Below is a transcript of Rep. Jamaal Bowman's remarks at the Build Back Better Agenda event at the Northeast Bronx YMCA with Vice President Kamala Harris. The transcript has been slightly edited for clarity.
Good afternoon, how are y'all doing?
It’s a pleasure to be here, so honored to be here. Thank you all for being here. I want to first acknowledge this facility, this YMCA. This facility was 30 years in the making. It took organizing and fighting and strategizing to get this facility opened, which just opened a couple of months ago. And before I say anything else, I have to acknowledge the two community organizers and community members that helped this facility to be built. So I want them to stand and I want us to give them a huge round of applause. The first organizer is Ms. Shirley Fearon, please stand.
And the second is Mr. Alonzo De Castro, please stand. Come on now, y'all could do better than that, give them a standing ovation. Round of applause.
And the transformative power of a community center is not lost on me personally. The 92nd Street Y probably saved my life, Asphalt Green downtown probably saved my life. It gave me a safe place to go and just be a kid playing basketball tournaments, football tournaments, learning how to swim, which didn't happen, but you know I tried. It was these community centers that we can go to after school and on the weekends that kept us out of everything else that was going on.
I also want to acknowledge our phenomenal Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, who has represented this district for a very long time and he was fighting right along with the organizers to help get this done. So please, thank you so much, sir. And I have to acknowledge our State Senate Majority Leader, doesn't represent the Bronx but represents the other part of my district, and has shown leadership for decades, particularly for Black women, Miss Andrea Stewart Cousins.
I want to also acknowledge the only other member of Congress who was here today, I finally got her to come into my district. I have been trying for months and she is finally here, Ms. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I want to acknowledge every elected official that’s here — I know Governor Hochul did that as well, but I got to move on, they only gave me a few minutes.
So we're here to talk about the Build Back Better agenda. And those words you know some people initially say, oh that's a terrible name, but I think it captures exactly what we are trying to do. Historically, our federal government has not done enough to invest in our historically marginalized and neglected communities. As a matter of fact, historically, the federal government has done the opposite. We have kept our Black and brown communities behind, we have kept them marginalized, and we allowed neglect to persist in communities just like this.
Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez and I and many others often talk about the New Deal. And this New Deal was transformative for America. It helped to build the middle class. It helped us to recover from World War II and a Great Depression. But you know what else it did? It redlined our Black and brown communities. It kept out our domestic workers and our homecare workers who are disproportionately women of color. And that was the only way the deal was going to pass.
And if you watch the news today, you see we are having some of those same conversations. But thankfully the Congressional Progressive Caucus and many others are not having any of it this time around, because with this bill, we are ensuring that we target historically marginalized communities, we are not going to leave those communities, we are not going to leave women behind. We are not going to leave children behind. We are not going to leave our seniors behind. We are going to deal with the climate crisis. And we are not going to leave people of color behind, because we have done that for far too long.
So this is where we are. But before we talk about where we are, I’m going to talk about where we've come from. Because of the work of many of you, and many across this country, organizing in places like Georgia, and Arizona, Democrats were able to take back the Senate and take back the White House. Yes.
And as a result of that, we were able to pass the American Rescue Plan, which is already transforming the lives of thousands of families and children in this district and millions across the country. We're talking about unprecedented investments in education — $130 billion. Investments in rent relief to make sure people can stay in their homes. And this is the kicker, we lifted 50% of children out of poverty, with the Child Tax Credit that will go until December, at the lease.
Now, only till December, if we don't do what we need to do with the Build Back Better Act.
Now, poverty is not just about how much money you make, what you don't have. It's how poverty impacts you emotionally, psychologically, and even physically. Poverty is connected to toxic stress and chronic trauma, and Senator Bailey and I have been speaking about this for many years — the impact of poverty and its connection to stress and trauma.
Because when a child is living in an environment where they are consistently stressed out or dealing with the trauma of poverty, they are less likely to thrive when they enter our school system, and they often enter our schools, behind the ball, and schools work miracles to catch them up. I know because I worked in schools for 20 years.
But look at what we're doing right now, we are in the process of investing in our children to provide almost universal childcare, where no one in this country will pay more than 7% of their salary towards childcare. That is incredible. That deserves a round of applause. We're also borrowing from Mayor de Blasio’s plan of pre-k programs. So I want to shout out the mayor for that, implementing it and doing it in New York City. But as we talk about universal childcare, universal pre-k now we are making sure every child in America is ready for kindergarten.
And when that happens, as that happens, you are going to see increases in graduation rates, increases in college matriculation rates, decreases in poverty rates, decreases in the level of wealth inequality that we see, you're going to see better health outcomes, you're going to see decreases in terms of the amount we spend on putting people in jail. Let's not invest half a million dollars on keeping people in jail. Let's invest that money on early childhood education, and that is what we are doing with the Build Back Better Act.
We are also looking to make sure our seniors are taken care of by investing in home care, by decreasing the cost of prescription drugs, and by providing optical, dental and hearing services to our seniors and people who are on Medicare. This is huge. This is huge.
And then finally, finally, we are beginning the process of dealing with the climate catastrophe that we are currently living in. Beginning the process... Hurricane Ida that just came through this district and came through the city, so aggressively. And part of the way we're doing that is investing in a Civilian Climate Corps that has been championed by Congresswoman Ocasio Cortez, so please give her a round of applause.
This is the federal government working to do what it's supposed to do. And I know you know when you turn on the television, it looks like we're at civil war. We're not. There is some disagreement but we're not throwing blows. This is how government is supposed to work. This is what negotiation looks like. And we're going to continue to try to go bigger and bigger and bigger for communities like this one.
It’s my honor to be with you all today, thank you so much. This is a celebration. And we should recognize it as such, but there's more work to be done after this event. It is also my honor to introduce this gentleman who is our Secretary of Health and Human Services. And just so you know, I'm an educator, I've been an educator for 20 years, I will remain an educator for the rest of my life, even though I'm in Congress. But education and health care have to work to gather in order for us to accomplish the things we want to accomplish. So it is my honor to introduce the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Mr. Xavier Becerra.