Never.
Up to 70 percent of up employed blue-collar workers have lost jobs permanently, meaning their old jobs won't be there when the economy recovers.
That is the Boston Globe, last year. When we talk about the economy, what we have to do is understand that blue-collar workers, middle-class, young workers are hurting very much. In the context, again, of the debate we are now having, the discussion of whether we should approve the agreement reached between the President and the Republicans on taxes, the idea of not significantly investing in our economy but, rather, giving tens of billions of dollars to the very rich in more tax breaks makes no sense to many of us.
When we talk about why people are angry, why people, when asked the question by pollsters: Do you think America is moving in the right direction, and overwhelmingly they think not, let me tell you why they think not. This is just during the Presidency of President Bush from 2001 through 2008. During that period alone—and by the way, the pain is certainly continuing right now. I do not mean to suggest otherwise. During those 8 years of Bush, over 8 million Americans slipped out of the middle class and into poverty. Today, nearly 40 million Americans are living in poverty; 7.8 million Americans lost their health insurance, and that is continuing.
A recent study came out and suggests that the uninsured now are about 50 million Americans. Fifty million Americans have no health insurance now. We hope health insurance reform will make a dent on that. I think it will. But as of today, without the major provisions of health care reform being implemented, 50 million Americans are without any health insurance.
During that period—and we have not talked about this a whole lot—there is another thing going on in the economy for the working class. Years and years ago, if you worked in a manufacturing plant, you had a union, you stood a reasonable chance of having a pension—a pension. During the Bush years, 3.2 million workers lost their pensions, and about half of American workers in the private sector have no pension coverage whatsoever. The idea today of having a defined pension plan significantly paid for by your employer is going the way of the dinosaur. That is just not there anymore.
Workers are more and more dependent on Social Security, which has been there for 75 years, which we have to protect and demand that it will be there another 75 years because right now millions of workers are losing their pensions. I mean, I am throwing these statistics out, and the reason I am doing that is I want people to appreciate that if you are hurting now, stop being ashamed. It is not, yeah, we can all do better. Every one of us can do better. But you are in an economy which is contracting, especially for the middle class and working families.
According to an article in USA Today, from the year 2,000 to 2007, middle-class men—women have done better—middle-class men experienced an 11.2-percent drop in their incomes—a reduction of $7,700 after adjusting for inflation. Middle-class women in this age group saw a 4.8-percent decline in their incomes as well. So they did pretty badly, but the men did even worse. So what we are seeing is an understanding of why people are angry and why people think this country is moving in the wrong direction.
I think most people understand that today our country is experiencing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. It is important to say that because, again, it is hard enough when you do not have a job, when you do not have income, when your dignity and self-respect are declining, but I don't want people to be banging their own heads against the wall blaming themselves for all of the problems. Something has gone on in the Nation as a whole. You are not in this alone. When we talk about working-class families all across the country seeing a decline in their income, it is not because people are lazy, it is not because people do not work hard, it is not because people are not trying to find jobs. What we have is an economy which is rotting in the middle, and we have to change the economy.
If there is anything we can say about the American people, we work hard. We, in fact, work longer hours than do the people of any other country, industrialized country, on Earth. We are not a lazy people. We are a hard-working people. If the jobs are there, people will take them. If people have to work 60 hours a week or 70 hours a week, that is what they will do. But we have to rebuild this economy. We do not need tax breaks for billionaires. We need to create jobs for the middle class of this country so that we can put people back to work.
Let me take a few minutes to discuss how we got to where we are today and, in my view, what policies we need to move this country forward to create the kinds of jobs we desperately need.
Let's take a quick look back to where we were in January of 2009—it seems like a long time ago but just a couple of years ago. That was the last month of the administration of President Bush. In that month, we lost over 700,000 jobs. That is an absolutely incredible number. In fact, during the last 6 months of the Bush Presidency, we lost over 31⁄2 million jobs, all of which was caused by the greed and recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street.
Our gross domestic product, which is the total sum of all our economy produces, had gone down by nearly 7 percent during the fourth quarter of 2008. That was the biggest decline in more than a quarter century. Some $5 trillion of America's wealth evaporated in a 12-week period, as the people in Vermont and all over this country saw the value of their homes, retirement savings, and stocks plummet.
I want to say just one word again about Wall Street greed because I think for a variety of reasons we just do not talk about it enough. What you had was a situation in which a small number of folks at the head of huge financial institutions, through their greed, through the development of very reckless policies, through illegal behavior, through pushing out financial instruments which turned out in some cases to be worthless—as a result of all of that, they plunged this country into the worst recession we have seen since the Great Depression—from January. That is at the end of the Bush Administration.
It is very important to understand that the Wall Street crisis took us over the wall in terms of precipitating the severe recession we are in, but we have to remember that during those 8 years, as I mentioned earlier, the middle class was also shrinking. So it was not: Oh my goodness, everything is going great. Then you got the Wall Street disaster, and now we are in the midst of a terrible recession. This trend of a middle-class collapse went on long before Bush—precipitated significantly during the Bush years, but it went on before as well, not just during the Bush years.
Over the 8-year period of President Bush, from 2001 to 2009, we lost 600,000 private sector jobs. We lost 600,000 private sector jobs, and only 1 million net new jobs were created, all of them in the government sector. So for my friends, my Republican colleagues, to tell us that we need more tax breaks for the very rich because that is going to create jobs—that is what trickle-down economics is all about—I would say to them: You had your chance. It failed. In case you don't know, losing 600,000 private sector jobs in 8 years is not good. That is very, very bad. That is an economic policy that has failed. We don't need to look at that movie again. We saw it. It stunk. It was a bad movie. Bad economic policy. More tax breaks for the rich is not what our economy needs. In fact, what every economist will tell you is that is the least effective way to create jobs.
During the Bush era, median income dropped by nearly $2,200. That means that a family in the middle, over an 8-year period, saw their income drop by $2,200 during the 8 years of Bush.
I say all of these things just to tell you that we are not where we are today just because of the Wall Street crisis. That took us over the cliff. That made a very bad situation much, much worse. But it has been going on for a long time. It has gone on before Bush. It has gone on after Bush.
During the 8 years of Bush, over 8 million Americans slipped out of the middle class and into poverty. We don't talk about poverty in America anymore. We don't talk about the homelessness in America very much anymore. Trust me, it is there. It is three
