Bill Summary
The resolution calls for a Third Reconstruction in order to address poverty and low wages, which are intertwined with systemic injustices such as racism, lack of healthcare, and ecological devastation. It emphasizes the devastating consequences of poverty, particularly on marginalized communities, and critiques current measures of poverty and underfunding of social welfare programs. The legislation proposes specific economic rights and measures to prioritize and center the needs of impoverished individuals, as well as demilitarizing foreign policy and enacting fair taxes on corporations and the wealthy. It also acknowledges the impact of social movements and calls for a moral policy agenda to heal and transform the nation.
Possible Impacts
1. The Third Reconstruction legislation will greatly impact people living in poverty or on the brink of poverty, as it acknowledges their struggles and proposes measures to provide economic security and ensure access to adequate income and healthcare.
2. The legislation will also address systemic injustices faced by marginalized communities, such as systemic racism, lack of healthcare, and disproportionate impact of defense spending and endless wars. This will greatly benefit these communities and work towards healing the nation as a whole.
3. People with disabilities, immigrants, and women will also be greatly affected by this legislation, as it recognizes their struggles and proposes measures to alleviate their burden, such as fair taxes on corporations and protection of their rights. This will work towards creating a more equal and just society for all individuals.
[Congressional Bills 118th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 532 Introduced in House (IH)]
<DOC>
118th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. RES. 532
Third Reconstruction: Fully addressing poverty and low wages from the
bottom up.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
June 21, 2023
Ms. Lee of California (for herself and Ms. Jayapal) submitted the
following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Oversight
and Accountability
_______________________________________________________________________
RESOLUTION
Third Reconstruction: Fully addressing poverty and low wages from the
bottom up.
Whereas, before the pandemic, there were over 140,000,000 people who were poor,
low wealth, or just one emergency away from economic ruin in the United
States;
Whereas pandemic relief programs that were long overdue temporarily relieved the
load of poverty, reducing these numbers to 112,000,000, but were ended
abruptly, precipitating a rise in these numbers once again;
Whereas, during this same time period, billionaire wealth increased by
$1,500,000,000,000, or over $2,000,000,000 per day;
Whereas the injustice of poverty and low wealth is deeply entwined with the
injustices of systemic racism, the denial of health care and ecological
devastation, militarism, and the distorted moral narrative of religious
nationalism that seeks to blame the poor instead of addressing systems
that cause poverty;
Whereas there are devastating consequences to these injustices, including that
poverty is the fourth-leading cause of death in the Nation, higher than
homicides, firearms, suicide, and diabetes, taking 290,000 lives every
year, or 800 people a day, meaning we can no longer ignore policy
violence nor deaths caused by policy;
Whereas our entire society suffers when nearly 40 percent of the country who are
poor and one emergency from economic ruin cannot fulfill their potential
or fully participate in society;
Whereas these widespread conditions cannot be explained by blaming individual
behaviors, nor are they inherent to our economy or society, but rather
they are created and sustained by unjust and immoral laws, policies,
systems, and structures;
Whereas we need the resolve to pass moral and just laws and policies that fully
address these interlocking injustices, which were deepened during the
COVID-19 pandemic;
Whereas the official poverty measure (OPM) is an inadequate measure that does
not account for today's cost of living, including child care, health
insurance, and transportation, and even the supplemental poverty measure
(SPM) does not account for all modern necessities or debt burdens that
siphon household resources away from meeting basic needs;
Whereas among the 140,000,000 people who were poor, low wealth, or one emergency
away from economic ruin, were 52 percent of children (39,000,000), 45
percent of women (74,000,000), 60 percent of Black people (24,000,000),
64 percent of Latina/o people (38,000,000), 40 percent of Asian and
Pacific Islander people (8,000,000), 59 percent of Native and Indigenous
people (2,000,000), and 33 percent of White people (66,000,000);
Whereas these tens of millions of poor and low-income people live in every
region, State, and county of the Nation, including approximately:
50,000,000 in the South (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky,
Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina,
Tennessee, Texas, Virginia), 40,000,000 in Appalachia (Alabama, Georgia,
Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, New York, Pennsylvania,
Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia), and over
8,000,000 in New York alone, over 40,000,000 in the Southwest/Border
(Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Texas, Utah),
20,000,000 in California alone, 20,000,000 in the Midwest
deindustrialized States (Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Michigan,
Illinois, Wisconsin), 11,000,000 in the Northeast (Connecticut,
Delaware, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey,
Rhode Island, Vermont), 7,000,000 in the Northwest (Alaska, Idaho,
Oregon, Washington, Wyoming), 7,000,000 in the Great Plains (Iowa,
Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma,
South Dakota), 700,000 in Hawaii, and 300,000 in Washington, DC;
Whereas systemic racism takes the form of laws and policies that target people
of color, especially poor people of color, to create and deepen
inequities in democracy, health, economic security, education, housing,
jobs, policing, incarceration, criminalization, and immigration, which
has contributed to the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on poor
communities of color;
Whereas, since 2010, at least 25 States had passed new voter restrictions,
imposing racist gerrymandering and redistricting, restricting early
voting and voting hours, purging voter rolls, closing polling stations,
and instituting onerous voter ID laws;
Whereas 10 years after the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in Shelby
v. Holder, voting rights remain unprotected, unleashing an assault on
voting rights and access to democracy, including that, since the 2020
elections, over 1,000 voter restriction laws have been introduced in all
50 States;
Whereas voter suppression laws disproportionately target poor, Black, Brown, and
Native people, they also pave the way for immoral policies that deny
health care, living wages, immigrant rights, women's rights, LGBTQ+
rights, and more;
Whereas nearly 52,000,000 people are working for low wages, including at least
47 percent of Black workers, 46 percent of Latina/o workers and
approximately 30 percent of White workers, and a significant number (40
percent) of low-wage workers are women;
Whereas approximately 12,000,000 essential workers are immigrants, including
5,000,000 undocumented immigrants, and Native Hawaiians and Pacific
Islanders are the highest represented subgroup among essential workers;
Whereas women carry a disproportionate share of unpaid care work, which would
total $1,500,000,000,000 at the current minimum wage ($7.25);
Whereas the average hourly wage that a full-time worker requires to afford a
modest two-bedroom apartment is over $25 per hour;
Whereas there are 8,000,000 to 11,000,000 people at risk of homelessness, and an
estimated 34,000,000 people are facing food insecurity, including a
disproportionate share of Black, Latina/o, American Indian, Alaska
Native, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, and multiracial households,
yet protections against evictions and hunger are being rolled back;
Whereas of the approximately 60,000,000 adults with disabilities in the country,
26 percent are living below the poverty line, 10 percent are uninsured,
and 7,000,000 students with disabilities are enrolled in our public
schools;
Whereas the average cost of living in the Nation amounts to more than twice the
OPM and SPM, close to $60,000 for a household of four;
Whereas due to these limitations in the measure of poverty, social welfare and
antipoverty programs have been underfunded, to the extent that only 1 in
5 eligible families received TANF or Federal housing assistance,
expanded SNAP (food stamps) were reduced to just $6 per day and Head
Start reaches only 54 percent of eligible 3- to 4-year-olds;
Whereas household debt burdens have grown to over $17,000,000,000,000, and more
than two-thirds of our families are having difficulty meeting usual
household expenses, including more than three-quarters of low-income
households and Black and Latina/o families;
Whereas student debt amounts to $1,600,000,000,000, impacting 44,000,000
households, and 100,000,000 Americans struggle with medical debt;
Whereas alongside mounting poverty, low wealth, debt, and economic desperation,
poor communities and poor communities of color are hit first and worst
by climate change, pollution, extreme weather, climate disaster,
ecological devastation, and related health disparities, including during
the COVID-19 pandemic;
Whereas an expansion of oil and fossil fuel infrastructure led to over 5,000
significant oil and gas leaks or ruptures on United States pipelines,
more than 2,400 oil spills in United States waters, and 1,100 coal ash
ponds, all of which are disproportionately proximate to poor
communities;
Whereas decades of residential segregation continue to expose, especially, Black
communities to greater air pollution, as well as Latina/o, Asian and
Pacific Islander, and poor and low-wealth communities;
Whereas Native and Indigenous reservations cover just two percent of the United
States, and ancestral and sacred lands are at risk of being devastated
by mining, extraction, and pollution, because of their vast mineral and
natural wealth;
Whereas tens of millions of Americans cannot afford access to clean water,
44,000,000 people are living with water systems that violated the Safe
Drinking Water Act, and approximately 540,000 households lack access to
complete plumbing, with Native American households more likely to face
water access issues than other households;
Whereas, despite these threats to health, 119 rural hospitals have been closed
in 41 States since 2010, more than 450 rural hospitals are at risk of
closure and 104,000,000 people were uninsured or underinsured leading
into the COVID-19 pandemic;
Whereas the United States has the worst-ranking public health outcomes including
that average life expectancy is at its lowest point since 1996, with
higher infant and maternal mortality rates than our peer countries, even
though we spend twice the amount per capita on health expenditures
compared to other industrialized nations;
Whereas, during the deadliest phases of the pandemic, poor and low-income
counties experienced death rates that were up to five times higher than
wealthier counties;
Whereas rather than addressing these pressing conditions impacting our health,
well-being, and general welfare, 62 cents of every Federal discretionary
dollar goes to the Pentagon and militarization;
Whereas experts have identified up to $350,000,000,000 in defense spending cuts
that would both save resources and keep the country safe and secure;
Whereas the United States wars since 2001 have killed more than 937,000 people
directly, and another 3,600,000 to 3,700,000 indirectly, and displaced
3,000,000 more;
Whereas local and State law enforcement agencies have received over
$7,600,000,000 worth of equipment from the Department of Defense since
1990;
Whereas of the 16,500,000 veterans in the Nation, 4,500,000 have a service-
connected disability, more than 33,000 are homeless, and 1,200,000
receive food assistance;
Whereas the United States is home to less than 5 percent of the world's
population, but accounts for 20 percent of the world's incarcerated
people, most of whom are poor and the poorest of whom are women and
people of color, and 74 percent of those held in jail have not been
convicted of any crime, but are unable to make bail and therefore unable
to be free before trial;
Whereas there have been over 1,000 police killings every year since 2013, with
Black, Native, and Indigenous people more likely to be killed by police,
yet 98 percent of police killings since 2013 have not resulted in a
criminal charge;
Whereas nearly every American will know a gun violence victim in their
lifetimes;
Whereas our strength as a Nation is greater when we welcome newcomers and
immigrants, and immigrant families are vital members of our communities,
yet our broken immigration system is harmful to immigrants and our
society as a whole, it is plagued by backlogs, processing delays, and
overly complex policies, it criminalizes migration and prioritizes
detention, deportation, and the economic and political exclusion of
immigrants, and it relies on a largely for-profit detention system that
detains tens of thousands of people and separates families;
Whereas, although immigrants, regardless of status, pay more than
$490,000,000,000 in taxes, they are virtually excluded from nearly all
safety net programs;
Whereas White supremacist and far-right extremist groups have been recognized by
the Federal Government as a predominant domestic security threat;
Whereas every year we spend over $1,000,000,000,000 in endless wars, mass
incarceration, policing, immigration, and border enforcement, none of
which make us safer;
Whereas billionaires have added more than 1,500,000,000,000 to their collective
wealth over the past two years;
Whereas these interlocking injustices are precipitating the deconstruction of
our democracy and imposing unbearable costs to our economy, including
that $1,000,000,000,000 is lost every year to the costs of child
poverty, $1,900,000,000,000 of government revenue was lost by lowering
the corporate tax rate in 2017, $8,000,000,000,000 has been lost in
endless wars over the past two decades, the costs of the pandemic are
estimated to be at least $16,000,000,000,000, and inaction on climate
change threatens the loss of life itself;
Whereas there was record turnout among the 85,000,000 poor and low-income
eligible voters in the 2020 elections, who did not vote for a return to
``normal'';
Whereas moral policy that prioritizes the 140,000,000 poor and low-income people
can lift this Nation from the bottom up, rather than waiting for wealth
to trickle down;
Whereas social movements committed to the needs and demands of poor and low-
income people, including the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for
Moral Revival, Repairers of the Breach and the Kairos Center for
Religions, Rights and Social Justice, have been calling for
transformational change and putting forward a Third Reconstruction
Agenda; and
Whereas drawing on the history of the first Reconstruction after the Civil War
and the second Reconstruction of the civil rights struggles in the 20th
century, this moment demands a third Reconstruction to revive our
political commitment to implement moral laws and policies that can heal
and transform the Nation: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That--
(1) it is the sense of Congress to--
(A) recognize that--
(i) this country is founded on the moral
commitment to establish justice, ensure
domestic tranquility, provide for the common
defense, promote the general welfare, and
secure the blessings of liberty;
(ii) equal protection under the law is
nonnegotiable;
(iii) it is a moral abomination that there
are 140,000,000 people in this country who are
poor, low wealth, or one emergency away from
economic ruin; and
(iv) economic security should be guaranteed
to all, and to that end, every individual is
guaranteed access to fundamental economic
rights, including the unqualified right to--
(I) the opportunity to work in a
fulfilling occupation for a thriving
wage;
(II) an adequate income, sufficient
to meet basic needs and enjoy a life
with dignity, including for care work
inside of our own homes;
(III) safe, well-maintained, and
healthy housing for themselves and
their families within affordable reach
and without becoming cost-burdened;
(IV) accessible, quality education,
from child care to postsecondary
education;
(V) comprehensive health care
coverage with free choice of hospital
and provider;
(VI) access to free, secure, and
accessible banking services, including
fair credit and lending opportunities
to build generational wealth; and
(VII) a healthy environment and
sustainable climate that embraces
renewable energy, clean air and water
quality, and eliminates environmental
health risks;
(B) recognize that the United States Federal budget
is a moral document that exposes the priorities and
values of our Nation, however, addressing poverty has
not been a top legislative or budget priority; and
(C) recognize that these times require moral
policies aimed at fully addressing the interlocking
injustices of systemic racism, poverty, the denial of
health care and ecological devastation, militarism, and
the distorted moral narrative of religious nationalism,
as a third Reconstruction to build an equitable,
thriving, and resilient economy from the bottom up; and
(2) Congress commits to heal the Nation, beginning over the
next two years, by--
(A) prioritizing and centering the needs of the
140,000,000 in laws and legislation, including in
infrastructure development, by--
(i) updating the poverty measure to reflect
what it takes to have a decent standard of
living in the United States today and to
establish a new standard for social welfare
programs that permanently expand welfare
benefits, provide cash assistance programs, and
guarantee regular adequate incomes to all;
(ii) raising the minimum wage to a living
wage and guaranteeing the right to form and
join unions for all workers;
(iii) expanding unemployment insurance and
ensuring paid family and medical leave for all
workers;
(iv) implementing a Federal jobs guarantee
to increase public investments and
infrastructure in poor and low-income
communities that prioritize green and socially
beneficial industries, public health, public
education, care work, public transit and roads,
public utilities, broadband, sanitation and
water services, climate resilience, sustainable
food production and distribution, libraries,
fire stations, and cultural work;
(v) guaranteeing safe and quality housing
for all by enacting rent control policies,
ending all evictions, canceling past due rent
and mortgage payments and rehabilitating and
expanding the stock of affordable and public
housing, as well as public housing and rental
assistance, and housing people experiencing
homelessness through ``Housing-First''
principles, rather than expanding the shelter
system;
(vi) guaranteeing the right to water by
ending water and utility shut offs and making
clean water and sanitation services accessible
to all;
(vii) guaranteeing accessible, diverse,
safe, high quality, equitable options for
universally affordable child care and public
education and accessible education
infrastructure from pre-K-12 for all children,
ensuring that higher education is free to
everyone who wants to attend, and protecting
and expanding public resources for students
with disabilities;
(viii) guaranteeing quality health care for
all, enacting a universal single payer national
health care program that puts people ahead of
profits, expanding our public health
infrastructure to better address social
determinants of health, investing in Native
American health through fully funding the
Indian Health Service and social support for
Native Americans, and investing critical
resources for health care services and
infrastructure in urban and rural underserved
communities;
(ix) enacting relief from student debt,
housing debt, utilities debt, medical debt, and
other household and personal debt that cannot
be paid;
(x) ensuring every individual can access
financial and credit services free of deceptive
or unnecessary fees and lending discrimination,
but with meaningful community reinvestment; and
(xi) ensuring that State, local, and Tribal
governments are adequately funded so as to
avoid bankruptcy or fiscal crisis;
(B) expanding and protecting the right to vote,
including by--
(i) restoring the full power of the Voting
Rights Act by updating the preclearance formula
to cover all States and political subdivisions
with deep-rooted histories of voter suppression
and any and all jurisdictions that recently
passed voter suppression laws or utilized voter
suppression policies or tactics;
(ii) making election day a national
holiday;
(iii) establishing a fair redistricting
process that eliminates all forms of racist and
political gerrymandering, allows public input,
and guarantees that every vote counts the same;
(iv) increasing polling locations so all
eligible voters have equitable access to the
polls;
(v) implementing no-excuse mail-in voting
in every State and requiring all States to
offer early voting to extend equitable
timeframes and polling locations;
(vi) modernizing voter registration by
instituting online, same-day, and automatic
voter registration; and
(vii) ensuring the right to vote for
formerly and currently incarcerated people;
(C) complementing existing efforts and legislation
to eliminate persistent racial inequities in education,
health care, housing, jobs, wages, Social Security and
veteran benefits, land ownership, financial assistance,
food security, voting rights, and the justice system
that are rooted in our Nation's history of violence and
dispossession of Native and Indigenous peoples, 250
years of chattel slavery, systemic racism, and unjust
immigration policies at the expense of Black, Latina/o,
Asian American and Pacifier Islander, and Native
Hawaiian peoples, including through--
(i) a national commission to study and
develop proposals on reparations for African
Americans; and
(ii) a national truth, racial healing and
transformation commission, which can include
recommendations for restorative processes and
reparations for Indigenous and other
dispossessed people;
(D) protecting the constitutional rights of
assembly and free speech, including from critical
infrastructure legislation and other antiprotest
legislation, including by--
(i) removing criminal penalties, fines, or
other costs for protest activities;
(ii) protecting all constitutional activity
that occurs in the course of a protest; and
(iii) retaining liability for public or
private actors for causing harm to protesters;
(E) enacting comprehensive and just immigration
reform, including by--
(i) demilitarizing the southern border and
immigration enforcement, closing Immigration
and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Enforcement and
Removal Operations, and limiting staff and
authority of the Border Patrol;
(ii) repealing and redressing mandatory
detentions, deportations, child detentions, and
family separations, and reuniting families;
(iii) ensuring regular and timely access to
legal documentation and residency; and
(iv) making public welfare programs
available and accessible to all immigrants,
regardless of legal status;
(F) ensuring all the rights of Native and
Indigenous peoples and Tribal Nations, including by
honoring treaties, guaranteeing the right to the free
expression of their religion, the right to Native and
sacred lands, and otherwise protecting against
legislation or land transfers that violate these sacred
rights;
(G) embracing a bold agenda to transform the
economy away from climate chaos to a green renewable
energy economy that prioritizes poor and low-wealth
frontline communities and builds up publicly owned and
controlled green energy infrastructure, including by--
(i) investing in a green infrastructure
package that provides for equitable public
transit, fixes roads and bridges, ensures
equitable and affordable housing, education,
and care work and access to broadband,
electricity, water, sanitation, and other
public utilities, expands public health
infrastructure, sustainable food production and
distribution, and community-based institutions
like libraries, fire stations, and recreation
facilities;
(ii) dramatically curtailing air, water,
land, and climate pollution; and
(iii) creating resilient jobs to help
communities prepare for and respond to climate-
related disasters and promoting a just worker
transition;
(H) demilitarizing United States foreign policy,
borders, and policing, including by--
(i) cutting the Pentagon budget by phasing
out outdated weapons systems and eliminating
waste, fraud, and abuse;
(ii) reviewing the moral, economic, and
social consequences of spending 62 cents of
every Federal discretionary dollar on
militarization;
(iii) ending the forever wars, repealing
existing Authorizations for the Use of Military
Force, and restoring Congress' war powers,
including over limited uses of force such as
airstrikes and drone attacks;
(iv) recognizing the three pillars of
foreign policy (diplomacy, development, and
defense) and pursuing diplomacy over war,
including reconsidering forward military
deployments, instituting a nuclear no-first-use
commitment, and moving toward nuclear
disarmament and curtailing the use of broad
economic sanctions that create mass suffering;
(v) repealing programs like the 1033
program that provides military equipment and
training to domestic law enforcement agencies;
and
(vi) ending mass incarceration and violent
policing, based on the demands of grassroots
organizations and communities who are most
egregiously impacted by these injustices;
(I) enacting fair taxes on corporations, Wall
Street, and the wealthy, including by--
(i) repealing the 2017 tax cuts that
reduced the corporate tax rate and the top
marginal tax rate;
(ii) repealing tax breaks on fossil fuels;
(iii) repealing tax breaks for pass-through
income;
(iv) instituting a financial transaction
tax on Wall Street;
(v) instituting a wealth tax;
(vi) taxing investment income the same as
income from work; and
(vii) otherwise making the Tax Code less
punitive for poor and low-income people;
(J) alongside cuts to the Pentagon budget and fair
taxation, using deficit spending to meet these pressing
needs so as to end systemic racism, poverty, the denial
of health care and ecological devastation, and
militarism and address the distorted moral narrative of
religious nationalism; and
(K) encouraging States and cities to enact policies
that follow the direction provided by this resolution.
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