Reflecting on Priorities Facing America
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Ms. PLASKETT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Horsford) for yielding and thank him for the work he is doing on this issue and so many issues that affect American families.
Sometimes here in Congress we can be distracted by issues that come up on a daily basis, but the gentleman from Nevada has kept his mind focused on the things that everyday Americans are concerned with, that is, proper wages, livable homes, good education, affordable housing. I am appreciative that we have kept our eyes on the prize, kept our eyes focused on the policy and the things that move the needle on this.
I was so happy to hear just a few moments ago from the gentleman from Philadelphia, Mr. Evans, because, although he talks quite a bit about Philadelphia, there is one area he talks about quite a bit, and that is sustaining the Black middle class, sustaining Black homeownership.
This minimum wage bill, Raise the Wage Act of 2019, supports those kind of initiatives. It gradually raises, as we have said, the Federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 over several years, over the next 6 years, to lift millions of workers out of poverty, even those who are working, who are still the working-class poor, stimulate local economies, and restore the value of the minimum wage. It gives 40 million Americans a raise.
As we heard from the gentlewoman from Michigan (Mrs. Lawrence), my colleague and good friend, it helps women and workers of color.
Today, more than 40 percent of Black workers and one-third of Hispanic workers will get a raise under this bill. Women make up nearly two-thirds of all minimum wage workers.
In areas like the Virgin Islands, where many of the homes and percentages of homes are run by single-person households, those being predominantly Black women, this is very important that women are two- thirds of the minimum wage workers. For them to be lifted out raises families.
One thing that I think this touches on and is part of that hasn't really been expressed as yet is wealth disparity.
The wealth, the measure of an individual's or a family's financial net worth, provides all sorts of opportunities for American families. Wealth makes it easier for people to seamlessly transition between jobs, move to new neighborhoods, and respond to emergency situations.
Unfortunately, wealth in this country is unequally distributed by race, particularly between White and Black households. African American families have a fraction of the wealth of White families, leaving them more economically insecure and with far fewer opportunities for economic mobility.
Even after considering positive factors such as increased education levels, African Americans still have less wealth than Whites. Less wealth translates into fewer opportunities and is compounded by lower income levels and fewer chances to build wealth or pass accumulated wealth down to future generations.
This also is very symptomatic and has a well-documented history of mortgage market discrimination. It means that Blacks are significantly less likely to be homeowners than Whites, which means they have less access to savings and tax benefits that come with owning a home.
Persistent labor market discrimination and segregation also force Blacks into fewer and less advantageous employment opportunities than their White counterparts. Even when they have homeownership, they have less access and ability to be able to use that homeownership.
In the Virgin Islands, surprisingly, almost 60 percent of families of Black people own their home, but they are unable, and the banks are unwilling, to allow them to leverage that wealth for education, for second mortgages, to start businesses. The scrutiny is high.
When we are talking about wages, in the Virgin Islands, we make 75 percent of what is the national average. The average for a Virgin Islands family is $37,254; whereas, the estimated national average is $50,221. And 13.5 percent of U.S. Virgin Islanders have family income levels below $10,000 a year--for a family. That is horrendous.
This bill, however, and passage of this bill would mean lots of wealth and lots of opportunities for Black families, African Americans, the working poor, White poor families, Hispanic families.
African Americans own approximately one-tenth of the wealth of White Americans. In 2016, the median wealth for nonretired Black households 25 years old and older was less than one-tenth that of similarly situated White households. Those are White households, making the same and having the same access as Black families, which are making one- tenth that of similarly situated White households.
The Black-White wealth gap has still not recovered from the Great Recession. In 2007, immediately after the Great Recession, the median wealth of Blacks was nearly 14 percent of Whites. Although Black wealth increased at a faster rate than White wealth in 2016, Blacks still owned less than 10 percent of White's wealth at the median.
Black households have fewer and are in greater need of personal savings than their White counterparts. For a variety of reasons, Blacks are more likely to experience negative income shocks but are less likely to have access to emergency savings. As a consequence, Blacks are more likely to fall behind on their bills and go into debt during times of emergency.
The systematic challenges in narrowing the wealth gap for African Americans with Whites persists. The wealth gap persists regardless of a household's education, marital status, age, or income.
This is something that we are fighting for. We are grateful for this legislation that is going to make a difference in African American lives.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for bringing this important matter to the floor for us to discuss here this evening, and it is my plea for my colleagues to pass this legislation, for it to go to the Senate so that it can make a tremendous difference in so many Americans' lives. Raising the income level of the less fortunate assists all Americans in raising the tide of Americans' ability to excel.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Ms. PLASKETT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for that discussion about what is happening in Nevada and raising the minimum wage, what that is going to do in the gentleman's State. Kudos to the Governor to take that bold leap.
There is concern about what happens with small businesses, and I know that the chairman of the Committee on Education and Labor has been thinking about that as well, that this bill does take this into account, that there are small businesses that this may be difficult for.
But we have to understand what the entire objective is of this bill. I know that there are amendments by other good Democrats to look at the Government Accountability Office to determine employment impacts.
That is much more helpful than what was done with the tax bill that the Republicans passed. They aren't trying to see what the impact has been of their legislation. They didn't ask for a lookback to see is this, in fact, stimulating the economy, because the objective was not to stimulate the economy.
The objective was to give the 1 percent--those corporate CEOs and others--additional money. It was not to put money into the economy. Because, if it was, then we would be looking at it right now: What is the impact on America?
That was not put into that tax bill. But the Democrats are willing to do that. The Democrats want to make sure that this legislation is doing what it is meant to do; that is, to be for the people, for the larger American people, by supporting that.
When I was talking earlier about the wealth gap and income, income and employment are obstacles to the wealth gap. The income gap has actually worsened over time.
According to a 2016 Economic Policy Institute report, the income gap between Blacks and Whites has grown since the 1970s, not lessened. In 1979, for example, Black men earned 22 percent less than White men. In 2015, Black men earned 31 percent less.
The report's authors note that, in 1979, Black women's wages reached near parity with White women's wages, but that by 2015 the gap had risen to 19 percent.
We are not getting better. The equality gap is not narrowing. We need to face the statistics. And Democrats are willing to do something about that.
The report also found that the gap persists across women's educational levels and worsens for those with higher levels of educational attainment.
The gap at a higher level of education for White women and Black women with similar education is worse than it is for those lower.
In 1980, college-educated Black women with more work experience actually earned slightly higher wages than college-educated White women with the same experience. By 2014, however, the gap had widened to 10 percent in White women's favor. That is a reversal.
Similarly, while the gap between college-educated Black and White men in 1980 was slightly less than 10 percent, it rose to 20 percent by 2014.
In 2017, researchers from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco similarly concluded that the Black-White earning gap is growing, and that the growth can largely be attributable to so-called immeasurable factors.
What are some of those factors? Those factors that play a role in the Black-White income and employment gap include employment discrimination, weak enforcement of antidiscrimination laws, and racial differences in unobserved skill levels, as opposed to measurable factors such as educational attainment or work experience.
I am grateful that we have this time this evening to talk about this, to let the American people see the truth--not a tweet, not what is happening on the news on a regular basis, but the things that everyday Americans care about: wages; minimum wage; having quality of life; and, as my colleague from Nevada said, the ability to have one job to sustain your family, not having to juggle two and three jobs, leaving your children at home and not being able to be an important and positive force in your children's lives because you have to work.
We are concerned as well about what is happening to our young children who don't have that supervision in the evening.
Those are some of the issues where we have concern in Black communities, not because parents aren't working and they are not there for their children because they are shiftless, they are lazy, et cetera, the things that you hear. It is because parents have two jobs. They are trying to hold it together.
Single households, even those households that have both parents working, they have to have two jobs to make ends meet.
This is a means to get people to be able not only to get out of poverty but to support their families, to support their communities, to create wealth, to have homeownership, which allows access to so many other things such as education and so many things that are, in fact, the American Dream.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Ms. PLASKETT. Every day, every week, and definitely every month, they are trying to juggle which bill they are going to pay, and which bill they are not going to pay. Are they going to be able to keep the lights on? Are they going to be able to pay the rent?
In the Virgin Islands, public school students wear uniforms. Are they going to be able to scrounge up money at the end of the summer to be able to provide clothing for their children to be able to go to school?
Those are the things that people are concerned with working minimum wage jobs, and working them hard; and then maybe at night having a nighttime job somewhere else; and making sure that maybe one of the older children is watching the younger ones; making sure that they are asleep while they are away at that job; and praying that nothing happens while they are there, not because they are negligent parents, but that they care enough to be trying to put food on the table.
Those are the stories that I am sure you hear in your district; that I know I hear in the Virgin Islands; and that I am sure all of our colleagues, if they are willing to listen to the people that are on the ground, the people that have put them here in Congress, are facing every day.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source