Mark Pocan

Mr. POCAN

Mr. POCAN. Mr. Speaker, I am here and rise today on behalf of the Congressional Progressive Caucus for a Special Order hour on a topic. However, before we start that Special Order hour, I would like to yield to the lady from the Ninth District of Arizona (Ms. Sinema). The STEADY Act

Mr. POCAN. Thank you. And thank you for introducing that important bill to help students and families across the country. Today during the Special Order hour for the Progressive Caucus, we are here to specifically talk about the issue of income inequality in America and the growing gap between the wealthiest and the average person. Just today, Mr. Speaker, while we voted on legislation, we voted on a bill, the ironically titled Working Families Flexibility Act, which, in reality, would mean more work and less pay for hardworking Americans in my State of Wisconsin and across the country. As many of my colleagues have spoken on the floor this week, what this bill will do is to deny workers compensation for overtime--any hours that they would work over 40 hours a week. This is, in essence, an attack on workplace flexibility and an attack on the hard-earned wages Americans rely on. But what makes this bill even more onerous, though, is a topic of importance to our caucus, the Progressive Caucus, and to workers across America: the growing income inequality in our country. Mr. Speaker, it's hard to imagine why some of our colleagues are interested in reducing wages for Americans when multiple reports this week show that despite the fact that stock markets and corporate profits are close to all-time highs, wages in this country are stagnant at best. In fact, according to the St. Louis Fed, wages as a percentage of the economy have hit an all-time low. What does that mean in real dollars? Well, adjusted for inflation, an average worker who was paid $49,650 at the end of 2009 makes $545 less now, even before taxes and deductions. Meanwhile, because companies have slowed down hiring to control costs, many are operating with fewer employees, meaning there's more work for those with a job, even though their wages aren't moving upward. To summarize, Americans are working harder while getting paid less, even before the bill the Republicans put on the floor this week. Mr. Speaker, given that our economy is still recovering from the recent recession, and close to 12 million Americans are still looking for work, it would make sense if all areas of the economy were facing tough times. But that's not the case. In fact, the stock markets and corporate profits are breaking records. Standard & Poor's 500 corporations hit a record in the first quarter of the year; and last week, including today, the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average crossed 15,000 for the first time in quite a while. The wealthiest Americans only are getting richer. According to tax expert David Cay Johnston, in the first 2 years of our recovery, from 2009 to 2011, close to 150 percent of the increased income in this country went to the top 10 percent of earners. Why? Because incomes fell for the bottom 90 percent of Americans. If you dive deeper into those numbers, the increasing inequity becomes even more staggering. Just in the past 2 years, the top 1 percent saw 81 percent of all this country's increased income. Almost 40 percent of the increased income since 2009 went to the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent, or those making at least $8 million a year. What does that mean? Our country, our Nation, has 158.4 million households, and only about 16,000 of those households have accounted for 40 cents of every dollar of increased income in this country in the last the 2 years. Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, this trend of a growing income inequality can be traced back to more than just the 2 years following the recession. You can go all the way back to 1966 to find the last time the average adjusted gross income was lower in this country than it was in 2011. In between this time, 45 years, the bottom 90 percent Americans saw their income increase by an average of $59. What about the top 10 percent? Well, from 1966 to 2011, their income increased by an average of approximately $116,000. And what about the top 1 percent? Their income increased by an average of $629,000. And the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent, the wealthiest in this country, have seen their income rise $18.4 million on average in the last 45 years. Let me say that again. In the past 45 years, since 1966, the vast majority of Americans, 90 percent, have seen their average incomes increase by an average of $59, and the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent have seen their incomes increase by an average of $18.4 million. It's almost impossible to comprehend, but Mr. Johnston found a way. If you represented these increases in a line chart, and 1 inch is equivalent to $59, the top 10 percent's would go to over 163 feet. The top 1 percent's line would go to 884 feet, and the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent would go for 5 miles. One inch of increase, 5 miles of increase for the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent. So while the majority of us have gained only an inch over the last 40 years, the uberwealthy have gained not just inches but miles. Put another way, for every extra dollar of annual income earned by the top 90 percent of Americans, an extra 311,000 went to the households in the top 1 percent of 1 percent. This growing income disparity, what does it mean? Well, it's bad for the economy. It's bad for our deficit, and it's bad for the most vulnerable in our society, and, of course, that's bad for the American Dream. As Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody's Analytics recently said, for the economy to thrive, we need everyone participating: When a majority of Americans are left behind in the recovery, our economy will never truly thrive. In fact, there have been a number of studies that have said that the way to get the economy going is to make sure those who have the least have the money because they'll spend it. They'll put it immediately into the economy. When the wealthiest have the extra income, it often goes into savings. But for the average person, that 90 percent, when they get the money, it goes right back into the economy and stimulates the economy. But when the average 90 percent of Americans only see a $59 wage increase in 45 years, that just doesn't put money back into the economy. Consumer spending, which constitutes 70 percent of our economy, is strained when wages decrease. This is particularly acute when low- and moderate-income workers spend nearly all of their paychecks as those studies have shown us. And when there's a lack of demand, there will be a lack of economic growth, which means a lack of jobs, which means a lack of opportunities for Americans. When we have vast income inequality, reducing our debt and our deficits becomes nearly impossible. When people are making less, we collect less in revenue. And at that point, the only way to balance our budget would be to drastically reduce funding for programs that primarily serve those with, guess what, decreasing incomes. It is a lose-lose proposition, and we shouldn't pursue it. What else is this bad for? Well, it's bad for college affordability. It's bad for health care costs, and it's bad for programs that help the elderly, including programs like Social Security. Multiple studies have shown us that huge income inequality makes Americans more pessimistic and less likely to believe that they have little in common with anyone else unlike themselves. The basic tenets of the American Dream are at risk when the income gap is so wide. When 90 percent of the country is so far behind the top tiers of the country, it's hard to make the case that if you work hard, you can get ahead. In fact, studies have demonstrated that the higher the income inequality gets in this country, the harder it is for people to move up and make a better life for themselves and their parents. Let's just look at CEO pay, just to give you an idea how CEO pay has increased. In the last three decades, CEO pay has skyrocketed at a rate of 127 times faster than worker pay. In fact, from 1978 to 2011, CEO compensation increased more than 725 percent--faster than the stock market, and painfully faster than the 5.7 percent growth in worker compensation in the same period. The ratio of CEO-to-worker pay has increased since 1950 by 1,000 percent, according to data from Bloomberg. And the AFL-CIO, the American Federation of Labor, has found that CEO pay has reached a high of 354 times that of the average employee. Just decades ago, that ratio was in the 20 to 30 times average for the lowest paid employee, and now 354 times. CEO pay has absolutely taken off, while everyone else's pay has been stagnant now for decades. I've recently started reading a book, ``Who Stole the American Dream?,'' by Hedrick Smith, a book that our whip, Mr. Hoyer, has often referred to for our caucus to read. It details exactly how the middle class has been under attack for the last 40 years largely due to a corporate takeover of our culture. I highly recommend this book to every American. This is a book that says Americans are willing to accept inequality in our society, to a degree. They understand that if you work harder, you should be able to get ahead. But they want it within a percent that makes sense and that we've had in this country for so long. This massive wealth gap in our country--where the top 1 percent captured 93 percent of the Nation's gains in 2010--undermines our social fabric and our ideal of equal opportunity. This has been caused by the way corporate interests have taken over our lives, our laws and our elections in the last several decades. According to ``Who Stole the American Dream?,'' up until the seventies, the middle class had thrived as increases in productivity were matched by increases in wages. When prosperity was shared, there was a stable relationship between business and government and labor. Everyone pitched in, and everyone benefited and gained. Then, around the time President Nixon was in--when he put in place some very good business regulations--corporate interests decided to fight back. And we've seen over these decades how they fought back. One, they started importing cheap foreign workers for a wide range of occupations. They've moved jobs offshore, so many of our Nation's previously unionized blue collar jobs--even calling centers--have been sent overseas. And they've changed our laws, from bankruptcy laws to Tax Code changes, so that just in Tax Code changes alone workers could supplement existing pension plans with individual retirement accounts. But the result is corporations got rid of the robust pension programs to help people when they retire. Now workers cover 50 percent of their retirement costs, compared to 11 percent in the 1950s. Finally, there has been a race to the bottom. We compete now with Asian sweatshops, we import cheap foreign goods that undermine American small businesses, and there are major U.S. business operations that have moved overseas. So the bottom line is we need to have a thriving middle class, not the inequality of a $59 increase in the last 45 years for the bottom 90 percent of the population, and the top 1 percent have an increase of $628,000. And the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent received an increase that's the equivalent of 5 miles to the 1 inch of increase that the bottom 90 percent have made. So what do we need to do? I think the Center for American Progress has noted a strong middle class can help promote the development of human capital and a well-educated population. It can create a stable source of demands for goods and services. One of the key findings of that book is that people, when they had that income matched by their productivity, it went back into buying more goods and kept the economy stable. When those changes took place, since the Nixon administration, that's what has helped to create the strong inequality. It incubates the next generation of entrepreneurs and supports inclusive political and economic institutions to make sure we have solid economic growth. So what do we need to do differently? One, we need to have tax rules that are fair for everyone. We need to make sure that everyone pays their fair share. We don't incentivize companies to ship jobs overseas. And we promote the creation of jobs here at home. We look at things like capital gains like any other way we would tax, not differently for those with the most money, who make money off of money rather than off of their hard work. But we need to make sure there is equal tax treatment for everyone under the laws. And those companies that want to outsource their headquarters overseas to avoid paying taxes aren't allowed to do that. It's an important part of changing our Tax Code to get the equality back that we need to. Next, we need to invest in American workers. That means investing in education, investing in research and development, and investing in job training. Especially at a time that we have 12 million Americans out of work, we need to get people the skills so they can get back to work and work at jobs back here in America. We need to establish a livable--not a minimum, but a livable--wage so that people who are in that 90 percent, who are making so little gains right now, can put that money back into the economy and stimulate the economy from the bottom up, from the grassroots. That's what we need to do. Bottom line, we need to have trade policies that reward jobs in America and not reward jobs overseas. We've lost way too many jobs through many of our trade agreements overseas. And fundamentally, we need to change the way we finance our elections in Wisconsin and across the country. I can tell you from my practical viewpoint of spending 14 years in the Wisconsin Legislature and my time here, there is no question that we have seen a lurching of corporate influence and big-dollar influence in our elections that have influenced the bottom-line policies that have created this sort of inequality. So to summarize, we need prosperity over austerity in this country. And those are some of the things that we need to move toward. I could talk more about income inequality, but I just want to address for a minute if I can another part of this inequality, which is going specifically to the sequester. The sequester we have talked about now for a number of weeks, the ill effects on the economy of the sequester. We know 700,000 jobs between now and September 30 are at risk, including almost 36,000 jobs in the State of Wisconsin. The verdict on the sequester is clear and predictable, as we said. These mindless, reckless cuts are slowing our economic growth and taking away valuable resources to get the economy up and going. Congress continues to defy logic in this area. We're dealing with the sequester piece by piece. During the continuing resolution, we fixed meat inspectors. A few weeks ago, we fixed people who wait in line at airports. But what we haven't done is addressed those who aren't as well connected in this country and the problems that they're seeing on a daily basis with the sequester. That means for Wisconsin seniors, they're receiving fewer Meals on Wheels that help seniors--for many of which 50 percent of their daily nutrition comes from the Meals on Wheels program, those who receive that program. Close to 1,000 Wisconsin children and families will lose access to Head Start services. Just last week, I was in Beloit, Wisconsin, which is in a county, Rock County, that Representative Paul Ryan and I share. While we were down visiting that Head Start program, they told us that they were going to have to have fewer students in the program next year. And they already have a waiting list for low-income families to participate in these programs to give them a fair start in education. In the Bayview neighborhood of Madison, Wisconsin--one of my very first county board district and local governments--this neighborhood center, one of their very first programs was the Head Start program. That program will be closing because of the sequester and what we've done to that. Cancer patients and HIV patients are being turned away from cancer clinics and other clinics because of cuts to Medicare payments caused by the sequester. And nearly 125,000 low-income Americans will not receive rental assistance. In Dane County, that means people are going to lose that critical assistance right back in my district. Finally, over the Easter break I visited with people at UW-Madison, one of the world's premier research institutions. They're going to see a $35 million cut in funding--$17 million just in research alone--from NIH cuts. So that FAA solution that we did a few weeks ago was anything but a solution--it was barely a bandaid. In fact, that bandaid will only get us through September 30, and we're going to be back to long lines in airports and not having meat inspectors for companies that need to have meat inspectors to have people go to work every day. The bottom line is we need to fix the sequester now holistically, and we need to deal with that in this House. This piecemeal approach is irresponsible, it's inadequate, and it's offensive to the people of Wisconsin and the country who are caught in the political cross-fires of Washington, D.C. And it does nothing to help our economy or create jobs--in fact, just the opposite; it will be shrinking the economy between now and September 30. The people of this country deserve a comprehensive national budget. I don't know why we can't get the Republicans to appoint conferees so we can have that budget. But until they do, we're going to continue to have the squabbles that you find all too often in Congress that don't address the sequester and don't give this country a roadmap for our finance's budget. Once again, we are likely not to have a national budget. I would urge my Republican colleagues to appoint the budget conferees immediately so that we can not only pass a budget, but we can replace the sequester cuts for everyone, not just those who are the most well connected. I would like to talk just briefly in closing about the income gap that we have. There's another way of talking about this chart. When you talked about the bottom 1 percent being an inch to the 5 miles represented by the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent, let me share another statistic that was shared with me. If you talk about that 1 inch being a football field, the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent is equivalent to 86 football fields. So 1 inch of a football field to 86 football fields. That's the gap in wages that we have with this inequality. With that, Mr. Speaker, the Progressive Caucus was glad to be able to talk tonight about income inequality. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. POCAN

Mr. POCAN. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. POCAN

Mr. POCAN. Congress is now more than 1 week past our legal deadline to produce a final budget for the American people, but this is not due to a lack of activity by either Chamber. In fact, the House has passed a budget, and the Senate has passed a budget; yet there is no movement toward creating a final national budget. Why? Because Republicans in both the House and the Senate refuse to appoint budget conferees. Mr. Speaker, the people of Wisconsin and the Nation deserve a Federal budget that reflects our values and that lays out our priorities just like we do in Wisconsin and other States. Without a budget, we cannot respond to emerging needs or cut wasteful programs, and we cannot replace the irresponsible sequester cuts that are hitting our families and communities. This is unacceptable and it is unnecessary. I am a member of the Budget Committee, and I do not agree with most of what was included in the budget that our committee passed, but I do believe we need to sit down with the Senate and, in an open, transparent process, come to a budget solution. There is no excuse for inaction. Republicans should immediately appoint budget conferees so we can produce a budget that promotes economic growth and supports our middle class families.

Mr. POCAN

Mr. POCAN. I join today with my colleagues to observe the National Day of Silence, which began 13 years ago, to raise awareness of the hurtful and often long-term silencing effects that anti-LGBT name- calling, bullying, and harassment has on our young people. It's a tragic fact of our society that almost all LGBT youth know what it's like to be bullied or harassed because of their identified or perceived sexual orientation. Surveys show that nearly 9 out of every 10 LGBT students have experienced harassment in our schools. Mr. Speaker, our schools should be a place of learning and growth, where every student, no matter their background or orientation, should be safe and free to reach their full potential. On the National Day of Silence, we stand with our LGBT students to let them know that we understand, we care, and we are here for you. I stand in silence to observe this day.

Mr. POCAN

Mr. POCAN. Thank you so much, Ms. Lee. We really appreciate it. And again, your history in this House has been recognized by so many of us who are new and proud to be here. We appreciate all that you've done on behalf of the middle class and those who are striving to be in the middle class and those who are just getting by in this country. Ms. Lee is also leading an initiative for the Democrats to address poverty. We are doing everything we can on the Democratic side, but it's under your leadership that's happening, and thank you so much for that. We've been joined by another colleague who is from California who has been another one of our freshman Members of the House, and he is here to talk to us also about the issues before us on chained CPI and perhaps some other issues. I'd like to introduce, from the State of California, Mr. Mark Takano.

Mr. POCAN. Thank you, Mr. Ellison. As a leader of the Progressive Caucus, I have been talking about how 107 Democrats in this House and the leadership of the Congressional Progressive Caucus have signed a letter and asked the President to not cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid. So the majority of the Democrats have already signed a letter saying, Keep the hands off. As we deal with our Nation's budget, the one place we shouldn't go is to those who need it the most--our seniors, our disabled, our veterans, and their children and orphans who receive Social Security benefits. As I talked about the realities of that $1,001 a month, as Mr. Ellison just said, when you receive that additional $100 cut, that additional $100 cut is almost 10 percent of your budget. Think about if you had a 10 percent cut in your budget and you're not able to make any more money. At 84, I'm sorry, my mom is not going back to Taco Bell. She worked there in her seventies to continue to make money because she just didn't have it and to have something to continue to get by on. But at 84 she's already had a couple of falls. There's nothing else she can do to make additional money. So she has to make that tough cut. And I would argue that this bad idea that the Republicans came up with and the President included just to get them to the table to talk about the budget, this bad Republican idea, chained CPI, will have a real effect on tens of millions of people across this country. There are way too many seniors for whom this means just about everything in their lives. She can't really cut her utilities. She can change the thermostat. She can set it to 60 in the winter. She cannot use any kind of air conditioning in summer. In Wisconsin, I won't recommend that in the summer. We have some humid, humid days. So you can't cut this line. Her groceries and other things she has to buy for the home, she can cut back. But she already tells me stories. There's a place in her neighborhood she'll go to that has a $1 burger special. She'll go there. This is going back over the holidays. We had to convince her to tip 35 cents. Because she said, My God, that's 35 percent. I don't tip 35 percent. But we're trying to explain to her in the economics of it, it's 35 cents to give. But she gets a burger for $1. And she says, Sometimes I get two. So she's deciding about a $2 meal. Are we going to take that away from someone, the very groceries they live on? Health care: with rising health care costs, the facts are that 20 to 30 percent--I think specifically 26 percent is the current number--of your annual costs, seniors' health care costs. She can't change that line. Insurance: Does she not insure her vehicle? Does she not insure her home in case of a fire? That's $77 a month. We all know you can't get away and not pay your taxes. That line is off the table. I'm going to jump down a line to her miscellaneous. She has to have people shovel and do other things around the home. That's very hard to change. That's only a $50 item. Finally, gas: she doesn't control the price of gas. So the only line she really has left is her telephone and her cable bill. And with the way we have to deal with the budget, rather than making those who can most afford it in the country and all the tax loopholes and tax breaks for some of the wealthiest in this country, instead we're going to go to this 84-year-old woman and say you can no longer have a telephone to talk to your family and friends on, or lose the little bit of entertainment you have through a television seems wrong. It's not the values of this country. It's certainly not the values of the Democrats in this House. Yet that's what they'll face with a chained CPI cut. That's the bottom line. And when those other expenses come up, how does a senior pay for them? So we really want to express to the President in the strongest possible terms that the Republicans may have had this bad idea of chained CPI to provide a cut to Social Security payments, but you included it in your budget to bring them to the table to make them negotiate, and all you've heard for the last 36 hours is criticism and that they won't sit at the table. You've got dollars in the budget to help grow the economy. The Progressive Caucus had a Back to Work Budget. We worked hard and steadfast in talking about growing the economy as our best way to solve the deficit and our economic problems. But if the Republicans are going to criticize that and refuse to have one more dime in revenue, not one more CEO can't still get his tax break for that corporate jet, not one more company can't get that tax break for sending jobs overseas--those are the types of tax breaks we have in this country. And if we can't get one more dime from programs like that so that a senior doesn't have to make those tough, real-life decisions, then we're failing as a government and we are breaking our promise to the seniors of this country. So I would hope that we can continue to get people who are watching this to realize it may be called chained CPI, it may have an obscure term--we're the body that came up with a sequester, right? It's a term. It's in the dictionary. But I guarantee not one person that I know of has ever used it in real life. No one has said to their child: I'm going to sequester your toys today. It's just not something that real people do. Well, chained CPI is the same thing. It may be an obscure economic term, but the bottom line, the reality of what it means to the average person who's listening, is it means a cut to those who can least afford it, to those third of seniors who live on that check exclusively to get by. And all the other seniors who rely largely on that to get by, should they have the good fortune to grow old, they'll have the bad fortune of seeing that savings go down, as they have these expenditures. In the end, we have made a promise--a sacred promise, as Representative Takano said--to the people of this country that as we take their money, their Social Security, through their earned benefit they have paid into--we have put up a social insurance program to ensure that when they retire or become disabled or, God forbid, lose their parents and become an orphan, they will continue to have an ability to live in this country. It's not those people that created our financial woes that this country has. There are real ways to deal with the deficit. There are real ways to deal with Social Security. But those real ways are not the ways that are proposed through the chained CPI. In fact, another thing that was said, I believe it was by Ms. Lee from California, was she talked about, on this floor, we have other people trying to fix Social Security. We had 104 Members of the other side of the aisle vote for a version of the budget that raised the Social Security retirement age to 70. I'll tell you, I don't know many construction workers or nurses or teachers who could necessarily still be able to do that job as well as they would like to between 67 and 70. The construction field, there is not the ability to do that job. As a nurse, when you have to lift bodies and help move people, you just can't do that job for those additional years. So, to me, to raise the Social Security retirement age is, again, part of breaking that promise. There is a way we can continue the promise, and that is to lift the cap on Social Security. Right now, no matter how much you make, we tax for Social Security up to $113,700; but as soon as you make a dollar more, you don't get taxed for Social Security. Now, we tax in every other way in a progressive way, as you make more, you pay more in taxes, but we don't tax a dime more at $113,700. If we were simply to lift that cap or raise that amount, you would extend Social Security for decades. In fact, if you lift the cap entirely, it is estimated at least 75 years of life would go into the Social Security program. Wouldn't that make a lot more sense than instead nickel-and-diming those who can least afford to, to preserve the program? So that is the hope of this Progressive Caucus that we have. You've heard from a number of leaders, both freshmen and people who have been here for a long time. You've heard from people from different parts of the country. It is an important promise that we have to the public. We are the party that has been there to protect seniors. The fact that the President has it included in his budget, we all know--and the President has been very clear--it is not his idea. This was an idea from the Republican Speaker and other Republicans, and he put it in his budget proposal to try to get them to come and finally have a budget for this country, to make them come to the table. Right now, we have very different documents. We have the Democratic document in the Senate and the President's document that invests in the economy so we can create jobs and grow the economy right now. And we have a Republican version of the budget that focuses almost exclusively on getting rid of the deficit. The holy grail is the deficit; it will cost us millions of jobs. Just in the next year it is estimated 2 million jobs will be lost. But you can't have those diverse documents and still fund Congress. So what does Congress do? We continue to have continuing resolutions that get us by for months at a time. I have heard on this floor so many times where people will talk about a wasteful program--and there are wasteful programs in the Federal Government we should address. There is a GAO report that specifically outlines about 45 areas of duplication, where we are doing the same thing across different agencies. We have a focus on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee to find waste, fraud, and abuse wherever we can. We are working on that. The problem is when you don't have a budget that says we're going to cut these programs so we can fund these programs, we punt. And as a government, we have punted far too many times. We have not had a serious budget in place. So the President's goal is indeed sincere, that he wants people to come to the table. I, perhaps, would have waited to compromise until we got to the table, but the President in this case put their request right in his budget and put it on the table. The problem is, that is a bad compromise. There are so many other things that we can do that will better serve the public than to cut the benefits from our seniors and our veterans and our disabled and the children and orphans who rely on Social Security. So, Mr. Speaker, our Progressive Caucus has been here for close to the last hour to make sure that we are talking about an important program that the public, I'm sure, is concerned about. I know I'm getting the calls in my office. But we really plead with the President to make sure that as we move forward and try to bring the Republicans to the table to try to have a national budget--as we all need to--do not balance that budget on the backs of those who can least afford it. Mr. Speaker, with that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. POCAN. As Representative Takano said, these are sacred promises to people who've paid into the program, and now the expectation is, as with any insurance, you've paid in and now you're able to get the benefit when you need it. That's why you've paid in all your life. And that benefit is for people who retire and for people who become disabled and, God forbid, children who become orphans. It allows them to be able to continue, in our society, to get by. But as I've shown, an 84-year old woman like my mother--this is my mother's actual story--gets $1,101 a month. That's $13,212 a year. We went through her expenses, from utilities, $130 a month, food and other miscellaneous items she has to buy, $180 a month. Health care, as Representative Takano said, it's about 20 to 30 percent of the average senior's monthly expense or their income. I'll take it right in the middle, 25 percent; that's $275 a month. Her car and house insurance, $77 a month, her taxes, $273 a month, her phone and cable, $140 a month, miscellaneous, having people mow her grass and shovel, et cetera, $50 a month, and her gas about $40 a month. That's $64 a month more than she makes. And unfortunately, she has, at the age of 84, having been widowed since 1991, expended through almost all of her savings and, like a third of seniors, is living on that Social Security paycheck. But what about the senior who's in the exact same situation, receiving and living off that check, but they still pay rent or have a mortgage? Six hundred to $1,200 more dollars you're going to have to add on to that. And what if they have a car or they have a bus pass? Two to $300 a month you're going to add on to that. Miscellaneous repairs. My mother, this year, had to replace her heater, at $1,700. How do you do that with a cut in Social Security? So additional expenses, still, on the low end, add that up, you're almost at $2,000 a month. There's no way that $100 hit that'll happen is something that the average senior or person with disabilities, veteran, or child can be able to get by. That is a real life cut, and where they have to cut and make tough decisions is on their groceries, on their medicine, on whether or not they're going to be able to drive the car that they have. It's serious consequences. And I know that the Democrats have been especially strong in the Progressive Caucus. The Progressive Caucus penned a letter that 107 Democrats in this House have signed on to that said, do not do any cuts to Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid. Now, there are some who say that you can't ignore it, that in the future, far down the road, decades in the future, we have to make sure that these programs, these earned benefits are still alive. But we have argued there are ways to do that. If you lift the cap at which you pay into Social Security, you could extend it, the program, Social Security for 75 years into the future. And remember, Social Security has not added one dime to the deficit. By law, it can't add one dime to the deficit. But, instead, we are balancing the budget, with this provision, on the backs of the very people who can least afford it. So the senior who makes $1,101 is going to see a cut, but the company that sends jobs overseas under the Republican budget still gets a tax break for sending jobs overseas. And that CEO with the corporate jet still gets a tax break under the Republican budget. And when you go down the list of breaks that are out there for the most wealthy, we need to find a different way to do this than balancing the budget on the backs of those who can least afford it, those who've paid in their entire lives, those who didn't create the financial situation we're in. Our Progressive Caucus has been strong in talking about this. We have tried to take quite a bit of time today to really explain this as plainly as we can and as absolute simply as we can a person's monthly budget. We all know you have other surprise expenses like your heater goes out at your home or your car needs repair. We don't even factor that in. Most people will probably still have some rent or perhaps a house payment to make. When you add all this in and if you have expended your savings like one-third of our seniors who live on that Social Security check, it is impossible to continue to get by. And to take a cut to the very people who can least afford it seems wrong. We are honored in our Progressive Caucus to have two people that lead us, Representative Raul Grijalva and Representative Keith Ellison. Representative Keith Ellison is a fellow Midwesterner and I think a man of incredible common sense, coming from the Midwest, like we like to at least think we do back in the Midwest, coming here. And he has done an extraordinary job of leading the progressives and the Democrats in this House to make sure that we stand up for our seniors and our disabled and our veterans and the children who receive Social Security. I would like to yield to the chairman of the Progressive Caucus, the gentleman from Minnesota, Mr. Keith Ellison.

Mr. POCAN. Thank you, Representative Takano, again, for you leadership on this issue. As I said, you've authored one of the major letters that's out there talking about chained CPI and cuts to Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare. And also, as a member of the Veterans Committee, I know you've been especially articulate on the effects on veterans. I thank you for your time.

Mr. POCAN. Mark, I just want to ask you, you've been a leader in this body on chained CPI.

Mr. POCAN. Mr. Takano, would you yield to a question?

Mr. POCAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today on behalf of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. We are here today to talk about a specific item in the President's budget, and that item is the chained CPI in Social Security. The chained CPI is an idea that originated with the Republicans and was included in the President's budget as a way to try to convince them to come to the table and have a budget for the Nation. But the chained CPI is more than that. We have a problem with the way the chained CPI works. Chained CPI. No one in the real world talks about chained CPI. It's like sequester. I don't know a single person who tells their child, I'm going to sequester your toys. Chained CPI is another Washington idea. What that idea is, in layman's terms, is essentially a cut in how people will receive the cost of living increase for Social Security. A real important way to talk about this is currently the consumer price index is how we determine any increases to people who receive Social Security. When you do the chained CPI, it takes the rate that we provide for that cost of living increase and changes the cost of living increase in a different way that makes it a smaller increase for people who receive that. The problem is specifically for seniors and disabled and children who are receiving Social Security. Seniors, especially, pay about 20 percent to 30 percent of their incomes on health care, and health care costs have risen more than the consumer price index or the cost of living increases that people have had. So by doing the chained CPI, essentially it is a cut in Social Security to people who need it the most. There is a famous Midwesterner, a former Senator from the State of Minnesota, Hubert Humphrey who once said: The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped. Our moral test today is Social Security. It's our moral promise to seniors for their economic security. That promise comes in the form of Social Security. It's also our promise to veterans, to people with disabilities and to our children and orphans in this country. If we break that American promise by moving to a chained CPI, it'll have real consequences to real people. Granted, this was a Republican proposal that the President included. This is a Republican idea that the President included in his budget in order to try to get them to the table. Nonetheless, it is a bad idea no matter where it comes from. Let me give you a little example about the amount of cuts that would be provided on average to some seniors through this. Benefits for someone who's 75 years old would see $658 less a year. If you're 85 years old, you would see $1,147 less a year. If you're a 95-year-old, you would see $1,622 less a year. And for our 3.2 million disabled veterans in this country who sacrificed for our country, it means they would see reduced disability in Social Security benefits as well. These cuts grow deeper and deeper, as I explained, the older you get, but they also are especially hard on women in this country. Women have longer life expectancies. They rely more on their income from Social Security, and they already are more economically vulnerable than men. Let me give you an example of what this means in real terms. My mother is 84 years old. My father died in 1991, and she has been alone all those years living on Social Security. I called her and I asked her specifically what she gets from Social Security every month. She gets $1,101 a month. That comes out to $13,212 annually. I asked her to break out her expenses for me. I went through every possible expense that we could, just to get an idea of what it's like to be 84 and to be on a modest income. I grew up in a lower middle class family. She's already gone through most of her savings, living to 84. Her mother lived to 101. Should her genes hold out, her savings will definitely not hold out that amount of time. First of all, her utilities, her gas, electric and her water bill come to $130 a month. She said she spends $40 to $50 for groceries and other essentials a week. That comes to an average of $180 a month. The average senior's health care is 20 percent to 30 percent of their income. That's why the chained CPI is especially hard on seniors, because it's such a large percent of their income, because so much of their income goes to health care, whether it's copayments, prescription drugs, or other needs. So with that income of $13,212, let's just go right down the middle and take 25 percent. That's $275 on average a month. Her car insurance and home insurance averages out to $77 a month. Her property taxes are $3,285. She's fortunate she owns her home, but she has property taxes that come to about $273 a month on average. Her phone and cable bill, combined, comes to $140 a month. She has to have help doing her snow shoveling, mowing her grass, and other errands around the house. That comes to about $50 a month. Finally, her gas she has estimated--she doesn't do as much traveling as she used to--is about $40 a month. That grand total is $1,165. That means she is underwater. She is in the red by $64 a month. That is before other expenses. Now, she is fortunate that she doesn't have a mortgage anymore. But could you imagine if you had a mortgage and on top of that $1,165 you added another $600, $800, $1,000, $1,200 a month. She has her car paid for, but it's from the nineties. That car, if it was a payment, would be $200 or $300 a month. Add that on top. She was just telling me about repairs. She spent $1,700 fixing her furnace at her home. That's not calculated in all of her other monthly expenses, car repairs, et cetera. The bottom line is that that $1,101 a month, which is essentially what she lives on--and one in three seniors live on that Social Security payment a month. You cannot afford to lose, at her age range, over $100 a month. At $100 a month, that means she's either cutting back on her food, cutting back on her medicine, turning the thermostat down in winter or up in the summer. But it has real-life implications on people who can afford it the least, people like my 84-year-old mother and millions of seniors across this country. There are some in this body who try to rewrite history. They are trying to say that our economic woes, our deficit, is somehow caused by Social Security. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Social Security, by law, cannot contribute one dime to our deficit. Are there long-term issues with Social Security? Well, long-term we do have to make sure that we're making sure that those funds are available in the future, but there are other ways we can do that. But the chained CPI merely extends the Social Security program for 2 years. Those real cuts to every single senior that receives those payments are real dollars that people will lose. I respect the President's desire to achieve a comprehensive and bipartisan budget proposal. I'm one of the freshmen in this building. I came from a State legislature. When we did a State budget--and I used to be the cochair of that committee--we spent 8 hours a day, 3 days a week for 3 or 4 months crafting a budget. And every single line of that budget meant something. It was a statement of your values. It's a moral statement of your values as a government. This government hasn't had a budget to work off of for a number of years. We just can't seem to get people on both sides of the aisle in both houses to be able to sit down and have a document that guides the country. So the President, in an effort to do that, said, I heard the discussions we've had on the fiscal cliff, on the debt ceiling, on the sequester. He's listened to the people on the other side of the aisle. And one of the things that's been asked for by the Speaker of this Chamber and the others is the chained CPI, a cut in Social Security benefits. So the President included it in his budget in order to try to bring them to the table. Now, I sat through the Budget Committee today, which I serve on here in the House. I can tell you, it was not bringing people to the table. With no surprise, it just brought criticism from the Republicans on the President's budget in general. So I think the President does not need to keep the chained CPI in his budget proposal. It is a break, I believe, to the promise we've made to seniors about what they will see from us. In fact, 107 people in this House, Democrats in this House, including myself, have signed a letter to the President explicitly stating that we don't want to see any cuts to Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid. If I can, let me just read a little bit of this letter to you that was signed by a majority of the House Democrats back in February. We thank the President for standing strong and the American Taxpayer Relief Act to protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid from benefit cuts that would jeopardize the well- being of millions of Americans. We write to affirm our vigorous opposition to cutting Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid benefits in any final bill to replace sequester. Earned Social Security and Medicare benefits provide the financial and health protections necessary to keep individuals and families out of poverty. Medicaid is not only a lifeline for low-income children, pregnant women, people with disabilities, and families, it is the primary source of income of long-term care services and supports for 3.6 million individuals. We cannot overstate their importance for our constituents and our country. That is why we remain deeply opposed to proposals to reduce Social Security benefits through use of the Chained CPI to calculate cost-of-living adjustments. We remain committed to making the changes that will extend solvency for 75 years, but Social Security has not contributed to our current fiscal problems, and it should not be on the bargaining table. Then it goes on to discuss Medicare and Medicaid. We have been very explicit that there are other ways that we can extend the solvency of Social Security. Remember, it did not cause the financial situation this country is in right now. That was an economic uncertainty caused by the financial institutions and the housing crisis that put every State in this country into fiscal chaos, but that was not caused one dime by Social Security. So for us to balance the budget on the backs of seniors and the disabled, of veterans and the children who receive Social Security doesn't make sense. Now, there is something that does make sense. Currently, we take a portion out of every person's check to pay for Social Security. It is your earned benefit. You pay in in every paycheck to Social Security so that, when you need it, it is available for you whether it be at retirement or through disability. At $113,700, you are capped when you make that much income. Not $1 more in income do you pay additional dollars into Social Security. If we lift that cap and, like so many other provisions, you continue to pay taxes on your salary--so, if you make $500,000, you don't just stop at $113,700 and paying into Social Security, but you would continue to pay into Social Security like you do on all your other taxes--that would extend the solvency of Social Security for at least 75 years. Now, that is a commonsense way for us to make sure a program that is probably one of the most popular and crucial programs the Federal Government offers to its citizens that we've all paid into--our money, our social contract, our insurance so when we need it we have it--can be extended simply by lifting that cap, and that would go a long way to providing the economic certainty that we need. So while we are supportive of so many of the measures that the President has in his budget, the President's budget focuses on what we need to, which is the immediate need to make sure that we are improving the economy and that we are creating jobs. That is our focus that we need to do in this country. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office, which is our nonpartisan agency that we work with--that both Republicans and Democrats work with to get the financial numbers that we work with in our bills and to make all the decisions we make--has said that three-quarters of this Nation's deficit in the next year that we're all talking about a budget for, 2014, is caused by economic weakness--in other words, unemployment and underemployment. If we address those two issues, that is the best way to stop the trajectory with the deficit and the debt. By getting people back to work, you can do that. I'll tell you, in this budget, the President does much of that. The President includes extra funding for research and development. It's what we have been told by businesses is the best thing we can do to be competitive in a global market. It includes $50 billion for infrastructure investment--to get people working now, to have us help stimulate the economy. I can tell you, when we had the last recovery dollars that happened at the very start of the recovery that we had with this bad economy-- when we were at our worst and our lowest point--we were bleeding hundreds of thousands of jobs a month. When those recovery dollars came to the States and my committee, the Joint Committee on Finance, we had to approve every single dollar that went to roads and schools and other programs. We had our road-building industry and our vertical construction industry in our State tell us that 54,000 jobs were saved or created because of those dollars. In the Budget Committee, I asked the question of Dr. Elmendorf from the Congressional Budget Office nationally, what did that do for us, those recovery dollars. They estimated--not the Democrats, not the Republicans, not anyone else but our official agency--up to 3.3 million jobs were saved or created because of those recovery dollars. The President has $50 billion in infrastructure to make sure that people are working again, and he's getting them back out, while we need to, to keep the economy moving. He has focused on advanced manufacturing: some innovative ideas that we could create these hubs where people can create new jobs and have jobs come back to America from overseas. He also provides tax credits for small business owners who will hire new workers so that we can, again, continue to have the private sector, as well as what we can provide through infrastructure, to help get the economy to grow and to create the jobs we need to. Those are all good provisions the President has. At the same time, he is working at $1.8 trillion in deficit reduction, which, on top of the previous $2.5 trillion, takes us exactly to the target people have been talking about of the $4 trillion deficit we need to address in the immediate amount of time. It has the long-term picture in mind as well. It's not saying the Holy Grail is the deficit reduction, but the Holy Grail is the economy and job creation to solve our deficit problems, and the budget does that. There are many strong provisions in the President's budget, but many in this House--107 people who signed a letter in this House on the Democratic side and many of us in the Progressive Caucus--have been especially outspoken about the one provision that we think takes a completely wrong turn. That completely wrong turn is the Chained CPI-- to change how we deal with increases for Social Security, how we estimate the payments for Social Security--which essentially turns out to be a cut, a real dollar cut, to people on Social Security. I can tell you they have given us some really better ways to illustratively explain what those cuts mean. If you take the cuts under Chained CPI and if you are 65 years old, that cut will be about 2 weeks' worth of groceries. When you're at 70, it's about 6 weeks' worth of groceries, and it continues to grow. At 75, 9 weeks of groceries; at 80, 13 weeks of groceries. That's a quarter of the year that you have less for groceries that you need to get by. At 85, people like my mother, 16 weeks of groceries, and if you make it to 90 and 95, 20 and 23 weeks of groceries. That's the cut in real terms that comes from Chained CPI. We stand to make sure that we are raising the issue that as we continue to talk about the budget--and we need to go to conference committee. We have a House budget; we have a Senate budget; and we have the President's budget. But do you know what that means? We have no budget. That means we will continue to have continuing resolutions, that we will continue to fight every 2 or 3 months and do stopgap measures with chewing gum and Band-Aids unless we have a budget. So I appreciate what the President did. He's giving us a measure specifically to make us all come to the table to try to do this. His intention was to take a Republican idea, Chained CPI, and put it in his proposal to show he's willing to compromise. Unfortunately, all we've heard from the Republicans has been criticism of the budget. In the House, their budget is a fantasy as far as balancing the budget in 10 years as they claim. It is a fantasy because it repeals the Affordable Care Act, benefits of which include making sure that people with preexisting conditions have health care, making sure that children up to 26 have health care, making sure that we have dollars for preventative care. It repeals the benefits, but it keeps the savings and the revenue. Well, you can't do that. We can't tax the people in the Affordable Care Act so that we can pay for the benefits but not give them and keep that money and try to balance the budget. So it's not a real budget. What we need to do is have a real budget, and we need to get people to the table. I urge this House to announce conferees so we can start the hard work of doing that. The three positions are on the table. We need to do that. We want to say strongly--the Progressive Caucus and 107 Democrats in this body--that the one thing that is unacceptable is to balance that budget on the backs of people who didn't create the crisis, and they are our seniors, the disabled, our veterans, and our children and orphans who rely on Social Security; and the Chained CPI would provide just that sort of a cut to those people. So, Mr. Speaker, those are some of the strongest problems that we have with the change in the Consumer Price Index. That is called chained CPI. There are a number of organizations, Mr. Speaker, that have joined us in this. They range from the AFL-CIO, on behalf of the working people of this country, to PCCC, to MoveOn, and a number of other national organizations that have stood with us at multiple press conferences this week to try to raise awareness that this is a bad idea. This is taking the budget situation we have in the future and balancing it today on those who can least afford it. We need to have the backs of our seniors and our disabled, not put the budget on their backs. And the chained CPI is a provision that, unfortunately, does just that. So while it is not the President's idea, it is absolutely not the Democrats' idea. It was an idea proposed by the Republican Speaker and other Republicans just in the last couple of years. It was put forward in the President's budget to try to bring people to the table. We want to make sure that it is heard loud and clear that many of us will not support a bill that includes a chained CPI. It will not get the support of many people in this room if it includes those cuts to our country's promise, which is to our seniors. Mr. Speaker, it is a huge concern to those of us in the Progressive Caucus. There are a number of groups, including Strength in Social Security, who join us in our efforts against this, who've put out some various estimations of what this means. They have said that for someone who is 75 years old, the cut they would see would be about $658, which is 3.7 percent of what they are currently receiving in Social Security. If you're 85, they estimate that to be $1,147 a year, 6.5 percent. Again, to my mother, who's getting that $1,101, that is almost a $100 a month cut. As I estimated from her utilities to her groceries to her other payments that she has, none of those are necessarily luxuries at 85. None of those are excessive payments. They are the basic payments just to get by that she comes up with, for about $1,165 a month. After burning through savings for 20 years, she just doesn't have it left. So like a third of Americans who live on that Social Security check, they live on $1,101. They live on that $13,212 a year. And I don't think there is anyone who could honestly say that that's too much. After you've paid in your entire life, it's your earned benefit that you paid into, that insurance for when you need it, for when you are a senior and you retire, or when you become disabled, or God forbid your parents die and now you're an orphan, that payment is this country's promise to each and every one of those people. So to go after that $13,000 payment to this 84-year-old person and get that 6.5 percent cut, that means real things. I remember a few years back, before, in Wisconsin, we created about a decade ago a program called SeniorCare to help seniors afford prescription drugs. It has been a great success with bipartisan support. But prior to that, my mother was one of those people who cut pills in half because she couldn't afford her medications. She doesn't have to do that anymore because of SeniorCare, but we're the only State, Wisconsin, which has SeniorCare in the entire country. There are seniors in the other 49 States who, if they get that cut, that means cutting pills in half, that means deciding which pills you're taking, and it means deciding which meal you're not eating. It means those sort of basic, basic cuts. It is estimated that at 95 years old, according to Strength in Social Security, it's a $1,622 cut. That is a 9.2 percent cut. We're balancing the budget on the backs of those who can least afford it who didn't create the financial times we're in, and that seems entirely wrong. What that means in a lifetime, what your cumulative benefit loss is, and that is where it really starts to add up, and maybe this will be more illustrative: At 75, at that point on Social Security, you've lost $4,631. At 80, you've lost $8,660. At 85, people like my mother, she has lost $13,910 of what she has paid into and expected to get during her twilight years. That's the enormity of these cuts. I have been joined by an extremely articulate and solid progressive colleague of mine, a mentor of mine, someone who is not only a strong leader, not only in this entire House, but especially during this hour with the Progressive Caucus, and I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee).

Mr. POCAN. We did several press conferences this week. You're the author of a major letter from many people in this House about it. Could you just address a little bit about why you're so passionate about the need to make sure we have Social Security for generations in the future and why you oppose the chained CPI.

Mr. POCAN

Mr. POCAN. Mr. Speaker, I stand with my colleagues to highlight Equal Pay Day and call on this body to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act. Equal pay for equal work not only adheres to our country's founding principles of justice and equality, but it makes a huge difference to the families in Wisconsin. In my district, women are paid 81 cents to the dollar that men earn, and across the State of Wisconsin, the number is even lower, 78 cents. That equals $10,324 less in wages a year between a man and a woman. What does $10,324 mean? Well, it means almost 2,800 gallons of gas. It means more than a year's worth of groceries and almost a year's worth of rent. The pay gap has a real effect on the families of Wisconsin. Almost 230,000 households in Wisconsin are headed by women, and almost a third of those fall below the poverty line. Eliminating the wage gap would provide much-needed assistance to women whose families depend on those salaries. I am proud to cosponsor the Paycheck Fairness Act, which makes important strides towards ensuring that women finally receive equal pay for equal work. This bill improves the lives of Wisconsin women, Wisconsin families, and Wisconsin communities. We have an urgent moral need to pass it.

Mr. POCAN

Mr. POCAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise on behalf of the Congressional Progressive Caucus to recognize our Special Order hour not only to talk a drop about the budget plans we had this week, but more importantly, this is an hour to honor organized labor in this country and what organized labor has done for the middle class and for so many millions and millions of people across this country. This week, the Congressional Progressive Caucus put the Back to Work budget before this body. The Back to Work budget is based on a simple concept: the number one problem facing this country is not the deficit, it's the need to improve the economy and create jobs, and the single best way you can address the deficit is to get people back to work. The Back to Work budget did just that. It would have created 7 million jobs, it would have brought unemployment down to 5 percent within 3 years, and it still would have trimmed $4.4 trillion from the deficit. What it did is it invested directly in the very things that create jobs--in infrastructure, in police and fire, and in teachers and in other services that are vital to this country--because we've been told by the Congressional Budget Office, the single entity that is a nonpartisan agency that both parties rely heavily on, that this year one-half of our deficit is caused by economic weakness, and three- quarters of the deficit in 2014 is caused by economic weakness. Now, what is economic weakness? That means unemployment and underemployment. If you get the people of this country back to work, you will solve most of our problems in trying to deal with the deficit. So rather than make the end-all goal solving the deficit but completely ignoring the economy--and as the Republican budget, we saw that, on the floor today, actually could cost 2 million jobs in this country in the next year--we need right now to be investing in those jobs so that people are getting back to work and supporting their families and becoming taxpayers. When they pay, we'll stop that trajectory and the deficit that we have caused by this weakened economy. So that's the answer. That's what we need to focus on, and that's why the Congressional Progressive Caucus put the Back to Work budget out this week. It really is the premise of what we really want to talk about, which is our support for the working men and women of this country and the support for organized labor. Because when we put our emphasis on jobs, we're recognizing the very hard work that labor has done in this country. I just want to share a few historical parts that labor has done which are so important in this Nation. First of all, we have the weekend because of organized labor. In 1870, the average workweek for most Americans was 61 hours. But many workers, including children, put in 10- to 16-hour workdays 7 days a week. Many workers didn't have a single day off for a week or two in a row. In response, labor unions in the late 19th century and the early 20th century organized massive strikes demanding shorter workweeks. They fought so that Americans could be home with their loved ones instead of constantly toiling for their employers with no leisure time. By 1937, these labor actions created enough political momentum to pass the Fair Labor Standards Act. The FLSA created a Federal framework for a shorter workweek that included room for leisure time. So the reason we have our weekends, our days off during the week, is because of the effort a century ago by people in organized labor. Also, unions helped to end the lack of child labor laws that we had in this country. Child labor was prevalent before the growth of the labor movement. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, child laborers were commonplace in factories, shops, and other workplaces across this country. American children as young as 5 years old worked in large numbers in mines, glass factories, textiles, agriculture, canneries, home industries, and as newsboys, messengers, bootblacks, and peddlers. In fact, children were often preferred because factory owners viewed them as more manageable, cheaper, and less likely to strike. In many factories, children were forced to climb on and crawl into large, dangerous machines because they were the only workers small enough to do so. These dangerous child labor conditions often caused the problem with people losing fingers, arms and legs of children that could easily get caught and mangled in devices. Beyond the equipment, the environment was a threat to children as well as the factories that put out the fumes and toxins. When children inhaled toxins, they would often suffer from illness, chronic conditions or disease. And harvesting crops in extreme temperatures for long hours was considered normal for children. The labor movement spearheaded the fight against the child labor practices that were going on. As early as 1836, union members at the National Trades' Union convention made the first formal public proposal recommending that States establish a minimum age for factory work. That year, Massachusetts enacted the first State law restricting child labor for workers under 15. Over the next several decades, the efforts of labor movements successfully achieved minimum age laws in other States. In 1881, the AFL proposed a national law banning all children under 14 from employment. In 1892, the Democratic Party adopted the AFL's child labor platform and began to push for national child labor laws. Finally, in 1938, Congress included minimum ages of employment and hours of work for children in the Fair Labor Standards Act. Unions have spearheaded the fight for the Family and Medical Leave Act. Labor unions like the AFL-CIO federation led the fight for the 1993 law which requires State agencies and private employers with more than 50 employees to provide up to 12 weeks per year of protected leave for workers to leave for a newborn, a newly adopted child, a seriously ill family member, or the worker's own illness. Thanks to the labor movement, employers are required by the FMLA to continue group benefits, including dental and optical benefits, during family or medical leave. The law also requires that employees can't be retaliated against for merely taking their federally protected leave; and under the law, when they have completed their family or medical leave, they must be allowed to return to the same or an equivalent position with equivalent pay, benefits, and working conditions. Here's another thing that organized labor has done for the American people: they've pushed throughout their career for workplace safety. It's not just for children, but for adult workers. Efforts by the Federal Government to ensure workplace health and safety were minimal until the passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, better known as OSHA. The laws were so lax that in places for some employers, it was cheaper for the employer to replace a worker injured in the workplace than it was to introduce safety measures. There was little recourse or relief for the survivors of dead workers or injured employees. In the early 1900s, labor unions had pressured many States to enact workers compensation laws that discouraged employers from permitting unsafe workplaces. Prior to OSHA's enforcement, 14,000 workers died each year from workplace hazards and 2 million more were disabled or harmed during those years in these unsafe workplaces. It wasn't until the 1960s that the movement began for a comprehensive workplace safety law once again backed by the labor movement. That law went into effect on April 28, 1971, declaring Congress' intent ``to ensure so far as possible every working man and woman in the Nation safe and healthful working conditions and to preserve our human resources.'' Those are just some of the benefits that we have seen because of organized labor's efforts over the last century and a half. They also were instrumental in passing the Social Security Act of 1935. They were instrumental in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And their support for World War II was unmatched in making sure that we had workers to deal with what we needed to back home while we had so many people fighting for our country overseas. Those are just some of the efforts, but there's more. Part of being a part of organized labor has meant so much for this country. If you are a union member, let me just offer a few of the things that you're more likely to have because you're part of a union. One, you will earn higher wages. Union Members earn 30 percent more than their nonunion counterparts. So you'll have a better chance at a living wage, the ability to support your family because you are a part of a union. You'll have more on-the-job training. Union workers are more likely to have access to formal on-the-job training, making employees more skilled and adding to productivity. And something I should have mentioned from the beginning is I have been a small business owner for 25 years, over half of my lifetime. I opened a small business when I had hair and it was dark. It was a long time ago. But my business has also been a union business. I have a union specialty printing business. I can tell you one of the very important reasons why many of us who choose to have unions in our businesses is because we know the value of what I just talked about, that training. Many unions have an apprenticeship program where you can get the very best, most qualified and skilled employees to be able to come to your place from day one. One of those other benefits for me as a small business owner is they're more likely to stay in my business so that I don't have the turnover of constantly training new employees. I have the benefit of someone who is going to stay with me for a long time. Another thing, if you're a member of a union, you have safer working places. Union workers are more likely to be trained on health and safety rules, and union workplaces are more likely to enforce OSHA standards. You're also more likely to receive workers' compensation. Union members get their benefits faster and return to work more quickly. When workers are injured, the union helps workers through the often complicated process of filing for workers' compensation, and they protect the workers from employer retaliation. Finally, you have a better chance as a union member to have health insurance. Nearly 80 percent of the unionized workers receive employer provided health insurance compared with 49 percent of nonunion workers. Union members are more likely to have short-term disability and life insurance coverage. Those are just some of the benefits that you'll see for union workers. Now, specifically, I would like to talk about some of the problems that unions are facing today because there are several very significant issues. Not only is it in the States and in the Halls of Congress that they're having a hard time making sure that we continue to protect workers and the unions that are working to protect those workers, but very specifically within agencies. I would like to read a story--I believe it's The New York Times-- about a situation that just happened this year in the State of New York. I'm just going to read parts of this article, but I think it will be especially significant. This was written in mid-February. So this happened at the end of January of this year. I'll read it from the beginning, and I'll take a few breaks in here. The article is: ``At Cablevision, Norma Rae Has Been Escorted Outside.'' Cablevision claims to take pride in its open-door policy for employees. So two weeks ago, a tight-knit band of cable television installers gathered at a company depot in Brooklyn to pick up route shoots and put ladders and tools in their vans when they trooped inside to ask a vice president for a couple of minutes of his time. Last winter, these workers overcame fierce management opposition and voted to join the Communication Workers of America only to spend 9 months in rancorous contract talks. They wanted to ask the vice president if Cablevision was serious about a contract agreement or if they only wanted to break their union. They waited for 20 minutes to talk and then 20 more. La'kesia Johnson, 44, grew restless and walked to the front office. The manager told her to go back inside. Then the vice president walked in and asked essentially, ``Who is supposed to be working now?'' Every worker, 22 in all, raised a hand. ``Ladies and gentlemen,'' the vice president said, according to multiple accounts, ``I am sorry to tell you that you've all been permanently replaced.'' ``What?'' Ms. Johnson said, ``Replaced? You just fired us? You don't even know what we want.'' Ms. Johnson said the vice president looked at her and stated, ``I don't care what you want.'' The article goes on to talk about unions: Unions win just 50 percent of elections when they successfully negotiate an initial contract just half of the time. The National Labor Relations Board is a dog missing teeth. If workers engage in an illegal strike, the board legally must seek a court injunction. If a company illegally fires workers, the board takes months to investigate and cannot levy any fines. It goes on further: I asked Charles R. Schueler, a company spokesperson, about the firings. He said that ``22 employees refused to go to work after multiple requests to do so.'' The workers, I noted, all said they intended to work that day. He repeated his original statement. He also said that Cablevision negotiated in good faith. He then said, ``That leaves us with the issue of your conflict. Are you ready?'' The reporter said. Sure. You, he said, are a vice chairman of the Communication Workers of America union. He's got me, sort of. Like most reporters of The New York Times, I'm a member of the Newspaper Guild, which is a part of the Communication Workers of America, which has about 140,000 members in the Northeast. I receive no union pay, and I have no duties. I'm also a Knicks season ticket holder and a Cablevision cable customer. I pay far more to Mr. Dolan's companies than I pay to my union in dues. Ms. Johnson feels guilty. She's persuaded her colleagues to risk being fired. She speaks of waking in the middle of the night and of bills piling up. Her husband is a freelancer. They depend on her health benefits. ``It's stressful. The air in our house is very thick,'' she says. ``Sometimes I break down,'' Ms. Johnson said, and asks herself if she's been selfish. ``But my husband reminds me: 'You have a home family and a work family. You must be loyal to both.''' What's so significant about this case is the anti-worker attitude that Cablevision brought forth to its workers who voted by law to form a union. It was on January 30, over a year after 282 cable television technicians voted overwhelmingly to be represented by the CWA, that they illegally locked out and fired 22 technicians who were engaged in legally protected legal union activity. After waiting more than 40 minutes, as the article explained, they were told that they were permanently replaced. Since then, five have been called back to work. ``Permanently replaced'' usually refers to workers who are on strike, but none of these workers were on strike. In fact, some of the workers that were fired were already in the field on their jobs. This is a violation of Federal labor law which follows a year of management's delays and refusal to bargain in good faith with the elected union. They illegally gave raises to every Cablevision technician except those in Brooklyn who voted to form a union in an attempt to blunt the Communications Workers of America's union-organizing drive that they were having in the Bronx. They left Brooklyn consumers behind with slower Internet speeds, and they publicly stated that they would disinvest in Brooklyn because of the unionization vote. They refused in negotiations to agree to even the most basic union contract demands, such as the union security clause and just cause for discharge and discipline. Rather than negotiate a fair contract, Cablevision spent millions on anti-union lawyers to fight the union, and that's more than it would have cost to settle the contract. All Cablevision employees want is to be able to organize and be treated with respect and fairness, and all Cablevision seems to want to do is spend millions of dollars to take away those very rights. That's just one problem that we've seen with attempts to bust unions. The reason we've seen that is due to a provision that has also happened just recently with this Senate in its blocking appointments to the National Labor Relations Board, which is the board that oversees what's going on. We've heard the case of the Brooklyn Cablevision story, but here is why it is especially significant. The reason Cablevision had that confidence in treating its workers so poorly is that it was part of a strategy of illegal firings and a lockout of the workers that stems from larger, recent judicial rulings in Washington, D.C., as part of a larger anti-worker strategy. On January 25 of this year, in the Noel Canning ruling, a three-judge panel of Republican appointees to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit overturned a National Labor Relations Board unfair labor practice decision because the court deemed that three NLRB members who helped to decide the matter ascended to their positions due to unlawful recess appointments by President Obama in January of 2012. The ruling went on and destroyed the NLRB's ability to enforce U.S. labor law. As a result, Cablevision's firings were executed without fear of reprisal. Cablevision is merely the first company to recognize and to act on the fact that that ruling can be exploited by anti-worker corporations. The real problem we have is that we can't get the appointments to the NLRB that the President has tried to make because the Senate has refused to place the people. They have taken advantage of the quorum of Senate-confirmed members, and they've made it exceedingly difficult to appoint these because of the 60-vote rule that they have in the Senate. Due to the GOP's unprecedented obstruction and use of the filibuster and secret hold, they essentially have made it impossible for people to be appointed to the NLRB so as to actually enforce the labor laws that are the law of the land in this country. Now, it's not just the communication workers who have this story. I have a union in my State of Wisconsin, the Operating Engineers, who had a very similar story; and this is repeated across the country. These are workers with Local 139, with Proppant Specialists, which is a company in Wisconsin that has had a 3-year fight of trying to form a union in violation of U.S. law. The company has stopped them from being able to proceed. They started back in October of 2010. They filed for a petition for election in April of 2011. They had an election in June of 2011 and voted to form the union, at which time people filed objections to some of the votes. That went on for a period of time until the board decision on April 3, 2012. They certified the election on the 9th of April of last year and said that, indeed, the election after a year was a fair election. There are supposed to have been immediate timelines to have started negotiations for a contract with the union. It's the law of the land. Instead, the company refused to. They sent a letter to the union, declining the union's request for bargaining late in that month of April. The union then filed a complaint against the employer in May, and the investigation by the labor board had started at that point. The problem is without the teeth of the NLRB, to this day, 3 years after starting this process, the workers who voted to form a union still don't have that right to the union that they have by the law of the land in this country because of what has happened with the NLRB. Simply, we have to do something to fix this. We have to make sure that the President can appoint the people he has to appoint to the NLRB and make sure that those appointments are confirmed so that they can do their valid, prescribed-by-law jobs to ensure that workers have that right to unions when they vote on that. Now, we know, if you had the Employee Free Choice Act in place in this country, you wouldn't have to worry about this because it would be very clear that they would be able to negotiate that contract and get that done. The problem is if that were the law of the land, despite support from a bipartisan majority of the House and a strong majority in the Senate, those same 60-vote filibuster rules would hold up the ability for us to pass an Employee Free Choice Act in this country. So what has happened? We have this toothless law which now is going to allow for more and more abuse that we're going to see. This isn't the only law that we've seen like this that has been abused. We've also seen an abuse in the State of Wisconsin, my State. I was in the State legislature for 14 years before coming this year to be a Member of Congress. Two years ago, we had what we refer to in Wisconsin as the ``uprising.'' Newly elected Governor Scott Walker at the time had a provision to fix the budget. We were slightly in deficit. We were not prescribed by law to fix it, but were close to that point. He decided to have a budget fix; but within that budget fix, he went way farther and attacked the middle class and the workers of the State of Wisconsin. He proceeded to, in that budget fix, put in a provision--one that, I think, the employees have said since they would have agreed to--for them to pay more for their pensions and health care, although that normally would happen through the bargaining process. Then he went as far as to take away their rights to collectively bargain for public employees, and he took away their ability in how they paid their dues to their unions. What does paying your dues to a union have to do with a shortfall in the State budget of Wisconsin? Absolutely nothing--but Governor Walker abused his job in order to go after the public unions. We have had collective bargaining laws in Wisconsin for over a half a century--and guess what? We've had labor peace for over a half a century in the State of Wisconsin, only until Governor Walker 2 years ago decided to take that attack on those public workers and their ability to bargain for the most basic rights. When you're talking collective bargaining rights, you're not just talking their wages, their health benefits, their pensions. You're talking their right to bargain for their workplace safety conditions. I have visited many prisons in the State of Wisconsin, and I used to serve on the corrections committee. Those correctional officers work and put their lives on the line every day for the safety of my family and everyone else's in the State of Wisconsin. When they see a blind spot and when there's not a camera and when there's a security risk, they have to have that right to be able to negotiate for those safety concerns; but that was taken away. That's collective bargaining. It's simply someone's right to bargain for the most basic concerns, like worker safety. So in Wisconsin, Governor Walker did that. We had the uprising. We call it the ``uprising'' because, within days of his announcement, we had 10,000, 20,000, 40,000 people come each day to protest the Governor's decisions. On one Saturday, we had 100,000. On another weekend, they estimated it could have been as high as 180,000 people who showed up around the State capitol and in the State capitol in order to protest losing their rights as employees to bargain for their laws. What's interesting is that we knew when this fight happened that it was going to be a long and hard battle, but even more so, the Governor tried to be very strategic. He did this against all public employees, but he excluded police officers and firefighters because--let's face it--after 9/11, politically, those are two organizations that are viewed very respectfully by the public. So he tried to basically divide and conquer, but to the police and firefighters of Wisconsin, to their credit, they stood with every other worker and said, An attack on one of us is an attack on each and every one of us. Because they stood with us, it was a stronger, more cohesive effort. You had schoolteachers and State workers and correctional officers and people who worked for the DNR--the Department of Natural Resources--and every State agency standing with police and firefighters and families across the State. Yet it wasn't having the rallies with 10,000 and 20,000 and 40,000 people that mattered; it was having the 800 people in Bayfield, Wisconsin. Now, if you haven't heard of Bayfield, Wisconsin, don't feel bad. We sometimes say this is a map of Wisconsin. At the very tippy top of the State of Wisconsin, almost in Canada, is a town called Bayfield, but they had 800 people in this small community rally to show their support for workers. So that is what is so important. We saw the other consequences of this law. It was the private unions that also saw this problem because they knew what would happen. Just like the problem happening right now to the communication workers in New York, they knew this would happen in Wisconsin. If first you take away the collective bargaining rights of the public employees, what kind of a signal is that to those companies that have negotiated in good faith with their workers to form private sector unions? Well, sure enough, we know exactly what happened. Within months, we saw unions, private sector unions across the State, start to start a fight with their union. In one particular case, we had a crane company, Manitou Crane, where they had one division, one of the unions that negotiates a contract with them in dispute, and they were going to stop production and do unpaid leave for members of other unions. Now, you can't do that. You shouldn't do that. But they went ahead to try to force that on the other workers in order to try to bust that union. Mr. Speaker, those are the problems that we're seeing right now in this country. There's another really strong example that we are seeing right now in this very body on a very regular basis, and this is the fight we're having on behalf of our United States Postal Service. There has been no question that there has been an attack on the Postal Service. And what happened essentially is a number of years back under the Bush administration, they had this idea to take the Postal Service, the Postal Service alone and no other agency in the Federal Government, and make them prepay their retirement system 75 years into the future. Let me give you an example what that means. That means they're prepaying the pension of someone who is not born today for their retirement a half a century down the road. No other agency, no private company would do that; but we are requiring the Postal Service. So when you hear the Postal Service is losing money, almost every single dollar of those losses is due to the prepayment of this unusual requirement that only the Postal Service has to pay. So what happens, the response, clearly I think this is an attempt to try to privatize the system. This is to completely take away a system that I think so many people have relied on for so many years in this country. But this is what we see happening. Recently, we saw there was a move to go from 6-day delivery to 5-day delivery. When you start to cut back on delivery, it has real ramifications on people, on what they're going to receive and the timeliness of what they're going to receive. As a small business leader, again for 25 years of my life, many small businesses, especially in rural communities, count on the United States Postal Service to help them conduct their businesses so that they can hire the workers who work for them. Here's an example. There's a place in Wisconsin called Brooklyn, Wisconsin. It's just outside Madison, Wisconsin, maybe half an hour. The people of Brooklyn, Wisconsin, need a post office even more than the people of Brooklyn, New York, because in Brooklyn, New York, there may be other alternatives. There may be stores that provide similar types of services, not necessarily mail delivery, but other types of delivery that they can go to. But in Brooklyn, Wisconsin, they don't have that luxury. That post office means everything. That small business operating out of Brooklyn, Wisconsin, having that means they can be in business and be able to hire the people in Brooklyn, Wisconsin. And that's Brooklyn. If you go to other rural parts of my district in Lafayette County, in Lafayette County, I guarantee, they have a problem with broadband so they can't necessarily even do an Internet-based business, so that post office means everything to them. So when we see some of the attacks that are caused by this absolutely ridiculous requirement to pre-fund pensions into the future, 75 years into the future, that's why they are having financial difficulties. So there is a bill that I'm on, and others, called the Postal Service Protection Act of 2013. That act would not only maintain the 6-day delivery service we currently have, but it would also give the United States Postal Service the ability to reform its funding structure for their employee pensions. It also would direct them to use revenue to create innovative postal and non-postal products and services to generate new revenue sources. Let's face it, we know things keep changing in how we are able to communicate and get information out to potential consumers for businesses, and to get out to your neighbors and friends. But allow them the ability to do that because if they can, they can make up for those shortfalls. But this absolutely unfair requirement they have puts more than 1,700 United States Postal Service workers in my Second Congressional District of Wisconsin--it puts their jobs in jeopardy. And for seniors and small businesses and those who live in rural areas, and those who rely on the Postal Service, it means a lot to have that post office, that 6-day delivery, and to have a service that's strong and affordable like it is in this country. So, the Postal Service is yet one more of these attacks that we've seen. The bottom line is thanks to organized labor--they have fought so much for the people of this country, for the middle class--one might argue the reason we have a middle class is because of exactly what they've been able to do. Fighting for the very things that we talked about, things like a smaller work week, giving us that weekend, as I discussed at the beginning of this Special Order time that I've had to talk about labor, has been absolutely crucial. We have seen the child labor laws that at one time put children as young as 5 years old in this country, their lives and limbs, at risk. In large part it has been corrected because of the labor movement over the years. The fight for family medical leave, which is so important to families now. If you have a child, you adopt a child, you have a family member who is seriously ill and you want to spend that final time with that loved one, the reason we have that law in place is because of the efforts of organized labor and others. The fact that we have work place safety through the OSHA laws, which is so important, that you can go to work and not have to expect because of that work to have less of a lifetime, that's been created because of labor's efforts, and so much more. Now, I'm a proud member of the Painters and Allied Trades, the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades. I'm a business owner and I'm a union member because I'm proud of the workers that I have. When people are paid a fair wage, you get much more of a result for your business. I know that I have long-term employees because, instead of trying to nickel and dime them and not treat them right, by paying a living wage, I get more than that back in return. And one of the other challenges that unions have faced is this current economy, which is exactly why the Congressional Progressive Caucus introduced the back-to-work budget. Until we get people back to work, we have all of the other economic woes that are surrounded by that. The Painters and Allied Trades are part of the building trades within the union. There are public employee unions, there are private sector unions. But the building trades are the folks who are the bricklayers and the laborers and the operating engineers and the painters and the electrical workers and the carpenters. I could go on and on, and I apologize for the ones that I'm not listing, but those people who work every day in construction, which is one of the markets that's been the hardest hit through this economy, when the economy is good, people who work in the trades are working and they're doing well. But when the economy gets the sniffles, people in construction get a cold. And when the economy gets a cold, people in construction get pneumonia. It's simply that much of a direct effect from how our economy is doing, which is exactly why we should here in this body not only support the labor laws that we need to and appoint the people to the NLRB so we can enforce the laws we have in place and expand the protections for workers that we need to do in this very body, but we need to get the economy going so that more people are working. Because the more people who are working, that is going to strengthen and support the economy. I've listened to people on the other side of the aisle, the Republican side, with their budget presentation this week. I know that they are very serious about wanting to address the issues that they address, from deficit reduction to some of the other issues. The problem is that they are going about it in completely the wrong way. You can reduce the deficit best by getting people back to work. In the Progressive Caucus budget, the back-to-work budget, we do just that. We invest in infrastructure. We invest in putting police and fire back to work. We invest in putting teachers back in the schools. We invest in infrastructure so that those people in the construction industry who are hit with double the unemployment that everyone else is right now can get back to work. And I can tell you, from firsthand experience, why that investment means something. When Congress, several years ago, passed the Recovery Act and passed the dollars that came to communities to invest in communities, we saw the benefit in the State of Wisconsin. I was the cochair of the Joint Committee on Finance, the committee that writes the State budget for the State of Wisconsin, and we had to approve every single dollar that came through Wisconsin to make sure it went efficiently to build roads, repair schools, and the other services that that funding helped provide. And when we did that, we had a report from the road-building industry and the vertical construction industry--not exactly your most progressive or liberal organizations--that said 54,000 jobs were saved or created in the State of Wisconsin because of the recovery dollars and our State budget that year, but it was predominantly the recovery dollars. So I was surprised when I sat in this room for my first-ever State of the Union Speech, and heard President Obama talk about the need for more investment in infrastructure, just like the budget the Democrats proposed, just like the budget the Progressive Caucus proposed. When you talk about that investment, I saw a press release from our Speaker of this House who said that no jobs were created in this country from the last recovery dollars. Well, fortunately, the very next week, in the Budget Committee, which I serve on, we had Dr. Elmendorf, the head of the Congressional Budget Office, who is our official, nonpartisan, number-crunching agency, and I asked that question. Is this true? Is this true that no jobs were created because of those recovery dollars? And he said, according to their statistics, up to 3.3 million jobs were saved or created in this country because of that investment. So it wasn't just the 54,000 jobs in the road-building industry back home, much less the other industries. It is the nearly 3.3 million jobs that were helped because of our influx of cash because, at that time, face it, the economy was down. If people aren't working, they're not spending money. If they're not spending money, businesses can't grow. If businesses can't grow, they can't hire workers. In fact, just the opposite, they were laying off workers, and it has a cumulative spiral effect down. But because of those recovery dollars we were able to hold off how deep we fell and, since then, under this President, we have had consecutive job creation happening to try to make up for those very deep losses that we had at the end of the Bush administration. But we still need to grow even faster, and that's why we need to continue to work this. When we continue to work hard on creating jobs, we are helping people to be able to help pay taxes and to bring the revenue in so that we can solve our deficit. That is the single best way to solve the deficit. And again, that same Congressional Budget Office that we all go to, on both sides of the aisle, to get our facts and figures that we work off of, they're the ones who said three-quarters of the deficit we'll have in fiscal year 2014, that we just voted on a budget in this House today on, is caused by economic weakness. In other words, unemployment and underemployment. You fix that, you solve the deficit. So we don't need to take away the Affordable Care Act and take away all of the benefits that you're going to have from the Affordable Care Act; the fact that an adult child at 26 can still be on a parent's policy, that if you have a preexisting condition, you still have access to health care in this country. You don't need to repeal that in order to solve the deficit. In fact, just the opposite. We have savings in there that will help reduce the rising cost of health care, because that's a challenge. I think everyone in this room would agree that we have a challenge of rising health care costs, but we can address that very primarily by keeping that law in place. But the Republicans have taken that away. In fact, the Republican budget, it's been estimated, would cost 2 million jobs next year if it were to become law. We need a very, very different process and a very, very different place for this country to be. As a small business owner, I have been an advocate in this House of saying, you can be pro-business, you can be pro-labor. I have a union business. And you can be a progressive. None of those are incompatible. Again, to me, one of the smartest things that I was ever able to do, as a small business owner, was to have a union shop, because it allowed me to hire some of the best and most talented people, to offer them a fair wage so they can support their families, offer them good benefits so they have health care and are in a better place for their families. And it's a mutual respect that we have that allows it to continue. It's so important that we have that respect for the people who work in this country, for the middle class, and for those who are aspiring to be in the middle class. That is the backbone of the country we have to fight on. So when the Republican version of the budget, instead, is going to take trillions of dollars and put it on the backs of the middle class, it's the reason why the Democrats, instead, were looking at getting rid of some of the loopholes that are out there, whether it be the subsidies to Big Oil that we still do, the corporate jet loophole, that they still fund tax breaks for corporate jets, the fact that we give tax breaks to companies that send jobs overseas, none of that makes sense. So the Democrats are working hard to try to take care of that, because we know that the backbone, again, is people getting to work in America, and part of the strength of that is the union movement that we have. So I would hope that people would really realize that it is because of the labor movement that we have been able to benefit so very much from what has been able to support the middle class in this country. There is so much more that unions are facing across the country, whether it be collective bargaining laws, the right to work less for less laws that we just saw happen in Michigan and other places. It's those sort of laws that sound good on the surface but really hurt the American worker. When you hurt the American worker, that's a serious problem. So with that, Mr. Speaker, again, on behalf of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, we are so proud to have spent a little time to talk about the middle class and the American labor movement and what it's done for America. We salute our brothers and sisters in organized labor, thank them for their efforts, and vow to continue to fight on behalf of the middle class, and to make sure that they all have protections and standards by following our laws and passing more laws that give workers a voice. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. POCAN

Mr. POCAN. The number one issue before our country is not the deficit; it's getting the economy going and creating jobs. We have 12 million people who are still unemployed and millions more who are underemployed in this country. That's why the best budget we could put forward is one that creates jobs, not one that costs us 2 million jobs as is estimated by the austerity policies of the Republican Party. It's not just the Congressional Progressive Caucus that says this. Our Congressional Budget Office says that three-quarters of the deficit we're going to see in 2014 is caused by underemployment and unemployment. The real enemy to deficit reduction is not a new made-up spending crisis; it's the need for jobs. The Back to Work budget makes a real commitment to job creation, creating 7 million jobs and reducing unemployment to 5 percent within 3 years. It invests in education, in police, firefighters, teachers, infrastructure; and it ends the job-killing cuts of the sequester. Instead of balancing the budget on the backs of the middle class and the neediest, the Back to Work budget has the back of America's middle class, and it does it while responsibly reducing the deficit by $4.4 trillion. I urge my colleagues to vote for the Back to Work budget.

Mr. POCAN

Mr. POCAN. I rise today to join my Democratic colleagues on the House Budget Committee to staunchly oppose the budget proposal we have considered last week in committee. Mr. Chairman, I was not in Congress last year when the budget was considered in the House, but it sure seems like my Republican colleagues want to make sure I didn't miss a thing since the proposal before us today represents little more than the same recycled, unrealistic policies that have been rejected by both the Congress and the American people. This is a budget based on bad math and unrealistic assumptions. It keeps the savings and revenue from the Affordable Care Act, but it repeals its benefits to the people. It cuts taxes for the wealthiest without identifying how they'll pay for the trillions, and it takes almost a trillion dollars in unspecified cuts that will likely target programs for the needy and disadvantaged. With all those unrealistic assumptions, I am surprised there's not a provision that requires leprechauns to steal the pots of gold at the end of rainbows and then to count that as revenue. Mr. Chairman, that could have been a trillion dollars and you'd have a surplus now. Mr. Chairman, while the math may be bogus, the budget will have real and serious effects on the people of Wisconsin. It keeps the sequester in place, which costs the people of Wisconsin 36,000 jobs; and across America, that's 2 million jobs. It will turn Medicare into a voucher program, forcing 850,000 Wisconsin seniors out of traditional Medicare, eventually, people like my mother. And it will raise taxes on middle class families by more than $3,000 while giving the richest a $245,000 tax break. We need to balance the budget responsibly by getting people back to work. That's the best way to reduce our deficit. We need to create jobs. Economists of both stripes say we should do it and the CBO says we should do it. We need to get it done. I urge my colleagues to reject the backward-looking plan from our friends on the other side of the aisle and, instead, embrace a forward- looking plan on job growth.

Mr. POCAN

Mr. POCAN. I would like to thank the gentleman from Minnesota. As you said, we've heard from Representative Takano from California, from yourself and myself from the heartland, and now we have one of the most solid Progressives in the U.S. House, a Representative from the Orlando, Florida, area, Representative Alan Grayson, to whom I yield my time.

Mr. POCAN. Thank you to the gentleman from Florida. Thank you for so eloquently talking about the problems of austerity and this budget that is the path to austerity, to continued austerity in this country. One of the statistics I think that's really worth mentioning, and this is from the Congressional Budget Office, is that from 1979 to 2007, the top 1 percent of income earners grew 278 percent, or about $973,000 per household. In contrast, the middle 20 percent grew 25 percent, and the poorest 20 percent grew 16 percent. So the very things that we just heard the gentleman from Florida talking about are very real; and that's why the Democrats on the committee, when we had a chance to try to amend the Republican path to austerity, instead we put out a budget amendment that said we would cap no family making $250,000 or less, covering the vast, vast majority of Americans, would be held harmless under the proposals presented by the Republican budget. They would not go along with that amendment because they had to protect the tax breaks for corporate jets, and they had to protect the tax breaks for oil companies, and they had to protect the other tax breaks that they had. Now, we brought up that during the Clinton administration the top tax rate was at 39 percent, but the economy added 20 million jobs. So at 39 percent top tax rate, we added 20 million jobs. During the Bush administration, we reduced that top rate down to 35 percent, and yet we lost a half a million jobs. So the argument that somehow having a lower top tax rate is going to create jobs is simply a myth. We saw that when the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest were passed and we saw no economic recovery. And then when they were reauthorized, we still saw no economic recovery. But where we did see an economic recovery was when we had the stimulus and recovery dollars that came through. And in my State of Wisconsin, I was on the Committee on Finance during that time. We had to authorize every single dollar that came through in recovery dollars in my State. And when we put forward the programs that went and built the roads and rebuilt the bridges and built schools, did repairs to schools, we had a report by the road building industry and the vertical construction industry, not exactly your most progressive organizations, that said that 54,000 jobs were saved or created in the State of Wisconsin because of those recovery dollars. And at the Federal level, in the Budget Committee, the head of the Congressional Budget Office, Dr. Elmendorf, I asked him point blank, were there jobs created by the recovery, because the same day the President gave the State of the Union, the Speaker of this House said that no jobs were created from the past recovery. And yet we were told by Dr. Elmendorf, from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, that up to 3.3 million jobs were saved or created. So, again, part of what the Democrats talked about is how could we help provide some additional recovery dollars in the Back to Work Budget, which would specifically invest in those infrastructure projects into our schools, into our police and fire services. So that's a little bit about what we talked about down there. But one last thing I would like to bring up and talk about that happens in the Republican version of the budget that does not happen in our version, the Back to Work Budget, the Progressive Caucus Budget, is the effect on Medicare. Right now, half the people who receive Medicare make $22,000 a year, and yet their health care costs are three times that of the average person. So some of our folks who are the most low-income seniors, who've been relying on the promise that they've paid into their entire lives for Medicare, are now having three times the costs of the average person, are going to see this new voucher program that, down the road, will eventually make them pay more and more immediately, but down the road, not keep up with inflation and cause people to make those tough choices in a lose-lose proposition, receive less health care or pay more for it when you can least afford to. That's not fair. That promise that we've had as a Nation through Medicare, it's simply not fair to voucherize that program. And then when you take the $800 billion in cuts to the Medicaid budget, again, that largely goes to seniors in our States, you are going to see the access and the ability for senior citizens, especially people of modest and middle incomes, diminish because of this budget. Now, we agree that the real culprit out there is rising health care costs. We have to, in a bipartisan way, address those. But you don't address them by balancing the budget on the backs of the people who can least afford it, and that's the middle class and the seniors of America. So when you look at this budget from the Republicans in totality, and you look at the cuts to Medicare and the cuts to Medicaid, the protection of tax breaks for the most wealthy, for the special interests, for companies that outsource jobs overseas, the lack of any investment in infrastructure or education, or research and development, when you listen to the stories that I've talked about from people from my district, from the very same county that Chairman Ryan and I share, who talk about devastating impacts of these cuts, we have a budget that is misplaced and will affect real people in the middle class. I would just like to talk about one final part of the budget that really makes it really hard to, on top of all these cuts, think that a lot of serious thought went into it, and that's the fact that the Republican version of the budget repeals the Affordable Care Act, all of the benefits to the public, the millions of people who will gain access to health care, but it still takes the revenues brought in by the program. And we were told that when we asked questions in committee. So, on one hand, to take away the program and say you're going to get rid of it, and on the other hand, to still take the revenues that are brought in by the program makes the budget not a very credible budget. And as I've said in committee, and I'll say again, if you're going to take those sort of false assumptions and put a budget together, you might as well say that we're going to hire leprechauns to take the pots of gold at the end of rainbows and count that as revenue, because it's about as realistic. In the end, the Progressive Caucus is very proud of our Back to Work Budget. We are going to invest in infrastructure, we're going to invest in public workers, we're going to make sure that we're getting our fair share of resources that we need so that government can function to take care of the middle class and the people who need it the most. It will create 7 million American jobs, reduce unemployment to 5 percent, and yet still reduce our deficit by $4.4 trillion. It will strengthen Medicare and Medicaid and provide high-quality, low-cost medical coverage to millions of Americans. That's what the people of the country voted for in November. That's the budget we should be putting forward in this country, and that's the budget the Progressive Caucus puts out today. With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. POCAN. Thank you, Representative Ellison. When you talked about the 2 million jobs that we'll lose in 2014 alone and the loss of the gross domestic product, there is no question that these are the challenges we're facing with the budget before us. What we didn't mention is that the only folks who are really going to benefit are the most wealthy. Under the plan that's been released by the Republicans, they're changing the tax rates and lowering it for those who make the most money; and the trillions that it's going to cost to make up for that is going to have to come from somewhere, but it's not outlined in the budget. What does that mean they're going to have to go after? They're going to have to go after the very tax breaks that the middle class rely on. That means your mortgage interest tax deduction could be on the chopping line under the Republican version of the budget. The largest investment that the middle class ever make in their lifetime is their home, and the fact that we help incentivize that investment so that people live in strong neighborhoods and safe communities could be on the chopping line. The very fact that you could take away the employer's ability to deduct some of their health care costs could be on the chopping line. The child tax credit, for people who have children who have an opportunity to get back to work but need to have their children cared for, helps 25 million people across the country, including military families, that could be on the chopping line. What they're silent about in the Republican budget is that they keep the deduction for corporate jets and they keep the subsidy to oil companies and they keep a number of deductions that do not benefit the middle class. It's not just the jobs, Mr. Speaker, that are costs in the version of the budget, the 2 million jobs next year alone on top of the jobs we are losing through the sequester that we are facing right now, but it's this inequity in the tax system that is once again going to benefit the most wealthy at the expense of the many. Another thing that I think is worthwhile mentioning as we are talking about middle class families is what is going to happen to Medicare. My mother is 84 years old. In fact, she lives in the district in Wisconsin of the chairman of the committee. She is one of those countless seniors that cut pills in half because they couldn't afford to be able to afford medication at the time when she was trying to get by at 84 with a limited income. It's those sorts of things, if we change that into a voucher program and we don't keep up that Medicare promise that people will have money to keep up with health care costs, that go away. Seniors will pay thousands more in the future because of the change by breaking that Medicare promise. That's not even talking about the Medicaid changes, Mr. Speaker. There are so many changes that will cost middle class families that we need to make sure we have a more sound version, and that more sound version that the Progressive Caucus puts forward is the Back to Work Budget. The Back to Work Budget will invest right now on getting people back into the marketplace and able to have a living and able to work and be able to pay taxes. When you have more people paying taxes, as we have already shown, three-quarters of the deficit in the next year will be due to unemployment and underemployment. By getting people back to work, that is the single best way to address the deficit. With that, I'd like to yield a little time back to my colleague from Minneapolis, Mr. Ellison.

Mr. POCAN. Absolutely, Representative Ellison. We are very proud to be not only the creator of collective bargaining, but I believe also unemployment compensation and other great provisions for workers across America.

Mr. POCAN. I would like to thank the gentleman from California. As a member of the Budget Committee that marked up the bill yesterday, we had spent the entire day considering the budget proposal that was introduced by our Republican colleagues. From the beginning, it was clear that the budget represented little more than recycled policies that have already been rejected by the American people and unrealistic proposals that will never occur. We had an opportunity in committee to focus on areas where Democrats and Republicans could come together to grow our economy and responsibly reduce our deficit. Instead, we were given a budget that is based on math gimmicks and absurd assumptions, assumptions like trying to keep the savings from the Affordable Care Act while repealing its benefits. Well, that has about as much credibility as if we had said in the budget we should hire leprechauns to grab pots of gold at the end of rainbows and count that as revenue. It is simply not realistic. As a small business owner and as a former cochair of the Wisconsin joint committee on finance, I've worked on budgets for years and years. We used to spend 8 hours a day, 3 days a week for 4 months making sure that each and every detail meant something in a budget because a budget is a statement of our values, where do we stand as a country, or, in that case, as the State of Wisconsin. Unfortunately, we didn't take the time to make those tough choices with the budget that was presented to us. Instead, we were given a budget that balances the budget on the backs of seniors and working class families. It's not a tough choice. It's a reckless and irresponsible choice. Our budget should reflect our values, and the GOP budget does not reflect Wisconsin's values. And I don't believe it reflects the values of middle class families across the country. Mr. Speaker, the type of choices that we were given from the Republicans in presenting their budget included things from keeping the sequester in place that you heard earlier have had terrible effects across the country and will continue to in the coming months of this current budget, like turning Medicare into a voucher system, a system that breaks the promise to the American people that we've had about Medicare for so long. It includes trillions in undisclosed spending cuts with absolutely no information on where they'll come from other than eventually they're going to come from the middle class through losing some of the current proposals that we have in place in the law. Ultimately, all these will harm our economic growth and stunt the positive gains we've made in the economy just as recently as last month. In fact, the Economic Policy Institute has found that the GOP Ryan budget released yesterday would result in 2 million fewer jobs next year alone. It would decrease our gross domestic product by 1.7 percent and stall our Nation's economic recovery. What the budget does, and we can tell this in my State of Wisconsin and across the country, is, one, it keeps the sequester in place. And we've already been told that could cost 750,000 jobs nationwide, including 36,000 in my State of Wisconsin. The budget would turn the Medicare program into a voucher program, forcing 873,753 Wisconsin seniors out of the traditional Medicare plan when the conversion happens and breaking the promise that kept the link to increasing costs and having increasing funds that go with it. Finally, it would increase tax breaks for the very wealthy and big businesses but cost middle class families $2,000 annually in new taxes. We must remember the biggest threat to our long-term economic security at this time is not the deficit; it's our economy. It's about jobs. It's the 12 million people that are unemployed in this country. We need to be making investments in American workers, in American ingenuity, in education, research and development, and infrastructure, and that's what will get the people of America back to work. We have a budget that does just that, and I'm proud to support the Congressional Progressive Caucus' Back to Work Budget. The Back to Work Budget invests in America's future because the best way to reduce our long-term deficit is to put America back to work, get people back working and get people into jobs. Just last week, the Congressional Budget Office released a report finding that half of the deficit in 2013 and three-quarters of the deficit in 2014 will be due to economic weakness. That means people being unemployed or underemployed and paying less in revenue rather than structural budget policies like defense spending, entitlement spending, or overall tax policy. So the very problem we're facing is that people aren't working and aren't able to pay taxes and guide the economy like we need to. If they're doing that, we would make up three-quarters of the deficit in the next budget year alone. Plain and simple, we need to get the American people back to work, and the Back to Work Budget does that by targeting a goal of 5 percent unemployment through investments in infrastructure, education, hiring back laid-off teachers, aid to States, rehiring police, firefighters, and other public employees, investing in a public works jobs program, and giving tax credits to companies that create jobs in America instead of the tax breaks that are still under the Republican budget that help companies that send jobs overseas. So I'm hopeful that as this budget process moves forward, we can turn our attention back to job growth as our budget does and not backwards to the rejected policies of the past. I would like to share a few stories that I've collected from my district from constituents who have written us about the budget, about the sequester that continues in the Republican budget, as well as the budget proposals in front of us. Let me read one from a reverend in Beloit, Wisconsin. Beloit, Wisconsin, is in Rock County, and the chairman of the Budget Committee, Representative Ryan, and I split Rock County right down the middle. So these are people that we both talk to on a regular basis. This is a reverend in Beloit who had been diagnosed with lung cancer. This is what he writes: This morning, I was reading more about the cuts coming on March 1. One of the areas that could be cut is cancer research, to the tune of $250 million. This is frightening to me. I'm married with two girls, ages 8 and 4. Three years ago, I was diagnosed with a rare form of nonsmoker's lung cancer. I went through chemo and radiation, and we thought we got it all. Last year, we discovered the cancer was back and in my bones. So I started a new pill. Within 2 months, all of the spots are gone, and I'm in remission. It is because of the funding for cancer research that I am alive today and my girls have their father. I have been told that the cancer will eventually build an immunity to my pill, so there are a number of other medications in trial now. If the funding is cut, my next miracle pill may not be there. I heard that these cuts could set back cancer research 5 years. Please, do what you can to make sure these cuts don't happen and people like me can beat back this nasty disease. That's just from one constituent in my district from a county that just happens to be shared by the person who authored the budget that keeps these sequester cuts and these cuts to research in place. Let me read one more, and then I'm going to introduce one of my colleagues, the cochair of the Progressive Caucus. This is from a mother in Evansville, Wisconsin, also in Rock County, the county that I share with the chairman of the Budget Committee, Mr. Ryan. This was received back at the end of February: My son-in-law will be laid off next week due to the sequester. This is extremely difficult for his family. My daughter works for the State and has not had a raise in years, and pays more for her health insurance and retirement since all the State's woes are blamed on State employees and teachers. Her cut in pay is deep. Our family will not be buying a house or a car, going out to dinner or purchasing anything from any local entrepreneur due to these issues. Does this help the economy? Nope. It's time to fix this so that the little people are not being harmed the most. Now I'd like to yield some time to my colleague from Minneapolis, the cochair of the Progressive Caucus and one of the authors of our budget plan for the Progressive Caucus, Representative Keith Ellison.

Mr. POCAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today on behalf of the Congressional Progressive Caucus to repeat and enhance our calls made by our colleagues today to talk about the budget introduced by the House Republicans. We have a number of members of the Progressive Caucus who will be addressing various components of the budget. I will start out with one of the freshman Members from the great State of California (Mr. Takano). I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. POCAN

Mr. POCAN. Mr. Speaker, the gentlewoman from Florida hit it exactly on the head. This is about real people. This is about the effects that sequestration will have on real people, the kind of people who, when they hear ``sequestration,'' they think it's a medieval torture. Average people don't come up with a term that only Washington could devise, which is what we've done with the sequester. Let me tell a real story from my district. There's a woman in Marshall, Wisconsin, who sent me an email. I'd like to share that with the American people. Here's what she says: It's being reported that the effect of the sequester on average Americans will be minimal. In the case of our family, this is not true. My son is a civilian firefighter at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha. Today, he gave me a call to tell me that all the firefighters would be getting a letter Friday explaining that their shift crew size will go from 19 to seven immediately. As a firefighter, he must work 106 hours-- versus 80 for the rest of us--to receive overtime. In addition, their overtime will be eliminated. That will result in a 40 percent reduction in pay for my son's family. His wife is in graduate school, and they had their first child in December 2012. There is a real face to the reductions. Please use your energy and Wisconsin progressive common sense to put a stop to this across-the-board reduction. That's another real story of someone being affected. It's not about a $4 million TV station at the IRS. It's about the real people in this country who will see the impact in the next month and the next month and the next month. And as much as the Republicans tell us that they'll try to fix it a month from now--again, I don't know why you wouldn't just fix it instead of letting these devastating cuts come in. I want to share another story that came in from Oregon, Wisconsin. This is from a case manager who works with seniors at Meals on Wheels. Let me read their story. They said: I work in Beaverton, Oregon, as a case manager for seniors and people with disabilities. I work with seniors who live on $700 a month. That's all they have to pay for rent, utilities, food, and medication. If Congress cuts funding for the programs that my department administers, the seniors I work with could end up in the hospital, sick, or just living on the streets. Budget cuts also affect our jobs. I'm a single parent with a child who goes to school. So if there are cuts, I might need assistance myself. We see the faces of our seniors, we see their homes, and we see how they live on a very limited income. Some legislators say it's too much money and we can't afford it. But if we don't provide services, these people could literally die if we take away their life support. That's what our services represent to the seniors who I work with: life support. Look, this isn't about pointing fingers and assessing blame on whose idea this was. Let's figure out how to get it done, how to fix this. I can tell you, when I served on our finance committee in the State legislature in Wisconsin, I had the opportunity to serve on that for 6 years. I served on that 16-member committee when there were 12 Republicans and 4 Democrats; I served on that committee when there were eight Republicans and eight Democrats; and I served on that committee and chaired it when there were 12 Democrats and 4 Republicans. I've been on pretty much every configuration you can have. The way we did our budgeting was we would literally spend 3 days a week, 8 hours a day for 3 or 4 months just agonizing over every detail of the budget because it was important. Every single program we had, every single dollar we spent meant something to someone. We had to make sure that we were spending it in the most wise and efficient way possible. I've heard a lot about how Federal Government spends too much, how there's waste, fraud, and abuse, but the sequester doesn't address that. The sequester addresses these across-the-board, indiscriminate, irresponsible cuts we would never do when we were actually laying out the budgets we did back in our State of Wisconsin. I feel that these real cuts, these real effects that we're going to see could be stopped, but the only way we can do that is to actually have that impact right here in this House of Representatives. We need to get people to come back to the table. Stop the finger-pointing, stop the blaming, stop saying you'll fix something a month later, maybe. I'll tell you, last week when I was back in Wisconsin, I have heard more than 10 or 20 times that people have no confidence in Washington. How many times have we just kicked the can on the debt ceiling? How many times have we faced a deadline and the days before maybe started talking? Here we are 2 days before these meat-ax cuts will take effect, and this House has done nothing. We need to take a much wiser approach to this. We need to make sure that we stop these cuts that are going to have real impacts to small business owners, to seniors, to parents with children who go to school, to health care for so many hundreds of thousands of people across this country, to the people who are going to medical school, to the people going to our universities, to the researchers, to everything that we've heard of just in the last 45 minutes. From California, to Pennsylvania, to Florida, to Wisconsin, you've heard the real impacts of the sequester. Now it's up to us, the House of Representatives, to act. Yet we haven't. We've had our opportunities, and the Progressive Caucus and the Democrats have put forth real alternatives that will provide both cuts and revenue that will really deal with the amount of money that we have to face in the next 2 days to take care of, and yet no one has come to the table. There's no other plan in this room right now offered to deal with the sequester that we're going to face in the next 48 hours. On behalf of the Progressive Caucus and our ability to talk today to the public, I hope you've heard the real impact of the sequester. I hope you'll contact your Representatives, no matter where they are across the country. Email them, call them and tell them, Go get the job done. You've got 48 hours to do that. I don't want cuts to the schools that my kids go to. I don't want my grandparent or my parent or my neighbor to lose their ability to get that Meals on Wheels. I don't want my neighbor who is a small business owner who is trying to jump- start the economy to lose access to capital. You have to make that call because you're our bosses. So, please, in the next 24 hours, reach out to us and tell your Member of Congress to get to work. Our job is to end the sequester. If we don't, you'll be watching, and you expect more of us. Mr. Speaker, with that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. POCAN

Mr. POCAN. Madam Speaker, as a lifelong Wisconsinite and a proud resident of Madison for the last 30 years, I am deeply humbled and honored to represent Wisconsin's Second District in the House of Representatives. The Second District is home to a world-class university, innovative small businessowners, and hardworking dairy farmers and cheese makers who produce the best milk and cheese you can find. I ran for Congress because I wanted to ensure these voices, the voices of south central Wisconsin, are heard, respected and represented in Washington. And I am committed to serving their needs by working with my colleagues--all of my colleagues--regardless of party affiliation. But I hate to say it, Madam Speaker, right now the people of Wisconsin's Second District are frustrated, and I understand why. When I went home last week, I met with people from all kinds of professions and all walks of life, and their concerns could not have been more different from what we talk about right here in Washington. What they care about is what all families care about: how can they make a living so they can pay their bills, provide for their loved ones, and create opportunities for their children. They don't care about political finger-pointing. They care about how we in Congress can support an environment where businesses can attract more buyers for their products, hire more workers, and increase wages; in other words, how do we grow the economy. What I told them, and what I'll repeat here today, is that the sequester and its irresponsible, indiscriminate and across-the-board spending cuts is the exact opposite of what we need to be doing right now to grow our economy. Taken as a whole, these spending cuts represent a harsh austerity policy that I fear could only move our country backwards. We've seen in Europe the severe effects austerity policies have had on fragile economies working their way back from recessions. Four years after the global economic crisis, our friends across the ocean are at risk of a triple-dip recession. Unemployment is climbing; and even with these massive spending cuts, countries have seen their debt loads increase. Is this the model we want to follow in our country? Madam Speaker, we must remember that the biggest threat to our long- term economic security is not the deficit. It's the economy. It's a lack of jobs, and it's about the more than 12 million people who are unemployed in this country. I own a printing shop in Wisconsin; and as a small businessowner, I can tell you that it's about the lack of access to capital because of economic uncertainty, it's about a lack of consumer confidence, and it's about people needing to get back to work. These are the issues we need to address, not austerity; and we are not going to create jobs or help spur spending by gutting critical government programs without any thought to the consequences. To people in Wisconsin, that's just politics as usual. We need to change the conversation right here in Washington. We need to be talking about what people are talking about in Beloit, in Baraboo, and in Sun Prairie. Instead of asking about how much we can cut, we need to be asking ourselves how we can jump-start the economy, how we can invest in our future, and how we can support our local small businessowners who are the backbone of our communities. That's how we'll fix the economy. We need to support education, infrastructure projects, research and development, and new industries such as green energy that will help lead to job growth and bring our unemployment rate down. And by growing the economy, we will fix our fiscal problems. Now, that doesn't mean I don't see a place for responsible restraint. As the former chair of the Joint Finance Committee in Wisconsin, I understand that when you put together a budget, tough decisions have to be made, and you can stay up all night agonizing over the smallest details, the tiniest programs, because these programs make a difference in people's lives. It's a lot of work, and it should be, because our budget priorities have a direct effect on our middle class families and on long-term economic growth. But the sequester trades in the tough work and replaces it with massive, indiscriminate, and irresponsible spending cuts. It's like taking a meat cleaver to the budget instead of a scalpel. It could cost 750,000 jobs nationwide, including 36,000 jobs right in Wisconsin. It could mean 70,000 students across the country, and 1,000 in my State, would see their Head Start services eliminated this year, and it would mean $900 million less in loan guarantees to small businessowners nationwide, including in Wisconsin. Now, I'm a cosponsor of a plan put forward by Representative Van Hollen that would avert these disastrous spending cuts and replace them with a balanced approach that promotes economic growth while responsibly reducing the deficit. I strongly urge my colleagues to come to the table, stop this irresponsible sequester, and then refocus our efforts. The time has come to stop talking about harmful spending cuts and start talking about getting the people of Wisconsin and of America back to work. We need less austerity and more prosperity. We don't have time to waste.