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[Pages H4397-H4398]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
OUR ECONOMY IS SICK
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from
Massachusetts (Mr. Kennedy) for 5 minutes.
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. Speaker, this administration continues to tell us
that our economic recovery is chugging along, that it has even been
hypercharged under President Trump.
They say there is well over 7.5 million unfilled jobs and 6 million
people looking for work, that wages are beginning to pick up. The stock
market has reached record highs and the unemployment rate, record lows.
So why aren't our constituents celebrating, saving, and spending at
equally historic rates?
Mr. Speaker, everyone in this Chamber knows what I am talking about.
They can feel it. Why does it all seem so fragile, like this country is
walking on economic eggshells?
Because that is how it feels to American families every single day.
Because in today's America, you can work a 12-hour shift, 7 days a
week, year after year--get in one car accident on your way home from
work and end up bankrupt.
Because the cost of a college education is leaving a generation of
graduates with a high-interest mortgage without the house.
Because the cost of childcare is becoming even more unaffordable than
that college degree.
Because the cost of a two-bedroom apartment swallows up the income of
a full-time minimum wage worker in every single neighborhood in our
country.
Because nearly 40 percent of Americans can't afford an unexpected
$400 medical bill, and skyrocketing pharmaceutical costs are forcing
families to open GoFundMe pages to keep their kids alive.
Just over a decade after hitting rock bottom, our economy is still
sick for a very simple reason: We haven't correctly diagnosed the cause
of that illness.
We are comforted by the improvement of external symptoms, like stock
[[Page H4398]]
prices and unemployment rates; meanwhile, our economy's heart is in
dire straits. Small businesses are shuttered, factories are fleeing,
family farms are closing, and once-prosperous American towns are barely
scraping by.
To blame for this chronic illness is a system that has whittled away
protection, opportunity, justice, and dignity for the American worker.
Our workers rise like their parents before them--early. They work
hard to provide for their family for well into the night; they skip
lunch breaks; they defer vacation; they trade with coworkers to take an
overtime shift--all to care for the ones they love. And yet the jobs
that they hold won't even allow for that.
The whole point of a job is to earn a living and make a life, to
contribute to something purposeful, to be able to provide for your
loved ones in return.
If American jobs can't meet the needs of Americans, then what is the
point? How will the greatest economy in the world possibly endure if
its people can't keep up.
Mr. Speaker, I read a story a few weeks ago about a few local Home
Depot employees who built a walker for a little boy whose parents were
not certain that insurance would cover a proper one. And just
yesterday, news sites blasted a story of a 9-year-old little boy in
California who used his own allowance to pay off the lunch debts of his
classmates.
The goodness of those workers, of those children is incredible, and
thank God we have people like them among us. But a moral, a just, a
fair, an accountable, and a decent economy wouldn't call those stories
heartwarming but heartbreaking, a damning indictment of a system that
bars countless Americans of basic necessity, particularly in their
moments of deepest need.
A moral capitalism would put quality on the same page as quantity. It
wouldn't just ask for integrity and decency from the public and private
sectors running our economic show, it would demand it, with laws that
work in tandem to guarantee that when our kids get sick, we can take
care of them; when our roof falls, we can repair it; when our stomachs
ache, we can fill them; and when we tire, we can rest.
Mr. Speaker, that shouldn't be too much for anyone to ask.
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