Restore the American Dream

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mrs. RAMIREZ. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congressman Deluzio for convening this Special Order hour, and I am grateful it is on a topic that I believe is so critical to so many of the conversations that we are having right now.

You are talking about babies still impacted. You brought me back to thinking about what it was like for me growing up. I grew up in Humboldt Park in the city of Chicago. I saw my immigrant parents work pretty long hours in minimum wage jobs. My dad worked two jobs, my mom worked two jobs, and somehow she also managed to give a lot of time to her local church.

What they couldn't afford was childcare. My mother worked first shift so my dad could work third shift, and they could figure out how to make sure that their kids always had someone at home. That meant that my parents could barely ever see each other.

My parents' experience is not very different from the reality of so many others right now. I witnessed the struggles of my community to secure stable housing, to ensure quality education for their children, and to raise a family with the rising cost of living.

Let me be very clear: Working people are still struggling. The cost of living in America is too damn high. Too often I hear my constituents, my neighbors talk about having to make a decision: Can I go to the grocery store and buy the eggs and the milk, try to get some spinach, try to get the bread, pay the $2,200 a month for a two-bedroom apartment in Chicago, and then afford my inhaler?

Mr. Speaker, oftentimes what ends up happening is that people have to choose between being able to feed their children and their healthcare, feeding their children and an inhaler in one of the richest countries in the whole world. Why is it so hard for us to move a working people's agenda in Congress? You would think there is more of us that come from working class than ever before. Some of us actually understand what it is like to have to help our parents who are probably making $100 too much for Medicaid so they need help covering their healthcare.

There are more of us here who are working class, but somehow a working people's agenda in this place doesn't seem to be a priority.

We ask ourselves: Why don't the American people trust that we are working for them?

Well, let me answer that question. When unchecked corporate power and greed in the marketplace meets unchecked corporate money in politics, well, we have a problem. It is the families in Illinois' Third, Fourth, Fifth, in your own districts, who end up suffering because of it.

We know that price gouging, price-fixing, predatory algorithms, and corporate monopolies put profits and production over people. It is why I joined my colleagues in sending a letter, that Congresswoman Jayapal was just talking about, opposing the Kroger-Albertsons merger, because we have to resist the consolidation of corporate power if we are going to protect working people.

I am also a proud cosponsor of Congresswoman Omar's Shrinkflation Reduction Act which would enhance price transparency for consumers and combat the deceptive practice of shrinkflation.

I go to my local grocery store. I can literally see the difference between what people in my community are paying and what someone else in a community that has four grocery stores pays. They usually pay 25 percent more. We need the kind of accountability that bills like this will bring.

Shrinkflation practices hide behind the language of inflation, but we know that actually consumer exploitation is intended to defraud us so corporations can continue to profit, while providing less product.

We know how corporations are able to get away with these practices. It is because they use their profits to buy the same exact people who are responsible for holding them accountable. Yes, I said it. Big money in politics, whether poured into elections or directly in the pockets of corrupt public servants, give special interests and corporations outsized influence in our democracy.

So when a good bill comes before us, when a good bill comes to the committee, somehow we can't actually debate the bill because it is a good bill. It should pass. These corporations have the power to buy elections and buy elected officials.

Our democracy is weaker and our communities suffer when the voices of working families are buried under the influence that millions can buy. We see it too often. It is why we need bills like H.R. 1118, the DISCLOSE Act, to end the scourge of dark money buying our democracy.

I am a cosponsor of the act that Representative Pappas introduced because it does a couple of things. It requires super-PACs and dark money groups to disclose donors who have given $10,000 or more during an election cycle. It requires those spending money on ads to disclose their donors. It cracks down on the use of shell corporations to hide the identity of a donor.

If you are donating to an elected official or candidate, the public should know who you are. The DISCLOSE Act bill does just that. If our democracy is not for sale, which it shouldn't be for sale, then mega- donors should not be attempting to buy our democracy. It means we have to bring the full power of the Federal Government through regulations, through accountability, and through transparency to fight for working people, for our constituents.

It is also why I think it is so important that we are cosponsoring legislation like Congresswoman Jayapal's bill, which is the Stop Corporate Capture Act, H.R. 1507. This bill institutes reforms to rightsize the influence of corporate interests over regulatory process, it increases transparency of government rulemaking decisions, and it establishes a mechanism for the public to hold agencies accountable.

We have to do everything possible so that the American people trust that those of us that are in the people's House are actually here for them because the reality is that they don't.

They do see us as people who are here to enrich ourselves, people who are here to hear ourselves speak. Working families demand accountability, and they have given us a mandate. They are asking us for bold solutions to economic justice, and it means taking on corporate greed.

As we get closer to an administration that has promised to weaken the pillars of our democracy more than ever, I think it is going to be critical that Progressives and every Democrat, frankly, every elected official that is here for working families, get together to unite and address corporate greed. If we don't, we will continue to see what we see now, which is corporations becoming wealthier than wealthy can possibly be, while poor people continue to have to choose between healthcare and feeding their children.

I thank Congressman Deluzio for the opportunity to speak today. I thank him for bringing up such an important, critical issue. I look forward to working with him in the next Congress.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source