Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

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By Mr. SANDERS (for himself and Ms. STABENOW):

S. 2832. A bill to provide for youth jobs, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, if you talk to the people in Vermont, and I suspect in any other State in America, they will say the most serious crisis facing this country is the lack of decent-paying jobs, particularly when it comes to young Americans. This is an issue we do not talk enough about, and this is an issue on which we have to focus.

Yes, we are better off today than we were 6 years ago when we were hemorrhaging 700,000 jobs a month and the Nation's financial system was on the verge of collapse, but the truth is that the economy for working families and lower income families today remains in very difficult straits. The middle class of this country--the backbone of this country--continues to disappear and more and more people are living in poverty. In fact, we have almost more people living in poverty today than at any time in the history of this country, and all the while we are seeing more wealth and income inequality, such that 95 percent of all new income generated in America since the Wall Street crash is going to the top 1 percent.

The fact is that real unemployment in this country is not the ``official'' 6.1 percent we see on the front pages of newspapers. The truth is that if you count those people who have given up looking for work because they live in high-unemployment areas or the people--and there are many of these--who are working part time when they want to work full time, real unemployment is 12 percent. That is a crisis situation.

As bad as that is, the unemployment rate is far worse for young Americans. Today the youth unemployment rate is 20 percent--20 percent. We all paid a lot of attention to the tragedy in Ferguson, MO, a few weeks ago, but what was not discussed is that African-American youth unemployment is 33 percent, and in many areas of the country it is even higher than that. Today over 5.5 million young people have either dropped out of high school or have graduated high school. And do you know what they are doing? Nothing. They have no jobs. Many of them in Vermont and throughout this country are hanging out on street corners and many of them are getting into trouble. Maybe they are doing drugs, maybe they are involved in crime, but this I will tell you, and the statistics are very clear on this: If you leave school--either you drop out or you graduate high school--and you don't get a job in your first year, you don't get a job in your second year, you don't get a job in your third year, there is a strong likelihood you will never get a job, never get a career, never make it to the middle class, never be part of mainstream America.

Youth unemployment at 20 percent is clearly one of the reasons why in the United States of America we have more people in jail today than any other country on Earth. A lot of people don't know that. China's a great big country, a Communist authoritarian country. Doesn't China have more people in jail than we do? No. We have more people in jail than China.

I think the time is long overdue for us to start investing in our young people, helping them get the jobs they need, helping them get the education they need, helping them get the job training they need so they can be part of our economy, part of the middle class, and not end up in jail or dead from overdoses of drugs. The situation is so dire that there are studies out there that tell us now that one out of every three African-American males born today, if we do not change this, will go to prison in his lifetime--one out of three. This is a crisis situation, and it is one that cannot be ignored.

The legislation I have introduced today, along with Congressman John Conyers of Michigan, is called the Employ Young Americans Now Act. This legislation will provide $5.5 billion in immediate funding to States and localities throughout the country to employ 1 million young Americans between the ages of 16 and 24 and provide job training to hundreds of thousands of other young Americans. Under our bill the U.S. Department of Labor would provide $4 billion in grants to States and local governments to provide summer jobs and year-round employment opportunities for economically disadvantaged youth, with direct links to academic and occupational learning. There is another $1.5 billion in there to provide such services as transportation or childcare, which would be necessary to enable young Americans to participate in job opportunities.

I am very grateful this legislation has already been endorsed by the AFL-CIO, which is the largest labor union in the country, representing some 13 million workers; the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; the United Auto Workers; the United Steel Workers of America; the Campaign for America's Future; and the National Employment Law Project.

I thank Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan for her support on this legislation as well.

We cannot continue to ignore the crisis of youth unemployment in America. We are talking about the future of an entire generation. We are talking about the future of the United States of America. Let's start focusing on this issue. Let's give millions of young people the opportunity to earn a paycheck and to make it into the middle class.

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