The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“MORNING BUSINESS” mentioning Tammy Duckworth and Richard J. Durbin was published in the Senate section on pages S1759-S1760 on March 24.
Of the 100 senators in 117th Congress, 24 percent were women, and 76 percent were men, according to the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
Senators' salaries are historically higher than the median US income.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
MORNING BUSINESS
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WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, the clock struck 12, and the chaos of whistles, bells, and sirens echoed down Michigan Avenue. All across Chicago, you could hear--feel--the jubilance erupting in the streets. Women of all ages sat on the hoods of Studebakers and Model Ts, waving American flags as they rode through The Loop in celebration.
A decades-long fight for equality had finally come to an end. Just days earlier, on August 26, 1920, U.S. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby had issued a proclamation. The 19th Amendment had been ratified, and women in America had secured the right to vote, once and for all. And though this victory was monumental, America still had a long way to go.
Nearly a century later, on the morning of Saturday, November 7, 2020, jubilance once again erupted in the streets of Chicago. Drivers honked their horns all along Michigan Avenue, while passengers leaned out of their windows, waving American flags. Joe Biden had finally been declared the victor of the 2020 Presidential election, his running mate: Kamala Harris, the first African-American and first woman Vice President of the United States. The scene in Chicago was a fitting tribute to the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment's ratification.
This month, America celebrates Women's History Month. And the people of my State are proud of the leading role Illinois has played in America's long struggle for gender equality. In 2018, Illinois lawmakers ratified the Equal Rights Amendment. Our State attorney general, along with the attorneys general of two other States, is now pressing in Federal court for the ERA to be officially recognized as the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as it should be.
We are proud of the remarkable women our State has produced. Some were Illinoisans by birth, others by choice. They include Ida B. Wells, the courageous journalist, anti-lynching leader, and suffragist; Jane Addams, the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize and a cofounder of the Hull House, a Chicago landmark; Mamie Till Mobley, a mother who forced the world to reckon with the brutality of racism when she opened the casket of her only son, Emmett; Betty Friedan, author of
``The Feminine Mystique,'' a book that inspired a new wave of American feminism; Gwendolyn Brooks, poet laureate of Illinois from 1968 until her death in 2000 and the first Black woman inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters; Sandra Cisneros, a renowned writer and educator whose work is taught in classrooms across the country; Jeanne Gang, a world-class architect whose work graces the skyline of Chicago, including the tallest building in the world designed by a woman, the St. Regis Chicago; Jackie Joyner-Kersee, one of the world's greatest track and field athletes and the founder of the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Foundation, which offers athletic and educational programming to kids in my hometown of East St. Louis, IL; Precious Brady-Davis, an environmentalist and transgender woman who has shed light on the experiences of transgender parents; Oprah Winfrey, the host of a daytime talk show you may have heard of--her career as a talk show host actually began on ``A.M. Chicago''; Hillary Clinton, the first woman to be nominated for President by a major political party, she may have represented New York in the U.S. Senate, but her roots are firmly planted in Park Ridge, IL; Michelle Obama, another former First Lady who broke barriers--she is the pride of Chicago's South Side, and I am grateful to call her a friend; and my colleague in this body, Senator Tammy Duckworth, an American hero.
In 2018, the people of Illinois elected Juliana Stratton as our 48th Lieutenant Governor, the first woman of color ever elected to hold a constitutional office in our State. She is a dynamo and part of a new generation of women who are taking their rightful place as political leaders in our Nation. In the 2020 elections, women across America turned out in historic numbers, and voters elected a record number of women to higher office.
But we still have a long way to go. America lags well behind other developed nations when it comes to gender equality in our government. Women account for fewer than 30 percent of our representatives in either Chamber of Congress. Countries like Finland, Sweden, and New Zealand are far closer to 50 percent, meaning complete gender parity.
So it is certainly welcome news that President Biden has nominated 12 women for Cabinet and Cabinet-level positions, including Janet Yellen, the first female Secretary of Treasury, and Congresswoman Deb Haaland, who would be the first Native American to ever serve as a Cabinet Secretary.
While the past year has been one of historic triumph for women, it has also been one of unprecedented challenge. The pandemic has disproportionately devastated women. In December, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the United States lost 140,000 jobs in a single month. A staggering number that is even worse than it seems, women accounted for every single one of those job losses. Men, meanwhile, managed to gain 16,000 jobs that month.
Working women, and especially working women of color, have been hardest hit by this pandemic. When schools across the country were forced to shut their doors, these women were thrust into the dual roles of breadwinner and primary caregiver. They shouldered the burden of keeping our families and children safe. This is essential work. And just as frontline workers need PPE to safely do their jobs, working mothers need economic relief to do theirs.
That is what the American Rescue Plan President Biden signed into law this month delivers. It expands the child tax credit, offering up to
$3,600 per child; it invests in our families, by increasing the value of SNAP benefits and expanding childcare assistance; and it gives every working American $1,400. The American Rescue Plan will help working mothers weather this once-in-a-century public health and economic crisis.
After a year of COVID lockdowns and losses, America is finally beginning to feel a sense of hope that the end of this pandemic is coming, and looking at the headlines, it is hard not to share that optimism.
Under President Biden, we are vaccinating more than 2 million Americans a day. As of last week, more people in the United States have been fully vaccinated than our total number of coronavirus cases since the beginning of the pandemic. By the beginning of summer, we should have a large enough supply of vaccines to inoculate every adult in America. This is one of the greatest scientific feats in modern history.
A major reason we were able to develop COVID-19 vaccines at such lightning-fast speed is because of the pioneering research conducted over decades by a brilliant scientist, one of the unsung heroes of our world. Her name is Katalin Kariko. Like many American heroes, she is an immigrant. She began her research in a lab in Hungary, when it was still under Communist rule. Back then, she believed that synthetic messenger RNA could hold the key to treating some of the world's most debilitating diseases.
She followed that dream across continents, immigrating to the United States in the 1980s. But people--and, let's be honest, men--doubted her at every turn. Her grants were rejected. She faced demotions. She was even threatened with deportation. One of the few institutions that supported Katalin's work was the National Institutes of Health. The experts at NIH didn't just follow the science; they supported the visionary behind the science. And that investment paid off. Her research into messenger RNA eventually blazed a trail for the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, which are helping curb the spread of COVID-19 at this very moment.
As we turn the corner of this pandemic, let us remember that it was not a miracle that got us here. It was science. It was dedication. It was the work of trailblazers like Katalin Kariko.
As I mentioned, Betty Friedan is one of the great women leaders to come out of Illinois. In her seminal work, ``The Feminine Mystique,'' she asked: ``Who knows what women can be when they are finally free to become themselves?''
As we celebrate women's history, let us also renew our commitment to investing in women's futures. Who knows how many Katalin Karikos are out there, ready to change the world?
For our own good, for the good of humankind, let's ensure every woman has an opportunity to ``become themselves.''
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