The Progressive Message

Floor Speech

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you, Congressman Ellison, who is the chair of the Progressive Caucus. Thank you for your leadership on this and in so many other areas. And thank you for having this Special Order on this disturbing vote that took place today in the Congress.

There is no question and there can be no debating the fact that the bill that the Republicans put forward endangers women's health, puts their lives at risk, and intrudes on their constitutionally protected liberties.

The bill extends the reach of government more cynically and in a very profoundly disturbing way. And that is why President Obama put out a veto threat on Wednesday that he would veto any bill that would restrict insurers from paying for abortions, saying, in the President's words, ``it goes too far.'' And I'd like to quote from the President's statement on this.

``Longstanding Federal policy prohibits Federal funds from being used for abortions, except in cases of rape or incest, or when the life of the woman would be endangered.''

The Affordable Care Act preserved this prohibition and included policies to ensure that Federal funding is segregated from any private dollars used to fund abortions for which Federal funding is prohibited. So that's very, very clear, and I don't understand why the Republicans forced a vote on this, like the other anti-women, anti-choice, anti-respect of a woman's right to choose and her judgment have failed so far in the Senate.

So I feel that instead of looking at creating jobs, which is the priority, and the Republican majority has consistently said that jobs and job creation is their priority, but then they spend their time on debating a bill that even their own Members admit the President will veto and it is going nowhere in the Senate. So instead of creating jobs, they remain focused, Mr. Ellison, on creating obstacles for women to access safe, legal, and badly needed health care.

This bill, H.R. 358, is an attack on women's access to reproductive health services and our fundamental right to lifesaving medical care. It is stunning in its scope, appalling in its indifference, and outrageous in its arrogance.

Americans want Congress to create jobs, strengthen the middle class, and find bipartisan consensus. So it's time to end this attack on women and get to work on our top priority, or what should be our top priority, creating jobs.

This bill is just another attempt to keep women down and back and not to protect their constitutional rights and access to the health care that they feel they deserve.

I thank the gentleman for organizing this and for yielding to me.

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Mr. ELLISON. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists wrote, in order for women to receive the best health care and disease prevention, they must have access to all medically appropriate, legal medical procedures, regardless of the ability to pay. The American College of Gynecologists and Obstetricians opposes legislative proposals to limit women's access to any needed medical care. These proposals can jeopardize the health and safety of our patients and put government between a physician and a patient.

My question to you is: This bill, H.R. 358, the very deceptively titled Protect Life Act, does this bill have scientific and medical backing behind it as the opposition to this bill has? In other words, do they have trained medical professionals operating on the basis of science supporting their position?

I yield to the gentlelady.

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Mrs. MALONEY. No, they do not. In fact, the scientists and the medical professions all support access to all medically appropriate legal medical procedures. There are some times when the fetus is not--could not live or has died and is in jeopardy of causing, literally, the destruction of organs or even death of the woman. So this is, I would say, a life-taking bill from the health and welfare. And this bill also allows hospitals to deny lifesaving care. This is a big change in our values and our procedures in this country.

And I want to point out very importantly, Mr. Chairman, that at the same time they are restricting reproductive choices, Republicans are limiting access to family planning and primary care by their efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, which is a primary care provider to most women for their basic health in this country. And these actions I would label just plain too extreme.

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Mr. ELLISON. The gentlelady has been very eloquent about the assault on women's health. If you don't mind, given that you are a member of the Joint Economic Committee, which is a bicameral committee, bipartisan committee, I think, in the Congress, I wonder if you don't mind talking with me just a little while about the assault on women's economic prospects.

In your opinion, Congresswoman Maloney, how will assaults and cuts to Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security impact women, given that women statistically live longer than men and have a greater representation for use of those important programs? Are we seeing not just the health but also the economic viability of women under threat, as well as seeing important programs that women rely on disproportionately cut into?

I yield to the gentlelady.

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Mrs. MALONEY. It is true that women disproportionately rely on government programs and, regrettably, women are the largest segment, older women are the largest segment of people living in poverty. So the discrimination that has existed in pay, there is still, for over 30 years, an unexplained gap between men and women, the pay gap, well over 20 percent; and this then translates into your Social Security--less Social Security, less pension--and the need for Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare to help women.

And also, a lot of women that are around the age of 55, when their spouses die and they've been stay-at-home-mothers and wives, they lose the coverage that their husbands have, and there is a gap that's not there until they reach Medicare age of 65. So they rely disproportionately on these safety net programs.

So any cuts--and I hear from my constituents, I know that you do, too, that say: I can't absorb another cut to my Medicare; I can't absorb a cut to my Social Security. And I believe that's one reason why Democrats have fought so hard to keep that safety net in place for working men and women in our country.

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Mr. ELLISON. I appreciate the gentlelady shedding some light on this issue because the fact is that today we were looking at a bill that would restrict women's health care access.

But you know that we have been trying to fend off assaults on the viability of women's economic situation. We still know that women earn about 80 cents for every dollar men make. This is unexplained, or it is explained. It's explained by gender discrimination.

And I think it's important for even men to take account of this important fact, that if your wife or partner is being discriminated against in the workplace because she's a woman, then your total family income is being hurt because of sex discrimination in the workplace. It's important that men and women come together to fight these attacks on women's rights because, even though the direct victims of this kind of discrimination are women, this invariably hurts the entire family, and so this is everybody's business to stand up for the rights of all people.

I tell you, one of the things that really concerns me is this gap in pay between men and women. The median weekly--women earn about 81.2 percent of what men earn. In addition to that, they have assaults on their access to health care. When you add these things up, what does this mean in terms of the majority's commitment to women's rights? What does it all add up to?

I wonder if the gentlelady might offer her views on this subject.

I yield to the gentlelady.

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Mrs. MALONEY. I think all of those efforts, whether it's the Pitts bill that passed today, I think it's a very dangerous bill that threatens women's ability to even purchase private health insurance that includes abortion coverage with their own money, and codifies broad and troubling conscience provisions. And it's another attempt to unravel the health care law while at the same time expanding anti-choice laws that will harm women's health.

That's an anti-woman agenda that just passed this great body. And when you talk about the assaults on programs that women disproportionately rely on, it is another step that will keep women down and back. And I'm proud of the Democrats for standing up for women, children, and families. You rightfully pointed out that when you discriminate against a woman, you discriminate against her husband and her children. And you and I know that it takes two working parents sometimes two jobs by each parent to pay the bills and keep the food on the table. So these are very serious concerns and ways that we need to fight back and stand up for the women of America.

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Mr. ELLISON. Now, Congresswoman Maloney, I know you might have to run, but I appreciate your standing here with me tonight because I think that the people of America, Mr. Speaker, need to hear from a person like yourself, Congresswoman Maloney, who has been laboring in the vineyards of economic and civil rights, both, for a few years now. You know what you're talking about, you've been doing this work, you've served the community for many years, and I just want to see if I can get your views on another issue, and that is that one of the things that Republicans have been doing is having this program to cut, cut, cut government services, which, of course, has led to reductions in public employees.

So, for example, while the private sector has added about 1.7 million jobs over the last 12 months--of course, during the Bush administration we were losing jobs--the public sector has lost about 400,000 jobs. When you consider the fact that women are disproportionately likely to work for the public sector, their employment decline has been particularly hit when public sector employees get laid off.

So I want to keep connecting the dots tonight, if I may. We started out the conversation with the cuts to women's health in this deceptively entitled bill, the so-called--I don't even want to repeat it because it is so wrong, but the Protect Life Act, actually it's a ``not to protect women's life'' act.

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Mrs. MALONEY. That's a better name.

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Mr. ELLISON. But then we move on to cuts to important programs that older women are disproportionately relying on, we move to the wage gap, and now we're seeing that these cuts to public employees are falling more heavily on the shoulders of women.

You mentioned an agenda. Are we really talking about an agenda here, not just a single program but a whole agenda?

I yield to the gentlelady.

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Mrs. MALONEY. Well, the gentleman is correct to connect the dots, and you are absolutely correct that when you cut education and health care, these are the two areas that women are employed in predominately. In many cases they have achieved leadership positions in these two fields. Yet these are the two areas that have been cut the most in the municipal areas across the country that have hurt our States and our cities.

And the gentleman is very correct to point out that you cannot cut your way to prosperity. Many economists have come out in support of President Obama's jobs bill, including two Nobel laureates. And one economist that I like to read because he is employed by the private sector, which means if he's wrong he's going to get fired, and he was a Republican economist in that he was the chief analyst for Senator McCain when McCain ran for President, and this is Mr. Zandi. And Mr. Zandi said that President Obama's economic plan, the jobs bill that he's put out, would create next year 1.9 million new jobs, add 2 percentage points to the GDP, and also cut the unemployment rate by at least 1 percent. I use his numbers since he was Senator McCain's adviser and economist.

But there is a drumbeat of economists across the country that are saying you cannot cut your way out of a recession and that we are getting dangerously close to a double-dip when you combine all these massive cuts with what's happening in Europe and the instability with the countries' finances and certain of our allies, and this is an extreme challenge here at home. And economists have universally said that we need to invest and continue to work to get the economy moving by investing in job-creating areas such as the infrastructure bank and such as rebuilding our bridges and making sure they're safe.

One part that I particularly like as a former teacher is the plan to rehab schools and make them ready for the 21st century. That will employ people across this country and invest in making our schools appropriate. I know that even in the great State of New York, some of our schools are not properly wired for computers. Mr. Ellison, when you and I were in school, all you needed was a pencil. But, today, our young people need computers. They are competing not with the people in the class but with people around the world. And they need to have high-tech access, and our schools have to be wired for the 21st century.

And the investment in creating good jobs by building high-speed rail to move us into the 21st century and repairing our infrastructure with our roads and our trains in so many ways, and also making sure that our teachers, our police and our fire are not laid off during this recession when we need to invest in helping America.

Every economist will tell us the best investment we can make for the future of our country is to invest in education. We can't afford to not be competitive with modern schools and not competitive with the proper number of teachers so that our classrooms are not so overcrowded. So that is a particular area that I like in this particular jobs program.

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Mr. ELLISON. I like the jobs bill as well. It's too bad that the American Jobs Act was not even able to be debated in the Senate yesterday. You would think that we could debate the bill at least. If Republicans have different ideas about job creation than we do as Democrats, I'm okay with that. Let's debate it, and let's get it out on the floor. But they don't even want to have the debate. You mentioned the public sector getting support.

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Mrs. MALONEY. I would like to applaud what you just said. I truly do believe that there is no idea that is so frightening or threatening that it can't be debated in the United States Congress. And so I agree with you. Let's have a debate. The President has put forward his program. Let's see what the Republican program is. Let's bring it down, have it debated, and let's have the economists across the country and across the world weigh in on which program is going to get the economy moving and move us with greater strength in the growth of our economy.

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Mr. ELLISON. Congresswoman Maloney, as you know, the President challenged them, the Republicans, to do this. He said, look, I'm putting my bill up here, you bring yours up here, and we'll see which one creates more jobs. And folks like Mark Zandi, an economist who has advised both Republicans and Democrats, took an evaluation. He said the Republican plan is not likely to create any jobs next year. Well, people are employed this year and next year. And what are they doing about it? Well, they're just cutting basic services in local government, they're getting rid of health regulations in the EPA, they're doing things like creating cultural fights, like the one they did today, trying to sort of divide Americans based on people's deeply held views about the issue of abortion when we need to be getting people back to work, which is, in my view, trying to take our eye off the ball.

But I just wanted to throw out a couple of facts that I think may contribute to the dialogue. Here's one: In September, 2011, a month that just passed, the public sector lost 34,000 jobs. Eighty-two percent of those jobs were women's jobs. This is an important fact. This is according to the National Women's Law Center. And then also, the damage in the public sector was driven largely by cuts to local governments' education. I'll say that again. And, Congresswoman Maloney, you're a former teacher, so I know this is close to your heart. The damage in the public sector was largely by cuts to the local governments' education.

In this field, one that is nearly three-quarters women, 24,400 jobs were lost from August to September. Since the recovery began in 2009, this field has lost more than 250,000 jobs. What does it mean when we, as a society, disinvest in public education?

One thing it means is that women workers will be hit harder because that's who three-quarters of our teachers are. It also means that our young people will be deprived.

As a person who has been in the classroom, Congresswoman Maloney, what does that mean when a classroom goes from 20 kids to 35 kids? What does it mean to the kids who might not be catching on to the lesson or who may have a learning disability? I mean, is it even possible for a competent, caring teacher to teach all the kids given that some may need extra help?

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Mrs. MALONEY. There is scientific data that, as schools are overcrowded, the quality of the teaching goes down. That's very troubling when you talk about the hemorrhaging of so many jobs.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 14 million people out of work, and there are 3 million jobs that are out there now. So, if we could miraculously fill those 3 million jobs overnight, there would still be 11 million Americans out of work and looking for jobs. For every job opening, there are five people, at least, standing in line for that job.

What I find particularly troubling is that many of these people are young people who have invested in their education and who are burdened with huge student loans, but they can't find employment. They are facing a terrible situation. Studies show that, if you can't find employment in the early years of your career, it affects your earnings and your self-confidence and your productivity for the rest of your life. For no fault of theirs, they are confronting, really, the worst employment situation in my lifetime and, really, in decades.

So we need to work together. If there were one area in which the Republicans and Democrats should work together, it's in creating jobs and moving our economy forward. Regretfully, some people don't want to do anything until the 2012 election, but the people who are out of work can't afford to wait until 2012. It is really incumbent on us to act now to help them.

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Mr. ELLISON. Congresswoman Maloney, you just mentioned a moment ago this idea of reinvesting in our schools. Today, I had a visit from a number of superintendents in my State of Minnesota. They were not all from the Fifth Congressional District, which I'm honored to represent, but they were from a cross-section around the State.

They told me that there were literally nearly 100 different school districts going to the voters for a referendum so that they could pay their basic expenses because the State government is backing off its commitment to education because the Federal Government is backing off its commitment.

The fact of the matter is we have a disturbing trend here.

They said, Look, if we could just get the part of the American Jobs Act passed that would help us with these old and outdated and rupturing boilers, these old, beat-up pipes, this poor ventilation, these windows that are not opening and closing properly--if we could get some help with our capital budget--that would free up money for us to hire teachers and to do some real instruction.

What do you think of that part of the American Jobs Act which goes to this issue of investing in our schools and in keeping our teachers out there and preventing 280,000 teachers from being laid off? What do you think about this idea of, really, just making sure that the infrastructure of our schools is sound for our kids and for the people working in the schools?

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Mrs. MALONEY. You focused, really, on one of the critical parts of the President's jobs proposal--modernizing our schools.

Not only would it help you through this period by creating good-paying jobs to modernize the schools and to keep the teachers working--and, I would say, the police and fire--but it also invests in better education, a better environment for our young people to learn and grow, and to modernize the schools to the extent that they are wired appropriately for the 21st century. These are important areas that we need to look at and think about.

I also want to point out the unemployed. The jobs aren't out there, so when you don't continue the unemployment insurance, there is no hope for these people. It's better for them to continue looking for a job and to continue trying and not to give up hope so that they continue working towards that end.

I just want to tell you how much I enjoyed sharing with you information on the jobs program for the President and, really, of the opposition's agenda--our friends on the other side of the aisle--to keep women down and back, of disproportionately cutting programs that aid women, of disproportionately going after, literally, their constitutional rights to make the choices that are legal in our country which provide the best health care for them.

The Progressive Caucus has always stood up for women, children, and families, and I want to thank you and the caucus in a programmatic way for standing up for women, children, and families and also for organizing this Special Order.

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Mr. ELLISON. Congresswoman Maloney, I know that you have to take care of other important responsibilities, so I want to just thank you.

I just think it's important, Mr. Speaker, for people to know that Congresswoman Maloney is the author of the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights Act. It's when you go and use your credit card and don't get back a bunch of fees and stuff you didn't even bargain for--terms being changed without any notice to you. When you used that credit card and were late on that card, sometimes they used to jack you up on the card you weren't even late on because you were late on some other card. They can't do that anymore.

When people benefit from credit card justice, you have to thank Carolyn Maloney. You cannot just use that card and say, Wow, things are better than they used to be with this card. They're better because Carolyn Maloney fought tirelessly.

This was an uphill climb for you. It wasn't easy. You had to work on editorial boards; you had to work on Republicans; you had to work on Democrats; you had to work on the Senate. You had to just pound the pavement night and day; yet you got that done, and this country cannot pay you back for the good work you did.

Congresswoman Maloney, I wish you many, many, many years here in this Congress; but no matter how long you stay here, I just want you to know that that accomplishment is a towering achievement which will stand the test of time and is historic. So I don't want to hold you up, because I know you've got to go do some important things, but I just didn't want you to leave without my mentioning how important that service that you gave was, not to mention the work that you do every single day, including the work you do on the Joint Economic Committee, on the rights of all people as well as on women's rights.

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Mrs. MALONEY. I just want to thank the gentleman for his statement.

The Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights, according to the Pew Foundation, saved consumers over $10 billion in the last year by cutting out unfair, abusive, deceptive practices--and I'm using the terms from the Federal Reserve. I am proud that it helps Americans better manage their credit.

No longer can people raise rates any time, for any reason retroactively on their balances, trapping them, really, in a never-ending cycle of debt. I had many constituents who had purchased items, and they had paid so much in interest over that time that they could have paid for the car or the washing machine; yet they still had not paid it off. This is wrong and unfair.

Central to this bill, it gives consumers the opportunity and the right to make a decision. If they're going to raise their rates, they must notify them, and the consumers have the choice of whether they opt in to a higher rate or pay off their cards and go to another provider that may have a lower rate. So it puts more competition in the system. It has lowered the interest rates, the fees, and has really helped consumers.

I want to say that we were cochairs of the Consumer Justice Caucus. We started that, really, to build support for the bill, and you were a strong part of helping me pass it.

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Mr. ELLISON. That's right.

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Mrs. MALONEY. It was difficult, but I'm proud that the President signed it into law and that it is now benefiting Americans and allowing more of an ability for them to control their own businesses, their own assets, their own credit. I must say, when it did pass the House, there was strong Republican support for it in both the House and the Senate.

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Mr. ELLISON. Yes, there was.

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Mrs. MALONEY. I am pleased that Americans have this added benefit in their lives.

Thank you so much for your leadership. It has been a pleasure to join you tonight.

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