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RACIAL EQUITY IN AMERICA JOBS AND FAMILY PLAN
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from the Virgin Islands (Ms. Plaskett) for 5 minutes.
Ms. PLASKETT. Mr. Speaker, while the American Rescue Plan is changing the course of the pandemic and delivering relief for working families, this is no time to build back the way things were. We, in the Virgin Islands, can tell you that after suffering not one, but two Category 5 hurricanes in 2017. This is our moment to reimagine and rebuild a new economy.
Let it be known, the American Jobs Plan is an investment in America, that it will create millions of good jobs, rebuild our country's infrastructure, and position the United States to outcompete China and others.
Public domestic investment, as a share of the economy, has fallen by more than 40 percent since the 1960s. The American Jobs Plan will invest in America in a way we have not invested since we built the interstate highways or won the Space Race.
The United States of America is the wealthiest country in the world, yet we rank 13th when it comes to overall quality of our infrastructure. After decades of disinvestment, our roads, bridges, water systems are crumbling. Our electric grid is vulnerable to catastrophic outages. Too many lack affordable, high speed internet, and quality housing.
The past year has led to job losses and threaten economic security, eroding more than 30 years of progress in women's labor force participation. It has unmasked the fragility of our caregiving infrastructure. And our Nation has fallen behind its biggest competitors on research and development, manufacturing, and training.
It has never been more important for us to invest in strengthening our infrastructure and competitiveness, and in creating the good-paying union jobs of the future.
Like great projects of the past, the President's plan will unify and mobilize our country to meet the great challenges of our time: the climate crisis and ambitions of an autocratic China. It will invest in Americans and deliver jobs and opportunities we all deserve.
But unlike past major investments, the plan also prioritizes addressing longstanding and persistent racial injustice. The plan targets 40 percent of the benefits of climate and clean infrastructure investment to disadvantaged communities. The American Jobs and Family Plan assists in creating equity and wealth creation in communities of color, which helps all Americans.
The American Jobs and Family Plan will transform transportation infrastructure, addressing historic inequities, and increasing resilience. It will bring broadband coverage to 100 percent while reducing costs, create jobs in renewable energy, revitalize our schools, veterans' hospitals, and support our essential home care workers.
The bill will strengthen financial security of working families through an increase in funding for key nutrition initiatives: SNAP, WIC, child nutrition, rural development, including broadband, rental, and other housing initiatives, and access to healthcare.
This will ensure a clean, affordable, and secure energy future by investing over $14 billion in clean energy and science, which will create tens of thousands of good paying jobs. We will also make sure K-
12 educational institutions have the resources they need, with robust investment in Title I and special education, Pell Grants, and other financial assistance so students' success is not limited by their income or their ZIP Code.
We will provide strong funding for minority-serving institutions, like HBCUs, like in my own district, the University of the Virgin Islands, along with Hispanic-serving institutions, and Tribally-
controlled colleges and universities.
The American Jobs and Family Plan will honor our responsibility to our veterans by supporting them with investments in veterans' healthcare, including women's healthcare and mental health, combating veterans' homelessness, creating economic opportunities, and rebuilding military infrastructure.
House Democrats are supporting the Jobs and Family Plan, which will advance justice and opportunity, secure opportunities for underserved businesses, low-income communities, communities of color, rural communities, and others too often left behind.
Democrats believe that we should invest in what we value as a Nation. We are investing in the American people, American economy, and our American values of opportunity, prosperity, and justice for all.
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SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 167, No. 131
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