,000 and a 5-year
old as high as $12,000 per year, that is an immense cost to families.

So as the President addresses this issue in the budget, he triples
that benefit to some $3,000 per child under 5 per family. For families
making as much as $120,000, they can get that full benefit, and there
is a scaled-down benefit for family incomes as high as $210,000.

So there are efforts here to grow the economy through middle class
economics. The middle class has taken it on the chin for far too long.
We have seen the growth of this economy post-recession and all of the
added wealth that has come since that turnaround, that upward movement
that has gone to a relative few in our society. Now it is time to share
the wealth with the great numbers of us in the middle class, and that
is the engine that runs America.

If you give more purchasing power to the middle-income community, you
give it to the working poor, give it to those looking to ascend into
the middle class, that will drive a strong economic recovery, even more
powerful than what we have seen since the President took office in
2009, when we hit the lowest point in March 2009. From that recession
that President Obama inherited, we have done really well. We could have
done much better with infrastructure investments, which would have put
many people in the trades to work and where we would have responded
with a much stronger outcome for purchasing power for the great many of
us in that middle-income community.

So, Mr. Garamendi, it is always a pleasure to join with you and our
colleagues to make certain that we bring to the public's attention
direct assistance that we can provide, items that have been introduced
in bill format or included in a proposed budget from the President that
can make a difference in the fabric of this community called America,
where we can tether that American Dream in more noble and measured
terms, and where we can make certain that we not only grow the climate
for job production but grow the economy.

So it is within our grasp, but we just have to be bold in our attempt
to go forward and to be progressive in our thinking and in our
policies.

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Mr. TONKO. Thank you, Representative Garamendi.

If I could just associate my comments with the representative from
Ohio, Marcy Kaptur talked about the impoverishment factor around the
world. These negotiated agreements are much more than just trade
barriers and tariffs. They become public policy.

When you lose American jobs, that is only the beginning of the story.
We have made a situation very critically tough here, and we have
resulted in impoverishing workers around the world, so that is an
undoable, unsustainable outcome.

I think back when Ms. Kaptur spoke of the exodus of jobs and the
incremental steps that took them eventually offshore. I think of the
entire passageway of the Erie Canal system that drove a westward
movement, reached Ohio, and then eventually allowed for the development
to the west coast.

You think of that, and many a person, many a worker, tethered the
American Dream to those mill towns that were given birth to by that
Erie Canal system. That was the empowerment of this Nation--and to
think that that whole history has been rejected. A lot of the creative
genius came from the immigrant who was working on those assembly lines.
We need to remember that history. We must have it speak to us.

This whole idea of inserting public policy into these agreements or,
again, circumventing our responsibilities here in the House--people who
we represent at home need to ask us: Where are we on fast track? Do we
want to give up that congressional responsibility and just do thumbs up
or thumbs down on a negotiated agreement?

The other items that I am concerned about are items like the earned
income tax credit. That is part of the budget request made by the
President. I spoke to a number of people in my district who rely on
that and others who aren't even filing for the earned income tax credit
and they qualify.

I want people to understand that this is not a tax loophole, this is
economic and social justice, where we take folks who perhaps might not
even make enough to file a tax return to get an earned income tax
credit.

This is one of the greatest antipoverty agents we have in the budget,
so we need to make certain that that earned income tax credit is
available when the final budget is completed, and we need to make
certain we get the word out.

This is about empowering those who are at the lower strata of income.
We want to make certain that programs like the earned income tax credit
speak to those who are working. It is encouraging people to work, and
it is trying to bring again some economic justice and social justice.

So many of these communities are benefited when we remind people that
these tax opportunities are available for them. It empowers the
regional economy. So many times, there is poverty clustered in some of
our urban cores, and so the social justice that comes with an earned
income tax credit is that millions of dollars are now brought back into
the community.

On those budgets where our lower strata income qualifying folks are,
they are going to spend those dollars, they are not going to bank those
dollars. So an earned income tax credit, dependent child care tax
credit, these are important items--fair trade, infrastructure
improvement, there are a great number of things that we can do to
muscle up the outcome here.

It begins in those hallowed halls of government where you can,
through these efforts in the halls of government, make policy happen.
We need to take heed as to what needs to be done for our middle income
community.

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