Hank Johnson: “I'm doing great. Mr. Ellison, you have been a shining light and a great example of a courageous congressman who doesn't…”

“I'm doing great. Mr. Ellison, you have been a shining light and a great example of a courageous congressman who doesn't run with the crowd and do what's popular but you do what's right, and I'm happy to join you tonight. You know, I am deeply concerned--and have always been deeply concerned--about the fact that there's been a transfer of wealth in this country, a shift of the money from the middle class to the upper 10 percent of earners here in this country. In fact, since 2001, the figures show that worker productivity went up, while at the same time, 96 percent of the income growth went to the wealthiest 10 percent of this country. And so that's a clear indication that something is wrong with the policies that we have been following over the last 8 years. And despite the wealth that has been transferred into the hands of a small minority of Americans, we still see that the pursuit of greed has brought us to the point where we're closer to a depression than we have been since the Great Depression. And so I'm happy to be a progressive. The other side of that is conservative. Let's leave everything the way we want to leave it, and let's do business as usual. We cannot do that. So I'm happy to be a member of the Progressive Caucus espousing, along with yourself, new ideas; and it's a new time. It's time for change.”