Majority Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On Senate Democrats’ Continuing Work To Lower Costs
Washington, D.C. – Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor regarding Senate Democrats’ work to lower costs, including moving forward on jobs and competitiveness legislation and holding hearings on the cost of child care. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:
Last night, the Senate cleared the first procedural hurdle on moving forward with jobs and competitiveness legislation that both parties broadly support. In fact, the vote last night was two more than the final passage a few months ago on the Senate bill.
As a reminder, our long term goal is to get to a Conference Committee with the House to finalize a bill we can send to the President. To do that, we must take the legislation that the House sent us, amend it with the bill the Senate passed last summer—USICA—and return it to the House so they can request a Conference. That's the elaborate process the Senate requires us to do.
This legislation has been dissected and debated for well over a year now, but the need to pass this bill really boils down to two simple words: J-O-B-S jobs and C-O-S-T-S costs!
It will create more jobs by bringing manufacturing back to America from overseas.
It will lower costs by taking aim at supply chains, address the chip shortage, and increase innovation.
Equally important: this legislation will revive the grand tradition of American innovation that has fueled us and helped our economy grow for much of the 20th century.
Our colleges, our universities, and our startups are some of our country’s most prolific job creators. We need to pass this bill to strengthen each of them.
Through this bill, we will also address the chip shortage, an especially severe scourge on American families.
There’s nothing abstract about the shortage of chips: it impacts Americans’ abilities to buy cars, refrigerators, phones and other household items. Americans have faced long delays in finding these goods, and when they are available they now end up costing a lot more than they did before.
By passing bipartisan legislation that invests in domestic chip production, we can help alleviate this vexing chips crisis.
America used to lead the world in chip production—we produced about a third of the world supply—and for the sake of American workers, American consumers and our national security we must lead the world again. Passing this bill is critical for achieving that goal.
And our efforts in the Democratic Senate at lowering costs extend to other areas as well.
Today, the Commerce Committee will hold a markup on bipartisan legislation by Senators Klobuchar and Thune to reform unfair shipping practices that are clogging up ports, diminishing American exports, and ultimately hurting consumers.
This bipartisan shipping bill is exactly the sort of thing the Senate should focus on, because when there’s a logjam at the port of Los Angeles, the tremors are felt by farmers in Minnesota, in North Dakota—and ultimately American consumers pick up the tab.
Chairman Murray will also hold a hearing today in the HELP Committee on another very important issue: lowering the costs of child care and pre-school. Today families pay something more than $10,000 per child on child care, more than some might pay on their annual cost for a mortgage. $10,000 a year is simply out of reach for many families. Not only do our kids suffer when they don’t have somewhere safe to stay, families suffer when parents can’t enter the workforce, and our country suffers as our economy’s productivity is diminished. The example of other countries that have better child care is shown in a greater participation in the workforce, particularly by women.
So I thank Chairman Murray and members of the HELP Committee for focusing on this issue.
Today’s hearings will surely inform the work of Senate Democrats as we work on legislation we can consider which will lower costs for the American people.
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