Happening every single day. And more often than not, its the woman who will choose to leave the workforce to care for that family member. When they do, they will earn less income. They will miss out on raises and promotions, and they lose out on retirement benefits. It can also hurt businesses. Today lack of paid family medical leave keeps some of our most highly skilled, best trained, hardest workers out of he work force. And give working parents a fair shot. The family and medical leave act we have today basically provides for unpaid leave. Job protected leave for Serious Health events. But only about half of our work force qualifies for about unpaid leave. Cant afford to take the time off. Supported by both the employee and the employer, contributions of a small amount in their wages. Its basically an earned benefit that would make paid leave to every working american, no matter how big the company is that you work for, a big business or a small business, whether youre part time or whether youre full time. The cost is about the cost of a cup of coffee a week. When a young parent needs to care for a newborn, it shouldnt come down to outdated policies that lets her boss decide how much time she can take off, how much time it will take her to et back on her feet. Let me give you one real life example to show why we can support this. For those who desperately want to reduce the roles of those on government assistance, this is a really great way to do it. Above the poverty line. When she got pregnant, she had no Health Care Benefits from her employer so she enrolled in medicaid. When she was about to have her baby, she knew she cannot afford the hospital bills so she had to quit her job. Because she was able to be on medicaid, that covered her hospital expenses. Because her employer gave her no vacation or sick days and no paid leave, she was not able to have her time with her infant at home so she had to quit her job. She enrolled in food stamps. This is a woman who was working fulltime basically on the edge of poverty and could not provide for her kids. If she had paid family medical leave in that job she couldve stayed at her job, had the time she needed, and had the benefits that wouldve protected her and er family. We also have to work on things as simple as raising the minimum age. When we are talking about lowwage workers, most people do not understand not only the prevalence of minimumwage workers but also how hardhit they are. Did you know that out of all our minimumwage earners, 64 of them are women . If youre working 40 hours a week on minimum wage, you earning you earning 15,000 a ear. We are saying as a country that has always said we reward work and if you work hard you will make it to the middle class, that is not true. F you are working 40 hours a week and on minimum wage, you are basically earning over 200 a week. Imagine what it is like to live with that here in d. C. I have an example for you. She works at union station. He has been working as a janitor for 20 years there. She never had a sick day or vacation day. She has no benefits. To work at the same job for 20 years and still be earning 8. 75 an hour with no benefits does not sound right. She is about to retire. She does not know how she will because earning so little, she was able to save very little. Hardworking people like her are not looking for a handout. They want to work hard every day and provide for their family and have some hope that they too can be able to see the American Dream. Under the bill we are working on in the senate it would give her a raise to get 10. 10 an hour. She is one step closer to getting out of poverty and moving into the middle class. Raising the minimum wage would help 33 million americans, 17 million women, many women with children just like her. Millions of mothers immediately would be able to do more to support their families and put that money right back into the economy. Raising the minimum wage is also good for business. An increase would raise our gdp over the course of three years but also those increase earnings which means increased spending on household goods, food, clothing. Ith that added activity to our economy, we can create up to 40,000 new jobs. The next issue that i feel very passionate about that i think would make a big difference for working moms is understanding the need for affordable childcare. More women are going back to work sooner after having a child creating a much greater demand or affordable childcare. The cost of childcare is about 6,700 a year. Just about the same amount an average family spends on groceries. If you cannot afford childcare as many middleclass families cannot, and you dont have a family option, the choice you are left with is to leave your job and stay at home. If you just think about the numbers again lets say the average for an infant is about 10,000 a year. You are a minimumwage earner. How will you afford childcare . Kindergarten does not start until five so you have no option before that. Imagine what you do as a single mom. 17 million of those minimumwage earners are women. Ou look for informal care. You look for your mother or the lady down the street or someone in your building. What happens if your care giver is sick . You miss work. You will probably get fired. You lose out on every bit of Economic Opportunity you have because there is no affordable daycare option. Just as important we need universal prek. We should focus on the fact that when children have a chance to have Early Childhood education, they are able to reach their potential. High quality, Early Learning leads to strong cognitive, intellectual, emotional development. Key skills that every child in america needs. Any Childhood Development expert would tell you the first five years of a childs life is a window we have to give the most essential skills for success. For millions of families struggling, this is a chance they will never get. Through no fault of their own and no other reason, their families were born into a life of less opportunity. The block you live on should not determine the success of the life you will have. That is why we need to make these investments today to bring affordable prek to every child n america. This will give every child the chances to make sure their hard work takes them where they want to go. Every dollar you invest in Early Childhood education generates up to 11 in economic benefit throughout the life of the child. It is important for the overall Economy Today when children have access to prek, it means more working mothers can stay in the workforce and stay on a path to advance their careers. That is good for the whole economy. Critics will say that because of our deficit we cannot afford this. I agree we have to do more to get our deficit under control but every budget that we write is about choices. They are about our riorities. They are about who we fight for. We are competing with countries and markets in every corner of the world and we cannot afford to lose this. When we close our doors to Early Childhood education, we risk a future engineer, scientist, or doctor that could make the next breakthrough. It is the best thing we can do to propel kids out of poverty. We should invest in our children. The last piece of my proposal is the most obvious. Equal pay for equal work. The promise was made 50 years ago which continues to be broken every single day in this country. Today, women make up more than half of the American Population and nearly half of our workforce. Women are outearning men and are a growing share of the primary household earners, but still to this day, men are outearning women. On average a woman earns . 77 on every dollar a man earns and even less for women of color. African american women earn . 69 on the dollar, latinos earn . 68 on the dollar. How can they get ahead if they are shortchanged . If you want to have a growing economy, simply pay women fairly for the work they are doing. It is that simple. It is a huge economic ngine. If you pay a dollar for dollar, you can raise the gdp by 4 . You can raise the gdp by 4 . Economy, simply pay women fairly for the work they are doing. It is that simple. It is a huge economic engine. If you pay a dollar for dollar, you can raise the gdp by 4 . A dream that makes our country the and will of opportunity. A dream that says it doesnt matter from where you start, hard work pays off, you can get to the American Dream and earn your future. Thank you. [applause] can everybody hear me all right . Senator, thank you so much. That was quite an exhilarating challenge to all of us. If i could summarize your agenda for american opportunity, it has five planks. Paid leave, raise the minimum wage, affordable childcare, universal prek, and equal pay for equal work. They are all really important issues. I want to try to relate them back to what we will be discussing all day. You mentioned the war on poverty and the fact we are celebrating an anniversary and everybody is talking about that. One of the academics that is here today from columbia university. Her colleagues have recently done a study which you may or may not have seen. I found it is very interesting. Although many people on the right have said that the war on poverty, poverty won, it did not work. Their study shows that the war on poverty reduced poverty appropriately measured by 10 or 11 . There is another message coming out of that study and out of this discussion we are having now. We did pretty well creating a safety net for people at the autumn who were not doing very well. We did not do as good of a job at changing the labor market to achieve middleclass status through their own efforts at omic becoming selfsufficient. There are some elements that speak to that. Some that are just catching people and helping them when hey are down like Unemployment Insurance is part of the safety net. Prek programs are part of helping people climb the adder. There was this study of the Head Start Program that said it was not having the kinds of effects that we earlier thought that it ould have. When you think about i am talking about longterm now. When you think longterm, some of us worry and think tank land, hat do you think we need to do to improve longterm opportunities for people to be selfsufficient . It is not an argument against helping them if we are if they are down on their luck. The most important change we need to make is recognizing the change of the face of the workforce. Most of our workforce policies of were set in place in the 1950s, 60s, 70s. If a block had 10 homes on it, seven of the husbands would he going to work and the wife would stay home. Now five have two parents working. Three have a single mom working. Nly to have a parent staying home with the child. If you create a work waste that has enough flexibility to accommodate families, you will constantly be undervaluing the underperformance of your workers. Women are typically the primary caregivers for both caregivers children and aging parents. You need a more familyfriendly workforce holocene. That means equal pay for equal work. Make sure that they are not getting shortchanged for every month. You do not have women off ramping every time there is a family emergency. That woman never has a chance to give back to the economy. Fortier percent of our workforce in new york state is women. You are chained shortchanging an economic engine im not giving those opportunities. You need that flexibility. Something as simple as universal prek and affordable day care, that is good for every child that she has. She will need that kind of support where she will not be in the work voice fulltime. Those are both engines that are eing entirely untapped for our workforce. It is a huge problem. It has been an enormous ransformation, the fact that it has been an enormous ransformation, the fact that women have moved into the workforce. Now 40 of the primary breadwinners. Hannah rosen wrote a book called the end of men. One of the reasons we have so many Single Parents is because the men can no longer make enough money to get married and support a family. Is that also a concern . Arguing for womens rights to climb the ladder and do better, what do we do about the men . They are still being paid a dollar on the dollar. They are being paid fairly for their work. We want work is policies for families. There may want to be men who want to be primary caregivers during their may be men that want flexibility if there mother or father is dying. If you have familyfriendly policies that both parents will be able to take advantage and be able to be there when needs arise. For all of those singleparent families, they need that flexibility. They will help more women than men because it is more often than not the woman who has to sideline her career for family. There are many men in the same situation. Lets open this up for the audience to ask a couple of questions here. Please state your name and your affiliation if you would. Right here. Right. My name is edna. I am with the World Organization for childhood education. I want to point out that Robert Samuels column in the post. I want to caution you not to make a dichotomy between child care and early education. I dont think you were. Uite often, people do. They see one as quite different than the other. All programs from children six weeks to six years are educational. Children are learning all the time. They do not start when they go to school. Universal prek is different than affordable day care. It is a different mechanism. My children were in daycare. I know the Early Childhood education they received was remendous. That day care was 10,000 a year. Affordability is a huge problem. There are too many moms that could not use the daycare available to federal workers because they could not afford it. I saw the Early Childhood education built right in. From infant care right onto prek. Affordability is as important as niversality. One more question since we are running out of time. Everybody knows you. I usually have a really loud voice. As you know, i am very sympathetic to this agenda you put forward. I am curious why this has not taken hold more within the emocratic arty or maybe it ill. Some of the proposals are obviously consensus proposals like the minimum wage. The package speaks to a lot of different aspects of what we are talking about. Will we see more action, not just from women members but party wide . I think so. As women and mothers we have particular sensitivity to these issues because we see it everyday. I see what benefit my children get from daycare. I know that i could have done my job well without the flexibility that was given for hague family medical leave for both of my children. When i speak to these issues, i speak very passionately about them. I know what opportunity is being missed for those who do not have them. I can speak from the heart and also from real life. That is one reason i think these issues are coming to the floor now. I think the democratic and Republican Party will be able to wrap hold of these issues as a generational issue. What do we need to do to actually make a middle class that can thrive . That can inspire both democrat and republicans. The president gave a very significant speech where he mentioned a couple of ideas just a few months ago. We had Speaker Pelosi do a very good press event with members of the house on this issue. I think these issues will continue to be talked about. I will do everything i can to make sure that i talk about them a lot. That is a good idea. That will have a real Economic Impact that will make a difference. We really wish you well on this agenda. Please join me in thanking the senator. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] today, well be taking you live to House Financial Services subcommittee. Well be taking a look at the qualified mortgage. Live coverage at 10 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan 3. And later members of president obamas Intelligence Review Group will testify about their recommendations to change government surveillance programs. That hearing will be live at 2 30 p. M. Eastern, also on cspan 3. As the president first stated in march and reemphasized tuesday night, the goal of the United States and afghanistan and pakistan is to disrupt, dismantle and defeatal kide and to prevent its returns to both countries. The International Military effort to stabilize afghanistan is necessary to achieve the overarching goal. Robert gates served two president s from 20062011 and c. I. A. Director in the early 1990s. Friday at 6 30 p. M. Eastern on cspan 2 a live book tv event. Secretary gates talks about his managements of the wars of iraq and afghanistan and his relationship with the white house and congress. And in a few weeks, look for bonnie morris. Shell take your questions and comments, live on indepth, february 2 at noon eastern. And online for the rest of january, join our book tv book club discussion, on the liberty amendments. Go to book tv. Org and click on book club to enter the chat. The chair of the House Budget Committee paul ryan was also at the Brookings Institution social mobility summit. He spoke about the war on poverty started by president johnson and why he believes it failed this is 30 minutes. Weve had a long day of discussions, started this morning with senator joe brand, and now weve been talking about poverty and opportunity and mobility in the United States, quite fascinating and great people here. And in our relentless attempt to be nonpart son or bipartisan we begin the day with a democrat and end the day with paul ryan of the budget committee. Heres something that might surprise you. Knowledge counts for a lot in congress. Paul ryans career illustrates this claim. First hes a former congressional staffer, and we all know theyre necessarily brilliant. And second, upon arriving in congress, he looked around and asked himself what makes this place run . The answer, of course, is money. And the budget is a source of all money, so he decided