Date: 2006-09-20
Speaker: WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (democrat)
Chamber: H

Mr. Speaker. it is again a pleasure to be on the floor this evening With the 30Something Working Group. and my colleague Mr. MEEK my will be joining me in a few short minutes. But I say to my good friend from Georgia who has just issued a call to raise the tone of the dialogue. I think the Official Truth Squad would do well to engage in a little truth and acknowledge that it is they who have engaged in the vicious rhetoric that has gone back and forth for the last dozen or so years that they have controlled this chamber. and that the direction that they have moved this country in has given us neither faith nor reason to believe that this country will be able to be put on the right track unless we making. some significant changes. not the least of which is in our economy. Security. Democrats believe that security is incredibly important. not just our national security and our homeland security. but economic security. and no matter what this district is I travel to. no matter what district you represent. the people in this country are yearning for a commitment from this Congress to move this country in the right direction on economic security. That does not appear to be the commitment of the leadership of this institution. One has only to look at the commentary across the country to know that it is not just my opinion. but this is the opinion of many. many people both who have expertise in economics as well as the rankandfile individuals who are struggling. to make ends meet on a daily basis. I want to just walk through some of the commentary that we have seen recently and compare the rosy picture that has been painted by this administration and by this Republican leadership. compared to what the reality on the ground every day for working families is. Let us look at. the economy according to essentially donothing Washington Republicans. and the way we are characterizing them is simply because we have spent the least amount of time at work during this 109th Congress than in history. We have worked the least number of days. produced the smallest amounts of legislation. and yet the administration and the Republican leadership continues -to toot a horn that does not deserve to be tooted. Let us look at what President Bush said just the other day. Just 2days ago he said. I would say look at what the recent economy has done. It is strong. We have created a lot of jobs. You also have majority leader JoHN BOEHNER say on September 1 that the American economy is strong. it continues to provide more economic opportunity and higher wage jobs to working families across the country. What I would say to . the President and to my colleague Mr. BOEHNER is that I am not sure what country they are living in or who they are speaking to. but they seem to believe that if you say something enough times and repeat it often enough that eventually it will sink in and someone will believe it. fl 2300 But if you ask about the economy according to Americas working families. .lets see what one young woman talked about from her point of view. Denine Gordon. who is 32 years old and is a waitress who makes the minimum wage. news about her latest trouble. Her van has been in the shop for a week because she and her husband cant afford to fix it. "This is the least I have ever made in my entire life." the Republican and mother of three said. "The gas prices went up. and the tips went down.". She said that in the newspaper as reported by AP just 2 days ago. . Debbie Brewer. a 50yearold woman and a deli owner. rattled off her biggest complaints about the economy as she counted change while closing her register for the night. "We will never see 99 cents again." the Republican said. of gas prices. "Everything is jumping. your gas. your food. and everything. but your wages dont go -up." And what both of these.young women are speaking about is the fact that in 9 years we have not had an increase in the minimum wage. We still have not provided just a minimal increase to those who make the least amount of money in the country. who certainly cant afford to uphold the costs that their families have on a minimumwage salary. We have a Republican Congress here that has repeatedly refused to raise the minimum wage. and no opportunity in the next 11/2 weeks. it appoears. that we are going to be able to do that. We have legislation that is been amended. we have the Labor and Health and Human Services appropriations bill that has an amendment sitting on it that the Republican leadership refuses to bring to the floor because it was successfully adopted in the appropriations subcommittee. As a result. that bill was stalled. never to see the light ofday because. God forbid. it would give the Members an opportunity to have a straight upordown vote on the minimum wage. Their fear is that it actually would pass. And that is just incredibly. incredibly sad. Lets take a look at some more reality about the economy. This is the real economic change under this President. While the minimum wage has not increased since 1997. lets look at what has increased. You look at this chart over here. all the way on the left you see zero percent increase in the minimum wage. But lets take a look at the price of whole milk. That has increased 24 percent. Lets take a look at the price of a loaf of bread. That has increased 25 percent. How about the price of a 4year public college education? That has increased 77 percent. Lets peruse how much health insurance has gone up. And. Mr. Speaker. I can tell you that health insurance in particular is an item that people in my district and districts all across the country. I am sure yours as well. people are totally frustrated. dont know what to do. are tearing their hair out because of the everincreasing upwards of 15 percent increases in health care costs. It doesnt matter whether I sit next to a mom with young kids or a small business owner or a CEO of a large corporation. I just talked to a CEO of a large corporation today. The cost of health care is their number one concern. We have 46 million people in this country that dont have access to health insurance. and that number is constantly going up. not down. And the reason it is going up is because more and more employers have less and less of an ability- to provide access to health insurance for their employees. so they are just dropping the coverage and leaving their employees on their own to figure out how they are going to get that coverage. What it means when someone doesnt have health insurance coverage. Mr. Speaker. is that when their child is sick. when they are sick. they cant afford to go to the doctor. And I can tell you a little story about how. when I first ran for the State legislature in Florida. which was back in 1992. I was walking door to door. And I knocked on a door. I knocked on 25.000 doors in my first election. And as I was walking door to door. it took a young woman who was home at the time a particularly long time to get to the door before she could answer it. And she called to me from inside of the apartment and said. "Just a minute. just a minute. I will be right there." So I waited patiently. And when she finally got to the door and opened it. you couldnt help but notice that her foot was incredibly. incredibly swollen. And of course. I couldnt help but ask her what happened. what was wrong. because she was obviously in agonizing pain. And she literally said to me. and this has been an.issue all the way this number of years. That was 14 years ago. She literally said to me that she now had an infection on her foot. but that she didnt have health insurance. so she now was about to actually. as I have knocked on her door. she was about to go down to the emergency room at the local hospital because she was no longer able to wait. And she didnt have health insurance. so she couldnt take care of it and go to the doctor for just a chance for him to look at her foot when there was only something minor wrong with it. she had to wait until it was bad enough for her to take herself to the emergency room so that .she could get it taken care of. And that is the story for millions of people across the country. .Mr. Speaker. And the problem with 14 years has not gotten better. it has gotten worse. a 97 percent increase in the cost of health insurance. How about gas prices? Amazingly. people have been rejoicing or at least breathing some sighs of relief that there has been a. drop in the cost of gas lately. What is sad is that there has been a drop from upwards of $3 to somewhere between$2.75 and $2.95. You know. when we are at the point in this country where people are excited about gas prices that are lower than $3. but are still higher than $2.50. there is something seriously wrong. Our expectations are out of whack. because America can certainly do better. We can certainly move this country in a new direction. And I guess that.the whole issue of gas prices boils down to. the way I summarized it. what happens. I think. in this country is that it must be on the other side of the aisle that the Republican leadership here isnt filling their own gas tank. or maybe they havent filled their own gas tank in so long that they dont remember what the cost of a gallon of gas is. They are not standing ther6 at the pump watching it tick dime after dime. It used to be pennies. When I was a child. when you would pump gas and when my parents were pumping gas. you would watch the pennies tick off. Now you watch the dimes tick off. And pretty soon. if we dont get a handle on making sure that we dont totally rely on foreign oil or oil in general as a resource. we are going to probably see quarters rattle off on that end column on the gas tank as opposed to dimes or as opposed to pennies like it used to when I was a child That is the only explanation I can find to the callous disregard on the part of the leadership here for getting a real handle on how to address gas prices so that we dont have joy and so that we are not forced to delight in a 20cent drop that brings us to about $2.70 or $2.50. It is just our priorities seem to be backwards. What we need to do and what Democrats will do in our new direction for America if we. are given an opportunity after.November 7 is we would make a real investment in exploring alternative energy. We would make an investment in the Midwest instead of the Middle East. We would make an investment in ensuring that we can expand the use of ethanol. that we can truly. like Brazil did. Brazil. Mr. Speaker. is now a country that has broken their addiction to for: eign oil. They actually are selfsufficient. They grew their way out of the problem. They have crops that give them the ability to produce enough ethanol. and now they have American automobile manufacturers building cars for them that are sold and marketed in Brazil so that they can again be energy selfsufficient and not reliant upon OPEC and the Middle East. And what we have is our Energizing America Plan. We have a plan to have farmers fuel Americas energy independence. and we have an action plan to do that so that we can be truly energyindependent within 10 years. It is not rhetoric. it is a plan. It is not rhetoric like what we heard here with the Presidents State of the Union where he talked about wanting to end Americas addiction to foreign oil. Well. where is thebeef. Mr. Speaker? Where is the backup behind the words? Because I havent seen it. and I -have only been here 2 years now and completing my freshman term in Congress. but I have only_ seen energy legislation that is written for the oil companies. that gives them the ability to not pay subsidies. that gives away the store. that gives them the ability to drill all they want without paying royalties to the government. And. the last time I checked. the oil industry is the most profitable industry on the planet. Literally. in the fourth quarter of last year. I believe it was ExxonMobil that made more money. more profit than any company in history. And lets just take a look at the oil companies record profits. Yet we are passing legislation that gives them even more money. In 2002. you have the oil industry making $34 billion. In 2003. they made $59 billion. In 2004. they made $84 billion. in 2005. $113 billion. Yet. we pass legislation here in this House that actually gave them more. Didnt make them pay the royalties and the subsidies that they would normally owe to the Federal Government. Why? Because there is no commitment on the part of this Republican Congress to actually end our addiction to foreign oil. because that would end the direction that this profit margin is going. It would make sure that there was some balance. It would make sure that we invest. like our plan would. in America. in the- Midwest. and in my home State where we have sugar farmers who could benefit from producing sugar that could be made into ethanol. I have a company in my district that has the ability to do that. and if we will only give them the opportunity to help move this country in the right direction. Lets take a look at what is happening with the individuals who work for the oil industry. This is Lee Raymond. Why is he smiling in this picture? Because he got a $398 million retirement package and a $2 million tax break. Really. When we are talking about who gets tax cuts that have been passed out of this Chamber again and again and again since you and I have been here. Mr. Speaker. this is the person and the type of person that those tax cuts are designed to help. We passed tax breaks and subsidy giveaways for the oil industry. and We refuse to raise the minimum wage for people like waitresses and our workers who are only trying to make ends meet. It is just abominable. What we would do as Democrats is we would move this cauntry in a new direction. We would make a real commitment to economic security. We would focus onthe domestic needs of this Nation. We would make sure that we cut the student loan rate in half. It is at its highest rate ever. We would make sure that we make a real commitment to expanding access to health care. to the 46 million Americans that dont have it. We would pass a real prescription drug benefit for senior citizens. and not a prescription drug benefit that was written to benefit the pharmaceutical industry. Right now. Mr. Speaker. the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit. and we are getting close to September 22. which is the date in which many. many senior citizens. and they are already dropping through it as we speak. that many. many senior citizens are going to fall into what is called the doughnut hole. the point at which the Medicare prescription drug benefit that was passed in 2003. before you and I came to this Chamber. the senior citizens that we represent will fall into this doughnut hole. And this is how it is going to happen.