Progressive Caucus
Floor Speech
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Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Speaker, my name is Keith Ellison, and I will claim the time on behalf of the Progressive Caucus. This is the Progressive Caucus' moment where we come together and talk about our ideals, our values, the things that are critically important, we believe, to all Americans.
This week, I'm joined by two outstanding leaders in the Progressive Caucus and in the Congress and in America, Hank Johnson of Georgia and Lynn Woolsey of California. I want to invite both of my colleagues to jump in as they feel inspired to do so, but let me just set the groundwork a little bit.
This week, we saw a number of things occur. One of the things that we saw this week is the Buffett rule that was taken up in the Senate. The Senate voted on the Buffett rule on a policy that requires millionaires and billionaires to pay the same tax rates as middle class families and working people.
I want to make it clear: we don't begrudge anybody for doing well; but we do believe, in a country as great as America, if you have been privileged enough to do well, that maybe you should do something for America. This wildly popular measure was filibustered and therefore defeated in the Senate. According to the CNN international poll, nearly three-fourths of Americans support the Buffett rule and believe it should be law. Despite this, Republicans in the Senate blocked the bill from even getting a majority vote.
I mention this particular situation this way as I begin our dialogue that we'll have tonight over the course of this hour because I think that this is emblematic of the problem that we're facing today. We're going to talk tonight about Citizens United; we'll talk about a lot of things. But one of the things that I think is emblematic of the problem we're facing here in the U.S. Congress today is that what the overwhelming majority of Americans want the overwhelming majority of Americans don't get, something like the Buffett rule. The reason why is the pernicious and corrosive effect of money in politics today.
So, we are the Progressive Caucus. We're honored to be before the American people today, Mr. Speaker. We are the caucus that, yes, will stand up for civil and human rights for all people without regard to your color, your culture, your sex, your gender, your sexual preference, your religion, wherever you were born--national origin. We believe that all Americans are valued and believe in liberty and justice for all.
Yes, the Progressive Caucus is the caucus that's going to say that if you work hard every day, you ought to be able to make enough money to feed your family in America. And, yes, we believe that if you've been able to be in this great country of ours and do well in this environment, you ought to do something, you ought to pay enough taxes so that the needs and the costs of our society can be paid for. And, absolutely, we believe we have a duty and obligation, a responsibility to the environment and our natural world.
Now, we're not ashamed to stand up for these values: peace, working-class prosperity and fairness, environmental sustainability, and civil and human rights for all people. We care about these things and we're going to. But today, we're going to discuss a number of issues, including the Buffett rule, Citizens United, ALEC, the budget, the Ryan budget, and a whole range of issues.
At this point I'm going to hand it over to my colleague and friend, Lynn Woolsey of California.
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Mr. ELLISON. Well, I would say this to the gen tle lady. You know, much of it has to do with the fact that we have a disproportionate percentage of wealthy interests. The fact is you've got money coming in, lobbyists paid for, campaign donations, all this stuff, and now we've got the onset of the super PAC and we have the Citizens United decision.
And if you ask yourself why can't we pass the Buffett rule, why can't we pass the public option, which is wildly popular, why can't we get environmental regulations we need to protect our lungs and our health and our Earth, why can't we do these things, and the reason why is because of the disproportionate corrosive effect of money in our government.
This is why earlier this week we were able to pass something, a Declaration for Democracy, which reads:
I declare my support for amending the Constitution of the United States to restore the rights of people undermined by Citizens United and related cases, to protect the integrity of our elections and limit the corrosive influence of money on the democratic process.
We have a lot of people who signed this particular document. But not just Members of Congress signed it. Some people who signed it were city council members, were community citizen activists. There are people from a broad cross section of American life, because they asked the same question you ask, Congresswoman WOOLSEY: Why can't we pass the Buffett rule? Why can't we pass environmental protections? Why can't we pass the public option? Why can't things that Americans want get through?
The reason they can't get through is because you've got the lobbyist money being poured in. You've got campaign donations here. You're about to see a whole plethora of ugly, nasty, divisive, corrosive attack ads in this upcoming Presidential election.
The bottom line is, if we get this money out, what will happen is that citizens' voices will emerge past the money. Citizens' voices will come up, and citizens will have their will reflected in the Congress more so.
It was an awesome lift to pick up health care, and we didn't even get all the things we wanted in there, but we got a lot of things we wanted.
But why didn't we get all the things we wanted even though they were popular? The corrosive, divisive effect of money.
I think the health care industry was putting in, like, $14 million a day to lobby against the Affordable Care Act. And of course you know with all that kind of pushing and shoving and cajoling, it just gets incredibly difficult.
So I want to yield back to the gentleman from Georgia, who has some important information about a number of things.
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Mr. ELLISON. So the people who have the kind of money you just described are actually a small part of the population, but I think they're punching above their weight because they have an inordinate influence in the political process.
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Mr. ELLISON. So, if you're making 70k a year, paying 25 percent of your income in income taxes, that means, if there is an increase in your property taxes, you're really going to feel that. That's going to punch you right in the stomach. That's going to make a difference in whether the kids can get braces or not. That's going to make a difference as to whether or not you can put a roof on the house. It will make a huge difference. $70,000 is actually doing pretty well, but small variations can change your life.
If you're a two-income household and are making $70,000 and if one of the partners in the relationship gets sick or dies, that means catastrophic expenses on the family because, if you're spending at a $70,000-a-year level and you lose a household member, you've got all those bills with just the one person, and then you're going to be in bankruptcy. This is why we know 56 percent of all bankruptcy filings are driven by medical debt. This is how this happens even to middle class people. But the Buffett rule and putting Americans to work and doing a lot of things are really what the Progressive Caucus is all about. It's about addressing these systemic problems we're talking about today.
So I just want to let everybody know, if you want to check out what the Progressive Caucus says about the Buffett rule, you should know that we have the Buffett rule contained in our budget.
We put America back to work by front-loading jobs in our budget. We invest in America's future by investing in infrastructure, and we reduce the deficit, in part, by asking the wealthiest and most privileged Americans to do the patriotic thing and pony up a little bit more to help America.
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Mr. ELLISON. Do you know what? I have to demur and say that I'm not that excited to respond. I've responded on Ed Schultz. I've responded on Wolf Blitzer. I've responded on Martin Brashir, and I've just said it's not true. It's a false statement. It's untrue. It's unfair. It's unkind. It raises the level of vitriol and insult in this body, and of course, it's tough enough around here already. We don't need to hurl false accusations against each other.
I would just urge the public to remind Members of Congress that we need to have a little bit more civility around here and that, if you do want to make an ugly comment or a negative comment about your colleagues, at least try to make it somewhere within 10,000 miles of being true. This is absolutely false.
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Mr. ELLISON. One thing I don't want to do--and I'm just speaking for me. If he calls us names, I'm not going to call him names. If he calls us names, I'm not going to call them ugly names like that. There are a lot of ugly names that you could call someone who has a right-wing perspective on the extreme. We don't engage in tit for tat, because that's childlike. We're adults. We're here to discharge a responsibility on behalf of the American people. We swore an oath to uphold and defend the U.S. Constitution, and that is what I'm going to do. I'm not going to be distracted by somebody who is not clear on what we're supposed to be doing here. I'm going to stay focused on what we're here to do.
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