Final Frontiers of Freedom

Floor Speech

Mr. SWALWELL of California. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to join my colleagues in, again, calling attention to our continued war on poverty, and I thank my colleague and neighbor in California, Congresswoman Barbara Lee, for leading this effort.

This war is, however, but the latest chapter in a larger struggle that goes all the way back to the founding of our country. When we declared our independence in 1776, Thomas Jefferson helped define the purpose and the mission of this new country with his timeless words in that Declaration of Independence. He wrote:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

They endeavored on what was called at the time a freedom experiment. It was this perfect idea that no longer should this British nobility system prevail where your destiny was often charted for you before you were even born based on where you were born or to whom you were born to. It was the idea that you should be able to decide your own independence, chart your own destiny.

It was a perfect idea carried out by imperfect men. It wasn't extended to African Americans. It wasn't extended to women. Certain religious sects were left out. So we fought a civil war, ended slavery. We went through the suffragist movement, and women were given the right to vote. Eventually, entire classes of people--Catholics, the poor, and others who had been shut out--were now brought into American opportunity.

Today, when I think about what are some of the final frontiers of freedom that have not yet been expanded, I think back to President Johnson. We are very grateful for President Johnson's declaration of the war on poverty. Fifty years ago, he stated that we are in a war on poverty, and we must fight for civil rights, and he signed legislation that marked the beginning of the end of the Jim Crow era. He also recognized it was time to give the poor a real chance to pursue their happiness.

He hearkened back, just as I did, to our Nation's beginnings. President Johnson said that our Founders made a covenant with this new land and that it was conceived in justice. In his words, this ``justice was the promise that all who made the journey would share in the fruits of the land.''

So began a renewed effort in America to fight poverty, a renewed effort to give those who are poor the freedom to dream that they could be anything they want. We recognized that kids needed to be better prepared before they go to school, so we created the Head Start program. We recognized the critical importance of health and wellness, and so we created Medicare and Medicaid.

But this freedom to dream has not yet been expanded across America. In fact, I see every day that there are still millions of children living in poverty, and just like every politician, when I see one of these young children in a schoolhouse, I ask them, What do you want to be when you grow up? After doing this a number of times, I realized, I should really ask them, Are you hungry? Are you cold? Are you safe? Because the opportunities around them--the crumbling buildings they are trying to learn in, the parents who are working at a minimum wage that is not a living wage--do not provide them with the tools that these children need to realize their opportunity. This leaves them no different than a child born in the 1700s under the British nobility system.

The freedom to dream is no different, and they are no more able to dream beyond where they were born or whom they were born to. So our goal must be to continue to fight this war on poverty, to give every child across every schoolhouse in this country the freedom to dream. This means we must raise the minimum wage. We must extend unemployment insurance for the long-term unemployed so that they can find a job and make sure they can reinforce the skills at home that their children are learning in the classroom.

We will not rest on this issue until I can ask and every Member of this Congress can ask a child, What do you want to be when you grow up? And that child will be able to say, My country has given me the tools to be anything I want.

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