Agricultural Act of 2014

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Madam President, on Tuesday evening, President Obama, in his State of the Union Address, made the point that America must be the land of opportunity for all. He acknowledged, quite frankly, that for many families in this country the American dream is just that, a dream.

Many families have lost hope that their children or grandchildren will be able to achieve the American dream. President Obama made the point that if we all work together, the outlook for this country is strong and that we can make not only the American dream something people can continue to believe but it can become a reality for more and more American families.

But he also expressed the reality of where we are. The facts indicate that intergenerational mobility, that is, for a child born into poverty, their ability to move up the economic ladder has not changed in the last several decades. The American dream has become just that for too many families.

Let me point out some of the income disparity we have seen grow in the United States. Some of this is very understandable. It is understandable that people get paid differently. Some people work a lot harder, some people come up with an incredibly ingenious way of doing something, the American way of developing new technologies, people are willing to take greater risks than others. Yes, the reward will be greater. We do expect and we do appreciate, we do look up to people who can be very successful in our economic system.

But what is not understandable is how we have seen a growth in the income disparity among Americans during good times and bad times. Between 1979 and 2007, the top 1 percent in income in America saw their income go up 275 percent, whereas the three middle quintiles--this is what we usually consider to be the middle class, those from 20 percent to 80 percent--saw their income go up only 40 percent. This is in a period of economic growth in this country from 1979. To see your income go up only 40 percent, whereas the wealthiest are going up close to 300 percent, should be of concern to people of this country.

As we all know, in 2007 we went through a recession. Since that recession, median income in this country has declined. It went down 31 percent during the recession. But for the wealthiest, it actually went up. It went up 31 percent. The median income went down for most Americans.

We have a problem. During good times, we are seeing the income of the wealthiest get larger, in bad times we see wealthy people protected, whereas middle-income families are doing worse. We even have what is known as the birth lottery. If you are born into poverty, we know you have a hard time getting out of poverty today. If you are in certain communities, it is even much more difficult.

So President Obama was right to concentrate on America as opportunity for all. How can we get a growing middle class in this country? What can we do to help everyone do better in our country? Many countries are doing much better than we are. This disparity strikes at the heart of who we are as a nation. We believe that if you work hard, you play according to the rules, you should be able to succeed in this country. For too many families, that is not the reality.

What can we do to make a difference? I know there has been a lot of talk as to what we can do to help in that regard, what we can do to make it better. It is very important to do that for the values of our country. It is important for the families who are affected. But it is also important for our economy.

So, yes, we need to increase opportunity for middle-income families so more people can live the American dream. We need to do that because that is what we stand for as a country. Those are our values. But we also need to do this for our economy. It is very interesting that the companies that are making money today are ready to invest in the growth of our economy. They need consumers. They need people who will buy the automobiles. They need people who will eat in the restaurants. They need people who will go on vacations. They need people who will buy the clothing in the stores. If they do not have the income to do it, they do not buy the products, our economy does not grow. So a growing middle class is critically important to our economy.

What steps can we take? First, we have already taken one very important step with the passage of the Affordable Care Act. The Affordable Care Act dealt with health care costs. We have seen a reduction in the rate of health care costs over the past couple of years. It is a major cost among American families. It has been growing and growing every year. We are now starting to see a slowdown in that. Why? Because we are dealing with health delivery. We are trying to make the health care system more efficient by looking at the total care of an individual rather than just looking at a specific episode.

We are trying to reduce readmissions. We are dealing with healthy lifestyles. The Affordable Care Act rewards all of those issues. We make quality affordable insurance available to all Americans.

Last year, nearly 2 million families had to go through bankruptcy in America because of health care costs. Last year it was estimated that 56 million American families struggled to pay their medical bills. So this is an issue we need to look at from the point of view of helping middle-income families.

Alan Krueger, the economist, observed:

We helped the middle class and those struggling to get into the middle class by lowering the growth of health care costs, by preventing those with pre-existing conditions from being denied health insurance coverage, by creating exchanges for small businesses and lower income families to obtain health insurance at competitive rates, and by providing tax subsidies to small businesses and lower income workers to purchase insurance.

The point Mr. Krueger was making is when we eliminate preexisting conditions, when we have health exchanges that allow individuals and small businesses to be able to get competitive rates, we are helping with middle-income growth in America.

There is a lot more we need to do in addition to the health care problems we have in this country. The President mentioned during his State of the Union Address that Americans need a pay raise. I could not agree with him more. In 1968--that was 46 years ago--the minimum wage in this country was set at $1.60 per hour. If you adjust that for inflation, the minimum wage would be $10.77. The minimum wage in America is not $10.77, it is $7.25 per hour. The tipped employee minimum wage is $2.13. For a full-time worker at the minimum wage, $7.25 per hour wage, they would be making a little over $15,000 a year. You cannot support your family on $15,000 a year.

The National Low Income Housing Coalition has done a study. There is not a single State in the Union where you can afford affordable housing. They defined that as a two-bedroom housing unit on the rental market. There is not a single State in the Nation where the $15,000-a-year income allows you to be able to afford that housing for your family.

The American dream is on life support. We need to do more about that. One thing we can easily do in this Congress this year is raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour.

We also need to adjust it for inflation. What does that mean? We have only adjusted minimum wages maybe three times in the last 30-some years. We need to have the minimum wage keep up with inflation. That way we do not have to deal with abrupt increases. We will have gentle increases, which I think is better for our economy to start off with, but it also keeps the minimum wage at where we want to set it. It does not erode the year after we pass it.

I think that makes sense. Let me dispel some of the myths about the minimum wage.

I hear frequently: Well, we are only taking about teenagers or those in their early twenties, it is their first job, and it is not so serious.

Let's look at the facts. The average age of a person earning minimum wage is 35. The median age is 31; 36 percent are over 40 years of age, 40 years of age or older; 56 percent are women--now only 56 percent of our workforce is women, but at minimum wage it is much more likely to be a woman than a man earning minimum wage; 28 percent of people who are earning the minimum wage have children. These are families trying to live on minimum wage.

Increasing the minimum wage will help to grow the middle class. It will help our economy. A $10.10 per hour minimum wage will generate about $34 billion in wages into our economy, $34 billion. Do you know what that means for the local businesses that are there? Do you know what that means for our economy? I know our economy is on the right path, but we have to help it along. We don't have enough jobs in America, and $35 billion will allow that local supermarket or that restaurant or that business owner to hire some more people, creating more jobs, helping our economy continue to grow.

People who work full time shouldn't live in poverty. Today, with the current minimum wage, and even with the tax credits we have available, most individuals will live in poverty. That is unacceptable. At $10.10 per hour, we will be above the poverty line with the tax credits.

That is what we should do. If we play according to the rules, we should be able to succeed; work 40 hours a week, we shouldn't have to live in poverty, not in the United States of America.

Americans understand this. Polls have shown over and over that the overwhelming majority of Americans support a reasonable adjustment in the minimum wage. The Gallup poll found that 76 percent of Americans believe Congress should pass an increase in the minimum wage. President Obama has already taken action, and I applaud him for that. He is going to be signing an executive order. So those people who are Federal workers, from a contractor, Federal contract worker, someone who is getting money from the Federal Government and hires people, they are going to have to pay the minimum of a $10.10 minimum wage. We should do the same for all workers in this country, and we have it in our power to do it.

There are a lot of other things the President mentioned. There are many other issues that I think we need to deal with for our agenda for a growing middle class. We clearly need to do a much better job in education. Education is the key to opportunity in America. It truly does open doors. We want to open up jobs, but we need people who are trained to be competitive for these jobs, particularly in a global economy. We need people trained.

The President is right to say it starts at a very early age, pre-K. In the pre-K through 12, we have to insist on quality education. We have some great schools in America, but not all children have access to those good schools. We need to do a better job at educating our children in all fields--all fields. STEM is very important, but so are the humanities, so are the arts. We have to do a better job in our pre-K through 12. In higher education, we have to make it much more affordable.

How do we expect to get a growing middle class when so many families are looking at tens of thousands of dollars of educational bills but they don't have any idea of how they are going to be able to pay for it--or our young workers saddled with these large debts affecting what career they are going to go into.

We have to invest in quality education but also affordable higher education. That is why it is important for us to reauthorize the Higher Education Act, to demand that there be value given for the money that we invest in higher education but that we also make it affordable for American families.

We need a modern infrastructure, and the President talked about that. Good jobs go to where there are good roads, good bridges, and good transit systems. Any morning today, try to get around this region; we know how important the transit system is in the Washington area.

In my own State I know we have three major transit projects that we need to get funded so people don't spend hours in gridlock every morning.

We need modern infrastructure in Maryland. In my own State of Maryland we have had tremendous problems with our water infrastructure. We have had roads flooded and homes damaged. We need to rebuild our water infrastructure and assure that people get clean, safe drinking water and that we take care of our water infrastructure in America.

We need a modern energy grid in this country, which is critically important for economic growth. As President Obama said, good jobs go to where there is good infrastructure, and we need to do a better job with the infrastructure in America.

We will have a chance again in this Congress. We haven't reauthorized the Surface Transportation Act. I hope a WRDA bill will get done with some of our WRDA projects. It is in conference today. Those are things we can do to help grow a middle class.

We have to invest in research. I think one of the lines that received the biggest applause in the President's State of the Union Address when he said: We have to restore the cuts we made that we should never have made to the basic research, the National Institutes of Health--headquartered in my State. They are located in every State, but they are headquartered in Maryland. The work they do is critically important to economic growth in our country. We have to invest in research.

We need a progressive tax structure. More and more economists are telling us that to have a growing middle class, we need the revenue. We are going to pay our bills--we don't want the debt--but we have to do it in a way that is fair and rewards the middle class.

Middle-class families don't take advantage of these tax breaks, these tax loopholes. At a minimum, we have to close those tax loopholes. I agree with the President in that regard.

The President also mentioned in the State of the Union Address that for growing a middle class we want to make sure they have a job, we want to make sure they are trained for that job, we want to make sure they are rewarded for that job with fair wages, and we also want to make sure they have a secure retirement. We are not doing enough to make sure Americans have a secure retirement.

We have to save more as a nation. The best way to save is through retirement savings. We can all come together to do more. This is not a partisan issue. We should be able to do this together.

Let me end on a quote from a former President, Theodore Roosevelt.

He said: "This country will not be a permanently good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a reasonably good place for all of us to live in.''

I think that was what President Obama was talking about when he said "opportunity for all.''

That is what this Nation stands for. We have all the reason to believe we can accomplish this for the people of America, but we need to work together with the President to work to implement commonsense changes so we can have a growing middle class in America.

With that, I yield the floor.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source