Date: 2015-03-18
Speaker: WATSON COLEMAN (democrat)
Chamber: H

I appreciate the comments that have been offered by both of my colleagues here. I think that you can certainly understand that a lot of work went into the creation. the development. and the evolution of this budget. We are happy to note that. over the years. some of those issues that were identified by the Progressive Caucus have now become part of the regular budget that is presented by the Democratic Caucus. I want to highlight a couple of other things. because I think we just talked about the need for housing. And we recognize that not only did we lose a lot of housing during the predatory lending crisis. a lot of that housing is still vacant. and we need to figure out a way to recapture that housing and use it for affordable housing purposes. Our budget proposes the extension of the use of vouchers for housing because we recognize how fundamental the need is to have safe and secure housing. We recognize that. over the last several years. millionaires. billionaires. and corporations have been getting tremendous tax breaks. that the very wealthy have received extremely generous credits. We want to see working people get credit for work. get tax advantages for the work that working people do. get additional child care credits so that they can provide the kind of safety and security and healthy environment for their families. Everybody has the desire to have a healthy family. Everybody has a desire to be able to participate in our society. to even pay taxes. Mr. Speaker. They just need to have the mechanisms. the infrastructure. the opportunity. the policies that will provide those opportunities. and this budget does just that. It is known that one in five children live. in the United States of America. in poverty. One out of three African American children live in poverty. That is unacceptable for any child to live impoverished in a nation that is as rich and that has so much wealth concentrated in so few hands. To whom much is given. much is required. and it is pay now or pay later. We need to recognize the significance of our budget that recognizes that education is. indeed. the equalizer here. Not only are we looking to expand access to preschool care. but full funding of K12. In addition to that. we recognize that higher education is what distinguishes our middle class from those who never can get into the middle class. But we want to make sure that students have access to education without being overly burdened with debt. So we want to look at creating opportunities for students to refinance their debt. Lets look at this country as a country of diplomacy. of humanitarianism. Lets look at this country as a country of peacefulness and hopefulness for goodwill for all nations. Let us move away from the sort of cold war mentality. look at modernizing our militaristic events. look at what we are doing with our resources. invest our resources here in America. not overseas. seek to bring humanitarian aid. seek to bring diplomacy. Seek. first. peace. seek. first. coalitions. but seek. first and foremost. to invest in America. Our unemployment rate is supposedly somewhere around 5 or 6 percent. but that is so misleading. It is so misleading on so many different levels. Number one. that is not true in rural areas. and that is not true in urban areas. and that is not true for minority communities. and that is not true for those who simply arent looking anymore because they have been so doggone discouraged that they dont even think that there is any hope for them to have a job. For those people. for that cohort that I am speaking of. unemployment is double digits. It could be 25 percent. It could be 13 percent. It is something that we really dont even know exactly what it is. but we need to be focusing on lifting up all of our communities. And if we truly. absolutely want the American economy to expand. then we need to know that we need more consumers. We need more jobs. We need more paychecks. We need more customers. And we do that by investing in our middle class. We do that by investing in small businesses. in new businesses. in startups. in education. and in research and development. This budget recognizes that if we are going to be the great America that we are supposed to be. that we need to make these investments. Today was monumental for me because I got to articulate and to stand with individuals who expressed things that I have believed. Even as a legislator in the State of New Jersey. I believed that if we are to experience an America that really works. an America where our communities are safe because there is full employmentso no one is trying to rob anybody or no one is feeling a need to engage in illegal activity simply to put some food on the tableif we are going to be competitive globally. then we need to be investing in education. We need to be building schools. We need to ensure that even the schools in the poorest districts across the United States of America have all of the 21st century technology and opportunities to learn and produce. And we need to have high expectations. We need to have high expectations for everyone. So I thank you very much for this opportunity. and I will take this moment to yield back to my colleague. the gentleman from Minnesota . the cochair of our Progressive Caucus.