Floor Statements

Let me thank you, Congressman Pocan.

One of the great things about this 113th Congress is that you and a number of other awesome new Members have joined us to really lend your creativity or expertise to advocating for the American people, the American working man and woman. You hail from the great State of Wisconsin, which is where I think collective bargaining began.

Am I right about that?

Congressman, you come from a State, ``Fighting Bob'' La Follette. We all know about his wonderful legacy.

And we all love Tammy Baldwin. When she told us she was running for the Senate, we didn't know how anybody could fulfill her tremendous legacy, but you've walked into this building, and you have stepped up right away. So I just want to the say thank you for the work that you're doing.

Just if I may take a few moments to talk about the Back to Work Budget.

There will be all kinds of budgets being discussed. The Republican budget authored by Congressman Ryan has already been the subject of a lot of conversation.

I would submit, Mr. Speaker, that the real criteria that we should use to evaluate a budget is how well it puts people back to work, and that's why we have the Back to Work Budget. The Back to Work Budget is about--guess what--putting people back to work.

Our budget is not an austerity budget. In our budget, we don't try to compete with how many people we can lay off and how many programs we can shut down. We say to the American people, We don't have a debt crisis. We have a debt problem in the out-years, but we don't have a debt crisis. Do you know what kind of crisis we've got? A job crisis. You know what? We've got to fix it.

In 1976 when we passed the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act, Americans regarded it as a national outrage that we had 6.3 percent unemployment. We have 7.7 percent now. That's way better than at the height of the recession. I remember in January of 2009, we were losing 700,000 jobs a month, and we're now adding them. But we are not adding them nearly fast enough.

I think that a lot of credit goes around due to the fact that we've had 36 months of positive job growth, but we don't have enough yet. So I think we need a budget that reflects the national priority of putting people back to work.

Mr. Speaker, as the people will stand back and say, well, is this budget good or is this budget bad? I'm hearing so much from the talking heads on television. I think, Mr. Speaker, the people need to ask themselves a very simple question: Does this budget put people back to work or not?

Congressman Ryan's budget, the Republican budget, according to the Congressional Budget Office, is going to lay off a lot of people. According to the Economic Policy Institute, it would be 2 million people in 2014. That's a lot of people. We don't need to be laying people off. We need to be hiring them.

So I want to turn back to you, Mr. Pocan, because I don't want to just talk the whole time. But I do want to say, the Back to Work Budget is a budget that puts Americans back to work, and I think that's a good thing.

In a moment, we can talk about one of my constituents.

Again, Congressman Pocan, thank you for your truly spoken words.

I just want to tell a few folks a couple of things. One is there is an alternative to Congressman Ryan's budget and that of the Republicans, and it's called the Back to Work Budget. There's going to be a Democratic Caucus budget, which I'm sure will put Americans back to work, too. But so far, in terms of the ones that have been released, the Back to Work Budget is the right budget. Ezra Klein says so. If folks want to look at Ezra Klein's recent zcolumn today, he says this is the right budget. Look at Jared Bernstein. He's thumbs-up on the Back to Work Budget. If you want to see economists and noted journalists who really scrutinize this stuff, evaluate the budgets, they'll tell you about the Back to Work Budget.

What I'd like to do for a moment, though, is to tell you about a constituent, Mr. Mark Krey. Mark Krey asked me to share his story. It goes like this:

I'm a special education paraprofessional at Heritage Middle

School. I live in St. Paul, Minnesota.

That's Mark right there.

Last year, we had an average of 28 kids per class in middle

school. This year, it's up to 35 kids.

That is like a big jump.

If a class has special education students, the teacher gets

a special education paraprofessional like me to help, so then

you have 35 students with two adults in the classroom. That's

just not the way to educate our future Americans. Our class

sizes keep going up, and the services are going down. More

budget cuts would be devastating to my school district and to

schools across the country. My coworkers and I would face

furloughs and layoffs, and the kids we serve would lose out

on the quality education they need to be future leaders.

I want to thank Mark Craig for caring about kids with special education needs and also for caring, not just about the individual kid, but about the system in which the kid's going to school. We can't just keep on dis-investing in kids like this, Mr. Speaker. We've got to throw the shoulder behind these kids, not abandon them.

One of the fundamental differences between Republicans and Democrats and the Back to Work Budget versus the Ryan budget is that, look, the Republicans, I don't doubt their compassion. They care about people, and they donate to charities; but it seems like they don't believe that government can help anyone. They think, oh, government can't do any good. Just cut it and cut it because it can't do any good.

That's absolutely wrong. All you've got to do is ask a teacher like Mark Craig, who every day teaches kids who have learning disabilities and who could be awesome, but if their budgets are cut and if there are tons of kids in the classroom, they really can't.

The Back to Work Budget recognizes a central truth, which is that, yes, it's the private sector that is a very important part of our American culture and part of our American way of life, but it's also the public sector and the mixed economy working together that helps Americans succeed.

The Back to Work Budget says we're going to rebuild infrastructure, get rid of those crumbling bridges and roads, put in some energy grids, fix our wastewater treatment, put in some transit, put in some high- speed rail. We're going to do that. Then we're also going to engage the private sector with the Make Work Pay credit. Then we're going to do things like help support local heroes like Mark Craig, who is a paraprofessional in the education sector, but also cops. In my home State of Minnesota, we're going to have a cut, because of the sequester, of $200,000. This is money that we use to train police officers to be better and more effective and to serve the public better, and we're not going to have that.

I'm not here to put my friends on the other side of the aisle down. I'm here to say they've got another vision of America, and that vision of America is that government can't help people and that government can't do anything right. They're wrong. The interstate highway system, hey, that's government. The interstate highway is government. There are police who walk the beat and make sure that the shopkeeper's stuff is not ripped off. That's government. So this whole thing about, oh, government is always wrong is wrong, and it's time for the American people to say responsive government does great things for the American people, along with the private sector, and we need to stop this free market extremism.

With that, I'm going to yield back to the gentleman from Wisconsin. I'm going to be around a little more. I know we've been joined by the gentleman from Florida. I am very happy to have him back in Congress after a 2-year hiatus. He was awesome then and he is awesome now, so I'll be listening carefully.

Madam Speaker, I'd like to talk to you about Lucy. Lucy is not the name of the person I'm referring to, although she is absolutely real. I can't use her name because Lucy still lives in fear of her abuser, a man she was married to.

Lucy is from a nation in West Africa. The man who was abusing her, physically and sexually, and mistreating her would tell her and threaten her--based on her immigration status to the United States that she was hoping to obtain--he would threaten her and tell her, I'm going to hold this against you; I'm going to do this to you; don't you dare leave me.

The Violence Against Women Act's self-petition process was a lifeline and a savior to her. She was able to explain the extreme violence that she lived through and suffered through all the time, and she was able to separate from her husband and seek a way to become a citizen and to stay in this country and get rid of her abuser. Sadly, the House version rolls this protection back. That's why you should support the Senate version.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, my name is Congressman Keith Ellison, and I would like to open up by talking about the progressive message. The progressive message is the message articulated by the Progressive Caucus, and the Progressive Caucus is that organization within this body, within this Congress, that is here to unapologetically say that all Americans should have the right to go to the doctor and get basic health care in this richest country in the history of the world. All Americans should have civil and equal rights and be treated fairly based on whatever color, whatever their sexual preference might be, whatever nation they might be from.

We're the ones who say let's have comprehensive immigration reform with a path towards citizenship, and let's absolutely pass the DREAM Act. The Progressive Caucus is that caucus that boldly and unapologetically says Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are great programs; and we need to protect them not only for today's seniors but for tomorrow's seniors, too.

I would like to start out, Mr. Speaker, by talking a little bit, as I talk about the progressive message, starting out with just a few observations about the State of the Union speech. I personally thought the State of the Union speech was awesome. I thought President Obama was great, and I was really proud of President Obama as he delivered that State of the Union speech in this very Chamber.

This Chamber was full of dignitaries from all over the world-- ambassadors, Senators, the United States Supreme Court. And in front of them, in front of the American people, President Obama specifically identified 24 Americans who joined Members of Congress as their guests. And these folks who President Obama identified were victims of gun violence. I was so proud to see President Obama specifically give these folks encouragement to keep on speaking out, continue to tell their story so that we can arrive at a place where the U.S. Congress will be on their side to bring forth sensible, sane gun violence prevention.

You know, President Obama's wife, our First Lady, Michelle Obama, had seated next to her her own guest, parents of young Hadiya Pendleton whose life was taken away from her. She was shot down in Chicago. But only a few weeks before, she had been performing for her country at the President's inauguration.

And so whether it was ordinary Members of Congress who just brought different people, or it was the President or the First Lady, the people who can speak most eloquently about the need for sane, sensible gun violence reform were here, Mr. Speaker. They were here and were present in this gallery so they could be a witness and a presence on the need.

And what did President Obama say? He said give us a vote. He said give us a vote. Now, I say to the Republican House majority: Why are you afraid of a vote? Let's have a vote. Let's count who is for sane, sensible gun violence prevention and who is not; who is for closing loopholes that allow people to escape background checks; and who's for filling up background checks and making sure that anybody who gets a firearm, an instrument that is dangerous by any account, at least we know that this person is sane and legally qualified to have one. Let's see. Let's have a vote. I don't think that anyone should be afraid of the vote, because if you are proud to say, no, we don't want any background checks, then stand up and say that. Be on Mr. LaPierre's side of the NRA. But if you believe we need to make sure that guns stay out of the wrong hands, that's a vote that the American people should have, and I was so proud that the President made that clear.

I personally think that the President was right in saying give us a vote when it comes to things like high-capacity magazines. You know, these high-capacity magazines, designed for the military, don't have any place on our streets. And the people who want to stand up and defend them, let them defend them. Let them defend them right here on the floor if they have the audacity to do so. And let us talk about millions of Americans, over the course of years, who have been tragically injured and hurt with bad gun policy.

Let us talk about the victims in Aurora who were shot by somebody with a high-capacity clip. Let us talk about people who were victims in Milwaukee. Let us give the message about the folks who were shot down in Tucson by somebody with a high-capacity clip.

The fact is that the President said give us a vote, and I agree 100 percent. We need a vote on these sane, sensible gun reforms.

I'm going to leave this topic now, Mr. Speaker; but I do want to just make mention of my own guest. My own guest was a young man named Sami Rahamin. Sami, 17 years old, a brilliant young man, but really just a regular teenager, he happened to be on a bus going to Madison, Wisconsin, when he saw a message come across his phone which said there was a shooting in what he knew was his neighborhood.

He texted back to his father and said: Dad, be careful because there's supposedly a shooting in the neighborhood. But the text never came back because one of the victims of that shooting was Sami's dad.

Ruvin Rahamin was an immigrant to the United States. He came to the United States in search of the American Dream, but he died the American nightmare because a person who is mentally unsound, mentally unstable, easy access to the most dangerous weapons came to a work site and shot down five people, including Ruvin who was an awesome guy, a wonderful constituent of mine. He's missed. But because of his son carrying on the legacy, he will never be forgotten because Sami is telling the story about how much we need sane, sensible gun prevention measures.

So enough about the gun issue. The State of the Union speech was awesome for another reason, which I definitely want to make note of, and that is the fact that he went right to the very heart of what I believe is the defining issue of our time, and that is income and wealth equality in our country. Our country, this is the land of opportunity. And we know that some people are rich and some people are middle class and some people are poor. We believe we're a country that can provide a ladder up for anybody who wants to work hard. And for those people who are too sick to work or too aged to work or too young to work, we believe in the social safety net to take care of them.

We believe in income and economic mobility in America. And yet the President put his finger right on it when he talked about how we've seen people making $14,000 a year working full time; but because they are paid so little, they are still in poverty.

I was so proud the President made this point. It's a point that needs to be made. There are people working in restaurants, people who are cleaning up, people in our hospitals, people who are doing the really tough jobs. I'm talking about the jobs where you've got to take a shower after you get off work, not take a shower going to work, you've got to take one when you're done with your day's work because you've been working hard, you've been building things, you've been maybe cleaning up things, you've been lifting people, you've been doing the hard work. And many of these folks are scraping by on really low wages. The President clearly has a heart for these folks and wants to see them come up. And I was glad the President was able to do that.

Mr. Speaker, you should know that over the past 30 years income for the average American has stayed flat, while the richest 1 percent of Americans have seen their income more than triple. This has not happened by accident. It has been a set of policies put in place through the Tax Code, through trade policy, through the loss of manufacturing, and a number of things.

There's been a number of policies that have gotten us to this place, but there's been one philosophy, and the philosophy is simply this: if we give a lot of money to the richest Americans, maybe they will take their excess wealth and put that into plant and equipment and hire people.

This is known as supply-side economics. We don't want to have any regulations on them. They can do what they want with the water, they can do what they want with the meat, they can do what they want with the air. No regulations or against regulations. We don't want to tax them. They don't have to pay for our roads, our bridges, our schools; they don't have to do anything like that. They get to keep all this money. And it's all under the assumption that they will take this money that they amass and put it into plant and equipment and hire people.

Well, this philosophy has proven to have failed; this philosophy has caused income inequality in America. And the President correctly said that we have got to do something to create more economic viability for the poor and middle class in America. I was so happy to see him do it.

Mr. Speaker, you should know, the President didn't say this, but it's absolutely true, that the wealth of the richest 1 percent is over 225 times larger than the average household, higher than it has ever been, higher than it has ever been.

Mr. Speaker, we look back at the Gilded Age and we think, oh, boy, wasn't income inequality bad way back then. Well, it's worse now. We've got to do something about it, and our President knows that. I am very pleased to see that. And the President, while he gave a message of economic hope and understanding to the working and middle classes of our country, the politician who gave the alternative, Mr. Marco Rubio, when he wasn't getting glasses of water in the middle of his speech, he just really articulated the same old thing: money for the rich, less for everybody else.

Mr. Speaker, we cannot continue to give tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires while cutting investments that the middle class relies on, while cutting programs that help local governments keep on police, keep on teachers, keep on people who fix our roads and firefighters. We cannot cut the Federal workforce, as is about to happen--I'll talk about sequester in a little while--and we cannot make these economic decisions and hope to have a strong economy.

We've got to invest in our roads, our bridges, our grids, our electrical power grids in transit to move people around quickly. We've got to make these investments. We've got to invest in research; we've got to invest in our schools. This is what's going to make America a strong country. This is what's going to put more people to work. More people paying taxes means we're going to have more taxes, and that will help us lower the deficit.

The Republicans have it all wrong. They think that by slashing the Federal Government, then that's going to make our economy better. All it's going to do is create a situation where you've got more people out of work, fewer people paying taxes, fewer people putting in tax revenue, and then the deficit will go up.

I'm going talk about the sequester in a moment; but I just want to say, as I highlight a few things about the State of the Union speech, how important I thought the President's remarks were.

Let me turn for a moment--another thing about the State of the Union speech--Mr. Speaker, on the issue of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. First of all, I want to encourage people to not refer to these programs as entitlements. I don't even like doing it myself right now.

What they really are is social insurance. You know how insurance works. You pay a premium and then when you need it, you can use it. Well, you get 6 percent taken out of your paycheck every week or two weeks or a month or however often you get paid. You're paying into Social Security, you're paying into Medicare, you're paying into Medicaid.

The bottom line is these social insurance programs are not some giveaway; they're not welfare. They are important social insurance programs to provide income security for people when they are aged, when they are too ill to work and disabled, or when their parents die and they need support. That's what these programs are about.

I'm glad that we are here to talk about how we preserve these programs. The President mentioned it. He said he wanted to strengthen Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid for generations to come. I quite agree with this. He said:

But any reform should come through protecting these

programs, not just cutting these programs to finance tax cuts

for the wealthy.

I believe that we should not have any benefit cuts to these programs. We don't need to. There's plenty of places to cut, plenty of loopholes to close, and we can get money elsewhere. But I'm glad the President made mention of the program.

I also want to mention, Mr. Speaker, that one of the places we can find savings for social insurance programs is we need to allow Medicare part D to negotiate lower drug prices. Medicare part D is a prescription drug benefit that the Republicans negotiated and passed in 2003. This particular program put into law that there could be no negotiation of drug prices. This has made the program more expensive. About $158 billion would be attainable as savings if we were allowed negotiation.

The President also said we're going to get out of Afghanistan. I think this is great. The President announced that we would bring 34,000 troops home from Afghanistan by this time next year. That's fantastic. My own son is a member of the U.S. Military. I'm very proud of that. I actually don't want to see

him deployed to Afghanistan. I want to see him in a place where he can defend this Nation, as he wants to do. I think that it's time for us to go home.

The President didn't say we're going to abandon Afghanistan. We will be there diplomatically, we will be there training their soldiers, but sovereignty means that you protect yourself. It's time for the Afghan people who want to be sovereign to take responsibility for their own security.

I want to turn now to the subject of immigration. I think right now, and I think the President made clear, that we may be at a point, and I pray that we are, where comprehensive immigration reform is within the reach of Congress to pass.

I'm proud to be joined by my good friend Congressman Jared Polis of Colorado. This is an important issue to you, Congressman, and I want to yield to you to share your thoughts on immigration.

I do appreciate the gentleman from Colorado. Congressman Polis, you have been on the mark on this thing ever since you stepped into this body, and there are literally I think millions of people who appreciate your advocacy. I just want to mention a few points and then, of course, invite you to dive back in.

The President does have a proposal on immigration reform. It's reasonable. It's a commonsense starting point. Republicans and Democrats need to find a way, as Congressman Polis just said. But it is a clear path toward a legal status for thousands who are already in the U.S. working and paying taxes. It's a process for family reunification. It's a workable employment verification system with penalties for employers who knowingly hire people who are not in status. It is a reasonable enforcement.

But I just want to say this, and I want to invite Congressman Polis to react. We've put about $18 billion into border issues so far. One of the real things about comprehensive immigration reform is, we hear people talk about the border, the border, the border. Well, President Obama has done tons on the border--for some of us, too

much--but the border issue is not the problem. The real problem is the other part.

I yield to the gentleman from Colorado to see if you have any thoughts about this matter.

Thank you, Congressman. I'm going to wrap up in about 5 minutes or so. But I just want to hit a few things that need to be touched on. One is that the Progressive Caucus is very concerned about this looming sequestration. Now folks out there this evening, Mr. Speaker, might think, sequestration, what is that? Is that like when you go on jury duty or something? No. Sequestration is what we're calling some really dramatic cuts to Federal spending that are coming up in about 2 weeks.

And now you're thinking, How did we end up here? Here is what happened.

In August 2011, the Republicans had taken the majority in that session, the first session of the 112th Congress, in January, and they started out with an agenda to dramatically reduce the size of government. They started out with something called Cut, Cap and Balance, and they wanted to cut all kinds of programs. They never wanted to touch defense, but they wanted to cut the Federal Government. I'm talking about Head Start, Women Infants, and Children nutrition, programs that help support State and local governments, for police, fire, all kinds of stuff like that, they wanted to cut. And they wanted to cut big-time. They wanted to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

And so they came forward with this proposal. Now, they knew they couldn't get it past the Senate, but they said, Oh, the debt ceiling. The debt ceiling, we can use that as a lever to make the Democrats give us significant cuts to the Federal budget.

So what they did, in August 2011, they said that we're going to allow--we're not going to raise the debt ceiling. We're going to allow the Federal Government to default on previously acquired obligations of the United States--so not pay our bills that we already acquired and risk our triple A credit rating--if you do not impose dramatic cuts.

And so what the President did is said, Okay, we're going to give you some cuts up front and we'll set up something called the supercommittee. Three Democrats from the House, three Republicans from the House, three Republicans from the Senate, three Democrats from the Senate, we'll call that the supercommittee, and they are going to work out a compromise and give us an up-or-down vote on some more cuts. But if they don't, then we're going to have this thing called the sequester and there will be across-the-board cuts in a dramatic and really imposing way.

The sequester is what we're facing now because the supercommittee failed. Now, the supercommittee didn't just fail. What we didn't know is that when the Republicans, both House and Senate, appointed their members of the supercommittee, all of them had signed a promise to a man named Grover Norquist never to raise any taxes. And so what happened is that they got on this supercommittee and refused to negotiate. Democrats said, We'll do some cuts, but we need some revenue. We need to raise some taxes and close some loopholes.

Republicans said, No way, and Democrats said, Well, wait a minute. So you want it all cuts and no raising taxes. They said, That's right, we're not going to negotiate with you on this.

And so the supercommittee failed in its work. When it failed in its work, that meant that we were going to deal with sequester, and that's where we are now.

Sequester is going to impose automatic, arbitrary cuts that could lay off, according to the Congressional Budget Office, up to about 750,000 people. There are going to be cuts in domestic spending and cuts to military spending. Some of us think that military cuts are warranted. Others of us are absolutely concerned about the people who are going to be affected by these domestic cuts.

Let me wrap up. I just want to say that I am concerned that several Republicans seem real cavalier about sequester, and you should look at the list. The Progressive Caucus' solution is to repeal sequester. What we would propose to do with our legislation is to say 50 percent cuts, 50 percent revenue. We already cut $1.7 trillion in revenue, and then last New Year's Eve we got some money in the door through raising taxes and now we need to balance to 50-50. This is what we call the Balancing Act.

Our bill would bring it to balance by raising money through closing loopholes, carried interest, jets and yachts, stuff like that. Oh, yeah, you didn't know they could write off their jets and their yachts? Oh, yeah, they can. And then put about $300 billion into jobs.

Let me wrap up by saying the Balancing Act, you can go online and look it up. It's a great program. We urge you to support it. In the last 1 second, if I may--I've promised my friend 20 minutes and I'm messing up right now.

On February 22, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder case. This threatens to take away serious voting rights. I'm going to be talking about this, because democracy must prevail. We have not reached the point where everybody has a fair vote in this country. I don't have the time to elaborate on it now, but please be aware that this Shelby County v. Holder is a critical issue. The Supreme Court is going to take it up on the 27th of February. We need to be aware of that if we want to believe that you ought to be able to cast a fair vote in America.

With that, I am going to yield to the gentleman from Colorado. Thank you very much, Congressman.

With the understanding that the gentleman will get the balance of the time remaining of

my hour, then I will yield the floor back.

I have a parliamentary inquiry.

My inquiry is, if I yield back, does the gentleman from Colorado get the balance of the time I have remaining?

And further inquiry, are there 25 minutes left?

In that case, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, thank you for allotting the time. I appreciate it very much.

My name is Keith Ellison. I'm here today to reflect on what I believe was a historic speech for the ages yesterday. President Obama met the historic challenge, met the historic moment; and I just want to talk about my feelings about how important that speech really, really was. President Obama, you should understand, was called upon to make his second inaugural address. And inaugural addresses, historically, are speeches that people don't always remember, but there are some that we will never forget because of how important they are.

His first speech 4 years ago was a speech during which, over the course of 18 minutes, he talked about trying to reach out diplomatically. He talked about the importance of trying to come together to solve common problems. And I think the basic attitude of the first speech was conciliation in an effort to try to work out problems both foreign and domestic.

In this speech, however, President Obama set forth what I believe was a clear, concise agenda based on values that he owns. I was so proud to hear President Obama talk about the need

to address climate change. He reminded us that you can believe in climate change or you can disbelieve in climate change, but the fact is our storms are harder, the drier weather we are seeing is causing forest fires, and we are seeing climatic catastrophes associated with climate change. We're seeing the consequences of it. So if we ignore the cause, we cannot ignore the consequence. I was so proud to hear him say that.

He also spoke out boldly for equality, human rights and civil rights for all Americans. I remember that he said, and you may recall, too, Mr. Speaker, he said, we will never forget Stonewall, Seneca Falls, and Selma. These are three iconic moments in civil rights history when he talked about the women's rights movement, the gay rights movement, and the African American movement for civil rights; but they all added up to one thing, which is that an American is an American is an American. It doesn't matter what your color is, what your sex is, or who you love and want to be with. What matters is that you are an American and entitled to the full protection of the law in these United States.

I think it was very important for him to do so. It represented an evolutionary moment in American history that a President being inaugurated into his second term would stand up for the first time and say ``civil and human rights for all people.'' I thought it was a great moment, and I found myself cheering even though I hadn't planned on doing so.

But he didn't stop there. He specifically said we need to stand here and protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, three critical programs this Nation depends on, three critical programs that seniors depend upon. But not only do seniors depend on them. Also we know that seniors and people live on survivors benefits. When their loved one who gets Social Security dies, children are entitled to get survivors benefits. And these survivors benefits are literally putting food on the tables for millions of families all across this country.

But not only that. People with disabilities get Medicare and Social Security. And he stood up for these programs, reminding us that this richest country in the history of the world--the richest country in the history of the world--does not need to throw its poor, its vulnerable, and its aged under the bus. We are not too broke to make sure that our senior citizens, our children who are on survivors benefits, and people who are vulnerable economically, we're not too poor to make sure that there's something for them and that they have a livelihood and a way to make it forward.

Imagine the richest country in the history of the world saying, I'm sorry, Grandma, but we got to cut your benefits because we can't make it. The reality is that when he gave that speech and he specifically identified those three programs as central to the American Dream, the American promise, I was proud. And I said, that's right. And I tell you, I was so happy to hear him say that.

But he didn't even stop there. He talked about the need for immigration reform and the fact that for so many people around the world, America is still the land of opportunity and that we cannot sit by as 12 million people live in our country in the shadows with no pathway toward citizenship. The President specifically called on us to do something about it.

Now, the President knows that guns are a volatile issue. He didn't smack the issue of gun violence prevention right on the head, but he did mention the victims of Sandy Hook; and he did tell us that children have a right to be safe at school, thereby signaling that, you know, yeah, we are going to do some things about the proliferation of guns, high-capacity clips, and background checks, things that make sense, not taking away the right to own a gun, but to do commonsense gun violence prevention measures that I think will make everybody safer. In fact, if you're looking at the news right now, you know that there was another shooting today in Texas--today--today.

So the bottom line is that the President laid out a vision, an inclusive vision, for America. The President got up in front of the world stage, all the Members of Congress, Ambassadors, Senators, the Supreme Court, and everybody assembled and said, This is the direction that we're going in. We're going to say Americans, whatever their background, are included within the promise of America. We're going to address income inequality. We're going to protect the social safety net.

Now, some pundits--you can always count on the punditry to throw salt around--they said, well, it didn't reach out to the Republicans. Well, I think that Republicans are on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid; and they probably, or at least their parents, appreciate protection of that program. Republicans live on this planet in which we see the temperature rising and the consequences of global climate change hurting more and more people. Some Republicans are black, some Republicans are Latino, and some Republicans are gay. And when they heard that they are included in Obama's vision of America, they must have felt good about that.

So I don't agree that this speech didn't reach out to the full range of the political spectrum, left and right. I think that if you're in the category that he mentioned, that no matter what your political ideology may be, that you would feel that, yes, this includes me.

Now, I think the President's speech was also great because it was courageous. No President has ever mentioned before the gay community in the United States; and most people like myself and most people are what we call straight or heterosexual.

But all of us know that there is prejudice against the gay community. There's no denying this. There's no sense in denying it. We all know that these folks are our neighbors, they're our coworkers, they're our friends, and we know that they have suffered because of prejudice against them. For a President to stand up and say this isn't right and that everybody is included in the American Dream, I thought was a great moment. It was a first. It was historic. I think that President Obama seized the historical mantle and said, I'm not going to sit up here and use a bunch of flowery, vague language. I'm going to get up here and talk about what I really believe in. I was so proud of Obama yesterday. I admired how he handled himself and what he said.

I think over the past 4 years, President Obama has, in my opinion, bent over backwards to reach out to the Republican Conference. He has really accommodated them in a whole number of ways, and yet their conference--and the record is clear--has come forward and said that their goal over the course of the last 4 years was to make him a one- term President. Well, they failed. He's a two-term President. So the question is: Are we now going to come together? Is the caucus of ``no'' now going to say there are some things we're willing to work with? I hope so.

Let me tell you. My dad was a Republican for many years. Of course, I love my dad and loved him when he was a Republican. He was what I would call a ``sensible Republican.'' He believed in watching the money. He believed in getting the most out of every dollar. He believed that the government had a limited role and shouldn't get in everyone's business. Today, we have folks who are not in the realm of even negotiation. They're willing to shut the government down, allow our country to go over the fiscal cliff and default on America's debt just to get their way. That's an extremist position. This is an extremist ideology. It's not a reasonable thing to say.

Now, some of them will come up here and talk about how big the debt and the deficit is. Wait a minute. When we say that we want to cut oil subsidies to Big Oil companies, they don't want to do that. When we want to raise some taxes on the wealthy so we can use that money to lower the deficit, they don't want to do that. I doubt anyone who says they're outraged by the debt and the deficit, and we give credible solutions on how to lower it and they say ``no''--I begin to doubt that that's really what they're concerned about.

The speech yesterday that the President gave, I believe, is a good starting point. The President is not negotiating with himself. He's declaring his position. The other side in the political divide can declare their position, and then we can come together and negotiate. I'm a huge supporter of the

President, but I kind of believe that what he used to do, he used to state his values, then he used to anticipate what the other side would want, then he used to try to come together, bring both sides together, and then he would go to the table and negotiate. So we would end up not with a liberal position, but with sort of a centrist position, and we would start out right there, and then anywhere we would go from there would be further to the right. So if we're lucky, we end up with a center-right position.

Now I think we start with, as we are proud to be the progressive liberals that we are, we start out with what we believe in, then they say what they believe in, and then we negotiate, and maybe we'll end up in the middle. But I don't want to end up in the center right anymore. I want to end up with some reasonable compromise that protects Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid; that protects civil rights for all Americans; that addresses this massive income inequality; that addresses climate change; that moves us toward a green economy; that allows people who are immigrants to have a pathway into the respectability of life in American society. The President did not disappoint last night. I believe in those things. Clearly he does, too. And I was so proud to see the President stand and deliver for these important values.

Over the next several weeks, Mr. Speaker, we're going to be in a huge debate. We just finished the whole debate on the so-called fiscal cliff. It really wasn't a fiscal cliff. That was just the name the press loved to call it, but the reality is it was a set of budgetary deadlines and tax deadlines. We were able to come up with a deal, but the worst part of the deal is what wasn't in it. That's why I voted for it. I wasn't thrilled with the deal, but the thing I didn't like about it was the stuff mostly that was not included. Because even though I was happy to extend unemployment for a year, that was good. Even though I was happy to raise taxes on the richest Americans, because I believe it's their patriotic duty to help their country out, that was good too. I believe those were good things.

I thought the fact that we did not deal with the debt ceiling, the sequester, and the continuing resolution really just put us in a position where a few months later our Republican friends would say: You're going to cut vital programs for Americans who need them, or we're going to shut down the government. You're going to cut Head Start, you're going to cut food stamps, you're going to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, or we're going to default on America's debt. This is the hardcore bargaining position they've been trying to ram down our throat.

I'll never forget Speaker Boehner, who said, ``Look, if they don't take these cuts in one loaf, we'll feed it to them a slice at a time.'' That's a quote.

And so I was concerned that this deal we just did, this so-called fiscal cliff deal, the New Year's Eve deal, even though there were things in it that I thought were good, I was concerned, Mr. Speaker, because of what wasn't in it. I believe the American people and our markets, our business people, deserve to have this budgetary issue resolved in a way so they can actually plan.

My Republican friends correctly point out that there is uncertainty when Congress doesn't solve problems, but they're the ones causing the uncertainty. In fact, they are guilty of creating the problem that they criticize the most. They say that we shouldn't kick the can down the road. They say we should have some finality. But they're the ones who are not agreeing to some finality. They say that we need to make sure that we get some real job creation, but they're the ones cutting into the public sector, causing us layoffs from the Federal Government, and therefore State governments. And of course, people who have government jobs spend money too, which leads people who they do business with to have jobs. If you work for the EPA and you go to a local grocery store, you spend money there, which allows the cashiers and the stock people to have jobs.

Everything they say they don't want it seems like that's what they're for. They don't want job cuts, they don't want job losses, but they create them. They don't want uncertainty, but they create it. They want finality, but they avoid it. It doesn't make any sense. They say they want to reduce the deficit, but they enlarge it. So my point is: What's really going on here?

I think President Obama has just kind of had enough and has said rather than trying to figure out how to do a deal with these folks who keep moving the goalpost, I'm just going to say what I'm about, I'm going to declare what my values are, and they can come to the table and represent their own point of view, and we'll find a way, hopefully, to get to a point where we can agree and go forward. Even if we hate the deal, even if we don't like it, at least maybe we can move forward so Americans can at least be able to plan for their future.

Mr. Speaker, I think that Presidential inauguration speeches are important. They do lay out an important path. I was reviewing, Mr. Speaker, the inaugural speeches of President Abraham Lincoln. I'm a huge fan of Abraham Lincoln. I wouldn't call myself an expert or scholar of Lincoln, but I'm sort of an amateur reader of everything about Lincoln.

In Lincoln's first speech, he was conciliatory. You will recall, Mr. Speaker, Abraham Lincoln, when he was elected, as soon as he was elected, Southern States began to secede even before he was inaugurated. South Carolina, Mississippi, the other States, they started seceding each before he was inaugurated. As soon as he was elected, some of them said, We are out of here.

So when he came to his inaugural speech, the first one, he was trying to keep the Southern States in and trying to keep the border States from leaving. So he said some things that were so conciliatory, that even the abolitionists of the time thought that he wasn't what they were hoping for. He wasn't really against slavery. He said he was, but they thought that he didn't prove it. They thought he was halting, they thought he was too cautious, and they criticized him for this.

But after the Civil War broke out and so much blood was spilled and so much harm was done to our Nation--620,000 people died in the Civil War--President Lincoln came back 4 years later. On that speech, his second inaugural speech, it was a bold defense of the union cause and an argument that slavery must go.

He didn't pull any punches on the second one. Now, he was not bodacious, and he was not offensive--he was trying to be as conciliatory as he could be--but he made very clear that America was going to be, one, whole and not divided and, two, that it would be slave free. He didn't water it down, as some pundits think that Obama should water his position down. The second time around, after we went through all the big fights, President Lincoln stood firm and spoke firmly and clearly but also in a conciliatory way about what he believed in. I don't know. Maybe there were some people back in 1865 who might have said, Well, Lincoln ought to be a little more sympathetic to the South, and he ought to try to work with them more.

Look, I'm not trying to compare this budgetary fight to the horror of slavery. There is no comparison, not at all. I'm not trying to say that our Republican colleagues are in any way sympathetic to slavery. They're not. That's not true. I'm simply trying to make the point that when you start out trying to work with somebody and you can't get anywhere, and when you go through all the travails and difficulties of trying to get somewhere and you can't, then at the end of the fight, if you win, you're probably going to say, Look, I tried to work with you and you wouldn't work with me. I ended up coming out on top on this thing, so now I'm going to bargain for my position.

This is not to say the President is not going to negotiate. This is not to say the Democrats aren't going to negotiate. We are going to negotiate. We believe that the democratic process requires an eye toward compromise, but I also believe that we went to our constituents in 435 districts around this country and that we told them what we believed in and we told them what we stood for, so they deserve for us to at least articulate that position. If we have to make a compromise on some

things for the sake of the Union, for the sake of the Nation, we should do that, but we should never act like we don't believe in what we do, in fact, believe in, which is Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid; which is confronting income inequality; which is equality for all Americans regardless of race, color, sexual preference; and all that kind of stuff. We should say what we believe in. We should say that we believe that a woman should earn every penny that a man makes. We should say these things. We should not be afraid to be who we are and articulate our vision of the world. Then when we go to the negotiating table, there might be some things we have to give up, and there might be some things we get, but we should never make any mistake about what we're all about.

So I'm really proud of the President tonight. I feel the President did a fine job for America yesterday, and I wish the President well. I do know that the President, in being a man of reason, will listen to Republican arguments as to what they would like to see happen, but I also believe, based on what he said yesterday, that he is going to fight for what he believes in, too. He warned us against dogmatism, and he also said Look, don't confuse absolutism with principle. So that's sort of a warning to our side a little bit in his saying, look, I am going to have to negotiate some things. But when he sits around that table, we know where he's starting from, and that makes me feel good.

I wish all the best for this Presidency and this Congress because I think that, if the Republicans are successful and if the Democrats are successful and if the President is successful, then America will be successful. So I'm here to say that I hope we do negotiate, but there are some things that, quite frankly, I'm not willing to cave in on-- Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare beneficiary cuts. They're asking for cuts from the people who have already been cut.

Do you know, Mr. Speaker, that 20 percent of widowed women on Social Security have nothing but Social Security to live on, and yet we want to reduce their benefits? Do you know that a full third of widowed women on Social Security depend upon Social Security to the degree of 90 percent of their incomes? We're talking about people who are making somewhere between $17,000 and $24,000 a year to begin with. You cannot go to people who already have so little and say give me back even more.

This is at a time, because of our housing foreclosure crisis, when rents in nearly every city have gone up, and this is at a time when we have limited vitally important programs that help ease the pain of poverty for Americans. So there are some things that we are going to protect in this and that we are going to call upon the masses of Americans to protect.

Let me just say, Mr. Speaker, that today I don't have the ability to be here for the whole hour--duty calls--but I did want to offer a few reflections on the speech that was given. I also want to say a few other things as it relates to the next period coming up.

In the next few weeks, we're going to face a debt ceiling increase. In fact, we have a debt ceiling vote tomorrow. We're not voting to raise the debt ceiling; we're voting to suspend it. I think this is bad policy because markets, businesspeople, and everybody else need to know that the Congress is going to stand by the credit rating and the debts of the American people. We're not going to default, and we shouldn't threaten that we are. It's bad. It's not a good thing to do. It's important for the American people to know that, when we talk about raising the debt ceiling, Congress is not approving new spending. We're not borrowing. We're saying that we're going to pay the bills on debts we already acquired.

It's kind of like this: If you have a family and if somehow you're already obligated to pay a mortgage, if you don't have the money for your mortgage, you may have to go to your cousin or your brother or your uncle and say, I need you to help me until next week so I can pay the mortgage. So you now have borrowed money to pay an obligation that you already owe, an obligation that, if you don't pay, you will default on. You can also have a situation in which somebody doesn't have enough money but goes into a local electronics store and says, I'm going to buy that big screen television right there on my credit card.

Those are two different scenarios--borrowing to meet obligations you've already acquired and borrowing to buy stuff you really cannot afford. Raising the debt ceiling is the first one, Mr. Speaker. It's borrowing to meet obligations we already have. It's not borrowing for new expenditures. So, when we appropriate money and when we have had appropriated expenditures in the past, we might raise the debt ceiling to meet those obligations, which we should do, because to do otherwise is to say that America is going to default on its debts, which we cannot do, not just for our own sakes, but this would cause international harm to the world economy.

People are confused about this whole debt ceiling debate, and I don't believe that it's right for Republicans to just suspend the debt ceiling and then to put a bunch of stuff in there about the Senate and all that kind of stuff, some provisions that are blatantly unconstitutional, too, by the way. So I'm disappointed in this thing that's coming up, but people need to know that this debt ceiling vote is coming up.

They should also know that the sequester is coming up. With the New Year's Eve deal, we delayed the sequester 2 months. These are massive cuts to the tune of, I think, around $89 billion that are going to be put on the Pentagon and domestic spending. They're dumb cuts. We're not looking at specific programs and evaluating their worth and eliminating some and keeping others. We're just, like, ``chop.'' This is no way to budget for a Nation, and I hope we can delay the sequester, but it's coming up soon. Republicans have vowed that they want even more cuts, maybe even in addition to the sequester, to negotiate. I think we should remind everybody that we've already had $1.7 trillion in cuts and that we just did $600 billion in new revenue. That's about $2.3 trillion. How much more cutting do we need to do, particularly when we're talking about vital programs for Americans?

So, Mr. Speaker, if we're going to make cuts, we should cut things that we really don't need. For example, Medicare part D, which passed in 2003, prohibits Medicare from negotiating drug prices with the pharmaceutical companies. Now, the Veterans Administration does negotiate for drug prices all the time, but Medicare is prohibited from doing so. Basically, if the pharmaceutical company says this drug costs this, the government has to pay, and we can't use our large buying power to lower a price.

We should change that. We should introduce competitive bidding. That would save us a quite a bit of money, Mr. Speaker. That's a way we could save money.

Here's another thing we should do. We should eliminate oil subsidies, coal subsidies, and natural gas subsidies. The fossil fuel industry, a highly profitable industry, making a lot of money, a profitable industry, there's no reason in a free market economy we should be subsidizing a profitable company. It doesn't make sense. Even if you are a free market person, you have a hard case to make that we should be handing Exxon, Chevron, and Mobil money. We shouldn't do it. We should end it, and any real conservative would agree with me on that. Now, if somebody is just trying to get money to friends, that's another story. But if you're really about reducing the deficit, that's one way to do it.

You know, there are a number of things we could cut. There's a lot of Cold War weapons systems that could be eliminated. Our nuclear arsenal could be reduced without threatening our national security, and we could save money in doing it.

There are ways to reduce the budget. There are ways to do it, and we probably should. But let's do it in a way where we keep Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, aid for college students, money for investing in medical research, and groundbreaking research to give life to brand-new industries. You know, a lot of people don't know, Mr. Speaker, this thing we call the Internet was started with a government program--something called DARPA. A government grant helped fund the Internet. Yes, it

did. I don't know about Al Gore, but I do know that the government, a government grant, put the money into the form that we now know as the Internet. The government did that.

The government funded the project for mapping the human genome. The government. The government's not always bad.

So we should keep some programs. We should lower others, but we've got to think about this thing in a different way than we are.

All I want to say, Mr. Speaker, as I begin to wrap up is that it is an honor and a privilege to be able to serve in this, the greatest deliberative body in the world. And even though we have big fights with our Republican colleagues, it's an honor to serve with them, too. We're both here, sent here by the 435 districts that we represent to argue our positions and try to come to some kind of solution. I believe that we can have solutions if everyone has an eye toward compromise, but that depends upon everybody starting out carrying out the vision of the district they represent.

My district wants me to stand up for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, stand up for civil and equal rights for everybody, including gay people. My district wants me to find a pathway to citizenship for immigrants who are here. My district wants me to do something about climate change and move our economy toward a green economy. Now, I'm going to start there, and then we can negotiate with our colleagues on where we end up, but I'm proud that the President stood up for our values. I think his speech was groundbreaking, historic, and gave real energy to people who share his value system.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I have to curtail my hour, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Madam Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Speaker, many years ago our friends on the conservative side of the political aisle told us that if we cut taxes for the wealthiest among us, what would happen is that they would get more money which they would use to invest in plant and equipment, and then all the rest of us working class and middle class folks would benefit by rich people having more money because then they would hire us and we'd have a stronger economy. They put this plan into implementation in 2001 and into 2003, and what followed was the most anemic decade of job growth that we have seen in many, many, many decades. If you can contrast it with the 1990s when the tax rates were actually higher, we had a much more robust economy. In fact, when President Clinton handed President Bush the reins to the government, he handed him, also, a surplus.

The fact is the conservative experiment based on the ideas of a guy named Arthur Laffer and others has failed. They don't work. They're wrong for this country. It's time for us to have some balance and to pay the bills of this country, and that means taxes.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in honor of Katrina Ann Kelley, a dedicated public servant whose service to the House of Representatives and the National School Boards Association spanned 28 years.

Katrina Ann Kelley was born on September 29, 1960, to William and Joan Kelley, in Galesburg, Illinois where she was raised along with six beloved siblings. She graduated Galesburg Sr. High School in 1978 as member of the National Honor Society before heading to Marycrest College in Davenport, Iowa, for a Bachelor of Arts in social work.

Katrina joined the staff of Congressman Lane Evans in 1984 as a District Caseworker in his Illinois office; then made the move to Washington, DC to become a Legislative Assistant. Later, Katrina served as a Legislative Assistant and a Legislative Director for Representative Charles A. Hayes of Chicago. Katrina loved her years ``on the Hill'' where she made many lifelong friends and brought her compassion for constituent service to every position. Katrina had immense respect for Congressman Evans and the late Representative Hayes and considered each of them personal mentors and lifelong friends.

Katrina took her comprehensive legislative knowledge and understanding of urban issues to the National School Boards Association, NSBA, where she served as the Director of Urban School District Advocacy, and later as the Director of the Council of Urban Boards of Education, CUBE, until her departure in 2012. Katrina helped to shape the CUBE program as a critical component of the National School Boards Association, touching over one hundred urban districts and millions of children in the United States and the Virgin Islands. Katrina's work helped urban school leaders find solutions to challenges at the local level and to improve their policy-making effectiveness, leading to improved outcomes for children. Katrina deeply believed in increasing the opportunities for all students, particularly low income and minority students.

Katrina passed away with her sisters at her side on October 9, 2012. I stand here today to honor Katrina Ann Kelley for her legacy of service to the citizens and students of the United States.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in remembrance of those who lost their lives in the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862. This year marks the 150th anniversary of the conflict, reminding us of this tragic era in Minnesota's history, and how it has shaped the lives of the Dakota people to this day.

It is easy to consider history as a list of dates--a discovery, a war, a proclamation, an election. We forget the complex human interactions that shape the past and continue to affect our communities today.

What has come to be known as the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 has its roots in the rapid expansion of Minnesota's population by white settlers, and the subsequent treatment of indigenous peoples. From 1850-1860, the numbers of white settlers in Minnesota grew from 5,000 to more than 170,000; in that same decade, Native Americans went from the majority of people in Minnesota to being outnumbered by whites 5-1. Treaties made between the Dakota people and the U.S. government pushed native communities off their ancestral lands with promises of money, food, and commodities. Forced assimilation policies further marginalized tribes by requiring the adoption of European style dress, hair, and culture. Tensions escalated when the government failed to pay promised annuities, a drought decreased the supply of food leaving many Dakota families hungry, and the U.S. government took back land set aside for Indian reservations, reducing the remaining reservation size drastically.

The first violent acts of the conflict occurred on August 17, 1862, when four young Dakota men killed five people at a farm near Acton, Minnesota. These murders divided the Dakota community; some argued it was time to go to war with the settlers who now claimed ancestral Dakota land, but much of the community wanted to maintain peace. Nevertheless, Dakota leader Little Crow led his Nation to War, understanding that the greater power of the U.S. government would most likely prevail.

The weeks of violence that followed in Southern Minnesota led to over 1,000 deaths. The U.S.-Dakota War is one of the bloodiest conflicts between a Native tribe and the U.S. government, surpassing both the conflicts of Little Big Horn and Wounded Knee. The War's end was marked by the largest mass execution in U.S. history, when 38 Dakota men were convicted in kangaroo courts and hung on December 26, 1862. Originally 303 Dakota men were tried and sentenced to death, but President Lincoln personally reviewed the cases and stayed the execution of those whose conviction was based on questionable testimony. Two additional Dakota warriors were forcibly returned from Canada and hanged at Fort Snelling in 1865.

Although the day of the execution stands out in history, the suffering of the Dakota people continued throughout the winter and into the coming years. Those Dakota who had surrendered to U.S. forces, many of whom opposed the war, were forced to march to an internment camp at Fort Snelling and suffer through a brutally cold winter filled with disease, food shortages, and assaults by soldiers and civilians alike. Hundreds perished over the winter, and those who survived were forcibly relocated to Western reservations where similar conditions led to more deaths. Some 6,000 displaced members of the Dakota community relocated to Canada and Western states and territories, and by the end of the decade a majority of the Dakota tribe had left its ancestral lands.

The U.S.-Dakota War reminds us of how the events of the past continue to reverberate to this day. Dakota tribe members are still dispersed over several states and into Canada as a direct result of this conflict. Most unfortunate, the Dakota Expulsion Act of 1863, a federal law making it illegal for Dakota people to

live in Minnesota, has yet to be repealed. In August of this year, members of the Dakota community took part in a walk through South Dakota to the Minnesota border, symbolizing the unjust forcible removal of all Dakota people from Minnesota in 1863.

The healing from the War is ongoing; honoring those we lost and remembering our complicated past should not be limited to anniversaries of the conflict. We should use this year of reflection to inform a more inclusive view of history, an appreciation of how far we've come, and recognition of all we must do to continue to support our Native communities today.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in honor of the Hard Times Cafe on the occasion of their 20th anniversary to recognize its contribution to the culture and economy of the great state of Minnesota.

Founded in 1992 as a 24-hour restaurant, the Hard Times Cafe has become a staple of the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis. The Cafe was started by eight employees out of the vestiges of a failing restaurant in the same location, The Urban Peasant. They came together to form a new cooperatively owned business that has become known for its gritty ambiance, affordable prices, and large selection of vegan and vegetarian food. The Cafe is open 22 hours a day, only closing between the hours of 4 am and 6 am.

After closing in August 2007 for required maintenance that was meant to last a few weeks, the Hard Times Cafe was forced to remain closed for a matter of months. With some assistance from a fellow Minneapolis worker cooperative, the Seward Community Cafe, they were able to reopen their doors at midnight on December 16, 2007 with many new improvements. The resilience of the workers at the Hard Times Cafe is a testament to the vitality of the American entrepreneurial spirit and the ingenuity of Minnesotans. I applaud them for taking the initiative and creating an atmosphere that is truly unique to Minneapolis.

The Hard Times Cafe also contributes to the civic engagement of the city of Minneapolis; Cam Gordon, the Minneapolis Second Ward City Council Member, holds his open office hours in the Cafe on the first Tuesday morning of each month.

I truly appreciate everything that the Hard Times Cafe has contributed to Minneapolis, and I thank them for their contributions.

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

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

My name is Keith Ellison, cochair of the Progressive Caucus along with my good friend, Raul Grijalva. I want to come before the body today, Mr. Speaker, with the Progressive message. The Progressive message is a message that the Progressive Caucus shares with people. The progressive message is very simple. It's a basic idea that America, this great land of ours, is big enough for everybody, has enough abundance for everybody, and we have natural resources which should be respected, and we should live in harmony and promote a green economy and should have civil and human rights for all people.

In the Progressive message we say that we would promote dialogue and diplomacy before we ever find ourselves in military conflicts. The Progressive message is about an inclusive America--all colors, all cultures, all faiths, an America that says if you live in this country and you want to work hard, the economy should be robust and broad enough and fair enough for you to make a good run in this economy. If you work 40 hours a week, you ought to be able to feed your family. You shouldn't have to resort to public assistance. It's talking about standing up for the rights of labor, the rights of working men and women, the right to be able to be paid fairly, the right to be able to go to the doctor, the right to look forward to a decent and fair retirement, the right to be able to see that your children will be able to get a good education that can see them through. In other words, the Progressive message is the message of an inclusive America that makes sure that our economic and our environmental lives are strong, healthy, and affirming.

We contrast this with another vision--a vision of a divided America, where not everybody counts and not everybody matters; an America in which labor and management are fighting and there's no peace; an America where there's not full inclusion of LGBT Americans or Americans who are trying to join America through immigration--a not fully inclusive America; an America in which women have to worry about their right to be able to seek out contraception or seek out equal pay for equal work. This is the America that we don't embrace. The America that we embrace embraces equality, inclusion, and opportunities.

Now where are we today? We are in the middle of a national conversation which is playing itself right here in Congress that has to do with the so-called fiscal cliff. I'm not going to use that term anymore because we're actually not on a cliff. What we are on is a set of important deadlines that we should meet and we should work at. But this imagery of a cliff and of falling over something and plummeting downward is false, and we should stop using this analogy. I know the press likes it because it adds drama. Of course, the press thrives on drama. But in truth, there are some important deadlines we should meet. But we should not surrender our deeply held views simply to get any deal done. The deal we should do should be a fair deal, it should be a deal for all, and it should be a deal that meets our most important priorities. But it should not be some force-fed thing that we accept simply because we fear going over this cliff that really doesn't exist.

You can refer to it as a set of deadlines. That's the best way to put it. That's what it actually is. And if you don't meet a deadline, then, of course, there are consequences to not meeting deadlines. And you want to avoid them. But at the same time, this idea that we've got to put up with anything that the other side may offer because we're facing a cliff is a concept that I reject, and I hope the American people reject, Mr. Speaker, because that's not really what is going on. We have a set of deadlines that we should meet. And everybody in this body should work earnestly, sincerely, and in good faith to compromise. But in terms of just accepting some bad deal just to get a deal done because of a crisis that they've threatened, we shouldn't buy into that line of thinking.

Now what are these deadlines? Well, we know that the Bush tax cuts are expiring. They'll expire for everyone, not just the top 2 percent. This is something that we don't want the American middle class to get hit with, a tax increase at this time, but we do believe the wealthiest among us should pay more. And we think that the top 2 percent should pay a higher tax rate on the money they make after $250,000 a year.

We also believe that there's more that can be done. Closing loopholes. People say, well, let's talk about that tonight too. But we see the Bush tax cuts expiring for everybody. We see the production tax credit expiring--which is something important for people who work in the wind industry and in the area of industry that promotes environmental matters. We also see the expiration of things like the estate tax, the SGR--which is the doctor fix for Medicare. We also see the sequestration, which is the outcome, the final outcome of the Budget Control Act that we passed in August 2011 which is now coming due. There will be equal defense and discretionary spending cuts on both sides, which will inflict damage.

So all these things are happening at the same time, and so the same question is going to be asked: How will this budget entanglement be resolved? Will it be resolved on the backs of people who can least afford it, or will the people who can best afford it be asked to help out?

So it's within this context, Mr. Speaker, that I come before you with the Progressive message today to try to bring some clarity to folks listening to C-SPAN today about what the real issues are, what we have to avoid, and what we have to fight for.

I submit, Mr. Speaker, that this deal that is being considered right now by the U.S. Congress and the American people--and of course the President--is still something that is subject to being changed and altered depending upon how vigorously people are willing to advocate for what's right. So I want to talk about that today. I don't want to call it the fiscal cliff--that will be the last time I use that term-- because it's not that, but there are serious fiscal issues that we should address.

Now, I want to talk about a few things that we should not be discussing and don't need to be talking about, and one of them is Social Security. Social Security does not contribute to the deficit. It's not expiring. There's no reason we have to deal with Social Security right now. It is one of those things that some people--who never liked Social Security, by the way, called it socialism even--want to change and have been wanting to change for decades, and so they create this imagery of crisis coming at the end of the year. Then what they're trying to do is say, well, we've got to change Social Security because of the so-called ``fiscal cliff''--although it's not really a cliff. So this is something that really shouldn't be on the table.

I want to encourage folks to really discuss and get the facts, Mr. Speaker, because Social Security is solvent through 2037. Does it need to be fixed? Yeah. It is true that there is slightly more money going out than coming in. But when you look at all the money that is owed to Social Security and you have the interest payments that are being made on it, it more than pays for itself for now. There are some things that could be done into the future that are not an emergency. It doesn't have to be done this second.

Social Security is probably more solvent than a whole bunch of businesses and agencies of government. To try to throw Social Security into the mix at this time is a big mistake. I believe, Mr. Speaker, it's being done because people who have been wanting to change it for decades and decades and decades want to create the idea of a crisis and then use that crisis to get Members to vote for something that is not well considered.

I insist on any changes to Social Security being well considered. I insist that there be a full-fledged debate on Social Security, not this fiscal mess that we're working through right now. But let Social Security be considered on its own freestanding basis, and if changes need to be made, we make them. But just to sort of argue that in order to solve this fiscal crisis that we're facing with these ending deadlines, these expiring deadlines, because of that we've got to deal with Social Security, Mr. Speaker, I think the American people should reject that idea.

I have brought this issue to people who say, Well, what are we going to do about Social Security? I say, Well, we're going to continue to have Social Security. Well, we've got to change it. We have the fiscal crisis coming up, don't we have to change Social Security? No, we don't. It doesn't add to the deficit. In fact, if any changes need to be made to it, they need to be on their own, freestanding.

Social Security is one of the greatest programs this country has ever produced. It helps literally millions and millions of senior citizens and people on disability and people who receive survivor benefits. It's a great program, and we should continue to support that program. We don't need to mess with it. When we do want to reform it, it needs to be something that will preserve benefits for people and allows the program to continue. It's a solid program, and it doesn't need to be in these budget entanglements. I hope Americans really get the facts.

Some people say, Well, okay, you're right, Social Security doesn't add to the deficit, but let's talk about it anyway. Okay. Well, let's talk about it for a minute anyway even though it shouldn't be considered. Here's what could be said, Mr. Speaker, by someone who wants to defend the excellent program known as Social Security.

They might say, Well, shouldn't we raise the retirement age? Again, it's an irrelevant conversation to this problem. But if they want to go down that road you can tell them, Look, we don't need to raise the retirement age because, firstly, people who are running jackhammers or people who are on their feet for their whole working life--nurses, firefighters, people who really use their bodies to earn a living--it's just not fair to them when you say we're going to raise the retirement age. If you've been a nurse picking up patients and walking, walking, walking for 30, 40 years, now all of a sudden they tell you, yeah, you used to be able to retire at 65, but we're going to move it to 70, that's just not fair to them. If you're just a white collar worker, that might be a little different, but the truth is it's going to be a big rule that everybody has to abide by, and it's not fair to a number of people, so we're against it.

Here's another reason--even the more important reason--why messing with Social Security that way is the wrong thing to do:

As you know, Mr. Speaker, over the last number of years we've seen our 401(k)s go to what? 201(k)s. We've seen American savings rates go down. We used to talk about a three-legged stool when it came to retirement: one, Social Security; two, the money you save yourself; three, the money you get from your job.

The money that we get from our jobs, we have seen pensions, guaranteed pensions become almost a thing of the past. Some people still have them--God bless them--but most workers are now having to bear the risk of their own retirement through a 401(k) plan. If the market has been down, as it has been, people's retirement savings--or at least one-third of what they were counting on--is diminished in a very significant way.

The other thing, private savings have gone down. A few years ago before the financial crisis hit in 2006 we had a savings rate of negative 2 percent, which meant people were not saving. So here we are when we're having one of the largest age cohorts in American history moving into their golden years, when they're expecting to retire, their 401(k) is a 201(k) and their pension from their own personal savings has gone down, and now we're going to tell them, your Social Security, you can't really count on that anymore. This is a problem.

We have a problem with retirement in America today. People aren't ready for it. This is the wrong time to take that one solid leg on what we used to call a three-legged stool and start sawing on it and making it less strong than it was before. The fact is, raising the retirement age means lessening benefits for people--people who need it, many of them who have been working hard at jobs all their lives--and it's wrong to do.

As I said before, Mr. Speaker, as we talk about this fiscal entanglement, these expiring deadlines that we're coming up on right now, Social Security shouldn't be part of the conversation. Anybody who brings up Social Security in this conversation ought to be asked why they're bringing up things that are irrelevant to resolving these expiring deadlines that are coming up between now and the end of the year. Why do they want to bring up stuff that doesn't have to do with these expiring deadlines? If it doesn't have to do with sequestration and it doesn't have to do with the 2001/2003 tax cuts that are expiring, then what are we discussing it for? It's a distraction from what we should be devoting our time to.

Now, Mr. Speaker, you're also going to have people who like to use the term ``entitlement.'' I resent the term ``entitlement'' because entitlement kind of suggests that, well, this is just something we're giving to you. No, this is an earned benefit, Social Security, and it should not be referred to as an entitlement.

Mr. Speaker, I hope that people begin to defend Social Security and say, Look, don't call my Social Security an entitlement. I've worked my whole life for this, and I'm not about to just say it's some sort of entitlement, that it's some sort of a thing that somebody's handing to me.

I just want to say that I think people need to defend Social Security. They need to stand up for it. They need to explain that it's not part of this fiscal mess that we're in. It's not part of the expiring deadlines that we're seeing happening right now, and we should

not deal with it here. They should defend it by saying that people's retirement security has significantly diminished over the last number of years, and now is not the time to start cutting benefits to Social Security. And more than that, we should make it clear that Social Security is the best program, perhaps one of the best programs our government has ever come up with. We're going to get more into the expiring deadlines that we see coming up in the next few weeks.

But before I say another word, Mr. Speaker, I want to yield to my good friend from the great State of Texas, Sheila Jackson Lee, a stalwart member of the Progressive Caucus. She is totally reliable and can be counted on to stand up for the American working people.

I thank the gentlelady for joining me. If you have the time, we'd love to hear more from you.

Let me just say today that we're members of the Progressive Caucus talking about the deal for all. First of all, we are laying out some of our values, but also talking about some things that are really problems in this debate.

I mentioned before and you mentioned, as well, Social Security is not contributing to the deficit. Social Security is solvent through 2037. Social Security may need attention, but to try to fix it in the midst of this debate is not the right thing. Again, I'm speaking only for myself. People who are demanding that we reform Social Security right now are people who want us to put attention on something that is other than the problem, and then I have to wonder why that is. Does it have something to do with the fact that ever since Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the legislation, that there have been some that don't like it. Why? Because they don't think the proper role of government is to have a program administered through the government that looks out for the aged, the disabled, the vulnerable. They don't think the government should do that. They think it's all about 100 percent individual initiative, and they don't believe the government has a role or responsibility to administer a program to make sure the aged and the sick and those who are the children of those people who may have died should have some basic sustenance.

We disagree philosophically and fundamentally, but some folks--there is a concept out there known as the ``shock doctrine.'' A woman named Naomi Klein wrote a very interesting book. Sometimes you will have folks who will create a crisis. They want there to be a crisis because within the context of the crisis, the parties to the bargaining will be willing to do things that in the absence of a crisis they would never agree to. So I believe that these expiring deadlines don't have to be a crisis, but they've been created to be one. We even use words that invoke imagery of a crisis, and that's why we now talk about this thing as to what it really is, which is expiring deadlines.

I yield to the gentlewoman.

The gentlelady correctly mentioned Medicare, because in this whole fiscal situation, they keep on throwing out Social Security and Medicare entitlement reform, which is what they want so bad. Again, we've clearly shown Social Security has no place in this debate.

Let's talk about Medicare for a moment. In the Affordable Care Act, the so-called ObamaCare, which I used to not want to call it that, but now I do because Obama does care. We call it ObamaCare because the Republicans thought they could use it as an insult, but actually it's kind of a badge of honor.

The Affordable Care Act, with the bill we passed, is estimated to save about $500 billion over the next 10 years. They say we've got to reform Medicare. There may be reforms to Medicare that are important to do, but we already started that process with the Affordable Care Act by reducing extra subsidies paid to Medicare Advantage plans. They said they were going to do it for cheaper, and they did it for more. Now we're saying we're going to hold you to your word.

We used that savings to close the doughnut hole, to make reductions in the rate of growth and provider payments, in efforts to make sure that Medicare programs were more efficient, and to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse.

Medicare will be reformed as we reform health care and as we move away from this fee for service, where it's this much for this test, this much for that test, then some folks run a bunch of tests, and you get this huge bill. We are now moving from that fee-for-service model to a model that goes on, Are you improving the health of your patients? There are a lot more doctors nowadays, particularly at the Mayo

Clinic in Minnesota, who are on salary so that the doctors don't have to worry about the tests, they just have to worry about health. They order the tests that you need, but they don't order the ones that you don't.

So my point is that we are already implementing ways to maintain and control costs in Medicare that do not deprive seniors of good medical care. That's the key. Medicare--I'm sorry--is going to cost more in the future because we have a lot of people born between 1945 and 1960 who are now getting into older years. Everybody knows as you get older you may need to go to the doctor more, and we have more folks who are in that age group, so that's the way it is. It does make sense to try to control costs, but the proposals have been to give seniors a coupon that the Congressional Budget Office admits is going to cost them $6,000 a year more than it does now and to give Medicaid a block grant program, which we know will likely be reduced.

What's the point?

They keep on saying, ``entitlement reform,'' ``entitlement reform.'' Social Security is fine for now, and it will be into the future with just a few tweaks that will not hurt beneficiaries. As for Medicare, we are reforming it and making it more solvent. We literally extended the life of the program up through 2024. Republicans during the campaign attacked President Obama for this, and yet we extended the life of the program. If entitlement reform were wrapped up in the expiring deadlines and the sequestration, I would say, yes, we have to talk about that now, but it isn't. Why are we doing that? It's because people never liked the program and don't believe the proper role of government is to help people. So we just disagree. I just wish folks would be a little more transparent in the positions that they take.

I am very fortunate to have been joined by the gentlelady from Illinois, Jan Schakowsky, and I yield to the gentlelady.

Will the gentlelady yield?

Is not having to bail them out on that list?

It's not right.

You know, here's the reality. In this whole debate, we want to talk about how to deal with these expiring matters like the 2001 and 2003 taxes and the sequestration. They have a time limit on them, and we in Congress are here now to address these issues. But does it strike you funny that they keep on talking about stuff and want to drag it into this debate that doesn't have anything to do with sequestration or these expiring tax matters? Why do they keep talking about Social Security? Why do they want to keep talking about raising the age or somehow cutting benefits for Medicare and Medicaid? I mean, one needs to ask the question, if these are problems and they need to be solved, why do they have to be solved in this very limited window of time when there are other things that, in fact, are expiring?

Right.

Well, you know, I appreciate the gentlelady in revealing really the real deal here. The President, to his credit, is trying to talk to broad cross sections of Americans. He's had labor and progressive groups join him, and then the CEOs come in. And it's funny, when the CEOs come in, and I'm not talking about everyone, but this letter where they're telling us we've got to have austerity, we've got to lower people's expectations as to what people expect.

Other people. They are extremely well taken care of, and they come from companies, several of them, that got direct benefits from the government. And now all of a sudden, you know, everybody else has to tighten their belt. It's shocking, actually. And if there's anything funny about it, it is that they don't get the irony of what they're doing.

I think the American people should know that whenever you see CEOs from polluting industries, from financial services industries, from industries that have gotten a lot of help and benefit from the government talking about how other people should tighten their belt and have to lower expectations, this should be met with extreme displeasure.

He must be talking about himself.

Well, let me quote Mr. Blankfein of Goldman Sachs. He says:

You're going to have to do something, undoubtedly, to lower

people's expectations of what they're going to get, the

entitlements, and what people think they're going to get

because you're not going to get it.

That's what he said. Now, this gentleman is the CEO of a firm that received tens of billions of dollars----

Tens of billions of dollars from direct money and indirect money through access to the Fed at lower rates, and now has the audacity--is the only word you can use--to start talking about how somebody who is making $22,000 a year has to figure out what they're going to do.

Here's the thing. I remember 2008 very well. I remember people's 401(k)s taking massive hits directly related to the behavior of large banks. So it used to be that you had money you saved, money you saved on the job and then Social Security. Two sources of your retirement income are now dwindling in part because of the behavior of these banks, and one of the leaders of one of the biggest ones is talking about other folks having to get by on less.

My question is: What happened to the basic concept of civic virtue? I mean, what happened to the basic idea that, yes, I may be a CEO and, yes, I have an obligation to my shareholders, but I also have an obligation to the community that has fed my business and I've got an obligation to the United States that has made it possible for me to do well.

What happened to the basic idea that we're sort of in this thing together?

I agree.

Well, I'd just like to advise the gentlelady that we've got about 3 more minutes in our hour, and I just wanted to encourage you to think about some of your essential points that you may want to repeat for the Speaker.

But I just wanted to say that, look, you know, the Progressive Caucus--we're here with the Progressive message--is thinking about these fiscal deadlines that this country is facing. We do believe that we should try to come up with a fair deal in anticipation of sequestration and the expiration of deadlines on some taxes.

We believe that the top 2 percent of the income scale should have to pay more. We believe that the Defense Department, which has seen its budget double since 2001, should have to take cuts.

We believe we have to invest in jobs and get people back to work. And we believe we should protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Those are some takeaways that I think are very important.

We do believe in negotiating. We believe that it's important to do so. We've already given up $1.5 trillion in the last term. People talk about what's on the table, what's off the table--$1.5 trillion should be on the table as cuts that have already taken place.

I'd just like to leave the gentlelady the remaining time to summarize.

The gentlelady from Illinois has the last word from ``The Progressive Message.''

I yield back the balance of my time.

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 3 o'clock and 23 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Friday, November 30, 2012, at 9 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in honor of Kevin Bennett to recognize his dedicated service to the great state of Minnesota and his selection as Minnesota's middle school principal of the year.

Mr. Bennett began his teaching career in 2001 in his 20's, and a mere three years later was hired by the Fine Arts Interdisciplinary Resource School, FAIR, as an assistant principal. One short year later, he became principal. Now in his mid-30's, Mr. Bennett is the principal of two FAIR schools, one in Minneapolis and one in Crystal.

Since his arrival, Mr. Bennett has made great strides toward the FAIR schools' goal of greater integration. Mr. Bennett, along with his superintendent, reworked the curriculum of both schools. This paid off and last academic year resulted in more than 1,600 enrollment applications for 150 openings at the two schools. Since Mr. Bennett became principal, the number of minority students at Crystal has risen from 32 to 44 percent. The reworked curriculum and diversified student population has resulted in significant test score increases.

With the downtown school's focus on literacy and the arts, 94 percent of the third graders met or exceeded Minnesota's reading proficiency standards last spring. The third

grade class was the first to benefit from the curriculum change that calls for kindergarteners through third graders to spend two hours each day on literacy.

Mr. Bennett has demonstrated an unwavering belief in the youth of Minneapolis and Crystal as evidenced by his willingness to think outside the box in order to achieve the best possible results for his students. It is Mr. Bennett's commitment to his students and the program that he helped develop that has resulted in him being selected as the state's middle school principal of the year. Kevin Bennett should serve as an example to us all to find ways to serve and improve our own communities.

I truly appreciate all that Mr. Bennett has done and continues to do for the youth of Minneapolis and Crystal, and I thank him for his dedication and service.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in honor of the Dakota Jazz Club for its contribution to the music industry and musical development of the great state of Minnesota.

The Dakota Jazz Club opened in 1985 at Bandana Square in St. Paul as a bar and restaurant for local jazz performers. Since then it has grown to a well-recognized institution featuring performances by a range of national artists. In 2003, the Club moved to its current home in Nicollet Mall in Downtown Minneapolis. Its stage has hosted a multitude of nationally famous jazz musicians, including: Ray Brown, McCoy Tyner, Toots Thielemans, Joey DeFrancesco, Ahmad Jamal, Chucho Valdes, Benny Green, Joe Williams, Bobby Hutcherson, Roy Haynes, Arturo Sandoval, Wallace Roney, Charles Lloyd, Roy Hargrove, Nicholas Payton, Larry Coryell, Pat Martino, Jack McDuff, Jimmy McGriff, Sonny Fortune, Frank Morgan, Zakir Hussain, Kurt Elling, Joshua Redman, James Carter, Madeleine Peyroux, Regina Carter, Patricia Barber, Von Freeman, Billy Higgins and Charles Brown.

The Dakota Jazz Club also operates the Dakota Live Record Label, a label dedicated to capturing and distributing world class jazz from their legendary stage in Minnesota. Some of the noted artists that have recorded for the label are legendary jazz musicians Von Freeman, Nachito Herrera, and Barvara Morrison.

The Dakota Jazz Club's passion for jazz extends beyond hosting musical performances and contributing to the history of jazz at large. The Dakota Jazz Club has also taken it upon itself to ensure the future of jazz in Minnesota through their Dakota Foundation for Jazz Education. Started in 1997, the Foundation's purpose is: ``Introducing young people to jazz and helping them understand--and care about--what they are hearing. We want to help young people use jazz for self- expression and communication, and to experience the sheer pleasure that comes from responding to its challenges.'' The Dakota Foundation for Jazz Education supports a variety of services including offering scholarships for a year of serious extra-curricular jazz study and performance in partnership with the MacPhail Center for Music, helping young musicians develop and hone their skills in jazz appreciation, promoting a wide variety of workshops, funding the Youth Stage at the Twin Cities Jazz Festival held each June in St. Paul, and recognizing outstanding educators in honor of Jane Matteson, the benefactor and cofounder of the Foundation.

I commend the Dakota Jazz Club for all it has done for the Twin Cities, and I thank them for their dedication and service to music and the community.

Mr. Speaker, my name is Keith Ellison. I'm the cochair of the Progressive Caucus. Tonight, I come before the people on the floor of the House of Representatives to discuss important issues facing our economy and the huge challenges that our Nation is facing, particularly with regard to the events that are going to take shape right after the election.

The Progressive Caucus has come together, Mr. Speaker, and thought very carefully about what a deal would look like and should look like. I want to talk about that tonight. I want to go into what we call the Deal for All and to elaborate on some of the complexities that are facing our country and how this is a time where we really need to focus on the real core of what is important to make sure that as all these fiscal matters come together, the United States and the people of America, particularly the working people, come out on top and in the right space.

Before I dive into that, Mr. Speaker, I do want to yield just for a moment to talk about the great service of Ambassador Chris Stevens. Ambassador Stevens was a dedicated public servant, and he and the individuals who lost their lives in Benghazi recently have to be remembered for the dedicated service that they lent to our country. It's important to note that Chris Stevens loved Libya, loved Libyans; and it's not any accident that Libyans took to the streets not to attack America, but really Libyans came to the street holding up placards apologizing for the act of these terrorists who killed Americans and Libyans when they assaulted the consulate in Benghazi, and many of them held up placards extolling the great virtues of Chris Stevens. And it's important to point out that as Americans are watching these things unfold across the Middle East, that the last thing Chris Stevens would want would be for us to withdraw or pull out of Libya.

This horrible incident that occurred in Benghazi was not done by the Libyan people. It was done by terrorists who have nothing but contempt for the democracy in Libya, which is unfolding; and that is why they would take their action against the consulate as they did do. But it's important to note that there were about seven Libyans who died. The numbers are yet coming in. Of course, they're subject to being revised. But there were a number of Libyans who lost their lives trying to defend that consulate. And I think Americans should keep that in mind. They also should keep in mind that as the outbreak of these protests across the Middle East--you have one in Yemen, you have them in Libya, you have them in Egypt--it is important to point out that leaders of these countries have apologized for these things, particularly Yemen and Libya. And Egypt eventually got there.

And it's important to point out that Americans should know that this is not representative of certainly the will of the Libyan people. And there are a lot of people across the region who support the United States and support a good relationship with the United States. We should not allow ourselves to be confused by these events. I could easily see how people could be; but when you see dedicated public servants risking their lives to build bridges, the last thing we want to do is withdraw and abandon these relationships that have been fought hard for and now have been paid for in the blood of our heroes, Ambassador Chris Stevens being one of them.

So I do want to just wrap up this section of my discussion tonight and just point out Chris Stevens, a dedicated servant of the United States, a dedicated and committed man who has gone and offered the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of his country to build bridges between people and particularly to help build democracy in the weak state of Libya, a state that threw off a dictator.

Chris Stevens went there to help the people and to help them build a democracy, and he must be remembered for his great sacrifice and also that of the individuals who lost their lives with him, four Americans and several Libyans. And as the names come forward and as their names are released, we'll come back to this microphone and share the information with the people.

So now let's talk about the business we're here to talk about, Madam Speaker. Tonight, we're talking about the Progressive Caucus message. The Congressional Progressive Caucus is the organization in Congress dedicated to talking about what's good for the average working American, making sure that the average American's interests are looked out and regarded highly as we move forward.

I want to talk a little bit about the Budget For All, and not only the Budget For All, but also the Deal For All.

I want to get right to the point. Everybody is talking about the fiscal

cliff. The sequestration cuts are going to come into effect. These are significant cuts both in military and nonmilitary domestic discretionary spending, which will be devastating to important programs like transportation, like health care, like research, like education. They'll put significant cuts in these important programs, lay off a lot of people, perhaps even exacerbating our already too-high unemployment rate.

But not only that, we see that the Bush tax cuts will expire, the payroll tax will expire, the so-called doc fix will expire, the AMT will expire. There's a number of things coming together, and many people who watch the news know that after this election, we're going to see a significant amount of activity around how we Members of Congress will be able to pull our fiscal situation back together in a way that hopefully avoids big cuts to important programs, hopefully avoids great pain that working class people might suffer if we don't come together and come up with some deal.

You've heard a lot of discussion about a grand bargain. But if we do any deal, the core values of the deal, we need to say first and upfront what this deal must include.

The first thing this deal must include, and I'll start with this poster here, Madam Speaker, is protection for America's social safety net. Let me start with a quote from President Roosevelt where he says: ``Every man, woman, and child is a partner.'' In 2012, these words come to life when we see that more than 58 million people rely on Medicaid. That's a lot of people, Madam Speaker; 48 million rely on Medicare; more than 61 million rely on Social Security.

So with the idea in mind that everybody is included, everybody counts, everybody is contemplated in our American life, it's important to point out that as we move forward with this Deal For All, or any deal that we might have, that it's important to maintain the social safety net, particularly in very difficult economic times. If you slice Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, you are going to literally be harming the interests of millions and millions of Americans. Therefore, a key feature of any deal will be preservation of benefits for the people who need them most--Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security.

Madam Speaker, the next slide, the next poster here is a poster that talks about how we need to move our Nation's military towards the ability to deal with 21st-century threats. That will mean that we need to do some changes, some adjustments; and Cold War-era weapons systems are just not what this particular moment calls for.

So the second feature of the Deal For All will be that the military, which has seen its budget literally double since 2001, will have to share and do some paring down, but not just paring down, literally advancing. But some of these old Cold War-era weapons systems and some of these things that are fit for dealing with the Soviet Union just aren't necessary any more. They're expensive, cost a lot of money, and they don't help us meet the threats we're facing right now.

So the second feature of the Deal For All would be moving our military to a position where it's dealing with 21st-century threats, not simply maintaining old expensive programs that we don't really need.

The third feature of the Deal For All would be that we would ask Americans who have been well-to-do Americans, people who have benefited tremendously under the Bush tax cuts, to do a little more. Now, I know my friends in the Republican caucus and some conservatives often say that taxes, why would you want to punish somebody for being successful. Well, we think that America has done so much for so many that to help pay a little bit more to this country that you love is not a punishment. In fact, it's actually something that we would expect people to do. And there's a lot of very well-to-do people who agree with that point of view.

We actually have a piece of an idea called the Buffett rule because a very rich man says that, hey, a rich man like Warren Buffett should not be paying a lower tax rate than his secretary, which he does.

So Americans of various economic classes agree taxes are not a punishment. They are the cost of funding a civilized society; and if we're going to meet the budget challenges facing our Nation, we're going to have to get some revenue, and it might well come from the people who have benefited so much under the Bush-era tax cuts.

Then, finally, but perhaps most importantly, Madam Speaker, we need to get Americans to work. This is a key feature of what any Deal For All must include.

So tonight, we're talking about the Deal For All, and we're talking about the fiscal cliff, and we're talking about what any fair agreement would have to include. This is not bargaining chips, Madam Speaker. All four of these things are key. In order to have a safe, sound budget fix or grand bargain, we're going to have to have something to get Americans back to work, and we're talking about an infrastructure bank, a longer-term transportation bill, various things I'm going to talk about tonight.

But putting Americans back to work, asking the military to share in the cuts, and to revamp our military for a 21st-century world.

Three, asking the top 2 percent to pay a little bit more by allowing the Bush-era tax cuts to expire for the top echelon. It would only mean that the top rates would go from 35 to 39\1/2\ percent.

Finally, we're going to protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid because these programs are essential and vital, particularly in times where people are truly having tough economic times.

So that's where we start the conversation tonight, focused on dealing with a proper resolution to these huge budget fights that we are about to have because so many important features of our fiscal reality are coming to expiration on December 31.

So I want to say that this deal that I think that we should have, we should work on, Mr. Speaker, and this Budget for All, this Deal for All as well, it's something that I think we can reach, we should reach. The American people need us to try to work toward a solution. This is why the Progressive Caucus has come together and said this is what we should do:

We should have a deal. The deal will be comprehensive, a deal that could help us avoid the harsh realities of sequestration, that could avoid the complete expiration of all the Bush tax cuts or the extension of all the Bush tax cuts, a deal that will help us do the doc fix and do all the things we need to do.

We do need some kind of agreement, but the agreement has to have some key benchmarks. I've laid them out to you, and I'll just repeat:

Ask the richest to help pay the freight for America;

Ask the military to share in the cuts; good, safe, sound cuts that will help position us for the 21st century are available;

We need to make sure that we protect those who benefit from Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid;

And, most importantly, we need to grow the economy by investing in jobs.

But we have had some difficulty getting together, and I'm not surprised. Colleagues on the other side of the aisle, on the Republican side of the aisle, have been, Mr. Speaker, slow to try to come together and work out the deals that we need, but we do extend our hand. Hopefully, we will be able to come together and work out these problems because the American people depend upon us to do that.

But I do want to say that we have seen some real challenges over the course of the year just in terms of getting things done. So I think this is the time when we really need to come together and focus on what's needed. But in order to be fair, Mr. Speaker, I think the people should know what some of the real serious challenges that we've been facing are.

I just want to make note right now that we have had a Congress where obstruction has been the norm. It doesn't have to stay that way--and I urge colleagues on all sides of the aisle to work together. But I'll never forget being in this Chamber just about a year ago, a little more than a year ago, when, because of obstructionism, we could not come together. The Republican caucus refused to vote to raise the debt ceiling, something that had been done literally dozens of times both under

Democrats and Republicans. But they refused to do it, and this political rancor resulted in the downgrade of America's bond rating.

This was a tragic moment that happened a year ago, but it marks the obstruction that we've seen. Hopefully, this kind of obstruction will not be what we see going forward.

But I think it's important that much of the obstruction that we began to see had to do with the budgetary position that we saw starting with the Congress from the very beginning. The bottom line is that it started with the idea that we could only have massive cuts and no revenue. Our colleagues even continue to this day to talk about how terrible the economy continues to be, but their only prescription for fixing it is to take, as President Obama said, two tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and call us in the morning. That's funny, but it's, sadly, true as well. Tax cuts seems to be their only prescription for all problems facing the American economy.

We started out this Congress with a budget being laid out. It was talked about as the Ryan budget, but really it was the Republican budget. He may have been the author of it, but they all voted for it, embraced it. But this budget, where we started out with massive cuts, didn't balance for a long, long time. The budget never really added up, and it still doesn't.

So in order to get to a deal or some kind of grand bargain to deal with our fiscal challenges that are coming right up soon, we need a new spirit of cooperation, and it cannot be based on the budget that was offered by Paul Ryan and backed by the Republican Congress. Like I said, it didn't add up.

The fact is that my Republican friends think that businesses always want a tax cut. I owned a small business myself. I was a lawyer. I had a law firm. I had staff that I had to pay. I had machines I had to purchase. I had rent that I had to pay. I had a payroll that I had to make. What I needed was clients coming through the door so that would justify me adding and hiring more people. But just tax cuts alone is not what small business people need. What they really need is greater demand, which is what we're not addressing if we don't deal with the key feature in the Deal for All, which is to invest in jobs.

If people can't buy, Mr. Speaker, then stores can't sell; if stores can't sell, they can't hire; and if they can't hire, people can't buy. This is the heart of the problem: slack demand, high unemployment, people who do have jobs nervous about making purchases. This is the heart of the problem and what we've got to address. Misunderstanding these simple ideas about the importance of the American consumer having enough wherewithal to buy things that they need is really part of the heart of this problem that we're in right now.

This idea of thinking that, oh, yeah, just a tax cut will solve the problem, or, oh, yeah, and get rid of all the health and safety regulations, too, these two things could never bring America prosperity. But making sure that Americans are working and optimistic about their economic future will absolutely help this economy, and it's what we've got to do. I think through the Deal for All, any bargain we come to will put us on the right footing as long as we keep those key features in place.

So here's the thing: We've got to get to the point where we're working together. The key to that is to scrap this budget, this Ryan budget the Republicans have adopted. We've got to scrap that idea that we can't raise any taxes, that raising taxes is bad, that taxes are wrong, and that taxes are always a problem and that they're a punishment. We've got to scrap that idea. We know better than that.

So many of our colleagues even signed pledges that they wouldn't raise taxes, and this, of course, has been a problem. The only pledge I say around here is the Pledge of Allegiance.

But the fact is that we've got to scrap this idea so that when we face this real serious fiscal cliff, some people are calling, that we are able to negotiate. This means letting go of some of our long-held attachments, starting with the so-called Ryan Republican budget and these no-tax pledges. If we were able to do that, we could solve our problems.

Again, it's not all tax raising. It's going to be cuts, too. We have some ideas about where we can cut in a way that makes our country stronger, but there will have to be a mixture of both of these things.

I just want to talk a little bit about the Ryan Republican budget and just to help dramatize what some of the key problems are with it and why it's not workable and why we need to reject it as we move into this fiscal time. We're going to have to deal with this fiscal cliff, as has been named.

One of the key features of why it's not going to work and why it's wrong is that it ends the Medicare guarantee. It replaces it with vouchers. Some people around here like to talk about ObamaCare. Well, I far prefer ObamaCare to voucher care. And it makes it dangerously more expensive for seniors and the disabled. We don't want to put seniors in a more precarious financial situation, which is what the Ryan voucher care idea would do.

The Ryan budget, adopted by the Republicans, would also cut Medicaid funding by 34 percent. It cuts away tens of millions of needy people and turns the program into an underfunded block grant program. This is a sad way to treat some of our most vulnerable citizens. And you should know, Mr. Speaker, that Medicaid actually impacts seniors, too, because so much of the money that funds nursing home care is from Medicaid. So it's not just Medicare. Medicaid cuts, 34 percent, would be very harmful.

The Ryan budget also cuts transportation by 25 percent. Now, transportation is a job creator. Transportation puts Americans to work--building roads, bridges, transit, helping people get from here to there. I can imagine high-speed railcars.

I'm from Minnesota. I'd love to see us have a high-speed train from Duluth to Minneapolis to Chicago. It would be a great thing. It would put lots of people back to work, and it would improve productivity. It would allow people, after it's built, to get from here to there faster so they can get to meetings, so they can do what they need to do, and stop the bottleneck, cut down on carbon emissions and move people around, not just cars.

Transportation, a huge job creator, cut 25 percent in the Ryan budget.

Cuts education by 40 percent, 45 percent. Now, if there's one engine of economic development, having smarter, better-trained people has got to be the core of that, and yet education is cut by 45 percent in the Ryan budget.

So the bottom line is, these are some of the key things that are wrong with this budget. There are many more. I plan on talking about them.

But I want to just return to my theme a little bit, Madam Speaker, to say that we are facing a fiscal cliff. Americans do need to focus on it and do need to call their Members of Congress and say focus on the job at hand. We need you to focus your attention. We do know all these things are expiring. What are you people in Congress going to do about it?

What we're saying we've got to do about it in the Progressive Caucus is that we do need to come together and have a deal, but the deal has to have four pieces. And I'll repeat, Madam Speaker.

We need to make sure the military shares in the cuts by being more efficient. We need to make sure that we protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. And we need to make sure that we are putting jobs up front and investing in American jobs to a very large degree. And we need to ask the wealthiest among us to contribute a little bit more so we can meet our budgetary challenges. That's what the Progressive Caucus says we need to do.

We've had difficulty coming together because, well, quite frankly, obstruction, Republican obstruction has made it difficult to move forward and do anything.

Why did we have the obstruction?

Because we started out with signing pledges that we won't raise taxes, and we had a Ryan budget that imposed significant and deep cuts that have already resulted in a number of public sector workers being laid off and Federal employees having a reduction in their health care. And so these things, this sort of obstructive nature and insisting on cuts only, has been the source of the problem.

In order to get to a solution, we need people to come off these rigid positions so that we can do the people's business.

I mean, just to sort of like think about the level of obstruction, I already mentioned, Madam Speaker, last August, how dramatic it was when the Republican majority refused to raise the debt ceiling and caused us to have a downgrade in our bond rating. That was a sad moment.

But we've also wasted a lot of time. For example, we voted 32 times to repeal ObamaCare. And I do call it ObamaCare because Obama does care, which is more than I can say for some. But in this time, we had time for cutting or voting to repeal ObamaCare 32 times, but we didn't have any time to offer serious fixes to the economy.

And I just want to mention that President Obama, to his credit, has done, I think, great and excellent work in offering solutions. They just simply, Madam Speaker, have been ignored. I mean, it's really kind of sad when you think about the fact that the President has offered real serious and important solutions to the problems of the Nation and yet, they really, really have not been seriously addressed.

For example, the President called us all here and talked about the American Jobs Act. This is a great piece of legislation. But, do you know, Madam Speaker, we've never even had a vote on it. We never even had an opportunity to say who wants the American Jobs Act. It was simply something that the Republican majority in the House wouldn't even address.

The fact is that there were great ideas in this bill, and I just want to talk a little bit about those ideas because I think that they would really do a lot of good.

It includes a national infrastructure bank bill, a proposal that we would be able to fund by the Federal Government putting some seed money and then leveraging that money, that public money, with some private sector bonds. We would then have a fund of money that we could then use to make investment in important infrastructure that would be a key and important element of the program.

We would be able to make investments in the transmission lines that would help take wind energy from the western part of my State in Minnesota and bring it to where the population centers are.

We would be able to improve our grid and have a smart grid that would make energy use much more efficient and much more effective. And we would be able to use this infrastructure bank bill to be able to fund programs all over the United States where we wouldn't only build things that we need, we would improve them.

The American Society of Civil Engineers has addressed this issue, Madam Speaker, and what they said is about $2.3 trillion of infrastructure maintenance needs to be done. You know, I come from the city of Minneapolis and in my city, about 5 years ago we had a bridge fall into the Mississippi River.

Maintenance in this country is critical. We have bridges that are old and deteriorating all over this country. We have bridges that are in need of repair, roads as well.

And we also have other projects that need to be taken care of in terms of our grid, in terms of wastewater treatment, in terms of all types of important infrastructure tools, but we are not investing in them. In fact, we're relying on the things that our grandparents gave us. We're relying on Eisenhower-era infrastructure because we haven't, in our age, focused on the needs of the American people to have an infrastructure bill.

You know, just to talk a little bit more about the American Jobs Act, it would also extend cutting payroll taxes in half for 98 percent of businesses. It would also offer a complete payroll tax holiday for added workers or increased wages. It would extend 100 percent expensing throughout this year, and if we were to pass it, maybe even longer. And this continues to be an effective way to incentivize new investment.

And also, it would address and reform regulatory reductions to help entrepreneurs and small businesses access capital. We do need to help small business people be able to get the money they need to do investment in their company, and that means access to capital.

The American Jobs Act would also have a returning heroes hiring tax credit for veterans. This is something we addressed already, which is a great thing, but it would move on from there, and it would prevent up to 280,000 teacher layoffs.

Madam Speaker, you should know, we have had, now, about 30 months of private sector growth. But we have had also significant number of months of public sector layoffs, mostly teachers. This is because of these draconian cuts that the Federal Government has made, and State governments have been affected by and, therefore, city and local governments. But we would be able to address these massive public sector worker layoffs, which are really hurting our economy. And of course, teachers have been some of the most negatively impacted of all.

We also would move from that idea to another great one: modernizing at least 35,000 public schools across the country. You know, our public schools across this Nation, our kids go there, they spend hours and hours a day trying to learn there. But many of them are in very bad repair. Some 35,000 public schools need help. We can support new science labs, Internet-ready classrooms, and renovations to schools across the country in rural and urban America.

The American Jobs Act, with all these great ideas, never got a shot in this Congress. It would, as I said, call for infrastructure investment with a national infrastructure bank, which I've talked about already.

I didn't mention airport improvements. I did mention waterways. But it would put literally thousands of workers back on the job.

And also, we need to wire up this country. We would expand access to high speed wireless, as part of a plan for freeing up the Nation's spectrum.

Now, I want to just remind you, Madam Speaker, that our Nation at one time didn't have the entire country on the electrical grid. There was a program called Rural Electrification, which was a program under the Roosevelt administration by which our Nation just decided that you would not have to leave the countryside, the rural areas, to take advantage of electric lights, but we would wire the whole country--and we did.

The new wiring, the new Rural Electrification program, is connecting all of America with high-speed wireless. This is a project we should embark on. It's worthy, and it would help improve economic activity. It would help revitalize rural communities, and people wouldn't have to move to the urban centers for work. It would be a great thing.

The American Jobs Act also included pathways back to work for Americans looking for work. Of course, we have a serious unemployment problem, and we see some of our friends on the Republican side of the aisle shaking their fingers, criticizing. Well, where are the jobs? I remember Speaker Boehner asking, Where are the jobs? Often, when I hear that from my colleagues, I think to myself, well, the jobs are in the American Jobs Act. Can we take it up? Can we have a vote on it?

There is something we can do for Americans who are looking for work. One of the most innovative reforms to the unemployment insurance program in 40 years is a program which is part of an extension of the unemployment insurance to prevent 5 million Americans who are looking for work from losing their benefits.

The President's plan would include innovative work-based reforms to prevent layoffs and give States greater flexibility to use unemployment insurance benefits to fund and support job seekers, including things like, one, work sharing, unemployment insurance for workers whose employers choose work sharing over layoffs; two, a new bridge-to-work program, a plan that builds on and improves innovative State programs and where those displaced workers take temporary voluntary work and pursue on-the-job training; three, innovative entrepreneurship and wage insurance programs. States could also be empowered to implement wage insurance to help reemploy older workers in programs that make it easier for the unemployed workers to start their own businesses.

So these are a number of things contained in the American Jobs Act which we have never had a shot at, and it's a

key feature of what we propose in the Deal For All: get to work. We've got a country to rebuild. This is absolutely the case, but if the Republican majority would allow us to take up the American Jobs Act, I am confident there is something in there that my colleagues would like.

Maybe they'd like the $4,000 tax credit to employers for hiring long- term unemployed workers. That would be a great benefit to workers and employers.

They might like another feature of the American Jobs Act, that of prohibiting employers from discriminating against unemployed workers when hiring. We know now that many workers who have been out of work and out of the market for a while are asked, Do you have a job? No. Have you been unemployed? If the answer is--yes, for a certain amount of time--well, we're not going to hire you, which simply prolongs the problem. These are valuable workers with good skills, and they should have a shot in getting back into the workforce.

We might also find support for expanding job opportunities for low- income youth and adults through a fund for successful approaches for subsidized employment, innovative training programs and summer and year-round jobs for youth. One of the groups of people that has been really hard hit during this recession is young people. The American Jobs Act proposed by President Obama addresses youth employment; yet we haven't had a chance to deal with it because of Republican obstructionism.

I want to encourage all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to let go of their attachments. Let go of the pledges. Let go of the Ryan budget. Let's come together to solve our problems. Many of them can be found in the American Jobs Act.

For example, there is a whole section in there on tax relief for every American worker and family. Now, I don't think we need to extend tax cuts for the richest folks, because they don't need them; but when people do need them, Democrats are happy to cut taxes, and we have. We cut payroll taxes for about 160 million workers. We could extend that if the President's plan will expand the payroll tax cut passed last year. Another thing is allowing more Americans to refinance their mortgages at today's near 4 percent interest rates. It would put nearly $2,000 a year in a family's pocket.

But the American Jobs Act--an excellent vehicle for putting Americans back to work--never really had a shot because, as the minority leader in the Senate said, the number one priority for the Republican caucus was to make President Obama a one-term President. Is it right to make getting rid of Obama your top priority when we have so many Americans out of work and when we have an economy that really has never come back? I think that is not a good thing, and I wish we could move away from that and start focusing on the things that people really, really, really need.

In fact, I go back to the Deal For All, which is the Progressive Caucus' idea for how we negotiate what the basic foundation of any deal needs to be. It's simple the way things are shaping up. After all the dust has settled from the 2012 election, an average middle class family could face tax increases of $2,000 unless Congress acts. That's how important it is for us to do something and to act. This fiscal cliff they talk about is an opportunity to address the budget in a responsible way that grows our economy and puts Americans back to work.

We talked about the American Jobs Act. There are other great ideas, as well; but too many folks in Washington and too many folks here in the Capitol would rather cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, which are benefits that millions of Americans depend on.

As I said, this particular chart shows it all. When you see the huge numbers of people who rely on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, rather than getting together and working on a problem, they'd rather cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits that millions of Americans depend on and raise taxes on middle class Americans to protect tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires. It's as simple as that.

So let's just take a look at what's at risk, Madam Speaker. One in every four families depends on our Social Security system--61 million folks, including 36 million retired Americans. It's important for people to remember that Social Security also cares for people with disabilities and survivor benefits for people who have parents who pass on. So many children in this country today are surviving on those benefits which some of us in Congress are trying to protect and others are trying to cut. Nearly every American senior can depend on Medicare to cover health care costs.

Turning Medicare into a voucher system, as the Republicans have proposed, would not only make seniors pay thousands more for Medicare-- about $6,000 more estimated--but it would leave as many 65- and 66- year-olds without any health care coverage at all, which would be a shame. It would return our Nation to a time when seniors were in desperate and bad shape.

So that's why the Progressive Caucus is proposing the Deal For All. They are commonsense proposals that would solve our deficit problems and protect the American middle class.

The Deal For All says that any plan cannot slash benefits for millions of America's seniors, children and disabled Americans who depend on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

The Deal For All says we must make and ask and expect that the wealthiest 2 percent pay their fair share of taxes and close loopholes that let companies ship jobs overseas.

The Deal For All makes smart cuts to defense spending--not just any old cuts, smart cuts, efficient cuts--to focus our Armed Forces on combating 21st-century risks.

The Deal For All also calls for any plan to invest in America's future by putting Americans back to work.

Yes, we are facing a fiscal cliff, as some call it, but that doesn't mean the middle class should get pushed over the edge of that cliff.

If working and middle class people are going to take a hit in tough times, it shouldn't be to pay for tax breaks for rich folks and millionaires and billionaires and oil companies. It's time for all Americans of every economic situation to step up and do what's right for this country, and it's time we had a deal in Washington that reflects our values.

I just want to elaborate on this a little bit by telling you, Madam Speaker, about how the Progressive Caucus has been bringing experts together to study this issue. This is not just something we've thought up. We've brought experts from the field, economists, people who really focus hard and have expertise in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, jobs, how to reduce the military budget in a wise way. We've brought folks together to discuss this.

In fact, yesterday was one of the hearings that we've had, and the Progressive Caucus was hard at work holding a hearing. We're going to put some of it online so people can see it. We had these experts from across the political spectrum--some conservatives--to detail the best ways to avoid the fiscal cliff and to rejuvenate the economy without harming essential protections for the middle class. The pending fiscal cliff is an enormous opportunity to address our jobs crisis. I say ``jobs'' first, Madam Speaker, and then we need to put our country on the path to fiscal health.

The Progressive Caucus is laying the groundwork to make sure that any agreement reflects these core values. Our bipartisan panel yesterday confirmed that the best way to grow our economy is from the middle out, not from the top down. No trickle down. We also cannot expect to put Americans back to work unless we protect Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and ask the wealthiest to contribute their fair share.

We had Larry Korb come in, and he is a person with an extensive background, a very wise gentleman, is politically on the conservative side, but has done a lot of important research on how we can reduce our military footprint in a smart way. Mr. Larry Korb was a very well- prepared witness and shared his views and was really a big help as he laid out his presentation.

I just want to share with you a little bit about what he had to say, Madam Speaker, because it really was fascinating. I would urge people to check

out Mr. Korb's presentation online. He had a number of things that would really provoke a lot of important thought, and they're online. You can go to the Progressive Caucus Web site and see some of that.

Let me talk a little bit about what he said. Mr. Larry Korb was asked how best to summarize his take on the current defense budget, and he pointed to our poster, this one right here. Mr. Korb made himself very clear when he said, Don't pay for a 20th-century military in the 21st century, which I think sums it up. I'll elaborate more on what he had to say, but we had another expert who I think I would like to direct people to listen to, Ms. Maya Rockeymoore. She is the chair of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. She said, ``Changes to programs must be based on what is best for the beneficiaries, not on what is expedient for reducing America's debt.'' She also went on to add that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are vital to the economic and health security of millions of senior Americans.

Chad Stone was also there, and he talked about the jobs picture. He actually referenced our poster right here, as well. Chad Stone, he is the chief economist for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. He said that piling tax cuts on will only lead to Draconian cuts in programs that millions of Americans rely on. So we can't go with this cuts-only approach. We've got to have some jobs, and we've got to have some investment.

Steve Wamhoff from the Citizens for Tax Justice put it best. He said:

I think all of us here agree that the most important job

for Congress right now is to help the economy to create jobs.

Tax cuts are one of the least effective tools to accomplish

this goal.

We had a great lineup. I urge folks to go on our Web site and study what they had to say. But I do want to go back for a moment to just talk about the ideas Larry Korb had to share. He mentioned sequestration. He said that sequestration is certainly not a smart way to cut the defense budget because it's just an across-the-board cut, but close analysis and careful cuts and strategic ones could help a lot. He talked about how the Pentagon actually is pretty well endowed. He talked about how if the automatic sequestration defense cuts were to go into effect the fiscal year of 2013, non-war expenditures of the 2013 base, he said the budget will be reduced by about $55 billion down to what is about $500 billion and remain at that level in real terms for quite a while. He said that this will result in total reduction of about $500 billion over a decade from the projected levels in defense spending. He also went on to note that it also means that the Pentagon will still be spending more in 2013 after sequestration than it did in 2006. So they're not going to be poor by any means.

At the height of the Iraq war in 2006, we still would have been spending more than that if sequestration goes into effect, but he's not just saying do sequestration. He's actually promoting a strategic and smart way to do some cuts. He says that the United States military can do well, defend our Nation, and protect our country for about $500 billion, and that seems to make sense to me. We'd still be spending so much more than any other country in the world.

He went on to also note that in short the military really doesn't have a resource problem. They have what they need to defend the country. He noted that if sequestration goes into effect, it would not be ideal to just do across-the-board cuts, but there are a number of weapon systems that could be retired and a number of strategies for reducing the military budget that would not hurt national security, but would really put our country in a position where we are dealing with our financial problems in a forthright way. I think that it makes sense to really look carefully at these ideas.

Maya Rockeymoore went on to note, when she talked about Social Security, that it does not contribute to our Nation's deficit. If you look at Social Security, it actually runs a surplus, and we don't need to cut Social Security. What we need to do is to recognize that this important program is a program that has been one of the most successful in the history of the United States; and if we abandon our commitment to our seniors and the disabled, we will be abandoning a core principle of our country.

Mr. Chad Stone was important in his testimony, as well. As we wrapped up, I was most impressed that it's not just about cuts, that we also need to grow our way out of this recession. That means investing in jobs. I think the American Jobs Act and many other things would put us farther down the line if we were to make those proper investments.

That's what I want to say about the economy tonight. I'd like to urge people, Madam Speaker, to focus their attention on the so-called ``fiscal cliff.'' It is coming up. We will see expiration of the Bush tax cuts. We will see expiration of the payroll tax. We will see expiration of the doc fix. We will see expiration of the AMT. There will be a number of things coming together all at the same time. There will be budgetary negotiations.

But no matter what they are, they've got to include protection of our social safety net: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. The military must share in the cuts. The wealthiest Americans must help us get some revenue. Finally, we've got to put jobs up front and center and grow this economy.

With that, Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.