Ayanna Pressley: “I thank my colleague for yielding and sister in service here, Congresswoman Leger Fernandez, for convening us here…”

“I thank my colleague for yielding and sister in service here, Congresswoman Leger Fernandez, for convening us here today. Mr. Speaker, I rise today on behalf of every worker, every parent, and every caretaker that has questioned how they will make ends meet and keep food on the table for their families; the parent that has felt that pit in their stomach, the anxiousness as they look over monthly bills with the growing costs of rent and childcare; the frontline worker, who is terrified to stay home sick and lose their job because of our Nation's failure to provide paid leave; the family afraid of being displaced from their home due to extreme weather and the existential threat of climate change; the student living in a transit desert with unreliable access to jobs, food, community; the daughter who is a caregiver to her parent who is one of 820,000 people on a wait list for much-needed home and community-based services; and our immigrant neighbor who has been unjustly denied a pathway to citizenship. Mr. Speaker, the Build Back Better Act will help us get one step closer to rejecting the unjust status quo and beginning to build a recovery that centers on the people. As Angela Davis once said: ``I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change.…”