Barbara Lee — What America Thinks with Scott Rasmussen

Fairness means

Speaker 1: different things to different people, but however you define it, just 35% of voters nationwide say the economy today is fair to the middle class. And when we ask about lower income Americans, people are evenly divided as to whether it's fair or not. When we look at the justice system, 44% say it's fair to most Americans, but when we ask about low income Americans, only 35% believe the poor are treated fairly by our justice system. With me now to discuss

this is

Speaker 1: First woman, Barbara Lee, a Democrat from California, welcome to What America Thinks. Very happy to be with you

Speaker 2: Now, I'm sure these numbers didn't surprise you at all. No

Speaker 3: these numbers, unfortunately, are numbers that so many people have lived with for generations. When you look at now the fact that the economy is not fair to middle-class

Speaker 4: individuals and families, nor is it fair to low-income individuals and families

Speaker 5: nor is it fair to the poor. I think what we learned during the Occupy movement, I mean, people understand. The 99. nine percent have been treated in a very unfair manner in terms of our economic system and we have to really begin to change

Speaker 6: that. Now you're on the budget committee and the appropriations committee you're dealing with budget issues right now are you happy with the the president's new

Speaker 7: budget and where that's leading

Speaker 8: Well

Speaker 9: on you know when you when you look at the president's new budget as compared to the Ryan budget it's light years ahead it's a lot fair there's some troubling parts of the president's budget, which I don't agree with the chained CPI as it relates to cutting Social Security benefits. We're going to work through that. But when you look at the fact that one of the focus of his

Speaker 11: budget has to do with addressing poverty and how we really create a fair society tax system that is fair, that really allows for tax fairness as it relates to making sure the millionaires and billionaires who have gotten all the benefits and the oil companies and the huge tax loopholes, making sure that

Speaker 12 (lower-pitched voice): those have been addressed in a fair way so that low-income and middle-income individuals benefit. Now

Speaker 13 (lower-pitched voice): last December, the president passed

Speaker 14: tax hikes for upper-income Americans. Public support was very strong for that provision. But in other areas, voters are kind of skeptical. And we have some numbers showing that only 21% think that if you have the government get more involved, it makes things more fair. And people tend to think that poverty, welfare programs tend to make poverty worse. How do you address people

Speaker 15: who have those concerns? I tell

Speaker 16: them, just look at the facts. For example, the earned income tax credit, the child

Speaker 11: tax credit. when you look at the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. When you look at workforce training, when you look at investment in early childhood education, when you look at investments in people into targeted areas in low income and poor communities, you see a track, a trajectory where people who receive

Speaker 17: these type of safety net support, they really have a pathway out of poverty into the middle class. and the facts are very clear, the statistics are there. I think people just

believe

Speaker 17: sometimes what they hear in the media, welfare queens

Speaker 11: food stamp president, you know, and all of a sudden then that becomes part of their consciousness. It wouldn't, in fact, that's not the case

Speaker 14: Peter Kove was on this show a while back and he was arguing that we should guarantee every American at least a minimum wage job. That they should have that chance to work, but he was saying the way you would pay for that would be by cutting back on some of the other welfare programs that are out there. Is that something

Speaker 13 (lower-pitched voice): you would be - Well

Speaker 18: first of all, Well, the minimum wage is

Speaker 5: very low. The president has actually, in his budget, increased the minimum wage. But what we need is a living wage. In my home state, for example, a living wage would be about $25 an hour. And I tell my Republican colleagues that if we get to a living wage, then a lot of the safety net programs would not be necessary. And so if you have enough income to feed your family, to send your kids to

Speaker 17: school, to start a small business, is to really begin

to live

Speaker 17: the American dream then you don't need a safety net but let me tell you our government is

Speaker 5: responsible for the common good

Now

Speaker 19: are you saying though that you would you think a $25 minimum wage is appropriate for California but it might be different somewhere else or is that sort of thing

Speaker 20: that you would like to see across the country

Speaker 11: I'd like to see a living wage

Speaker 5: index to inflation but also regional kinds of formulas that would allow for the quality of life that people deserve based on where they live

Speaker 21: Okay now so far we've been talking

Speaker 14: economic matters, the justice

system

Speaker 14: It's an area that concerns a lot of people. And there's a deeply held belief that lower income Americans are not treated fairly by this system

Speaker 5: Well they're not treated fairly and when you look at and I was on the public safety committee when I was in California legislature during the time that the three strikes law became law and of course I couldn't support it, voted against it and was harassed tremendously for that. But

Speaker 11: I knew then that the three strikes law would lead to the incarceration of young African American men for non-violent drug offenses. And the numbers

Speaker 22: now

Speaker 17: are amazing. They're scary in terms of what has taken place in California. When you look at mandatory

Speaker 11: minimum sentences for those who are convicted of powder versus crack cocaine, it was 100 to 1. Now as a result of this administration, it's down to 18 to 1, but we need 1 to 1 because again who gets incarcerated under the the provisions of the law for

Speaker 5: crack it's primarily down low-income african-american uh... people of

Speaker 13 (lower-pitched voice): color and it gives them uh... a difficult time to enter into the middle class with that record

Speaker 23: once you are out and you have this on your record many states

Speaker 11: you can't vote in many states i'd in and my district we conduct

uh

Speaker 11: Events where we have record remedy provisions in our law to remedy a record of certain offenses But what I learned was that you can't apply for certain housing federal subsidized housing You can't go to school with a Pell Grant you can't apply for it. Can you believe this food stamps nutritional assistance? You are ineligible if you are a parolee to apply for For basic nutrition assistance until you can get your life together. All these government support systems are really just bridges over troubled water. Well, these bridges are denied for formerly incarcerated

Speaker 12 (lower-pitched voice): individuals. Which, of course, presents then a cycle of recidivism, which we need to stop

Speaker 1: Congresswoman, thanks for joining me for this week's edition of What America Thinks. I'll be back with more right after this break

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