The Progressive Message From The Progressive Caucus

Floor Speech

Mr. ELLISON. Madam Speaker, let me welcome America and the rest of the world to the Progressive Caucus Special Order hour. We would like to call it ``The Progressive Message.''

And the Progressive message is something that the Progressive Caucus does every week to project a Progressive vision for America; not a reactionary vision, not a status quo vision, but a vision of America as we believe that it could be, can be, that all men and women are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The Progressive Caucus and the Progressive message, tonight, are here to come to bring a message to the people about where we are going, where we have been. And tonight's topic is ``Why I'm a Progressive.''

Why I'm a Progressive; here's why. We are going to talk about it tonight, and it's going to be good. And to help us get kicked off on this subject of why I am a Progressive, I want to yield to the gentlelady from the great State of California, who is also one of our co-Chairs, Lynn Woolsey

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Mr. ELLISON. We have been here on the House floor together before, and at that time in the past you shared one of your own personal stories about what motivated you toward Progressive politics.

But leave it to say that the gentlelady from California, our co-Chair, Lynn Woolsey, came to Progressive politics not just because of something she read in the book, but because of the life that she lived that helped her understand what the importance of Progressive politics are all about

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Mr. ELLISON. The fact is that many of us come to our own conclusions about the need for shared prosperity, and some of us find that that helping hand that we would give others, sometimes we need it ourselves.

But, you know what? It's okay, because Progressive politics has a long, strong, proud history in the United States. Part of that history has been fighting for peace. And that fight goes on today.

I want to yield to the gentleman from Colorado, Representative Polis, who has some views on that. How does Progressive politics inform you as you search for America as a more peaceful partner in the world?

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Mr. ELLISON. The gentleman has yielded to me. The attack on Iraq is the single worst decision any President of the United States has ever made. And I'm proud to say the Progressives stood up and voiced opposition to it. But not only that--Vietnam. Not only that, members of the Progressive community have stood up and questioned the very military buildup itself and the United States posture in the world.

You know, I'd like to share with the gentleman, if I may, and the gentlelady from Maine, that if you took every military budget in the entire world--I'm talking about Palau, Timor-Leste; I'm talking about places like Indonesia, Kenya, wherever--and you added them all up and you compared them to the United States military budget, ours would still be bigger.

We spend more money on military armaments than every other country in the world--and many of our military expenditures go to things that have absolutely positively nothing whatsoever to do with fighting terrorism. They're for fighting Russians--states that are confined within nonporous borders, state actors, not nonstate actors who are fluidly moving throughout the world.

So I toss it back to the gentleman from Colorado and yield to the gentleman from Colorado. Have Progressives stood up for peace? What do you think?

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Mr. ELLISON. Let's now introduce our freshman colleague from the great State of Maine, Representative Pingree, who comes here with a long-term service of the people of the State of Maine, but who is going to focus on another aspect of what it means to be a Progressive.

There's the peace aspect, there's the question of domestic economic progressivity, but there's also this element of Progressive politics, which says individual liberty is very important.

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Mr. ELLISON. Do you think that perhaps part of the Progressive tradition is this idea of individual liberty? There are certain things that we as Americans may not agree on, but we will agree that the decision rests with the individual.

I can't tell you, from Maine, how many children you should have, or whether you should have any. I can't tell you who to marry or who not to marry. I can't tell you about these essential decisions that are like your business.

This is a very Progressive idea. Sometimes when you hear about the government getting off people's backs, you associate it with people who are on the ``right'' end of the political spectrum. But when it comes to many other decisions that are essential and private, these are Progressive values.

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Mr. ELLISON. If I can turn to the gentleman from Colorado. The gentlelady from Maine makes an interesting point. Part of the Progressive vision is doing things together which we should and could do together, and doing things separately, then maybe we get to make that call on our own. Maybe we should make sure that all Americans have health care, that everyone is safe, that women don't have to live in a home where they fear battering, and that we have a criminal justice system that protects them from that.

But maybe on certain other decisions like marriage or other things, that's just your business and we let people make decisions for themselves on that. How does the gentleman feel about this issue?

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Mr. ELLISON. If the gentleman would yield, when it comes to this issue of marriage equality, I always say to people that it's not mandatory. It's up to the individual. What about individual liberty?

I just want to ask the two Members with me today, the gentleman from Colorado, the gentlelady from Maine, to just review with me, if you would, some of these things that I believe were Progressive in nature.

When it comes to this issue of the American Revolution, I think it was progressive. Yes, America was a slave-holding country. Yes, women didn't have equal rights. And, yes, there were a lot of problems. But if you look in that day and in that time for the American colonialists to say we are not going to ruled by a king and we are going to choose our leaders, that was a progressive step forward.

We may look at that time and say there were problems, people didn't overcome a lot of social injustices. But if we look at it for what it was, individual citizens saying I don't want a king making up my mind for me, I want to cast a vote and select my own leaders, that, I believe, was a progressive step forward.

The Bill of Rights I think was progressive. Think about the first one: No government religious institution, everyone practices their own religion as they choose; the establishment clause; right to freedom of the press; right to assembly; right to redress grievances. It was a progressive step forward.

Universal white male suffrage. Of course, not all Americans got the right to vote at the same time, but there was a time when being a white male was not good enough to get you a ballot. You had to have some property. You could not be Catholic, you had to be a white male Protestant property owner. So when America said the property thing and the religious thing, those don't apply any more. Of course we would have liked to have more people get the franchise, but a lot of people got it.

Public education; emancipation of the slaves; national park system; food safety; break up of monopolies; antitrust legislation--progressive. The Homestead Act. Land grant universities so that all Americans could really enjoy a university education.

What about this one, I would like to ask the gentlelady from Maine, what about rural electrification, was that a progressive step forward for America?

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Mr. ELLISON. I think it is a Progressive value because it says, look, we know Americans who live in rural America like living there. They grow the crops and they enjoy that life. But if there is no economy out there, then it is difficult to live out there and you see young people moving into the city, not necessarily because they want to but because they feel that they have to.

This rural electrification in one generation, broadband access in another, represents our shared commitment to each other to live our lives as we would choose.

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Mr. ELLISON. Moving down the list, women's suffrage, 1920. It is important for Americans to know that women could not always vote in America. It was progressive women, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and others who stood up and fought. It was Sojourner Truth and a man by the name of Frederick Douglass fighting for women's right to vote. And it was women in the West who made the claim, we are already voting. You may not have a constitutional right to do it, but we do it in our State, and they helped lead the way.

But what about the abolition of child labor, the 8-hour workday? Pretty progressive. We all hope we can do that. Minimum wage, Social Security, civil rights for minorities and women, voting rights for minorities and the poor. Cleaning up our air, water, toxic dump sights, consumer product safety and Medicare.

Today, I ask the gentlelady from Maine, are we done?

Has the Progressive agenda been completed? Do we have more work to do?

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Mr. ELLISON. Yes, we have a great progressive history, but we have a tall order to do. We have to get health care to all Americans. We have to make sure that we have a green renewable future so we can live in harmony with the planet. The planet is going to keep on turning. Whether we can continue to survive on it is another question.

I am happy that in the 110th and 111th Congress, we were able to pass legislation like the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which is an important step forward for people to bring pay equity lawsuits when they were victims of gender discrimination on the job.

We were able to pass the children's health insurance program, not health care for all, but health care for children, a very important bill.

We were able to pass the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which is a law that says, Look, you can have your value system as to how you feel about different sets of Americans, but you better not harm them. They are within the protection of the law. They have a right. People like Matthew Shepard will not be harmed. The rest of us will not tolerate it, and that is how we express our values for all human beings.

And as you pointed out the, American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the so-called stimulus act which gave a tax cut to middle-class Americans. Progressives aren't against tax cuts; we are just against tax cuts for only the rich people. We believe that working people ought to get a break sometimes, too.

So these kinds of things are things that we are fighting on. This may be the history, but we have a tall agenda for the future that we want all Americans to partake of.

I want to say briefly that to be a Progressive is to be one who believes, yes we have our individual rights, but we also have things that we proudly share together, like our safety and clean water and like our environmental legal regime.

But on the other side, what a Progressive is not, what a Progressive is not is somebody who basically operates on the basis of fear-based politics. We boldly say we can do this new thing together. We are not afraid to embrace the future. But there is a set of politics that says be afraid, be very afraid. The Russians or somebody is going to get you, and you have to be afraid. You can't share with anybody. You just have to look out for yourself. That is a set of political ideas that is prevalent around here, too; and those ideas are not the ones that made America great. The ones that made America great are the ones listed on this board and the ones that we are talking about now.

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Mr. ELLISON. As I just wrap up, this is the Progressive message. We have had Members, including Congresswoman Woolsey, Congressman Polis, and Congresswoman Pingree, talk about why I am a Progressive, giving their personal testimony and giving their own ideas and values about this critical subject.

We also want folks to be able to check in on the Website right here: http://cpc.grijalva.house.gov. Very important for people who are watching to check in and check out the Progressive Caucus agenda. It is very important. The Progressive Caucus is a moral force within the Congress bringing America to its better half.

I agree with Congresswoman Pingree, who pointed out that all of these things on this list are things where people said, Look, let's embrace our common life, our shared life. But these are all things, and I think that Congresswoman Pingree would agree with me, that before they were passed, people said it can't be done. They said this is something that we shouldn't do. But you know what? All of these things were done, and we are all as Americans much better off for it.

Let me also wrap up by saying that it was the words of President Barack Obama, who said in his first address to Congress, ``I reject the view that says our problems will simply take care of themselves, that government has no role in laying the foundation of our common prosperity.'' That rejected view, I submit, is a conservative view because government does have an important role to play in our common prosperity, and our problems will not simply take care of themselves.

President Obama went on to say, ``For history tells a different story. History reminds us that at every moment of economic upheaval and transformation, this Nation has responded with bold action and big ideas.'' I quite agree with the President on this point.

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