Floor Statements

Madam Chair, I rise today in strong support of the Progressive budget, and I want to thank our leadership in the Progressive Caucus for pulling the budget together. Though I do plan on supporting the House Democratic budget resolution, I believe that our Progressive budget differs in two important ways, and that's why I urge my colleagues to support the Progressive budget.

First, the Progressive alternative fully funds President Obama's international affairs request--Function 150 account. I believe robust funding for international affairs, which covers funds to combat HIV, tuberculosis and malaria as well as funding to help reconstruction in Afghanistan, is critical to our Nation's public diplomacy.

Our country has a unique opportunity to rebuild alliances across the globe, and we need to meet our foreign policy challenges in the 21st century. To accomplish this task, our country and this Congress must demonstrate a strong commitment to funding international aid.

Second, the Progressive Caucus budget embraces President Obama's commitment to retire Cold War weapons systems, and the Progressive budget goes further than the House Democratic budget in cutting defense spending. The Progressive budget reduces wasteful spending that, according to the GAO, costs taxpayers $8.7 billion a year. The Progressive Caucus budget also eliminates unnecessary and obsolete Cold War weapons systems, saving taxpayers $60 billion a year. I know my Republican colleagues are in favor of cutting those wasteful programs.

Will the gentlelady yield?

I have a question for you about the Employee Free Choice Act. Is this a proven idea? You know, this idea of a card check, of getting a majority of the workers to sign up and then have the union recognized, has this been tried anywhere before? I yield back.

In my own city of Minneapolis, the management of the city reached out to the workers and said, if you all want to have a card check in order to get your union recognized, that is the process we will go by.

I can list a number of employers who have voluntarily done card check, and it has not harmed these companies. In fact, as you pointed out, Congresswoman, there are a lot of American companies that have very good relationships with their workers that are humming along and making profit right now. So there is no reason to believe that if we make the Employee Free Choice Act law, that it would in any way undermine any productivity.

May I ask you another question, if I may?

If the gentlelady would yield, I want to ask you a more fundamental question. Are unions good for America? I yield back.

As I might point out, Congresswoman and Mr. Speaker, the fact is that having a union creates labor peace. We don't have costly strikes, lockouts. We have labor peace. We make an agreement, and everybody sort of--we have a refined orderly way to resolve conflict. And as you pointed out, sometimes these conflicts over a bargaining table are tough struggles. Nobody is expecting to just give anything away, but there is an orderly way to resolve issues. Turnover, which is a definite killer for productivity, is reduced when you have a union in place.

Unions tend to promote reliability. You have a place to go, you can to go your shop steward if there is something you think isn't right. And it provides a way for real stability on the job. Also, I think it is important to say that a lot of unions have training programs of their own, which it shares the burden with the employer.

So unions have been good for many employers and have been good for America. Union workers earn 30 percent more than nonunion workers. And when it comes to African American unionized people, they earn 56 percent more than nonunion African Americans. Women benefit from being in the union. Upwards of 40, 50 percent of women who are unionized make that much more than women who are not. Pensions, medical benefits. It is good to have a union job. Everybody knows that. And unions have not contributed to economic demise of any community or our country. In fact, unions have brought labor peace, unions have benefited our country in a great way.

And I just might add, before I turn it back to the gentlelady from Maryland, Congresswoman, I will never forget the image of Walter Reuther, the great UAW leader and Martin Luther King walking down Woodward Avenue in Detroit. I will never forget that when Martin Luther King went to his reward on April 4, 1968, he was at a union. He was standing up for garbage strikers, sanitation workers who were on strike because they were paid poorly and in unsafe working conditions and were dealing with these issues. And it is important to remember that the union won that strike.

So unions have contributed to the life of America. Unions have done a service for our great country. And so I think it is important that we point that out as we talk about the Employee Free Choice Act. And I yield back.

Would the gentlelady yield?

I have heard this term, ``captive audience,'' as I have discussed the Employee Free Choice Act, and heard stories about how, when the union drive was going on, that the employer can make it a condition of a worker's employment that they show up at a meeting where they give anti-union messages. Is this really true?

Is this really true? I yield back. Does this happen in America?

Well, I'm going to commend you, Congresswoman, for going down to North Carolina and standing with those workers. It is not easy. I have been on many a picket line myself. I have been on many a union drive because I believe in it. I think it strengthens the working class.

You're right. There are subtle points of intimidation to prevent the union. But there are lots of places in this country where there is not- so-subtle intimidation to prevent the union. There are people fired for trying to organize a union. And even if you prove that it is an unfair labor practice that you were fired for organizing a union, generally even if you win, at the NLRB what happens? Well, a minor fine maybe, a posting up on the wall that says we were wrong for doing this. In fact, it is really not a real deterrent to some of the unfair labor practices that we have seen.

I think that having a union in place would definitely strengthen a worker's right to raise issues that are of concern to them at the workplace as you point out.

I hope the gentlelady doesn't mind me taking a little turn to make a few comments that I would like to make. And I also want to thank you for holding it down. It was your idea that we do the Employee Free Choice Act today, it was your organization that brought this session about, and this is critically important that we do this subject because we do need to help the public understand that a strong workforce that is organized and unionized gives voice not just only to unionized people but to the entire middle class.

And so I do want to thank you for organizing this today. All I want to do is just take a little short detour for a moment and say that the Employee Free Choice Act, we also talk about card check, majority card check. As you pointed out, if you get 30 percent of the employees to sign a card, you can get an election for a union now. That is the present law. And nothing about that will be stripped away by the Employee Free Choice Act. But it is also important to say that even if you get, even if you get majority sign up and you get the union recognized or you get 30 percent which then provokes a union election and you get the union recognized that way, that is not the end of the Employee Free Choice Act.

The Employee Free Choice Act recognizes the fact that even after union recognition comes, a lot of employers fight and fight the contract, and you can have a union but no contract. And I would love to hear if you have any stories about that because it is important to talk about how workers have dealt with these things.

But the Employee Free Choice Act requires a period in which there is mediation on the contract, and then if that doesn't work, there is binding arbitration on the first contract so that there will be a first contract. And after there is one contract, then history tells us there will be another one. But there will be a first contract under the Employee Free Choice Act. So it is not just card check, but it is getting that first contract at the bargaining table.

So I will yield back to the gentlelady at this time because I just want to make sure that we frame what the bill says and what it doesn't say. And again I invite the gentlelady if she cares to talk about this effort to get the first contract which is so often a difficulty. Of course, I don't want to narrow what the gentlelady might comment on.

If the gentlelady will yield just on that point.

I'm curious to get the gentlelady's views on this point.

Now, on that myth you just talked about right there, is it common, in your view, allowing for the fact that there are a lot of good employers who cooperate with their unions, but is it common in your view for some of these folks who are opposing the Employee Free Choice Act, some of these big CEOs who are opposing the Employee Free Choice Act, to spend a lot of time worrying about whether a worker has a private ballot or not? Is there any irony here that you have been able to detect?

I yield back.

And I would add to society at large.

Let me say that 79 percent of workers surveyed reported that workers are very, or at least somewhat, likely to be fired for trying to organize a union, an important fact I think we need to point out. And in about 25 percent of all organizing drives, at least one worker is unlawfully fired for union activity.

So again, this kind of protection, this stress-free way to either have a union recognized or not I think is a very, very good idea.

I believe the gentlelady was kind of going down myths that are out there. Let's bust a few more myths. I think that it is important to point out that this does not hurt small business. Small businesses would not be harmed by the Employee Free Choice Act. In fact, small business stand to gain from the Employee Free Choice Act. It is interesting to me that in a time when we talk about ``too big to fail'' and these huge, enormous businesses, some of them opposing the Employee Free Choice Act, it is the small business, again, that is often at the back end of the line on this stuff. But along that alone, let's just say that small business owners are supporting the bill and are beginning to speak out all over the country.

In fact, a Wisconsin company, Wisconsin Vision, owned by Darren Horndasch, says that having a union makes his employees more career oriented, more invested in his business and gives him a competitive edge. Jim O'Malley, owner of a print shop in Pittsburgh, says that he values the union apprenticeship program for his employees. Again, sharing training expenses with the union is a benefit to this small business employer. Ruth Shep, a business owner in West Fargo, North Dakota, says ``good jobs support families, they support the community.'' And she wants to see workers be able to form a union and to have a choice in our economy. Larry Thompson, owner of an Ohio firm, Thompson Electric, recently wrote an op-ed in which he wrote, ``our union workers receive the most cutting-edge job training available, and it pays off through lower injury rates, increased productivity and strengthening the ability to serve the people of Ohio.''

So I would agree with you. It is cheaper in the short term, this quarter, to try to shave a buck here a buck there. But if you want a successful business, you have to build over the long term. That means having a good, solid, well trained, reliable and productive workforce. And you can't do that on the cheap. And that is why we need the Employee Free Choice Act.

And I yield back to the gentlelady.

I thank you, Congresswoman Edwards, for doing this again. So many myths you're busting tonight, so much good information, including the panels that are right next to you.

But I just want to say that, you know, as you're busting myths associated with the Employee Free Choice Act, and I thank you for that, let me just talk about a few other things that unions have done for me and you. Worker compensation. That's because workers fought for it. Social Security, that's a pretty good thing, right? Minimum wage, I'd say that's a thumbs up. The weekend. You want to thank somebody for the weekend, you can thank the union movement. The 8-hour day, prohibitions against child labor so we don't have 9-year-olds slaving away for 14 hours a day 7 days a week. Worker safety, used to be, Congresswoman Edwards, that if you lost your thumb at that punch press, they couldn't use you anymore, you just had to leave. Now we've got worker safety and requirements, OSHA. Setting a wage scale. As you pointed out, as a worker who was on the lower end of the wage scale, you could thank the union movement for setting a minimum wage and for setting a wage scale that other employers

had to meet, or they would lose workers because they would come to the higher wage area.

The union movement, as I pointed out a moment ago, contributed to the civil rights movement, for women, for people of color. And even today, so many struggles for union representation are caught up in struggles for empowerment, for people who are legal immigrants to our society, communities of color, women, people who are fighting for a chance in our society. The union movement has done a lot for us all.

I yield back.

And I again want to thank the gentlelady from Maryland, Congresswoman Edwards. You're doing a great job here, a great service getting the word out. And I want to lend my voice and thank you. Again, reminding everybody that we are here on the progressive message. The Progressive Caucus has a vision for America that includes workers' rights, and we're talking about that today.

And I just want to say, as I begin to have to wind down, Congresswoman, that I just want to leave with this thought. You know, you and I know that this Congress has been abuzz over the last week, over the whole AIG thing, right? We've been talking about AIG, AIG. And what have we been talking about? These enormous bonuses these folks have been getting. $165 million in retention bonuses to people who work in the unit of AIG that did all these fancy derivatives that kind of led to this tremendous risk to the American economy.

But this idea of work, executive pay, Congresswoman, is not a new one. In fact, it was 1991, when I was a brand new lawyer, just got out of law school in 1990, and I read a book called In Search of Excess. And in this book it talked about executive pay, exorbitant executive pay. 1991. I think I was 25 years old at the time.

What's my point?

My point is, that during the same period of time we've seen flat worker pay. We've seen worker pay stay stagnant. We've seen people's unemployment rise recently, but we've seen the health care plans have higher co pays, more of a premium every month, and we've seen workers really struggling, and we've seen productivity going up. So we see flat worker pay, increasing productivity, meaning workers are making more stuff and doing more services within the same amount of time, and so the reality is, somebody's got to stand up for the American worker.

I think it's almost time for us to wrap up. I am going to leave that to you, the Congresswoman from Maryland, who's done such a good job in organizing this special order tonight for the Progressive Caucus.

Mr. Speaker, I am here to talk about a very critical anniversary before us tonight, the Iraq anniversary. The Iraq war anniversary is tomorrow, Mr. Speaker, and it is critical that we give this moment due attention.

I am here as the person who leads our Progressive Special Order hour, the Progressive Message, and I want to just start off by thanking Mr. Jared Polis of Colorado who is here with me tonight who is a member of the Progressive Caucus and who has some very clear remarks to share with me right now.

Congressman, let me yield to you and can you reflect on this auspicious occasion, the anniversary of the Iraq war.

Will the gentleman from Colorado yield for a moment?

You are fresh off the campaign trail, Congressman. You have been knocking on doors, talking to folks, and you know what people are thinking. You haven't been around here long enough to get jaded, and so your level of enthusiasm for the work

is still very fresh. What are the American people saying about our involvement now on its sixth year in Iraq?

Congressman, if you would yield back for a moment, I would like to ask you again; in the course of your work, you're walking around Colorado, you're walking around your district, you're talking to folks, did you talk to any American families who had loved ones who were stop-loss, who are now on their second, third, fourth deployment? Did you see anything like that as I yield back to you, Congressman?

Congressman, if you would yield back, I can tell you that as a Member of Congress myself--now I'm a sophomore Member, and you and I are closer to not being Congressmen and being long-term veterans--my heart always breaks a little bit whenever I talk to a spouse who says my wife or husband is going to be leaving here for a year or 18 months, or how about the situation where a woman walks up and says, see this baby who is 9 months old? She never met her daddy. Is this the kind of thing that you saw while you were on the campaign trail?

Congressman, as you have done your work, you're fresh off the campaign trail, I wonder, did you ever have any occasion to talk to family members who said, you know, my son came back, but he's kind of different than he was when he left; he used to have a smile, he used to have a joke for everybody, and now it seems like the weight of the world is on this 22-year-old guy, now it seems like my daughter can't find her smile again?

In my great State of Minnesota, we had a young person who sought mental health care, and there wasn't enough room and they couldn't get in right away. And before this person could come back, they took their own life because they couldn't get the helicopters out of their head, they couldn't get the horror, they couldn't get these kind of images out of their mind, and yet, we've learned that suicide is a serious issue for our fighting men and women, particularly in connection with Iraq.

Have you encountered these kind of medical challenges that our veterans are facing in connection with this war?

Congressman, let me tell you, tomorrow marks the beginning of the seventh year of the war in Iraq. Throughout that time, we have lost more than 4,000 of America's bravest men and women. The number, to date, that I have is 4,259, but of course the way this war has been going, it could be 4,260 or 4,270.

We have spent over $600 billion, with long-term cost projections in the trillions, and we have seen Iraqi civilian casualties estimated at the hundreds of thousands. We know that there are over 30,000 Americans who have been injured. And of course the numbers of deaths are easy to count, but the injuries are more difficult because not all the injuries are manifested in terms of a limb or a scar; but of course we've seen those, too. Let me tell you, if you go to Landstuhl Air Force Base, the hospital there in Germany, you see bright-eyed, young people who have suffered catastrophic injuries, and of course we've seen them back home.

We all know, Congressman, that the purported reasons for going to Iraq--you remember what they are. Would you care to tick off a few of the reasons you and I were told, as Americans, that we needed to go into Iraq? Do you remember what some of those reasons were back almost 6 years ago, Congressman?

Weapons of mass destruction. And all we have been found with, Congressman, is weapons of mass distraction, as we have been given misinformation, disinformation due to a combination of political pressure, cherry-picking effects, and poor intelligence. All these assertions ended up being wrong, wrong, wrong and dramatically undermined American credibility around the world.

Congressman, you also would probably have to agree with me that this war has had a corrosive effect on our standing in the world. Whether you're talking about Abu Ghraib, whether you're talking about Bagram, whether you're talking about--whatever you're talking about, our country, which is known as a beacon of civil and human rights, as the rule of law prevails in America, we have seen this conflict sort of eat at what we stand for. I wonder, are these things that you've encountered as you were out there on the campaign trail and as you have been a Member of this body for the last several weeks?

Well, yielding back, Congressman, you and I also know that you are right when you say one of the purported reasons was weapons of mass destruction, which you and I learned was not true. We also know that we were told--we went through sort of this link that was sort of made between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. What have we learned? The bipartisan--bipartisan, that's Republicans and Democrats--9/11 Commission found that there was ``no operational relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda.'' Claims that 9/11 hijacker Muhammad Atta met with Iraqi agents in Prague turned out to be false. Do remember that one, Congressman?

Well, Congressman, as you yield back, we were told weapons of mass destruction, links with Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. And some people said, well, at least Saddam Hussein is gone--and of course we're glad he is

gone, but it almost seems like, when the argument was made, that folks acted like it was a cost-free endeavor, that he was just gone and we didn't have to pay dearly as a Nation for it.

But one of the questions that I want to also direct to you, Congressman, is, $8 billion in reconstruction funding disappeared under the Bush administration's watch. According to Iraq's Public Integrity Commission, roughly $8 billion in the country's reconstruction funds were ``wasted or stolen'' between 2007 and the beginning of the invasion. How does that strike you?

When you think about waste, fraud, and abuse, you might have heard that story about that billion dollars in bills sitting on a wooden pallet. How does that strike you? How does that strike your constituents?

Well, Congressman, I think that is a question that we all need to ponder. But Halliburton, after receiving no-bid reconstruction contracts from the Bush White House, wasted hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars. A 2005 report by Senator Byron Dorgan and Congressman Henry Waxman cited internal Pentagon audits that question ``more than a billion dollars in the company's bills for work in Iraq.''

It just boggles the mind. If the American taxpayer, in their generosity, says let's get water going in Baghdad, let's get electricity going in Baghdad, at least if we spent the money, the people there ought to get it; wouldn't you say so, Congressman?

And there have been other costs, those that are less easy to quantify, such as the cost to America's image, which you spoke of very well, Congressman Polis. And though it is difficult to assign numbers, we know the view of our great Nation has suffered--although I'm happy to report we're on the mend now--and the cost is just really very difficult to calculate.

Let me just remind folks that this is the Progressive message. We are talking about the anniversary of the Iraq war, we are talking about what's going on. We are the Progressive Caucus, and we're talking about a vision of peace and a vision of a progressive message in our country.

I want to get to this panel in our slides, Congressman. And I want to say, after 6 years of the Iraq war, here is sort of the cost that I just alluded to. Here is what we've had to pay. Here are some of the hits--flush with cites on the bottom of each one because we're not just up here talking, we back up what we say at the Progressive message. U.S. troops killed in Iraq, 4,259 as of today.

Each one with a family, each one with a story, each one with a future, each one with a patriotic passion for their Nation, each one who wanted to come home. And each one didn't have to ever go to Iraq because the premise for our involvement was, as you and I just mentioned, those reasons were discovered to not be accurate, the weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein in connection with al Qaeda.

U.S. troops wounded in Iraq, 31,102. And again, these are traumatic brain injuries, these are lost limbs, these are severe injuries--some will heal, some are injuries for a lifetime, as you know, Congressman. And I will yield if you want to comment on any of these. Iraqi civilians killed in the war, about 150,000; that's according to the World Health Organization. Please look it up yourself if you have any questions about that number. And you would have to imagine, in a country of about 29 million people, that there is no Iraqi family that has not seen death and destruction, and this has to be extremely traumatizing.

Iraqi civilians forced from their homes, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, about 4.7 million persons who have been homeless as a result of this conflict. That's a big deal. U.S. troops deployed in Iraq, right now we have got about 138,000 people there and, again, a conflict that, according to the reasons offered to us by the Bush administration, not one should have been there based on the reasons they offered to us.

Impact of war on the U.S. economy, $1.3 trillion. That's the Congressional Joint Economic Committee Report. I hope folks who might be seeing this, Mr. Speaker, will be willing to look at the Congressional Joint Economic Committee Report, which will cite the impact of this war on our economy as $1.3 trillion. That's a lot of money. That's a whole lot of money.

Cost of the Iraq War to the average American family, according again to the Congressional Joint Economic Committee Report, that's about $16,500 per American family. We have paid dearly, too dearly for our involvement in this conflict. And in my view, Mr. Speaker, the cost of even one life is too dear, even $1 is too dear, but we have made much, much more than that.

Yes, sir.

Congressman, I have just got to tell you that 1 more minute is too much. Our President has said that 16 months is our out date, and I think it's incumbent upon all of us to make sure that it is that or less because, quite frankly, I don't look forward to coming up here another year from now saying that we're still present in Iraq in the way that we are now. We need to out of there. We need to wind our way out. Iraq needs to go back to the people of Iraq. Iraqis need to get ahold of their country and govern their own affairs.

Sometimes we talk about the Iraq War and even here I've used the word ``war,'' but really at this point we are not talking about a war. We are talking about an occupation. And when I say that, I don't mean that in any sort of a derisive way. It's the legal word that is appropriate for this situation. In a war you can win or lose, but in an occupation you can only stay longer than you should or you can leave sooner than you should, but eventually you've got to go; right? So with this America involvement in Iraq, it is time to say to the Iraqi people, ``This is your country. We will not abandon you. We will not leave you because, of course, we're deeply implicated in your country at this time, but the reality is the military engagement needs to come to a close.''

Let me ask you this, Congressman Polis: When you think about this statistic, Iraqi civilians forced from their homes and the number of about 4.7 million, how does that strike you when you consider Iraqi boys and girls who used to live one place but now can't because of this military conflict? How does that impact their development? How does that impact their ability to grow up to be strong citizens of the world in, say, 5, 10, 15 years?

Well, Congressman, I just want to point out to you and to everyone watching, Mr. Speaker, that when one child is forced from their home or one adult, for that matter--a

home is like a bowl. Can you imagine making a cake without a bowl? Where are you going to put the eggs? Where are you going to put the milk? Where are you going to put all the ingredients for that cake so that you can make that cake and put it in the oven? Try to imagine raising a family. You don't know where you're going to be. You don't know where your school is going to be. No familiar places. You're a stranger everywhere. This kind of displacement has an impact on a child's ability to learn, a child's ability to embrace the environment that they're in. The child begins to sense that maybe their parents can't really protect them, that maybe they're vulnerable and perhaps that anything could happen to them at any time.

This does not bode well for the future. We're talking about a region of the world that has known way too much conflict, and this conflict is one that we surely need to end. And this idea of displacement, I think, is another thing that we need to talk about in terms of the impact on the development of this society as we talk in this Progressive message this hour and the anniversary of the war in Iraq.

Congressman, let's turn for a moment, then, to veterans' care, if you will. We must begin to take seriously the promise to care for our veterans. Our veterans, prominent men and women, you have them in Colorado and I've got them in Minnesota. Actually, they are from all over this country. And the fact is with tens of thousands of injured troops returning home, we must work diligently to ensure that they do not fall through the cracks and that every soldier receives care and benefits that they have earned and deserve.

During the 110th Congress, when I was a freshman Member, I was proud to have voted for the largest increase in funding for Veterans Affairs in history, upon passage of H.R. 2642, the Fiscal Year 2008 Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies appropriations bill. We made a real commitment to military hospital construction, improving the quality of care for veterans, improving the lives of veterans, making sure that we shorten the period of time and that their veterans' benefits got to them in a quick way. We not only talked patriotism, we did patriotism as we passed this largest Veterans Affairs funding bill in the history of our country.

In the fall of 2007, I worked closely with the Minnesota congressional delegation to ensure that members of the Minnesota National Guard Unit, the 1/34th Brigade Combat Team receive their full active component GI Bill entitlements. That particular unit, that particular brigade combat team, returned to Minnesota after a 22-month mobilization and deployment to Iraq, the longest tour of any ground combat unit during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Unfortunately, members of the unit were informed after they returned home, Congressman and Mr. Speaker, that they were not eligible for their full GI benefits because their orders to return home cut them a few days short of the eligibility for these benefits. After my office was informed of this decision, I and Mr. Tim Walz, my congressman and the highest-ranking enlisted Member ever to come to Congress, wrote a letter to the Department of Defense to appeal the decision. The Army responded positively, and most of the soldiers of this very brave, courageous, and successful combat unit were granted waivers to access those educational benefits.

And I just wanted to share that with you, Mr. Speaker and Congressman, because I think it's important that the world know that Members of Congress are fighting for their constituents who have served our country bravely.

And I just want to ask you, Congressman Polis, if you have any thoughts you want to share with us about our veterans at this time and about our Nation's commitment to this group of Americans. Whether or not we agree on the war, we all agree that the warrior needs to be supported. Any comments as I yield to you?

Well, Congressman, I just want to congratulate you and all the delegation of Colorado on this wonderful news. I believe that Mr. Shinseki is one of the best Veterans Affairs Secretaries our country has ever seen, and I expect that we will be able to work closely with him to not only help the constituents of your great State but probably many others around our country.

I also just want to mention that I'm proud to have the Minneapolis VA hospital in my district, and Minneapolis VA is one of the facilities in our country that I feel very proud to be able to represent. The Minneapolis VA Medical Center has been awarded the 2008 Robert W. Carey Trophy Award for performance and excellence. If I sound like I'm a little proud of them, you're right, I am. The annual Carey Trophy Award, the most prestigious national quality award that the VA bestows, recognizes a VA organization that implements management approaches resulting in high levels of performance and service to our veterans. So I am just real happy to mention that. And I am proud, along with you, as we see veterans in Colorado, Minnesota, all over the country being able to benefit from a responsive Congress, a grateful Congress, for the great service that these brave men and women have given to our country.

Yes, sir.

Congressman, great point. The fact is that our veterans are Americans, of course, some of the finest Americans. They come back to their country; they expect a country that's working. So they can come back and maybe get a green job that will help them build our country on the civilian side. They can help weatherize our neighborhoods. They can help build senior housing, low-income housing. They can do so many things our country needs and help build us a renewable future.

So I think you're absolutely right to introduce the broader economic context that we're in. One thing we don't want to see is to have these veterans who have given so much for so many come back to a country where we're not building, where we're not preparing for the future. So you're right. I'm glad you mentioned the American Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act. I'm glad you mentioned our efforts to build a health care system that everyone can benefit from. I'm glad you mentioned these important things because, of course, veterans are folks who come into a broader context, and it's not only veterans' benefits that benefit veterans. It's a working, functioning America in which everybody has a slice of the pie.

So, Congressman, as we are wrapping up today, I just want to thank you again for being here with us this afternoon. The Progressive message has to always come week in, week out. Whether or not Members are on a Thursday night jumping on a plane trying to get back home or not, the Progressive message has to be part of what we do every week. And I just want to yield to you to sort of offer some final thoughts as we begin to wrap up our comments tonight.

Let me join with you in that hope and in that wish. I think I can speak for the members of the Progressive Caucus, Mr. Speaker, when I say that we will be working hard to make that dream a reality.

I also want to point out that there have been a great many Americans, I'm sure Minnesotans and I'm sure Coloradans as well, who have been calling for, working for, pushing for America to assert its soft power in the world and to help make peace in this world and be a source of peace in this world.

You can bet there is a committed group of Americans who are in the United States Congress who are people who call themselves the Progressive Caucus, and you can find out what we are doing on this Web site, it's cpc.grijalva.house.gov. We are going to be here giving this progressive message every week, and we are the Progressive Caucus.

As I wrap it up, and I just want to thank you for joining me tonight, we are going to be here week in, week out, through rain, shine, winter, summer, talking about a progressive message, a progressive message for America, for the world.

Congressman Polis, let me thank you again for joining me tonight.

I yield back.

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 5 o'clock and 46 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Monday, March 23, 2009, at 12:30 p.m., for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, as we come in week and week out, the progressive message is up again, as we come back every Thursday in order to make the progressive position clear on the critical issues.

I'm going to be joined tonight by a number of colleagues who are making their way to the House floor, but tonight our topic is going to be the very critical issue of District of Columbia's voting rights, the District of Columbia's voting rights, which is a vital and essential issue which has been dogging our country for many years. We certainly hope that this issue of D.C. voting rights is an issue that the country focuses its attention on. D.C. voting rights is a question of giving rights and conferring rights upon Americans who pay their taxes, Americans who send their children to war, Americans who are equal in every way to Americans who live in the various States. And because of this important role that they play in our country, this equal role, we're looking forward to seeing legislation come out that will allow members of the District of Columbia to be able to have a representative who can cast a vote in our Congress. We are looking forward to this in the near future.

But before we get to that topic, I want to yield to the gentleman from Virginia, who is going to take a moment to make a critical statement.

Year of the Military Family

Let me thank the gentleman for his quick message. Though not directly related to what we're talking tonight, we are happy to yield to a colleague at any time, particularly in light of his very good message.

But, again, Keith Ellison here coming today with a progressive message. The Congressional Progressive Caucus comes every week to make the point that there is a progressive vision for America, that we have a vision that is inclusive, that brings Americans of all colors, all cultures, all faiths together, and this progressive message is going to be heard and will be heard every week, week in and week out. This is the Progressive Caucus, and we are here with a progressive message.

And what I want to do without any further delay is to ask my good friend from the great State of Missouri to weigh in on this critical issue of D.C. voting rights.

Mr. Cleaver, Congressman from the great State of Missouri, how do you understand this critical issue of D.C. voting rights?

Let me ask, we know that there is no voting representation for final passage issues for the people of the District of Columbia. Are they exempt from military service, are they exempt from taxes?

They have to pay, but when it comes to making decisions in Congress, they don't get to play; is that right?

The gentleman from Missouri made a very eloquent and clear statement.

We are here with the Progressive Caucus message tonight. We are talking about voting representation for the District of Columbia, and we have just been joined by a gentleman from the great State of Maryland, who has been a very able and strong representative of many, many issues.

I am just curious to know if the gentleman from Maryland, Elijah Cummings, former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, leading member on the Committee for Oversight, has a view on this issue of a voting representative for the District of Columbia?

The gentleman from Maryland just offered views on this important topic, and that is this, you have made a very clear case that a representative vote for D.C. is fair, it's moral, it's right, and it's the proper thing to do. But how will it benefit people across America for D.C. to have a vote?

What you are describing to me is kind of like pushing a cart in a grocery store when one of the wheels isn't really running right.

The other three might be, but one of the wheels isn't being represented and holding up, and the cart just doesn't run smoothly. It almost sounds like you are saying that America is a better country, and the values of the people are more accurately reflected when everyone has a vote here.

Is that your opinion?

Well, you know, Congressman Cummings, you represent a district very close to the District of Columbia and, therefore, you know people who live in the District and you know people who work in the District and I am sure many of them are your friends, your colleagues, your constituents, you have come to know on a personal basis over time. What is their opinion?

I mean, did the public want this or is this just something that D.C. wants? What do the public opinion polls say? I mean, it looks like the Washington Post might have done some research on this issue.

What, in your view is the public opinion of giving Washington D.C. a representative vote in the Congress?

I certainly thank the gentleman and do thank him for coming down here, Congressman Cummings, sharing his views about what he knows personally about the people of the District of Columbia and the surrounding area, sharing his views about how children ask their parents about who is sticking up for me, who is speaking up for me. And, unfortunately, in the District of Columbia, parents have to say well, we have a delegate who is really, really good, but she doesn't get to vote on some stuff.

So I have just been joined by other members of the Progressive Caucus, one of whom is Congresswoman Barbara Lee, who is a Member from the great State of California and is also the Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus; and we also happen to be graced with the presence of that very special delegate that we have all just been talking about, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton.

I think it's important to say that Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton is not on her own here, she is not fighting the fight by herself. I am all the way from Minnesota, and I feel passionately about the importance of the District of Columbia having a representative. And I look forward to seeing Eleanor Holmes Norton's vote up there on that board count equally with everybody else.

But this is the position of the Progressive Caucus, that we believe firmly in the idea of equal representation.

Yes, it is true that the Washington Post has done research on this issue and it is the will of the American people for the District of Columbia to have a vote.

With that, I'd like to invite the gentlelady from the great State of California to weigh in on this topic of the District of Columbia having a vote, standing equal with the rest of the country, being able to express an opinion.

I yield to the gentlelady from California.

Would the gentlelady yield for just a moment?

Ms. LEE California. I would be happy to.

The gentlelady is all the way from California. It takes you 4\1/2\ hours to fly here. Why do you care about whether D.C. has a vote or not?

I yield to the gentlelady.

Thank you for yielding back, gentlelady from California. Let me now recognize the person who we have all been building up to for a moment. Again, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton is not by herself on this. We are standing shoulder to shoulder with her. But there is also no doubt that she has been quarterbacking this issue, she's been spearheading this issue. No matter what kind of metaphor you want to use, she's been in the leadership of this issue and has offered tireless, unrelenting leadership.

At this time I want to yield to the gentlelady to sort of lay out the issues for us on this critical issue of D.C. having a representative vote in Congress. I yield to the gentlelady.

Here we are for yet another Progressive Caucus, progressive message coming to the American people to articulate a progressive vision for the society that we live in.

I'm so happy to be talking about the progressive message today. And I'm going to be joined by our chairwoman, who is none other than Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, and I look forward to having a very robust dialogue today.

Well, it's budget time, time to discuss the budget. And what better time than budget time to talk about how we're going to reshape our budget in a progressive and effective way that will reflect the needs and wants of the American people. Budget time, where we look at things, where we set our priorities, and where we really examine where we're going.

Tonight we're going to focus on a particular part of the budget. We're going to talk about the defense budget and the need for reform, to review what we've been spending our money on, to make sure that while we absolutely protect the American people, that we do not spend so much money that the American people really can't afford it, and that we try to get that peace dividend that after the fall of the Soviet Union we all thought we would be realizing. This is what we're going to talk about tonight with the progressive message, which we come to you with every single week.

The progressive message tonight: The budget. Tonight: The defense appropriation and how this particular end of the budget needs to be cut so that we, as Americans, can have the money we need to not only keep America safe, but also to keep America in the black and not in the red. Very important dialogue tonight.

Let me invite our chairwoman, Lynn Woolsey, to have some open remarks. I yield to the gentlelady from the great State of California.

All right. Well, it's good to be here again. Thanks for getting us started.

Let me invite Congressman Polis from the great State of----

Colorado. Congressman Polis, forgive my lack of sharpness on that point. But you're a welcomed friend tonight, and we want to thank you.

Would you like to make some opening comments as we begin to talk about the progressive message, the progressive budget, and we're going to be focusing on responsible defense spending tonight?

And we're honored to have you.

Well, Congressman Polis, you are a very welcomed voice. We agree wholeheartedly.

You know, the American people may be under the mistaken impression that the more money you spend on defense, the more secure you're going to be. Well, tonight we're going to talk about how that isn't true.

What I want to do is start out by quoting our President, Barack Obama, in his first address to Congress last Tuesday. He said, ``We will eliminate the no-bid contracts that have wasted billions in Iraq and reform our defense budget so that we're not paying for Cold War era weapons systems we don't use. At the risk of repetition let me just say, ``We will eliminate the no-bid contracts that we have wasted billions in Iraq and reform our defense budget so that we are not paying for Cold War-era weapons systems we don't use.''

When I quote that statement of our President, Congresswoman Woolsey, what sort of thoughts come to mind for you?

Well, Congresswoman Woolsey, you know every dollar spent is a dollar earned by somebody. And I imagine that these weapons systems may be quite a pretty penny for some people.

Congressman Polis, when I read that quote from our President--you were here last Tuesday night--what sort of thoughts come to you right away?

Well, I think that's dead on the mark.

I want to say that, just yesterday, President Obama began by making good on his promise by signing the Presidential memorandum that will reform government by contracting. What this memorandum talks about is strengthening oversight and management of taxpayer dollars, ending unnecessary no-bid, cost-plus contracts, and maximizing the use of competitive procurement processes and clarifying the rules prescribing when outsourcing is and is not appropriate.

The Office of Management and Budget will be tasked with giving guidance to every agency on making sure contracts serve taxpayers, not contractors. It's important to focus on who really matters here; this is taxpayer and American citizens, not contractors. That's the focus that we need to have. So I'm very happy to see the President taking the focus and really drilling down on getting the most for the American taxpayer.

I think we've also been joined by the gentleman from the State of Washington who has been pitching hard for so long, speaking so eloquently for so long about issues of peace, issues of security, and important issues on the welfare of the American people. I am speaking of none other than Jim McDermott of the State of Washington.

I would yield to the gentleman for any comments you might make on this important topic tonight.

Well, I just want to say that I think it's critical that we discuss this issue. I believe that a budget is a statement of values. And if we value human life, and if we value peace, then we should have that reflected in our budget. That's why tonight we are talking about taking a look at the defense budget.

I just want to tell you, draw your attention to this chart up here, Mr. Speaker, Cold War-era weapons systems. Things that were mentioned, the anti-ballistic missile system, this is a pretty big-ticket item. If you could look at what we could save by cutting the Bush's fiscal year 2008 request, and then there is a task force that proposed a reduction, these would not result in any reductions in safety and security for the American people, and this chart was generated by the task force on the united security budget.

I just want to talk about it a little bit. Let me frame it this way.

Yes, sir.

That's $60 billion, with a ``B.''

Yes, and that's quite a pretty pity, quite a bit of money there.

As a matter of fact, let me just say that Congressman Frank, like yourself, Congresswoman Woolsey and many others, Congresswoman Lee, have been working with the Center for American Progress and have adopted one of their proposals for reducing defense spending. That proposal, coupled with ending the war in Iraq, will be at the center of this plan to reduce military spending.

First, a timely withdrawal from Iraq could create $105 billion of savings in 1 year if the recommendation for the Center for American Progress report, ``Building a Military for the 21st Century,'' is followed. That's where this chart actually comes from.

If we were to take these proposals and reduce the Virginia Class Submarine and this destroyer, if we were to deal in a very sensible way with offensive space weapons. What do we need to be fighting in space for? I have no idea.

To reduce our nuclear arsenal which, you know, under the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, countries that don't have nuclear weapons shouldn't get them, but countries that do have them should be reducing them. This could be a significant savings. Then waste procurement and business operations, a 7 percent reduction.

We could save $60 billion. How many college educations is that? How many teachers, how many cops? Could we afford a universal single pair health care system?

Could we afford the things that will make our country ready for this new age, this green economy.

Let me ask you, Congresswoman Woolsey, what are your views on this subject?

I had a feeling you did.

Wait a minute, do you mean to tell me that if you take every country in the world from Palau to Brazil, Russia to Israel, from Argentina to Brunei, you add them all up, you mean we still spend more?

Early childhood, health care.

Mr. McDermott, a great American whose birthday we celebrate every January 15, actually on April 4, 1967, said these words: ``A Nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.'' Those words were spoken by Martin Luther King.

What do you think about that quote?

In the shadows of life.

Yes, I do.

Absolutely.

I was going to ask you to react to the quote, if you would, ma'am. Would you react to the Martin Luther King quote, or should I read it again?

``A Nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.''

How do you react to that? And then add on what other thoughts you may have.

Please do.

Congressman, you've been reflecting quite a bit on issues of military reductions and focusing on our country's security, not sacrificing that, but on how we might save more money. But what do you think about this idea of military expenditures not being a good economic investment, not stimulating a lot of jobs? Any thoughts occur to you about that?

Talking about soldiers as opposed to contractors, I will never forget the hearing in which General Petraeus was asked how much he makes, and I think he makes about $170,000 a year for managing a whole lot of people and a whole lot of equipment. And then somebody asked Erik Prince, who is the head of Blackwater, how much he makes, and he makes quite a bit more than that, definitely millions. And I mean he runs an operation quite a bit smaller than the United States military and a comparable force. So even when it comes to the leadership in the military arena, we're contracting military leadership and we are paying them a whole lot more than we are those soldiers who are at the head of our military and who are really doing the real hard work and can't just walk away, and it's not just about a dollar and cents for them. When you made your observation about contractor versus soldier pay, that was another image that stuck in my mind.

I yield back to you.

You've hit on something. Why has it been somewhat taboo to discuss the military budget? What is in operation that would make someone shy about asking tough questions about military expenditure?

Does the gentlewoman from California have any views on this?

Congresswoman, we have just been joined by Congressman Sam Farr, who is a member of the Progressive Caucus.

Congressman Farr, tonight we have been talking about the Progressive budget and how examining the defense budget in a tough way will allow us to save a whole lot of money which we can use for human need. And I just want to know do you have any comments on that, any reflections?

Congressman Farr, one of the things that Barney Frank says is that on September 10th, 2001, we had no idea how we were going to deal with the expenditures associated with an Iraq war. Somehow over the course of time we figured out how to come up with $10 billion a month to fight the Iraq war. Yet people tell you and they tell me we can't afford universal health care. That is just too expensive. The prior President even told us that and vetoed the State Children's Health Insurance Program because it cost too much money.

But what does that mean to you when we think about reexamining our defense budget for waste, fraud and abuse, and dealing with some of these Cold War era weapons systems? In your view, what do we really need a ballistic missile defense for in this age and day? Do you have any thoughts on that topic?

Congresswoman Woolsey, do you want to reflect on this?

Well, Congressman, the fact is that in all this exorbitant, precipitous expansion of the defense budget, you really haven't seen the average soldier getting a whole lot more money. We have had to increase the budget for the VA. When you talk about the human element in the military, this almost seems like the forgotten element.

When you think about a weapon like this ballistic missile defense over in Europe, agitating the Russians, the Iranians aren't threatening to bomb America. I haven't heard that one yet. The fact is that this thing in the Bush budget was $10 billion. The fact is you have got this $21 billion for nuclear weapons. We live in a time of asymmetrical warfare. What do we need $21 billion for? Why do we need that?

The fact is that is one of the things that is so appalling. One of the things we are doing tonight is saying it is not unpatriotic to examine the military budget. It is not a sign that you are a coward and you don't want to face the enemy if you want to cut the military budget. It doesn't mean that you don't care about the troops. Of course, we desperately care about the troops. Part of what we are arguing for is for the sake of the troops.

So the thing is that it is so important to be having this dialogue tonight, so critical that we do not shrink from this critical dialogue about cutting this budget. I am so happy that President Obama came right in this Chamber a little more than a week ago to say ``we will eliminate the no-bid contract that have wasted billions in Iraq and reform our defense budget so that we are not paying for Cold War era weapons systems we don't use. Let it begin now.''

Congressman Farr, let me thank you for being here. Let me also thank Congressman Woolsey, Congressman McDermott, and also Congressman Polis was with us for a moment.

This is the progressive message, the progressive message tonight that we came with, to talk about just the defense aspect of the progressive message. We believe that if we follow the program that has been offered by the Center For American Progress that Congressman Frank has been working on, we can save a lot of money for the American people without any reduction in safety for the American people.

It is not unpatriotic to question the military budget. It is not unpatriotic to talk about waste, fraud and abuse in the military. It is to enhance the quality of life for the soldier and security for the American people.

My name is Keith Ellison. I have been happy to be here tonight for the Progressive message. It has been great, another fantastic hour. We will be back, week in, week out, projecting a progressive message to the American people.

Mr. Speaker, my name is Keith Ellison, and I am here once again to help represent the progressive message of the Progressive Caucus.

We are really, really pleased to be joined tonight by an absolutely stellar leader in our great country, none other than the chairwoman of the Progressive Caucus, the co-chairperson, Lynn Woolsey of California. Let me yield a little bit of time to the honorable chairwoman because, when she is on the floor, representing our great caucus in this great body in this great country, it is always fun to listen to what she shares with us. Actually, she is going to share a little bit about a letter that the Progressive Caucus wrote, among other things. I am just going to yield the floor to Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey for a moment so she can get us started off right.

Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, how are you today?

You bet.

Well, Chairwoman, thank you for yielding back.

I want to say--and just to agree with you--that investing in our young people, young people going to Head Start is one of the very best investments that any society can make. And you can get conservative economists, you can get liberal economists, any kind of economists you want; they can tell you that the biggest bang for the buck is investing in early childhood education, programs like Head Start.

You're right to point out as well, Madam Chair, that we have about 90 percent of the House and Senate bill is overlapping, but there's that 10 percent that we're here to advocate about. And I think it's important that the American people know that the Progressive Caucus is going to be in there fighting for an inclusive version that embraces all Americans.

And I want to thank you and Chairman Raul Grijalva for writing that letter. That's the kind of leadership that the American people expect from you.

And I just want to also add that education is a critical point. The House bill allocated 2.1 billion for funding for programs to prepare children. And that was cut to about 1 billion in the Senate side.

But let me also talk about higher education.

The House voted to provide about 6 billion for higher education while the Senate compromised, ultimately eliminated 3.5 billion for higher education facility modernization and purchase of instructional equipment.

Right now, as you know, Madam Chair, when a recession like the kind we're in right now, what do people do as they try to figure out what to do as they've been unemployed? They often go to school to try to upgrade their skills. And the opportunity to do this, the investment in that, has been not as fully there as it could be as it is in the House version.

So we want folks to know that they can do something about this. The conferees are confereeing, and, you know, this is something that Americans don't have to sit back. It's not over yet. It's not done yet. This cake is still baking. So it's a time to try to be back involved.

I yield back.

Well, you know, I'm glad you mentioned that because Mark Zandy, who, again, was an adviser to John McCain, a Republican, said that the way to really stimulate the economy is to put it in certain areas and not so much in others.

And if you look on this chart right here, Zandy's Estimates For a Multiplier Effect For Various Policy Proposals, what you find is that spending money for States has a pretty good stimulative effect. Right down here, ``revenue transfers to State governments.'' For every dollar we put into that, that will generate $1.36. That's an important expenditure right there that we could use to really stimulate the economy.

This will bring back good benefits to the economy. So for the Senate to shortchange us by $40 billion is a mistake.

Let me also say, too, that these are good jobs, these are--we're talking about cops, fire fighters, we're talking about people who are really out there filling potholes, doing important jobs, making sure that people are getting workforce training and development. These are critical functions.

And you know what? I read, Madam Chair, that if you were to add up all of the State budget deficits that are current right now, it would amount to about $350 billion. I know my own State of Minnesota has about a $5 billion deficit. I know California, your State, is in need.

So the thing is that what we're trying to do is make sure that we don't have layoffs at the State, that we don't have service cuts at the State, and that we're continuing to bolster and pump our economy up.

So I'm glad you brought the aid to States out because it's very critical, very important.

And I might add that temporary increase in food stamps has a very stimulative effect. For every $1, $1.73 is going to come back; increasing infrastructure, for every $1, $1.59 comes back.

Now, I might add, Madam Chair, that certain things do not have a very stimulative effect. Things that don't really do much good in the situation we're in right now would be making income taxes that are expiring in 2010 permanent. That would not help. That has a very minimal stimulative effect. These kinds of things won't help. Making expiring capital gains tax cuts permanent has less--we put $1 in, we get less than $1 out. These kinds of things are important to keep in mind as we look at the stimulus proposal.

Thank you. Let me yield back to you.

That's right.

Trillion.

You know, Madam Chair, no one has to tell you. You've been a parent. You've raised a family. You know how it is.

Well, let me yield.

You know, Madam Chairwoman, it's so important that you share that personal experience because there might be people watching this broadcast right now thinking, ``Man, you know, am I just like a bad luck accident? Am I just like somebody who can't make it? Is it my fault that I am unemployed? Is it my fault that something happened? We had mental illness in the family,'' through no fault of their own. They're feeling like, ``Wow, you know, it's not working for me.''

So when you stand up here on this House floor as a Member of Congress saying, ``I have been there myself,'' it gives them great courage, and it makes them feel like there is a tomorrow; and it makes them feel like there are some people in this body who care and who understand what they're going through. Because, you know, I got charts and graphs up here with numbers; and, you know, you're choking on the world ``trillion,'' and of course it's all ridiculous.

But the point is that it is people who we're here fighting for. That's why the Progressive Caucus was formed. That's why we exist. Because the story that you just told, there are, unfortunately, too many stories like that being told. And there has got to be somebody in this body who will stand up for folks who are fighting, who are trying to make it, who are trying to take care of those three kids.

I am so proud of our Nation that there was, at one time in our history, when we understood that welfare wasn't anything to be ashamed of. It was what we did for our neighbors because we, ourselves, could be in a tough situation. It was saying we're going to step up for our neighbors; we're not going to let them go without because we all know that we're one accident, one medical problem, one job loss away from being in that situation ourselves.

So this is what a caring Nation does. It says that yeah, you may be living that middle class dream, but you don't know what's going to happen to you next year. And we are here for you because we're all Americans and we care about each other. This is the kind of thing the Progressive Caucus stands for, and it's why I'm so proud that you are our chairperson.

That's right.

Reclaiming my time, you know, the Federal Government has been there for so many of us, even those of us who are under the mad delusion that we did it all ourselves. You know, you may be a big successful businessperson, but you get out of the bed in the morning knowing that if somehow you had a medical problem, 911, you could call them, and the EMS truck--that's the government--would come take care of you and take you to the hospital.

If you do manage to get all banged up and clean, the water coming out of the shower, somebody's inspected it to make sure that it wasn't going to poison you.

You get in your car and you get out on the road, that's the government, too, buddy, making sure that you have a decent road to go on.

And then because people aren't driving a gazillion miles an hour driving crazy, there's a cop out there making sure that people obey traffic rules. That's the government as well.

And there is a light that's properly regulating the traffic flow, the government. And then you drive to work and you see your employees, and you know what, they were educated in public school, the government again.

And after all of that help you turn around and said I did it all myself, and I don't want to pay these taxes because they're reaching in my back pocket, wait a minute; we've been helping you every single step of the way. Maybe the invention that you sell was on a government research grant.

So many opportunities are afforded us because we come together, because we are a society that operates for the common good, and yet, we have some people who only want to say that it's all me, I did everything, it's just me, I don't want to pay any taxes, I don't want to help anybody out, I don't care about any poor people. I don't care if a husband had a mental health issue, couldn't maintain his livelihood; she ends up having to turn to a welfare system which really is a caring society. I don't care about them. I don't care about those three kids. I don't care about those homeless people.

That kind of psychology is why we exist to try to tell people that we're better off together than we are apart. We're not trying to stop you from being able to do your own thing, but don't forget about the rest of us as you do your own thing.

The taxes are what we pay to live in a civilized society. The taxes are what we pay if we want good roads, good water, clean meat, if you want to be able to eat a peanut and not fall out from salmonella poisoning. This is what it's all about.

If you want to make sure that some of those women who were not as lucky as you, maybe who didn't have those job skills, maybe just weren't as fortunate as you, but we do have a system in place to do workforce training so they can get these skills and take care of themselves because we all want to be able to take care of ourselves. This is why the Progressive Caucus exists.

So let me yield back to you again.

That's right.

Very important.

So let's look over the four things. Number one, the Progressive Caucus is in there pitching hard for education; two, for aid to the States; three, for homeownership; four, health care. The Progressive Caucus is fighting for America's people. I'm so proud of the leadership that you and Congressman Grijalva offer to us.

Let me also add on this health care front, the pandemic food preparedness. That's a serious health care issue, and the House version included $900 million for food and the original Senate proposal only had $870 million. That could be a big difference for people who really need the help.

I also want to just add on a few other items if I may. You mentioned the neighborhood stabilization program, very important program, and I want to mention that which I believe was the third item that we asked for in the Progressive Caucus letter.

The neighborhood stabilization program helps local communities say that, look, if you have a bunch of foreclosures on a block, we're going to try to go in there and do something with that abandoned house because you know that if you have never missed a payment on your mortgage, you upkeep your property, you do a great job with your house, the second you get a foreclosed property next to you, your property value has just dropped. If somebody doesn't move into that house, and oftentimes they don't, the lawn may not get cut, the pipes may burst, people might steal the copper out of them, and it just creates a real nuisance to the whole neighborhood and drags the whole neighborhood down.

Again, back to this idea of some people believe, well, I don't want to help anybody out of foreclosure because I paid all my bills. Well, look, if you can have the value of your home protected by making sure that people don't get foreclosed upon or that if they do, the foreclosed property doesn't just go down, that is helping you. That is helping you. But it's helping you in a way that recognizes you're a member of the community and not out there all by yourself.

I also wanted to mention, as you mentioned, as we talked, there are other things like infrastructure development we've got to keep fighting for. Rural broadband access. In the Senate compromise, funding to increase broadband access in rural areas and other underserved parts of the country was reduced from $9 billion to $7 billion. That's more than twice as much as the House has offered.

Also Byrne Justice Assistance Grants, let me tell you these help fund a lot of the police departments around the country. The fact is that we cannot stop protecting the public just because we have a recession. A lot of police departments, local governments as we talked about before, are under a lot of pressure, and the Senate proposal trims additions to the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant Program which provides formula funding to State and local police. And the compromise would cut $450 million from Byrne grants, reducing funding from $1.5 billion to just about $1 billion, and that's not a good thing. We need to be able to stick out there.

And I also can't neglect home weatherization services, where the House bill allows for a Federal program that provides funding to increase energy efficiency for low-income families. The Senate allocates only $2.9 billion for the program, while the House had 6.2. And of course, LIHEAP, I know that's a favorite program of everybody. Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, unlike the House bill, the Senate version does not include additional funds for LIHEAP, which help low-income families pay utility bills.

So, again, the House bill is much better, and we hope that the conferees fight for the House version of the bill because that is what would help America much better.

A good, livable wage, green jobs.

Let me say that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which is moving its way through Congress at this time, different House and Senate version, 90 percent of it overlaps but there are some important differences we just talked about.

The bill, the Democrat bill quite frankly, H.R. 1, which passed through the House, would create about 3.7 million jobs. That's a lot of jobs. The House Republican plan would only create 1.3 million jobs.

We can do more than twice as better. So we can't just do as the little we can do. We've got to do as much as we can do because unemployment is a serious issue.

It's important to understand that jobs lost in the last 13 months is we've lost 3.6 million jobs. So, if we want to recover what we've lost in the last 13 months, we've got to have a bill like the House plan, and if we don't, we're going to be in a real situation.

And folks need to understand--and I know you understand this very well--you know, if I lose my job, then I'm not going to get that haircut because I really cannot afford it. That's a 20 bucks I'm not going to spend. So now the barber didn't get that 20 bucks. Maybe there's a few other people who can't get their hair cut. So now maybe the barber's not making enough money to make his rent. So now he has got to say maybe I can't do barbering, maybe I've got to close down my little shop now because I don't have the volume of traffic coming in. So now this is a person out of work. So now maybe the barber would go to the diner across the street and eat lunch every day. They're not buying meals.

So this thing has a ripple effect. So that's why it's important for us to pass a jobs and stimulus bill but a smart bill that invests in long-term recovery.

You know what, I want to show you another jobs chart up here, and again, you very clearly pointed out the individual human toll. But just to do a little numbers for a moment, Job Losses in Recent Recessions. Now, if you look at that blue line, this is the recession of 1990. This is the 1990 recession. We were coming out of George Bush, the First, and that was the 1990 recession with the first George Bush. And so we had a recession then, and that was a Republican time and we had a recession, and those things seem to go together for some reason. But anyway,

we had another recession in 2001 when Bush came into office. You know, Bill Clinton left America with a budget surplus.

And you know, the other party got in and they took care of that surplus real quick. But the 2001 recession dipped us down. We lost the volume job loss relative to the peak month. This is way down.

Now, the current recession is off the chart. That is the green line. Pow. We are not even measuring how far down. We don't know how far down we are going to go.

This is not finished. And the fact is that the job losses that we are looking at--3.6 since when the recession started in December, 2007. Something must be done. We have to act now. Anybody who knows anything about economics knows that.

And I will say this: while I really want the Senate version to improve, and I really am going to fight for that and encourage people to get on those conferees and have a better bill come out, I know that we have to do something. No action is no option.

Now, I want to say, if the gentlelady yields back, that the American people are behind us here. Sixty-seven percent approved of President Obama's efforts to pass the stimulus. Only 25 percent disapproved. The Democrats in Congress scored a 48 percent approval rating. That is way up from before.

And we had 42 percent of those disapprove of actions in Congress' majority. Unfortunately, the party on the other side of the aisle, the Republicans in Congress, have an approval rating of only 31 percent. But I think they could do better if they support the bill. I would love to see them improve their popularity by supporting the bill.

It will be great to have a bipartisan bill. The first time it went through, we couldn't get one Republican vote, even though President Obama came to talk with them, even though he reached his hand out, even though he extended himself to try to get to this post-partisan world that we all really, really want. But he put his hand out and they left him hanging.

Maybe it's going to come back around, and we can get a few Republican votes next time. But I just want to make clear that the American people are on the side of a stimulus package that will help them get back to work, and they believe that the President's doing the right thing by pushing this bill.

If the gentlelady would yield back, you know the definition of insanity, right?

And expecting a different result. Deregulation and tax cuts got us into this mess. But fair regulation and shared prosperity is going to get us out. And that's why the Progressive Caucus is here tonight, talking about the progressive message.

Here's the Web site right down here. Congressional Progressive Caucus. Here's the Web site.

If the gentlelady from California feels that we made our point tonight, what we are going to do is hand it over. But I think before we do, any parting comments you would like to make?

That's right. So this is the progressive message, this 1-hour Special Order that the Progressive Caucus comes to the American people to talk about what is really happening, Mr. Speaker. We have been fortunate to have the chairperson of the Progressive Caucus, who's been offering tremendous leadership, not only on economics, not only on an inclusive economics system, but also on war and peace. That's another thing that you have done such a great job on.

How many 5-minute speeches have you given on the issue of peace?

I don't think there's anyone who's done nearly as many. I think you probably have, like, broken a record somewhere along the line.

So you're going to keep talking.

Let me say, just like you have been there day in and day out, talking about peace, bringing our veterans home, we are going to be here week after week doing a Special Order with the progressive message. We are going to be encouraging people to get involved. It's not just about an outcome, it's also about a process.

We want to encourage people to get involved. What can you do? You can write, you can call. You can raise your voice and let your voice be heard.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the chairwoman of the Progressive Caucus, and we will yield back our time.

Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Tonight we're here for the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and I'm joined by my colleague, the honorable Hank Johnson, who hails from the State of Georgia. And we are the Progressive Caucus. And we're here week after week, month after month to help the American people understand that the progressive community throughout America has a group of people in Congress who are willing to stand up and stand strong and project a progressive vision for all of the Nation.

The Progressive Caucus has designed something we call the progressive message. So this is what we do. We come together, and we talk about our progressive vision for our country.

We started off only a few weeks ago talking about the need to hold the executives accountable and to not simply wipe things that happened in the past 8 years under the rug. Then we came back last week to talk about the economy and the stimulus package. And because we're facing a rising unemployment rate, foreclosure rate that is increasing, because people are losing their jobs, because things are getting tougher every day, we've got to stick with this issue of the economy so we can talk to people about which way forward, what do we do, what is the progressive message to help America go forward.

So with that, I want to introduce my colleague, my good friend from the great State of Georgia, to introduce himself and the topic tonight, Mr. Hank Johnson.

Congressman, let me yield to you. How are you doing?

If the gentleman yields back.

Congressman Johnson, you know, we are the progressives. We want progress. And if you say you're a conservative, what, over the past 8 years, do you want to conserve? Do you want to conserve these exploding unemployment rates they've handed us? Do you want to conserve this war in Iraq and Afghanistan? Maybe you want to conserve this regime of deregulation which has allowed businesses, and particularly in the financial sector, to do whatever they want and not have to worry about consumers. Is that what you're trying to conserve?

The fact is the people of America don't want conservatism. They want a progressive vision. They're looking at things like I have up on this graph right here.

They're looking at Minnesota. We have an unemployment rate in 2008 of 6.9 percent. Last year, 2007, it was 4.7. In California, they're looking at 9.3 percent unemployment this year, 5.9 percent the year before.

What about our colleagues from Michigan, Congressman Johnson? We've got a serious problem.

The question is if you look at these high unemployment rates, and you look at every blue line is 2007 and every red line is 2008, as you can tell, unemployment is up all across the Nation everywhere.

These things did not happen by accident. They are the product of a set of policies, many of which were promulgated right in this gallery you and I are in right now. Many of the policies saying that poor people have too much money and rich people don't have enough money promulgated right here. Tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, no accountability. As a matter of fact, it was put into legislation that the whole credit default swap market would be excluded from regulation, and now we know that these derivative products cause so much risk in the system that we don't know what to do about it.

The fact is, the policies and the procedures that have brought this about were done right here during the last 8 years, and we are now going to project a progressive vision to get us out of it.

Let me just say this before I turn it over to you, Congressman.

America has suffered 11 straight months of joblessness, of increasing job losses, totaling more than two million in the last year, 1.3 million jobs lost in the last 3 months alone. The job losses totaled over 500,000 in November, the biggest 1-month jump in 34 years. Now that's serious business.

So, facing these kinds of things, Congressman, what would be your thought as to what we should be thinking about right now?

Let me yield to you.

If I can reclaim my time.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

I yield back to the gentleman.

Congressman Johnson has correctly pointed out that we have got people losing their jobs. Unemployment is climbing up to 10 percent in many States, and we don't want to reach that point nationally. But one of the things that I think you will agree with me, Congressman Johnson, is that when you lose your job in America, so often you also lose something else--your health care.

You and I have been joined by Jim McDermott from the great State of Washington, who has been fighting the good fight for so long, knows this issue of health care, and many other issues as well.

Congressman McDermott, welcome. What can you tell us about the other side of losing a job, or even folks who do have a job, their health care crisis?

Would the gentleman yield for just a moment?

So you think America should join the 36 other countries in the world that have a single-payer system?

Thank you, Congressman. I am going to yield back to Dr. McDermott because he was driving at a point that I think the American people need to hear about.

Congressman McDermott, when you were there at the White House and President Obama had just given his speech, all you guys who were instrumental in getting SCHIP together probably gathered around the desk and you saw him write his name on that bill which, in effect, makes SCHIP law, as a medical professional, as a person dedicated to the health of our Nation, what did you feel?

If the gentleman would yield back for a moment. I want to thank Congressman Johnson and you, Congressman McDermott, for coming here today, because what you are talking about is not just dealing with the immediate situation. We are not saying, well, we are on the Titanic, let's put the deck chairs over there. No, let's move them back over there. We are projecting a progressive vision for our Nation. We are saying we are going this way. And that is why we are here with the progressive message today.

I just want to remind people, we are here with the Progressive Caucus projecting a progressive message, talking about economic prosperity for all Americans. We have talked about unemployment. And Congressman Johnson and I had a great dialogue; and when you came, Congressman McDermott, we began an important conversation about how health care has a vital role to play in the economic health of a family and a Nation. I think we pointed out, when General Mills spends more money on health care than it does on steel, we have got a problem. When Starbucks spends more money on health care than it does on coffee beans, we have got a problem. Both things are true. It is time to move forward. Medical debt being one of the major drivers in bankruptcy. This is the time. The time is now to begin universal health care. And signing SCHIP I believe was the beginning of good times to come.

Well, Congressman, I know you and I join together in thanking Congressman McDermott, who did such a great job. But on your point, I just want to say that it is too bad that the Senate proposed to cut the provisions on HIV and STD treatment, because it is stimulative. We would be hiring people who would go out to these schools and talk to young people about the importance of proper sexual health, of respecting their bodies and respecting other people, understanding the medical situation that arises when you are irresponsible, when you are unlucky enough to be infected with these horrendous diseases, which are preventable if you know what you are talking about, if you are well armed with good information. It is really too bad. And that is one of the reasons we have to come here, because we are not here as an extension of the Obama administration. We love the fact that he signed SCHIP today. Go for it, President Obama. But if it ever comes a time when we don't agree, we will be here saying that.

So it is critical today that you bring out differences that we have with the Senate package, because it is our job to project a progressive vision. And if you want to know and if folks want to know how to reach us with their progressive vision, they can send their ideas to this e- mail at the bottom of this document here.

I didn't really want to interrupt you, but I just thought it would be an important time to say, don't expect the Progressive Caucus to come to the House floor saying thumbs up to everybody. Expect the Progressive Caucus to say that we agree with some things, we don't agree with others. We are projecting a progressive vision that includes all Americans, that says all Americans should have health, all Americans should have civil rights, all Americans should have a shared economic prosperity.

So forgive me for that interruption, but you inspired me for a moment.

Will the gentleman yield? If you don't mind, if you have a few other facts and figures at your disposal, would you mind detailing for us tonight some of the other things that you believe we need to stick with and not compromise away? Do you have a list of those kinds of things?

Will the gentleman yield?

One of the things that I think is important to bear in mind is that as we look at the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, it is not only stimulus. We keep talking stimulus, stimulus, stimulus. That is not really the right way to describe what we're doing. It is for long-term investment. It is to deal with an emergency issue, but it is also to invest in the long-term health of our Nation. So it is not just stimulus. It is important for the American people to know that.

But I do like this chart because a conservative economist named Mark Zandi did it. And he got his computers out, did some readings and figured out what is going to stimulate the economy the most, what is going to give the economy the most punch. And he found that one of the lowest things on his chart was make the income tax cuts expiring in 2010 permanent. That is like .9 percent. That is pretty low. But the big ones, the big ones that he found were things like temporary increase in food stamps. That is 1.73. That is the highest one on here. That is going to jack up and get people, that is going to help stimulate the economy, things like extend unemployment compensation benefits, 1.64 percent, things you mentioned just a moment ago, that we have to stick with the House version and hold up. Increasing infrastructure spending, 1.59. These are things that are really going to stimulate the economy. And I think it is important that as we really focus on stimulating the economy, we don't give in to ideological matters.

One thing I will say regarding the Obama administration, and you know I'm a big fan, is that President Obama reached out to the Republican Caucus, came to talk to them and tried to work with them. And they completely rebuffed him. And they told him just nothing doing. And here he is reaching across the aisle, trying to move us to this post- partisan place. And not one of them, even though they got their tax cuts, voted for the stimulus package. So in my opinion, I think we should not try to, we should put all the weight on stimulating the economy. We get the economy moving.

We have proved to the American people that conservatives are bad in economics. They don't understand economics very well. When the Democratic President left office in the year 2000, we had a $288 billion surplus. It didn't take long for the Republican President to mess it all up. And the reason was because they are bad at economics. They don't understand economics. Actually they like economics where the rich people get and the poor people don't. If I may, they don't quite understand that a rising tide lifts all boats. You have to make sure that everyone is part of the economic life of the country in order to have a strong, robust economy. You can't just have tax cuts for the rich people. By definition, being rich means you don't need the money. You just stick that money in your back pocket. Maybe it can just sit in an account. But when you give moneys to the poor for things like unemployment insurance, things like food stamps, when you invest in the Nation's infrastructure, then you are really building the economy. Then you're really stimulating the economy.

In my view, I will say with all due respect to our President, who I believe is a great leader, that he has tried to work with them on the other side of the aisle. They have rejected and rebuffed his overture. So skip their tax cuts. Let's get to some real stimulative stuff.

And I yield back.

Do you remember Charlie Brown, whenever he tried to kick the ball, Lucy always picks the ball up. And they picked the ball up on the President, even though they said they were going to hold it down.

I yield back.

So Congressman, we're going to begin to wrap up our hour at this time. We're going to allow somebody else to offer their views to the American people. But as we get ready to wrap up, I wonder if you have any remarks you would like to share before we hand it over.

And if the gentleman yields back, you can bet I will be right there with you standing behind our great Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, a leader for all America, a transformative leader, a leader with energy. The fact that she has children the same age as you and I, Congressman, doesn't undermine her energy level. She is energetic. She is powerful. She is visionary. She is progressive. And you and I are here today talking about the Progressive Caucus.

We're here talking about a progressive vision for our Nation. We're making an obvious observation. In the Progressive Caucus you say, look, if you don't like government, if you believe government is the problem, as Ronald Reagan famously said, ``government is the problem,'' it stands to reason you might not be good at it. If you think government is not a good idea to begin with, you might not invest the time, energy and resources necessary to be good at it. And therefore it should be no surprise to anyone that the government, that the Republicans and the conservatives are bad at economics. They are just not good at it. And so it is not surprising to me that they would think that you could increase spending

around a war, cut taxes, and then think that things are going to go well economically--they didn't go well economically--and then deregulate everything, and then neglect the infrastructure.

Well, we're back to offer a progressive vision, to say to America that it is time to have an inclusive economy, to have civil rights, to have environmental protection and to make a better way forward for all Americans. This has been Congressman Keith Ellison with the Progressive Caucus with Congressman Johnson. Thank you, sir. Congressman McDermott joined us and we are very proud to be here representing the Progressive Caucus with the progressive message.

[From The New Yorker, Jan. 26, 2009]

Annals of Public Policy: Getting There From Here

How should Obama reform health care?

(By Atul Gawande)

In every industrialized nation, the movement to reform

health care has begun with stories about cruelty. The

Canadians had stories like the 1946 Toronto Globe and Mail

report of a woman in labor who was refused help by three

successive physicians, apparently because of her inability to

pay. In Australia, a 1954 letter published in the Sydney

Morning Herald sought help for a young woman who had lung

disease. She couldn't afford to refill her oxygen tank, and

had been forced to ration her intake ``to a point where she

is on the borderline of death.'' In Britain, George Bernard

Shaw was at a London hospital visiting an eminent physician

when an assistant came in to report that a sick man had

arrived requesting treatment. ``Is he worth it?'' the

physician asked. It was the normality of the question that

shocked Shaw and prompted his scathing and influential 1906

play, ``The Doctor's Dilemma.'' The British health system, he

charged, was ``a conspiracy to exploit popular credulity and

human suffering.''

In the United States, our stories are like the one that

appeared in the Times before Christmas. Starla Darling,

pregnant and due for delivery, had just taken maternity leave

from her factory job at Archway & Mother's Cookie Company, in

Ashland, Ohio, when she received a letter informing her that

the company was going out of business. In three days, the

letter said, she and almost three hundred co-workers would be

laid off, and would lose their health-insurance coverage. The

company was self-insured, so the employees didn't have the

option of paying for the insurance themselves--their

insurance plan was being terminated.

``When I heard that I was losing my insurance, I was

scared,'' Darling told the Times. Her husband had been laid

off from his job, too. ``I remember that the bill for my

son's delivery in 2005 was about $9,000, and I knew I would

never be able to pay that by myself.'' So she prevailed on

her midwife to induce labor while she still had insurance

coverage. During labor, Darling began bleeding profusely, and

needed a Cesarean section. Mother and baby pulled through.

But the insurer denied Darling's claim for coverage. The

couple ended up owing more than seventeen thousand dollars.

The stories become unconscionable in any society that

purports to serve the needs of ordinary people, and, at some

alchemical point, they combine with opportunity and

leadership to produce change. Britain reached this point and

enacted universal health-care coverage in 1945, Canada in

1966, Australia in 1974. The United States may finally be

there now. In 2007, fifty-seven million Americans had

difficulty paying their medical bills, up fourteen million

from 2003. On average, they had two thousand dollars in

medical debt and had been contacted by a collection agency at

least once. Because, in part, of underpayment, half of

American hospitals operated at a loss in 2007. Today, large

numbers of employers are limiting or dropping insurance

coverage in order to stay afloat, or simply going under--even

hospitals themselves.

Yet wherever the prospect of universal health insurance has

been considered, it has been widely attacked as a Bolshevik

fantasy--a coercive system to be imposed upon people by

benighted socialist master planners. People fear the

unintended consequences of drastic change, the blunt force of

government. However terrible the system may seem, we all know

that it could be worse--especially for those who already have

dependable coverage and access to good doctors and hospitals.

Many would-be reformers hold that ``true'' reform must

simply override those fears. They believe that a new system

will be far better for most people, and that those who would

hang on to the old do so out of either lack of imagination or

narrow self-interest. On the left, then, single-payer

enthusiasts argue that the only coherent solution is to end

private health insurance and replace it with a national

insurance program. And, on the right, the free marketeers

argue that the only coherent solution is to end public

insurance and employer-controlled health benefits so that we

can all buy our own coverage and put market forces to work.

Neither side can stand the other. But both reserve special

contempt for the pragmatists, who would build around the mess

we have. The country has this one chance, the idealist

maintains, to sweep away our inhumane, wasteful patchwork

system and replace it with something new and more rational.

So we should prepare for a bold overhaul, just as every other

Western democracy has. True reform requires transformation at

a stroke. But is this really the way it has occurred in other

countries? The answer is no. And the reality of how health

reform has come about elsewhere is both surprising and

instructive.

No example is more striking than that of Great Britain,

which has the most socialized health system in the

industrialized world. Established on July 5, 1948, the

National Health Service owns the vast majority of the

country's hospitals, blood banks, and ambulance operations,

employs most specialist physicians as salaried government

workers, and has made medical care available to every

resident for free. The system is so thoroughly government-

controlled that, across the Atlantic, we imagine it had to

have been imposed by fiat, by the coercion of ideological

planners bending the system to their will.

But look at the news report in the Times of London on July

6, 1948, headlined ``FIRST DAY OF HEALTH SERVICE.'' You might

expect descriptions of bureaucratic shock troops walking into

hospitals, insurance-company executives and doctors

protesting in the streets, patients standing outside chemist

shops worrying about whether they can get their prescriptions

filled. Instead, there was only a four-paragraph notice

between an item on the King and Queen's return from a holiday

in Scotland and one on currency problems in Germany.

The beginning of the new national health service ``was

taking place smoothly,'' the report said. No major problems

were noted by the 2,751 hospitals involved or by patients

arriving to see their family doctors. Ninety per cent of the

British Medical Association's members signed up with the

program voluntarily--and found that they had a larger and

steadier income by doing so. The greatest difficulty, it

turned out, was the unexpected pent-up demand for everything

from basic dental care to pediatric visits for hundreds of

thousands of people who had been going without.

The program proved successful and lasting, historians say,

precisely because it was not the result of an ideologue's

master plan. Instead, the N.H.S. was a pragmatic outgrowth of

circumstances peculiar to Britain immediately after the

Second World War. The single most important moment that

determined what Britain's health-care system would look like

was not any policymaker's meeting in 1945 but the country's

declaration of war on Germany, on September 3, 1939.

As tensions between the two countries mounted, Britain's

ministers realized that they would have to prepare not only

for land and sea combat but also for air attacks on cities on

an unprecedented scale. And so, in the days before war was

declared, the British government oversaw an immense

evacuation; three and a half million people moved out of the

cities and into the countryside. The government had to

arrange transport and lodging for those in need, along with

supervision, food, and schooling for hundreds of thousands of

children whose parents had stayed behind to join in the war

effort. It also had to insure that medical services were in

place--both in the receiving regions, whose populations had

exploded, and in the cities, where up to two million war-

injured civilians and returning servicemen were anticipated.

As a matter of wartime necessity, the government began a

national Emergency Medical Service to supplement the local

services. Within a period of months, sometimes weeks, it

built or expanded hundreds of hospitals. It conducted a

survey of the existing hospitals and discovered that

essential services were either missing or severely

inadequate--laboratories, X-ray facilities, ambulances, care

for fractures and burns and head injuries. The Ministry of

Health was forced to upgrade and, ultimately, to operate

these services itself.

The war compelled the government to provide free hospital

treatment for civilian casualties, as well as for combatants.

In London and other cities, the government asked local

hospitals to transfer some of the sick to private hospitals

in the outer suburbs in order to make room for victims of the

war. As a result, the government wound up paying for a large

fraction of the private hospitals' costs. Likewise, doctors

received government salaries for the portion of their time

that was devoted to the new wartime medical service. When the

Blitz came, in September, 1940, vast numbers of private

hospitals and clinics were destroyed, further increasing the

government's share of medical costs. The private hospitals

and doctors whose doors were still open had far fewer paying

patients and were close to financial ruin.

Churchill's government intended the program to be

temporary. But the war destroyed the status quo for patients,

doctors, and hospitals alike. Moreover, the new system proved

better than the old. Despite the ravages of war, the health

of the population had improved. The medical and social

services had reduced infant and adult mortality rates. Even

the dental care was better. By the end of 1944, when the

wartime medical service began to demobilize, the country's

citizens did not want to see it go. The private hospitals

didn't, either; they had come to depend on those government

payments.

By 1945, when the National Health Service was proposed, it

had become evident that a

national system of health coverage was not only necessary but

also largely already in place--with nationally run hospitals,

salaried doctors, and free care for everyone. So, while the

ideal of universal coverage was spurred by those horror

stories, the particular system that emerged in Britain was

not the product of socialist ideology or a deliberate policy

process in which all the theoretical options were weighed. It

was, instead, an almost conservative creation: a program that

built on a tested, practical means of providing adequate

health care for everyone, while protecting the existing

services that people depended upon every day. No other major

country has adopted the British system--not because it didn't

work but because other countries came to universalize health

care under entirely different circumstances.

In France, in the winter of 1945, President de Gaulle was

likewise weighing how to insure that his nation's population

had decent health care after the devastation of war. But the

system that he inherited upon liberation had no significant

public insurance or hospital sector. Seventy-five per cent of

the population paid cash for private medical care, and many

people had become too destitute to afford heat, let alone

medications or hospital visits.

Long before the war, large manufacturers and unions had

organized collective insurance funds for their employees,

financed through a self-imposed payroll tax, rather than a

set premium. This was virtually the only insurance system in

place, and it became the scaffolding for French health care.

With, an almost impossible range of crises on its hands--food

shortages, destroyed power plants, a quarter of the

population living as refugees--the de Gaulle government had

neither the time nor the capacity to create an entirely new

health-care system. So it built on what it had, expanding the

existing payroll-tax-funded, private insurance system to

cover all wage earners, their families, and retirees. The

self-employed were added in the nineteen-sixties. And the

remainder of uninsured residents were finally included in

2000.

Today, Securite Sociale provides payroll-tax-financed

insurance to all French residents, primarily through a

hundred and forty-four independent, not-for-profit, local

insurance funds. The French health-care system has among the

highest public-satisfaction levels of any major Western

country; and, compared with Americans, the French have a

higher life expectancy, lower infant mortality, more

physicians, and lower costs. In 2000, the World Health

Organization ranked it the best health-care system in the

world. (The United States was ranked thirty-seventh.)

Switzerland, because of its wartime neutrality, escaped the

damage that drove health-care reform elsewhere. Instead, most

of its citizens came to rely on private commercial health-

insurance coverage. When problems with coverage gaps and

inconsistencies finally led the nation to pass its universal-

coverage law, in 1994, it had no experience with public

insurance. So the country--you get the picture now--built on

what it already had. It required every resident to purchase

private health insurance and provided subsidies to limit the

cost to no more than about ten per cent of an individual's

income.

Every industrialized nation in the world except the United

States has a national system that guarantees affordable

health care for all its citizens. Nearly all have been

popular and successful. But each has taken a drastically

different form, and the reason has rarely been ideology.

Rather, each country has built on its own history, however

imperfect, unusual, and untidy. Social scientists have a name

for this pattern of evolution based on past experience. They

call it ``path-dependence.'' In the battles between Betamax

and VHS video recorders, Mac and P.C. computers, the QWERTY

typewriter keyboard and alternative designs, they found that

small, early events played a far more critical role in the

market outcome than did the question of which design was

better. Paul Krugman received a Nobel Prize in Economics in

part for showing that trade patterns and the geographic

location of industrial production are also path-dependent.

The first firms to get established in a given industry, he

pointed out, attract suppliers, skilled labor, specialized

financing, and physical infrastructure. This entrenches local

advantages that lead other firms producing similar goods to

set up business in the same area--even if prices, taxes, and

competition are stiffer. ``The long shadow cast by history

over location is apparent at all scales, from the smallest to

the largest--from the cluster of costume jewelry firms in

Providence to the concentration of 60 million people in the

Northeast Corridor,'' Krugman wrote in 1991.

With path-dependent processes, the outcome is unpredictable

at the start. Small, often random events early in the process

are ``remembered,'' continuing to have influence later. And,

as you go along, the range of future possibilities gets

narrower. It becomes more and more unlikely that you can

simply shift from one path to another, even if you are locked

in on a path that has a lower payoff than an alternate one.

The political scientist Paul Pierson observed that this

sounds a lot like politics, and not just economics. When a

social policy entails major setup costs and large numbers of

people who must devote time and resources to developing

expertise, early choices become difficult to reverse. And if

the choices involve what economists call ``increasing

returns''--where the benefits of a policy increase as more

people organize their activities around it--those early

decisions become self-reinforcing. America's transportation

system developed this way. The century-old decision to base

it on gasoline-powered automobiles led to a gigantic

manufacturing capacity, along with roads, repair facilities,

and fuelling stations that now make it exceedingly difficult

to do things differently.

There's a similar explanation for our employment-based

health-care system. Like Switzerland, America made it through

the war without damage to its domestic infrastructure. Unlike

Switzerland, we sent much of our workforce abroad to fight.

This led the Roosevelt Administration to impose national wage

controls to prevent inflationary increases in labor costs.

Employers who wanted to compete for workers could, however,

offer commercial health insurance. That spurred our

distinctive reliance on private insurance obtained through

one's place of employment--a source of troubles (for

employers and the unemployed alike) that we've struggled with

for six decades.

Some people regard the path-dependence of our policies as

evidence of weak leadership; we have, they charge, allowed

our choices to be constrained by history and by vested

interests. But that's too simple. The reality is that leaders

are held responsible for the hazards of change as well as for

the benefits. And the history of master-planned

transformation isn't exactly inspiring. The familiar horror

story is Mao's Great Leap Forward, where the collectivization

of farming caused some thirty million deaths from famine.

But, to take an example from our own era, consider Defense

Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's disastrous reinvention of modern

military operations for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, in which

he insisted on deploying far fewer ground troops than were

needed. Or consider a health-care example: the 2003

prescription-drug program for America's elderly.

This legislation aimed to expand the Medicare insurance

program in order to provide drug coverage for some ten

million elderly Americans who lacked it, averaging fifteen

hundred dollars per person annually. The White House,

congressional Republicans, and the pharmaceutical industry

opposed providing this coverage through the existing Medicare

public-insurance program. Instead, they created an entirely

new, market-oriented program that offered the elderly an

online choice of competing, partially subsidized commercial

drug-insurance plans. It was, in theory, a reasonable

approach. But it meant that twenty-five million Americans got

new drug plans, and that all sixty thousand retail pharmacies

in the United States had to establish contracts and billing

systems for those plans.

On January 1, 2006, the program went into effect

nationwide. The result was chaos. There had been little

realistic consideration of how millions of elderly people

with cognitive difficulties, chronic illness, or limited

English would manage to select the right plan for themselves.

Even the savviest struggled to figure out how to navigate the

choices: insurance companies offered 1,429 prescription-drug

plans across the country. People arrived at their pharmacy

only to discover that they needed an insurance card that

hadn't come, or that they hadn't received pre-authorization

for their drugs, or had switched to a plan that didn't cover

the drugs they took. Tens of thousands were unable to get

their prescriptions filled, many for essential drugs like

insulin, inhalers, and blood-pressure medications. The result

was a public-health crisis in thirty-seven states, which had

to provide emergency pharmacy payments for the frail. We will

never know how many were harmed, but it is likely that the

program killed people.

This is the trouble with the lure of the ideal. Over and

over in the health-reform debate, one hears serious policy

analysts say that the only genuine solution is to replace our

health-care system (with a single-payer system, a free-market

system, or whatever); anything else is a missed opportunity.

But this is a siren song.

Yes, American health care is an appallingly patched-

together ship, with rotting timbers, water leaking in,

mercenaries on board, and fifteen per cent of the passengers

thrown over the rails just to keep it afloat. But hundreds of

millions of people depend on it. The system provides more

than thirty-five million hospital stays a year, sixty-four

million surgical procedures, nine hundred million office

visits, three and a half billion prescriptions. It represents

a sixth of our economy. There is no dry-docking health care

for a few months, or even for an afternoon, while we rebuild

it. Grand plans admit no possibility of mistakes or failures,

or the chance to learn from them. If we get things wrong,

people will die. This doesn't mean that ambitious reform is

beyond us. But we have to start with what we have.

That kind of constraint isn't unique to the health-care

system. A century ago, the modern phone system was built on a

structure that came to be called the P.S.T.N., the Public

Switched Telephone Network. This automated system connects

our phone calls twenty-four hours a day, and over time it has

had to be upgraded. But you can't turn off the phone system

and do a reboot. It's too critical to too many. So engineers

have had to add on one patch after another.

The P.S.T.N. is probably the shaggiest, most convoluted

system around; it contains tens of millions of lines of

software code. Given a chance for a do-over, no self-

respecting engineer would create anything remotely

like it. Yet this jerry-rigged system has provided us with

911 emergency service, voice mail, instant global

connectivity, mobile-phone lines, and the transformation from

analog to digital communication. It has also been

fantastically reliable, designed to have as little as two

hours of total downtime every forty years. As a system that

can't be turned off, the P.S.T.N. may be the ultimate in

path-dependence. But that hasn't prevented dramatic change.

The structure may not have undergone revolution; the way it

functions has. The P.S.T.N. has made the twenty-first century

possible.

So accepting the path-dependent nature of our health-care

system--recognizing that we had better build on what we've

got--doesn't mean that we have to curtail our ambitions. The

overarching goal of health-care reform is to establish a

system that has three basic attributes. It should leave no

one uncovered--medical debt must disappear as a cause of

personal bankruptcy in America. It should no longer be an

economic catastrophe for employers. And it should hold

doctors, nurses, hospitals, drug and device companies, and

insurers collectively responsible for making care better,

safer, and less costly.

We cannot swap out our old system for a new one that will

accomplish all this. But we can build a new system on the old

one. On the start date for our new health-care system--on,

say, January 1, 2011--there need be no noticeable change for

the vast majority of Americans who have dependable coverage

and decent health care. But we can construct a kind of

lifeboat alongside it for those who have been left out or

dumped out, a rescue program for people like Starla Darling.

In designing this program, we'll inevitably want to build

on the institutions we already have. That precept sounds as

if it would severely limit our choices. But our health-care

system has been a hodgepodge for so long that we actually

have experience with all kinds of systems. The truth is that

American health care has been more flotilla than ship. Our

veterans' health-care system is a program of twelve hundred

government-run hospitals and other medical facilities all

across the country (just like Britain's). We could open it up

to other people. We could give people a chance to join

Medicare, our government insurance program (much like

Canada's). Or we could provide people with coverage through

the benefits program that federal workers already have, a

system of private-insurance choices (like Switzerland's).

These are all established programs, each with advantages

and disadvantages. The veterans' system has low costs, one of

the nation's best information-technology systems for health

care, and quality of care that (despite what you've heard)

has, in recent years, come to exceed the private sector's on

numerous measures. But it has a tightly limited choice of

clinicians--you can't go to see any doctor you want, and the

nearest facility may be far away from where you live.

Medicare allows you to go to almost any private doctor or

hospital you like, and has been enormously popular among its

beneficiaries, but it costs about a third more per person and

has had a hard time getting doctors and hospitals to improve

the quality and safety of their care. Federal workers are

entitled to a range of subsidized private-insurance choices,

but insurance companies have done even less than Medicare to

contain costs and most have done little to improve health

care (although there are some striking exceptions).

Mr. Chairman, demand for transit service is on the rise. In 2007, over 10 billion trips were taken on mass transit, a 50-year record. Last year, 2008, we had a 4.4 percent increase; and yet, people around the country are seeing decreases and more pressure is on public transportation and they can't keep up with demand.

With this extra $3 billion in this package, we will put people to work and pursue a green economy and get people around.

My name is Keith Ellison, and we are here for the progressive message, the 1 hour when the Congressional Progressive Caucus will come to the American people and talk about what our agenda is.

Tonight it's important to specify, Mr. Speaker, that the Progressive Caucus is going to be on the floor for the next 60 minutes talking about America's economic picture, the landscape that we're facing, and what the progressive vision is for solving these problems.

I am joined tonight by some stellar members of the Progressive Caucus. We have with us tonight, Mr. Speaker, our outstanding, stupendous, colossal, fearless leader, none other than Lynn Woolsey, who just got through talking about the war. She has been a champion on many fronts. But I'm also joined by my classmate, a tireless fighter for all people across America, none other than Yvette Clarke, who never bends, never bows, and always stays strong for the American people. I think it's important for us to know that we're also joined by none other than Donna Edwards, who is going to grab a mike in just a moment. And the four of us and other members of the Progressive Caucus for about the next 58 minutes are going to be talking about the stimulus package, the economic picture facing the American people, and what the Progressive Caucus believes we need to do about it. Your progressive voice on progressive issues.

So with that, I invite my colleagues to jump on in. We're going to have a colloquy over the next few minutes where we come in and out and share the ball, if you will, to talk about the stimulus package. And let me just kick it off with our chairperson.

Congresswoman Woolsey, how do you look at the stimulus package we passed today?

So did the Progressive Caucus ask for things like extension of unemployment benefits, increasing food stamps, and infrastructure projects, things that are really going to have a big punch when it comes to stimulating the economy? Were those some of the things in the Progressive Caucus letter?

Reclaiming my time, I would like to direct the gentlewoman's attention to this graph, which an economist named Mark Zandi estimated the multiplier effect for various policy proposals.

Essentially, the higher the number is, the more punch; the lower the number is, the weaker the punch. And the things that the Progressive Caucus

asked for had, for example, at the bottom here it says increase infrastructure spending, 1.59. Now, that's pretty high. And also temporary increase in food stamps, 1.73. That's very high. Extend unemployment compensation benefits, 1.64. That's very high.

And, Mr. Speaker, I just want to toss it over to Yvette Clarke, and just ask, in your view, Congresswoman Clarke, are the things that the Progressive Caucus asked for in this stimulus package, they're not only good and decent and demonstrate compassion, but they're also good economic sense. Was that your view?

Let's get our colleague Donna Edwards from right next door in Maryland into this conversation.

Congresswoman Edwards, you've been an advocate for working people all of your life and have been fighting for justice. How do you see this stimulus package? Do you think that it was more or less what the Nation needed? Are you happy with some of the key elements of it, or do you think it really needed to bone up on some parts?

A very important observation.

I think it's important to point out that H.R. 1, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, does spend about 75 percent of the money within the first 18 months. Much of it is on infrastructure. It will create 3 to 4 million jobs. It does give about 95 percent of American workers a tax cut. Not the people who already get one but the folks who often don't get a tax cut.

If I may, I don't want to spend time on gloom and doom, but I would ask my colleagues to spend maybe 10, 20 minutes or so talking about what got us here. I don't know if you want to go back there, but I think it's important to say it is the absence of a progressive vision that got us to this point. We're talking about years of deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthy. We're talking about an economic philosophy that said that poor people have too much money and rich people don't have enough money; so what we're going to do is take from them and give to the ones upstairs. We're talking about tax cuts in the middle of a war, and we're talking about a war that never, ever, ever, ever should have been started. We're talking about an economic philosophy that really was not in favor of the average working family. And we know that when the average working family is doing well, then everybody does well, and when they're not doing well, then we get what we got. The fact is it is an economic philosophy that has been driving us.

What's needed is a progressive vision for our country, an economy that is inclusive, an economy that helps lift all boats because we do believe a rising tide lifts boats but you've got to raise that tide. It's not the ocean liner but the dinghies that need to be rising up.

So with that I invite you all, if you would, just to talk a little bit about what you believe got us here and what the situation is we're confronting. I think it's important for the American people to know that we are not just spending $825 billion on a whim. We're in serious financial trouble. We're talking about the loss of 2 million jobs and change last year.

This is an unemployment chart in 2007 and 2008. The blue is 2007 numbers. The red is 2008 numbers. Now, if you can see, every red bar is longer than every blue bar. Can you see that? That means we had a dramatic jump in unemployment in nearly every State. Minnesota's right here, California, Florida, Illinois, Iowa. Every State has had a dramatic leap forward in unemployment, a very serious issue, and I think that it's important to point out that we are here to do something about it.

Congresswoman Edwards.

Very important point.

Congresswoman Woolsey.

Yes, so in other words, we are not just giving $825 billion out, we are getting real value for these kinds of things, as Chairwoman Woolsey has said.

I just want to say that I am very proud, Chairpersons, of our Progressive Caucus have been communicating with our leadership and the administration on the things that the American people who are progressive really want.

Congresswoman Clarke.

Yes, well, let me thank you again, Congresswoman Clarke. You are right on the mark with everything that you have said.

I just want to let everybody know we are the Progressive Caucus, we are here for 1 hour. It is our plan to be here week in, week out to come project a progressive vision, whether it's on economics, whether it's on war and peace, whether it's on civil rights.

We talked about civil rights last week, we are talking about the economy this week. But this is the Progressive Caucus, and we are here tonight with our chairperson, Lynn Woolsey, with my colleague, Representative Clarke and my colleague, Representative Donna Edwards from Maryland.

Congresswoman Edwards, I am sure that some thoughts were occurring to you as Congresswoman Clarke was stretching forth on her ideas.

Well, if I may turn to our chairwoman here, you know, Congresswoman Woolsey, we are the Progressive Caucus. A stimulus package was passed through the House today.

Does the Progressive Caucus still have a vital and essential purpose, given that we have a President that we happen to like nowadays? What is our role in the Congress? What do we do? Now that we have a Democratic President and a majority, what should the Progressive Caucus take on as its mandate? What's our role?

Then the center becomes the right.

That's right, that's right.

Well, thank you, Madam Chairman, for pointing out what the role of the Progressive Caucus is. I invite my colleagues to weigh in on that subject as well, as we talk about the stimulus package and our economy tonight.

I think it's important that the American people know that they have a progressive voice, projecting a progressive vision. We will never lay down our role as a coequal branch of government.

You know, we happen to like this President, and we will probably agree with him on a number of things, but it's not our job to agree with him. It's our job to represent the American people, to project an inclusive vision in which every American feels they can be successful where their rights are protected and where they can make a living for their family.

So, with that, I would just like to throw it back to my colleagues.

Congresswoman Edwards, I'm sure you have some thoughts on this. As Congresswoman Clarke talked about building the resource development, the workforce development, the skill of our people, I'm really happy that the Green Jobs Act, which we authorized the last session of Congress at $125 million, has now been put through and appropriated at $500 million, which is a significant increase, and we have about $4 billion in job training and workforce development.

That goes to the point you were making a moment ago, Congresswoman Clarke. We are investing in our people, and it is something we have to continue to do.

Congresswoman Edwards, any thoughts on this?

Congresswoman Edwards, I want to thank you for pointing out that this stimulus package has been heavily influenced by the work of the Progressive Caucus. But for our efforts, it wouldn't be the great document that it is. Though it may not be all that we want it to be, it's much better than it would have been without our input.

It's important for people to know that the role of the Progressive Caucus is to put forth a progressive agenda to help our leadership stake out a progressive policy, and if we are not pushing, if we are not agitating, if we are not arguing for that case, then the case simply won't be made.

So it's critical that the Progressive Caucus come before the American people and talk about what we are doing, talk about what we are up to, but also we do some of the work that is our job as Members of Congress to do, which is to push that agenda right in here.

Congresswoman Clarke.

Congresswoman Clarke, are you talking about those people who work so hard and struggle so much to make this country really go, that this Congress needs to respond to them when they need a hand? Are you talking about those people?

Those people who are trying to wonder whether they need to put some cardboard in their shoes to go another couple of weeks or whether they can get some shoes, whether they can get lunch money for the children. Those are the folks you have got in mind?

Right.

So, the Progressive Caucus, that is who we are for. Because we know that the war makers and the big dogs, they have people who look out for them around here. They're paid to do so, as they wear their monogrammed shirts and fly their jets here. Sometimes they fly three different jets from the same industry here.

But, Congresswoman Edwards, how do you feel about the people we are here to fight for?

If the gentlelady yields back, I'd just like to point out that on this chart that Mark Zandi noted--a conservative economist, quite frankly--in his study he showed that the revenue transfers to State governments have a pretty high multiplier effect of 11.36, which is pretty high.

If you notice nonrefundable rebates, they're pretty low. Some of these things extend--the alternative minimum tax, that is very low. Less than one. Make income tax cuts expiring in 2010 permanent. That's extremely low. And reduce corporate tax rates. That's pretty low too.

So if you really want to get the economy moving, if you want to help small business, help the average person, and help those States that you just mentioned a moment ago, Congresswoman, revenue transfers to State governments.

If I may just point out, you mentioned your State, and I am glad you did, because it's important for people across all the States to know that we are in this thing together; Maryland, New York, Minnesota. We are in this thing together.

In my State of Minnesota the impact of this recovery bill will be State fiscal relief in a significant amount, which is actually over $1 billion, which is quite a lot of money. Title I education, $117 million; special education--always fighting for every penny--$216 million. Very happy to point out Workforce Employment Services, $19 million. That is a lot of money. That makes a big difference.

Weatherization. We like to get up to zero in Minnesota. If it got to be zero, it would be a heat wave in Minnesota. Weatherization is important for us. $210 million. A very important program.

Of course, as you pointed out, when you lose your job and you lose your health care, so our Medicaid funding of $737 million is a significant amount of money. All told, Minnesota is going to be able to benefit $3.3 billion from the stimulus package. We have a State budget deficit of about $5 billion. It won't cover everything, but it's going to help an awful lot, and there will be vital services that will not be cut because the Federal Government, with the influence of the Progressive Caucus, responded to the needs of the people in a real way.

Let me yield to the Congresswoman from New York.

We have about 15 more minutes left in our hour, so start thinking about what we want to leave the folks with tonight. But I just want to point out that one of the progressive values that we share is that we have an inclusive vision; so that we don't engage in regionalism, we think about what all Americans need. And so we are concerned. When I see an unemployment number in New York at 7 percent, that sends chills through my spine because in Minnesota we have got 6.9 percent, which is pretty much the same. And we look at Michigan really hurting.

So we know that we need those workforce development dollars there to help get people trained. And the year before that they were at 7.4. So they have been hurting for a long time. And Rhode Island people are really taking a hit, and in North Carolina as well.

One of our values as the Progressive Caucus is that we stand for the American people as a whole. And Congresswoman Edwards, again, here we are moving forward on this stimulus package, and we are going to continue over the course of the year to project a progressive vision and a progressive economy.

I guess one of my questions to you is, how critical is it that we continue to keep up the struggle to project a progressive vision for our Congress and for our Nation?

Thank you for yielding back.

Let me say tonight that it is important for us to realize that this stimulus package really is emergency surgery. It is a crisis, and we are addressing a crisis. But when we talk about a progressive vision, we are not just talking about dealing with this crisis; we are talking about setting forth a new way of doing business, saying that the market will not be allowed to run amuck, that the market does not answer our questions, that the market has market failure, and that there is a critical and indispensable role of government. Government is not the problem, but when government doesn't monitor people at the SEC and at other agencies, then we see problems arising. It is a vision of saying that the government has a responsibility to make sure that our economy is fair, that our economy is inclusive, that everybody matters, that everybody counts, and people are just not going to be left out.

It is a vision that says America should be at peace with the rest of the world, that we should pursue peace, we should promote peace, we should engage in dialogue and diplomacy and negotiation, and that war is the enemy of the poor. Not only is war dangerous to people on the business end of a missile, but it is the enemy of the poor in our country because it saps what poor people need.

And we also understand our progressive vision is that our country, a caring nation, a loving nation, should be concerned about the health of its people. And because of that, we need to have universal health care. And one of the best things we could do for the auto industry is to have universal health care, and they would have a lot of problems taken off of their shoulders.

So it is important to talk about that as we move into the final minutes of our special hour as we talk about a progressive vision that we are today dealing with a crisis, but that crisis is not the end of the story; that we are going to be moving into the future, and that we are going to be laying down a progressive vision for quite a long while.

Let me yield to Congresswoman Clarke.

Thank you, Congresswoman Clarke. And I just want to say thank you for yielding back. You do a wonderful job. And I want you to know that it is an honor to be serving with you. I admire the work you do, and just stand in awe of the way you just go about fighting for the people.

And the last word and the closing is going to be carried forth by our colleague, Donna Edwards. But before I yield back to her, I just want to say I was proud to vote for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. This bill creates 3 million to 4 million jobs, gives 95 percent of Americans an immediate tax cut; 75 percent will be spent in the first 18 months. And this bill is designed to get America working again. I am proud to vote for it, and honored to be able to be here with the Progressive Caucus.

With that, I yield to my distinguished colleague from Maryland, the gentlelady from Maryland.

So let me just close it out and say that it has been a pleasure coming to you with this special order with a progressive message with my colleagues, Congresswoman Woolsey, Congresswoman Clarke, Congresswoman Edwards. And this has been the progressive message here. Thank you.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, my name is Keith Ellison, and I do represent the great State of Minnesota. And tonight I'm coming to the floor to talk about the progressive message of the Progressive Caucus, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, dedicated to ideas that some might describe as liberal, but all must recognize have benefited the United States over the course of time.

To be liberal is to be open-minded, to be accepting of others, to listen to different points of view and to try to be tolerant and inclusive of all people. But the progressive community in the United States and throughout our whole land is entitled to have a body of people in Congress who will reflect their views. And tonight we are coming together to offer these views. I'm proud to be able to take the floor tonight with the cochair of the Progressive Caucus, Mr. Raul Grijalva from the great State of Arizona. We are proud to have him in our leadership.

But I want to point out before I hand it back to our Chair that the progressive promise is fairness for all. The Congressional Progressive Caucus offers progressive promise for all. We believe in government of the people, by the people and for the people. Our fairness plan is rooted in our core principles. And it also embodies national priorities that are consistent with the values, needs and hopes of all of our people, not just the powerful and the privileged.

We pledge our unwavering commitment to these legislative priorities, and we will not rest until they become law.

I want to throw it out to our co-chairman, Raul Grijalva from the great State of Arizona and ask him, what makes you come to the House floor tonight and commit yourself to talking about the Progressive Caucus and the principles that support our caucus?

Is fighting for economic justice and security in the U.S. and global economies, is that part of the Progressive message?

In the beginning of our hour as we come together in this Special Order, I think you, as one of the leaders in the Progressive Caucus, have correctly identified economic justice as one of the critical things that the Progressive Caucus stands for, not only here at home but also abroad.

Congressman Grijalva, what does it mean to you that there are a billion

people who go to sleep every night around the world who live on less than a dollar a day?

That's right.

So when we are talking about fighting for economic justice, we are talking about universal health care and about preserving guaranteed Social Security benefits for all Americans, including protecting private pensions and corporate accountability.

We are talking about investing in America by creating new jobs in the U.S., by building affordable housing and rebuilding America's schools and physical infrastructure, just like you talked about a minute ago, about cleaning up our environment and improving our homeland security.

What we mean when we say ``economic security'' is about exporting more American products and not more American jobs, and we demand fair trade, not just free trade, and affirming freedom of association and enforcing the right to organize. You and I know that we will probably be coming here one day in the future to talk about the Employee Free Choice Act. That is the right to organize in the labor union, and also to ensure that working families can live above the poverty line with dignity by raising and indexing the minimum wage.

I would like to ask you about protecting and preserving civil rights and civil liberties. What does that mean to you, Mr. Chairman?

Chairman Grijalva, as you know, the Progressive Caucus is dedicated to preserving civil rights and civil liberties. That means we believe in sunsetting expiring provisions of the PATRIOT Act and bring remaining provisions into line with the Constitution. We believe in protecting the personal liberty of all Americans from unbridled police powers and unchecked government intrusion. That means unlawful surveillance, things like that, violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. We believe an extended Voting Rights Act could reform the electoral process.

We believe in fighting corporate consolidation of the media because if the people don't know, how can they do anything about it. And we also believe in ensuring the enforcement of all legal rights in the workplace. That goes again to OSHA and things like that so people don't get injured. We worked hard for those rights, isn't that right, Mr. Chairman?

Mr. Chairman, do you want to talk about the third thing that the American people can count on the Progressive Caucus to fight for?

I think it is important as we come together with the Progressive Caucus message, and it is our goal to come here week in and week out,

that people know what the Progressive Caucus stands for, that they know what the Progressive Caucus will fight for, and that they have a chance to join and participate.

So now, I think, Mr. Chairman, we are ready to talk about the main subject we are going to be talking about tonight and that has to do with a report that was recently issued called ``Reining in the Imperial Presidency.'' This is a 500-page document that was drafted by Chairman John Conyers and his staff, the lessons and recommendations relating to the Presidency of George W. Bush, House Committee on Judiciary Staff to report to John Conyers.

In this report, it lays out a whole series of issues that need to be addressed. You know what, Chairman Grijalva, some people have said we don't want to look back, we don't want to dig up old dirt. We have a new President, why look back. But you know what, Chairman, I don't think we are looking back because you and I never want to have to deal with another President in the future who thinks, because George W. Bush did these things, they can do them, too.

We are looking to the future. We don't want to set a precedent around illegal wire-tapping, around domestic warrantless surveillance, around the U.S. attorney scandal, and things like that. We will get into this over the course of the next several minutes, and that is what we are going to be really talking about and digging into tonight.

Do you have any preliminary comments, Mr. Chairman?

Chairman Grijalva, did we do this after the tragedy of 9/11? Did we engage in a process where we tried to discover what the truth was?

You know what? Chairman Grijalva, I'm holding in my hand a pretty thick piece of paper right here. This is 500 pages all documenting allegations regarding abuses of power by the Bush administration. This thing is not designed, as you said, to try to settle old scores but to get to the truth of the matter of what really happened.

I mean, don't the American people deserve to know what Karl Rove would have said if he would have honored the subpoena that was lawfully served on him? Don't the American people deserve to know what Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten would have said when the Judiciary Committee had a subpoena duly served on them, where they were summoned to give testimony before the Judiciary Committee and they simply refused to show up? What would they have said?

This is the kind of process we need to go into. And I think the American people deserve to know what the truth is. And I think that this very weighty report--you know, you could probably work out with this thing, this thing is heavy--and it details allegations and it details the facts and information that cry out for answers.

And so what we've done is not just come to talk about a problem but really to discuss a solution. H.R. 104 is a bill that calls for a panel to do an investigative process to figure out what the truth is behind the allegations right here. Now, if nobody did anything wrong, then there won't be any problem and nobody should be concerned. But if there is some facts tied up in here that can be confirmed in this voluminous document.

I think it only makes sense that we should pass H.R. 104 to really figure out what actually happened. What actually happened with regard to allegations of torture and the torture memos that were written authorizing the torture of detainees? What happened with the extraordinary rendition, when, Mr. Chairman, people were brought from the United States and sent to countries and were tortured in those countries, where these countries aren't squeamish about torture? What happened with warrantless domestic surveillance? What happened with the U.S. Attorney scandal? These are things that need to happen.

What do you think about that?

Well, Mr. Chairman, I mean, Josh Bolten, Karl Rove and Harriet Miers were served with subpoenas to appear in front of the Judiciary Committee within the context of the law. We followed the rules when we authorized those subpoenas to be served upon them, and the White House told them not to come. Now, there may one day be a Republican administration, a Republican House, I mean, we're Democrats now, but one day things may change. Do we really want to set up a situation, no matter who's in charge, where an individual can simply scofflaw or skip over or just ignore a subpoena of the Judiciary Committee? I think it sets a horrible precedent, no matter who is in charge of our government.

And so I think you're right. This is a forward-looking process. This is not about settling scores. This is about setting the record straight. I think it's important that the American people really know what happened. I mean, extraordinary rendition. I was in a committee hearing one day when a man named Maher Arar, who is a Canadian of Syrian ancestry, was explaining how he had come from Europe through New York and was on his way to Canada when he was scooped up by representatives of our government and then held incommunicado, sent to Syria, and was tortured and was eventually released.

The Canadian Government did a full investigation of the whole matter and came to the conclusion that they grabbed the wrong guy. Oops. Well, the fact is the Canadian Government gave him a monetary award, but he could not come to the committee hearing and explain to us what actually happened to him. He had to appear by teleconference. Why? Because even our State Department, after they had demonstrably said they made a mistake about who they had picked up, still refused to take him off of the watch list.

My point is, these kind of things need a full hearing; these kind of things need a full airing. The rest of the world needs to know this is not how America does business. It was something that happened. We're not happy about it, but it happened.

We've been joined, Chairman Grijalva, by one of our most outstanding public servants from the great State of Texas. Sheila Jackson-Lee has been putting it down for a long time. How are you, Congresswoman?

The lacrosse team.

Reclaiming my time, could you speak on this critical issue. Some people might think that having a blue ribbon panel such as contemplated in H.R. 104 might be a backward-looking process and sort of be something about settling old scores now that the Dems have the White House and the Congress. But in your opinion as a lawyer of many years, what would such a process do in terms of signaling that such presidential behavior from a future President might not be permissible or might not be condoned if we were to have such a process?

Before you lead to this point, I just want to ask you another question.

You and I and Chairman Grijalva only a few days ago raised our hands up and we said we would swear an oath to support and defend. What did we swear to support and defend? Can you tell us?

That's right. What does that mean to you?

Forgive my reclaiming my time again, gentlelady, but if you could convey to the American people what is a signing statement? What is that?

Now, did the President do a signing statement when it came to the law that this body passed and he signed with regard to torture?

That's John Yoo and David Addington and people who worked for the Vice President?

Thank you, Congresswoman. And we have only got about 15 more minutes; so we invite you to hang out with us a little bit.

But we have got to hear from our illustrious chairman, who has helped lead the way for the Progressive Caucus.

You've had a long time to reflect on what Congresswoman Jackson-Lee has said and, of course, you have some thoughts on your own. How does any of this stuff strike you, Mr. Chairman?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman; and as we begin to wind down, I would like to invite Congresswoman Jackson-Lee of Texas to maybe give us a few concluding remarks.

We are here, this hour, we like to call it the progressive message. It is a special order afforded to Members of Congress to talk about what the progressive message is, whether it's on issues of executive authority, reining in executive authority, the economy, whatever it is. We want to let the American people know what the Progressive Caucus is talking about.

Would you like to give a few remarks as we come to the end of our hour tonight?

Thank you, Congresswoman.

Let me just say, tonight we have come together, members of the Progressive Caucus, a caucus organized, not based on ethnicity, like the Black Caucus or the Hispanic Caucus, not based on things like that, but based on our commonality of views, our value, what we all believe in. The Progressive Caucus represents diverse members of our congressional body, people from all over the country, different religions, different ethnic groups, all coming to project a progressive vision for our Nation.

We believe in fighting for economic justice and security in the United States and global economies. We also believe in protecting and preserving civil rights and civil liberties. We also believe in promoting global peace and security. These are some of the essential core beliefs of the Progressive Caucus, and you can count on us to come, week in, week out, with the progressive message to talk about how these critical values impact you.

Tonight we have spent time, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson-Lee and Congressman Raul Grijalva, talking about the imperial presidency that we have just seen ushered out of the door. We have seen a 500-page report, this big, thick, giant, humongous, enormous report full of facts and information in detail about allegations that the Bush administration may have overstepped its constitutional bounds. We believe this needs to be looked into. We believe the groundwork has been laid for an inquiry for a blue ribbon panel.

The vehicle, we believe, that should be used to get to the bottom, to get to the truth, is H.R. 104. H.R. 104, which Members and their community can look it up and read it, but what it would tell you if you looked it up is it would contain 47 separate recommendations designed to restore our Constitution's traditional system of checks and balances.

Chief among the recommendations are, one, continuation of congressional oversight; two, independent probes by the Justice Department; three, creation of a blue ribbon commission to fully investigate the activities; and they go on and on and on. You can look up the report online. It's there for you to look at it, at judiciary.house.gov/hearings/printers/110th. You can look it up that way.

Finally, we want to look into and don't want the American people to forget that our constitutional system is delicate. It must be maintained. It is a three-part system of checks and balances, executive, judiciary and legislative. The legislative branch is the first one mentioned in the Constitution.

We are a coequal branch of government. We don't work for the President, not the President we just got, Barack Obama, although we support him and wish him well. He is not our boss. The people are our boss. Also, we don't work for the President. We have a duty and an obligation to provide oversight to the executive.

We need to get to the bottom of allegations of torture and inhumane treatment, extraordinary rendition, warrantless domestic surveillance, the U.S. Attorney General scandal, a contrived drive to go to war with Iraq, signing statements to override laws of the land, intimidation and silencing of critics. We need to get into what happened with Valerie Plame. Why didn't Rove, Bolton and Myers show up to the Judiciary hearing after they were duly served? These are issues the American people have a right to know, and we intend to get to the bottom of it.

This is going to conclude the Progressive Message. Mr. Speaker, it has been a wonderful hearing.

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 7 o'clock and 23 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until Thursday, January 22, 2009, at 10 a.m.

Let me thank Chairman Frank for bringing this critical legislation to the floor.

When Congress passed the emergency financial services rescue package last fall, we included specific provisions to help distressed homeowners. Unfortunately, the Bush administration decided to help out Wall Street with

these funds while ignoring the needs of Main Street.

The fact is that this piece of legislation, carefully crafted and now working with an amenable and a cooperative administration, is in a much better position to meet the needs set forth in the original legislation, which is to help homeowners. The bill requires at least $40 billion, but no more than $100 billion, be used to help distressed homeowners.

Finally, I am excited to report that there is a measure that I authored with other Members which provides reasonable protections for bona fide renters, which is something I'm very happy about. I am pleased to be able to support this legislation today.

Again, Mr. Chairman, let me thank our very able chairman on this piece of legislation so we can get our country back and moving again.

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 18, had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''

Madam Speaker, I come to the floor today torn about this resolution. Though I welcome resolutions by the Congress to express support for the people of Israel and Gaza at this difficult time, this resolution does not do enough to move towards a stable and durable peace in the Middle East.

I feel that I cannot vote against the resolution, because I believe every country has a right to defend itself. I have been to Sderot, and I have seen firsthand both the physical and emotional destruction caused by the rockets.

Last fall I voted for a resolution specifically condemning the rocket attacks into Israel. However, I feel I cannot vote for this resolution either, because it does not sufficiently address the human suffering by Palestinians in Gaza. Over 750 people have been killed, 250 of them children, 50 of them women, with over 3,000 people injured.

Mosques have been bombed, schools as well. Even before the recent military operation, life for the people in Gaza has become increasingly unlivable under a crushing blockade. The Red Cross has been obstructed, 800,000 people without water, 1 million people without electricity.

That is why I intend to vote ``present'' today. Hopefully we can urge this Congress to not simply declare its support of its ally, but will actually move its ally and the rest of the region toward a more durable, sustainable, final solution to this conflict.

History has shown that ground troops and air strikes have not resolved conflict in the Middle East. If we try to resolve conflict with military might and nothing else, then we will be no safer than we were before. No one will be. Diplomacy is necessary to save lives and yield a lasting peace with security.

The United States must play a more active role in pursuing real peace in the Middle East.