Jamie Raskin

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Ms. Jackson Lee for her really profound and important remarks tonight. Mr. Speaker, I would close out our session here by just making an observation about the importance of this SNAP question. It is important legislatively because our friends across the aisle have broken from a bipartisan tradition going back a very long time now in the passage of the farm bill just to make it a partisan power grab and a push over everybody else in the body, but it also goes to the question: What kind of government are we going to have? Will this be government for the few or will it be a government for everyone? Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Ms. Adams for participating. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee), my distinguished colleague.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, three-quarters of SNAP benefits go to families: households with children in them. That should be what people think of when they think of the SNAP program. We heard a lot today in the Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing that was referenced earlier, basically about lazy people sitting around. I tried to alter the image a little bit. I said: You can have lazy people who get a paycheck in public housing and they spend all day watching TV, tweeting, and filing for bankruptcy. You have lazy people in the middle class. You have rich lazy people and you have poor lazy people.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Ms. Adams so much for her insightful remarks. Before Ms. Adams leaves, I would like to ask her a question. Working in Washington and coming here several days a week, as Members of Congress do, we are often treated to the spectacle of lifestyles of the rich and famous and political corruption. We see Scott Pruitt, the EPA chief, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on first-class air travel with a security detail of a dozen people, something nobody has ever seen before for an EPA chief. He built, I think it was, a $40,000 soundproof booth in his office in order to make secret phone calls. Last night, we saw on TV, or pick up the paper this morning to read about, millions of dollars flowing into an up-till-now secret bank account that Michael Cohen had. Part of it was used as a slush fund to pay off a porn star, who had a relationship, allegedly, with President Trump. But then hundreds of thousands of dollars flowing in from one of the oligarchs in Russia with U.S. corporations involved. There is a lot of money in this town. The power elite seems to have a lot of money, and gave hundreds of billions of dollars back to the wealthiest corporations and people in the country in the most recent tax legislation. Yet they get through with that, and then they turn and they want to pound the SNAP program, which is used to give a modicum of dignity and security to the poorest people in the country so that they can feed their families. What is going on here? How is it possible that we can see one kind of America operating in the Halls of power with the wealthiest people in the country, and another for the working people of the country who are trying to get by?

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I want to follow up on something Ms. DeLauro said, which I think is very important. She pointed out that it was Senator Robert Dole, a Republican from Kansas; and Senator George McGovern, a Democrat from South Dakota, who came together and said: We have this extraordinary agricultural bounty and surplus in America. We could be feeding the entire world. Certainly we could be feeding the people of America. Most people are able to afford it, but not everybody, and not at every point in their life. We should make sure that, in the wealthiest society that has ever existed, everybody has the opportunity to eat three meals a day for $1.40. Ms. DeLauro said that we don't have the giants that we had then. I don't know if that is true. I consider the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro) a giant. But I think what has changed is the public philosophy that is governing in Washington. I think there is a public philosophy that survives in town, which says that government is a moneymaking opportunity for the President and a handful of people: the President's friends and the people who surround the President. People are actually making money coming into government. Whereas, the traditional ideal--the one I think Ms. DeLauro invoked with Senators Dole and McGovern and the new deal and Franklin Roosevelt--was government is an instrument of the common good to benefit everybody to advance the general will. What has happened to our concept of government in America?

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, we are not going to be able to eliminate laziness, but maybe we can take care of hunger in America so that kids don't go to sleep without food. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Ms. Adams for her leadership and her strong voice on these issues. It is very impressive to see how hard she has been fighting.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, they are both from farm States.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, this used to be bipartisan. It used to be a bipartisan commitment, and now, suddenly, it fell apart with no participation from Democrats. It comes flying out with the idea of targeting the SNAP program. What is going on here? Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Connecticut.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I would say to Ms. DeLauro that that came out of the Agriculture Committee, as I understand it, on a party line vote.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, Ms. DeLauro made some really striking points, and I wanted to explore them a little bit more. The tax bill, as we know, created a windfall bonanza of hundreds of billions of dollars for the wealthiest corporations and the wealthiest people in the country. Eighty-six percent of the benefit from the tax cut went to 1 percent of the people. The interesting thing to me was that because it went overwhelmingly to investors, and one-third of the investment in our companies is held by foreigners, a third of the benefit of this tax cut just left the country. It went to foreign investors in Saudi Arabia or China or Mexico or wherever it might be. Now, does it make sense for us to confer this extraordinary bonanza on the wealthiest people in the country and wealthy people abroad, and then turn around and start cutting the major antihunger assistance program we have got, the SNAP program? I mean, what is the morality of that? What is the logic of that? Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Connecticut.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Ms. DeLauro, and I would ask if she would be willing to stick around just for a little colloquy.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mrs. Coleman for her strong voice and for participating in tonight's Special Order hour. Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to yield to our distinguished colleague from Connecticut, Rosa DeLauro, who has been one of Congress' leading champions for the security of America's working people and for building an American middle class that includes everybody. I am thrilled that Ms. DeLauro could join us, and I yield to her now.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, let me ask Mrs. Coleman one final question before she goes. She made a point before which I thought was profound, which is that millions and millions of people on the SNAP program are working, but they are not making enough money to support their family in a dignified way, in a way that lives up to even the most minimal expectations for health and nutrition. That is what the SNAP program is all about. In a way, you could view the SNAP program as a subsidy to the employers of these people because we are taking care of them because their salaries don't. Now, I could understand someone saying: Let's get rid of the SNAP program and make those employers pay a real living wage to these people, or let's make them pay a full living wage and give them all healthcare. But that is not the proposal that we are getting from our friends from across the aisle. They want to reduce the SNAP program at the same time that they don't want to increase the minimum wage and give people benefits. I wonder if she could just explain what the theory is about how these people are going to survive.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro) for her leadership, for her vision, and for her writing. It is incisive and useful for us all. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Adams).

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mrs. Coleman for her comments. She has made some very important points, and I wonder if I would pursue a couple with her before she goes, perhaps have a moment for colloquy. The first is the point she was making about the growing economic inequality in the country. That is something that has been on the minds of Americans, at the very least, since the Occupy movement took place after the 2008 mortgage meltdown crisis, which cost 11 million Americans their jobs, 12 million Americans their homes, and created an economic dislocation panic across the country, which thankfully President Obama and his administration moved to address, unleashing 60 straight months of economic growth and expansion in the country. Today we have an administration which vowed to drain the swamp when it came to Washington. It seems like they have moved into the swamp and they are just draining the treasury instead: $1.5 trillion added to our budget deficit from the tax scam giveaway, which you referenced. I wonder if she would reflect for a moment on the relationship between a vision of government, which is that it is a money-making operation for a handful of people, and growing inequality and poverty among other parts of the population.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Ms. Barragan very much for her leadership in defending the SNAP program. She talked about California. I just want to add to her point, a point about my home State in Maryland, where the SNAP program reaches 684,000 residents of my State, which is more than 1 in 10 people who live in the State. Nationally, of course, it is 42 million people who participate in the SNAP program, which is 13 percent of the total population. And that is not a stagnant, permanent pool of Americans; that is a transient group because people move in and move out according to their economic circumstances. The SNAP program is a reflection of our investment in ourselves as a people and our determination that here, in the wealthiest country on Earth, nobody should be sending their kids to bed at night hungry. Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to yield to our distinguished colleague from New Jersey, Bonnie Watson Coleman.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Ellison) very much. He makes an excellent point which is, more than two-thirds of SNAP participants are in families with children, and in the majority of those, you have at least one working adult in the house. So despite efforts to portray this as some kind of welfare, we are talking about millions of Americans who are working but still can't afford to feed their families. That is what the SNAP program is about. It is about helping working families meet the basic nutritional standards of our people. We are the richest society in the history of the world, and we can certainly support working families, through the SNAP program, to benefit from the great bounty that is the agricultural output of the United States of America, which is the breadbasket of the world. Mr. Speaker, I yield now to our colleague from California, Nanette Barragan. I thank Ms. Barragan very much for joining us.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congresswoman Jayapal for her terrific leadership on the SNAP program and for defending the ability of all of our families to not send their kids to bed at night hungry. That is really what this is all about. People on the SNAP program receive an average of only $1.40 per meal, and in order to get assistance, of course, they have got to complete a detailed application process with meticulous documentation of their name, their legal status in the country, their identity, their income, their address, and so on. Ninety percent of participants are in households with children under the age of 18, or with elderly people, or with individuals with disabilities. Mr. Speaker, I am going to yield next to our distinguished colleague from Minnesota (Mr. Ellison).

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to be leading this Special Order hour on the SNAP program and the current threats against it in the farm bill. SNAP, of course, is America's most important antihunger program, serving more than 42 million Americans and delivering improved economic, health, and nutrition outcomes for millions of our families, reducing poverty and food insecurity. To kick us off tonight, I yield to the gentlewoman from the great State of Washington, Pramila Jayapal, my distinguished colleague.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Chair, Americans really shouldn't care that much about this Duncan amendment if they don't go on the highway; but if you go on the highway, like hundreds of millions of Americans do, you better watch out, because this amendment makes it far more likely that there will be reckless and negligent truckers on the road and that you won't be able to sue for your damages if they smash up your car. Take the shocking case of a 19-year-old man whose car was totaled by a truck driver who was high on crystal meth. He was left injured and blinded for the rest of his life. Now, the truck company never drug tested or road tested its employees, but that didn't stop the shipper from hiring that trucking company to do business with. Now, the Duncan amendment would reward the shipper by immunizing it from any liability for hiring a low-road trucker that doesn't drug test its employees, or even knowingly hires employees who are high on crystal meth or who have a drug problem. This would give the shippers even greater incentive to hire reckless and negligent truckers, making our roads and highways all the more dangerous. In ``Born to Run'', Bruce Springsteen talks about cars that are suicide machines and a deathtrap. Mr. Chair, this amendment would make that vision of our highways the law. There is no way that the American people support excusing shippers from liability for their decision to hire low-road truckers, low-road trucking companies that do not drug test or do background screening on their employees.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor an outstanding educator and beloved community leader, Dr. Alan Goodwin. Dr. Goodwin currently serves as Principal of Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Maryland, and is retiring after 43 years in the Montgomery County Public School System (MCPS). The people of Maryland's 8th district, especially those who live within the Walt Whitman community, will be forever grateful for Dr. Goodwin's great contributions and steadfast commitment to our students and to our community. Dr. Goodwin began his career as an English teacher in 1975 and was immediately recognized for his ability to inspire students to challenge complacency and apathy and take charge of their own destinies. He was nominated for the prestigious Outstanding Teacher Award and led dozens of his colleagues as head of the English Department. Since leaving the classroom, Dr. Goodwin served MCPS as an assistant principal, a middle school principal, and finally principal of one of the top rated high schools in the United States, Walt Whitman, a school which honors its namesake with creativity, compassion and hard work. Principal Goodwin has been an instrumental force in creating positive changes in the school district, thereby bringing out the very best in our students. Holding a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction and possessing decades of experience as an educator and administrator, Dr. Goodwin waved off higher administrative posts where he could have worked less and made more. Instead, he opted to stay in a role where he could maintain day-to-day interaction with his students, or as he refers to them, his ``kids,'' stating, ``they make a difference for me every day.'' Principal Goodwin's unwavering dedication to his students and to his excellent teaching staff is legendary, and has resulted in multiple nominations by Bethesda Magazine as the ``Best Public High School Principal.'' Dr. Goodwin has seen tremendous triumphs for the Whitman community. Walt Whitman High School was routinely listed by U.S. World News and Report as one of the top high schools in the nation throughout Dr. Goodwin's tenure. He has also led the school through difficult times, helping students, staff and community weather devastating losses and tragedies that have shaken the Viking community. Recognizing the resiliency of the community, the Whitman baseball program has dedicated its 2018 season to ``Whitman Strong,'' a rallying cry used to bolster the school community in the wake of terrible events resulting in the loss of two students this past fall. On the occasion of Walt Whitman High School's 2018 Baseball Program Community Night, I am honored to join Vikings Head Coach Joe Cassidy and the entire school community in paying loving tribute to Dr. Goodwin for his years of service and his profoundly passionate dedication and commitment to the students of Walt Whitman High School.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kind).

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 5 minutes. Mr. Speaker, our good friends across the aisle have been bristling when my colleagues have pointed out the breathtaking budget hypocrisy being shown by the majority today, so I thought, instead, I would offer the comments of their fellow Republicans. Here is headline news: ``Conservatives irate over GOP's budget hypocrisy.'' ``Critics chafe over a balanced budget amendment vote on the heels of an omnibus spending spree.'' And then we get quotes from a number of Members, including Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows, who says: ``There is no one on Capitol Hill, and certainly no one on Main Street, that will take this vote seriously.'' We hear from someone named Barbara Boland, who equated the exercise to ``gorging on a sumptuous feast while insisting that you want a svelte physique.'' Mr. Speaker, America knows they just drove a $2 trillion deficit hole into our budget with their gold-plated tax-and-spend scam; and the CBO now predicts the deficit will reach an astounding $1 trillion in 2019, and will continue increasing annually to $1.5 trillion by 2028. That is not something the Constitution made them do. That is not something the Declaration of Independence made them do, or the Gettysburg Address. That is something they cooked up all by themselves. Mr. Speaker, they promised to drain the swamp, but they just moved into the swamp and drained the Treasury instead. The Treasury is ransacked, but the swamp is teeming with monstrous special interests devouring the common wealth of the American people. After slashing taxes on the wealthiest corporations and individuals, they propose cutting hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security, the programs built up by the American people with their blood, sweat, tears, and hard-earned labor. And now, today, after giving us one of the most regressive tax plans in history, they effectively want to make it unconstitutional to spend what we need on the people's Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security. The whole idea defies a basic principle of our Constitution, which was enunciated by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in his famous Lochner dissent in 1905. He said: ``A constitution is not intended to embody a particular economic theory.'' President Trump just signed a spending bill into law while complaining bitterly about it and saying he would never sign a bill like that again. Perhaps he shouldn't have signed it in the first place, but he has got the right solution in mind, Mr. Speaker: Show some courage. Here is the bottom line: If you show political courage and wisdom, you don't need a balanced budget amendment; and if you show no courage and no wisdom, then a balanced budget amendment will not save you. We have the constitutional power right now to pass completely balanced budgets. Indeed, one of our recent Presidents, Bill Clinton, saw to it that we posted not just balanced budgets, but big surpluses in 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2001, all of it done without a constitutional amendment. Mr. Speaker, if this political-camouflaged constitutional amendment had been in place when President Obama took office with nearly 10 percent unemployment and GDP having fallen 3.5 percent over the previous year, it would have locked the Bush era recession into place and driven our country into a deep depression. If you have a Congress that can't balance the budget, you don't need a new constitutional amendment; you need a new Congress. If you have a majority that won't govern responsibly, you don't need to spray-paint political graffiti all over our Constitution; you need a new political program and new political vision. They burned fiscal discipline and budget planning to the ground with their tax bill. Let's not throw the Constitution into the bonfire, too. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Costa).

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Deutch).