Marcy Kaptur: “Congressman Tonko, thank you so much for coming to the floor this evening. I grew up in a family where the work ethic…”

“Congressman Tonko, thank you so much for coming to the floor this evening. I grew up in a family where the work ethic was really respected, and we believed in it because you could get somewhere. You worked long hours. Sometimes, you worked 7 days a week, but you could save a little bit of money. Now, you try to save money and the banks pay you .07 percent interest or something like that, so if you are a saver, if you have a good work ethic, if you have a good savings ethic, what does the market yield you really? What I worry about is the work ethic itself because I talk to many employers now and they say, ``Marcy, do you know what, if we have to hire 40 people,'' let's say, for part-time jobs in a retail store, they say, ``you can't believe how many people we have to go through until we find people who really want to work.'' Well, one of the things that is happening across this country is large numbers of people don't believe working counts because they have seen what has happened in their own families. We stand to lose the work ethic itself among major segments of this population. That is very worrisome to me, and we see related social problems and rising poverty. I mentioned in the Maytag situation in Newton, Iowa--and I am not just picking on Newton, Iowa--but there was a community that absolutely lived for that company. It was invented there. Fred Maytag is buried right there, looking over his town and parks he endowed and all the people whose lives he helped to elevate.…”