Rep. Hakeem Jeffries highlights Go-Go music’s D.C. roots before addressing Illinois’ affordability crisis with Rep. Brad Schneider, citing Medicaid cuts for eBay sellers and $15/hour minimum wage failing to cover a family of four’s $29+/hour living costs. Lake County’s 8,000-unit housing gap—with only 40–50 affordable units built yearly—exacerbates job recruitment struggles as rents rise 2–4x faster than incomes. Immigrant families face ICE enforcement chaos, like the LUSH Fund diverting funds from SNAP and Medicaid, while disabled households grapple with therapy costs, caregiving shortages, and SSI asset limits. Jeffries demands Fourth Amendment ICE compliance and vows to fight for the American dream at the February 24 State of the Union, contrasting political gridlock with systemic failures. [Automatically generated summary]
You automatically become a part of it, but you got to see it live.
Hearing a recorded version of a Go-Go song, it don't really do nothing for you.
But if you see it live, then you can automatically embrace it.
Because Go-Go music is a live field.
You right there with it.
You right here with it.
And you can't stay still.
Especially when I look around the world by me traveling so many places.
I can see that living in America has been a blessing to me.
People living in poverty.
People are poor.
People don't have water.
They don't have clothes.
They don't have food and shelter.
I'm free, so this means a lot to me.
Whatever your dream is, go get it.
Nobody can stop you but you.
Believe in yourself, apply yourself, and be the best you can be.
This is Sugar Bear.
This is our American story.
C-SPAN, official media partner of America 250, commemorating 250 years of American democracy.
And now to Winnetka, Illinois, where Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries and Illinois Representative Brad Schneider joined community activists to talk about the rising costs of living.
They also talk about the Democratic agenda moving forward.
This is just under 30 minutes.
Good afternoon, everybody.
Good afternoon.
You'll know it's when your microphones take up the place my speech is supposed to go.
We'll make this work.
Anyway, welcome and thank you for joining us.
So for those that don't know me, I'm Brad Schneider, the representative for Illinois' 10th Congressional District, where we are.
The district runs from Winnetka up through the full length of Lake County to the Wisconsin border and west from Lake Michigan into McHenry County all the way to Hebron.
I want to especially take this moment to welcome Leader Jeffries to the 10th District in Winnetka.
We're very excited to have you here.
We just completed next door a rather important, robust conversation about the state of the economy here in Illinois.
And we got to hear from leaders across my district from Cook Lake and McHenry counties who are hearing from their constituents and the people they serve how everyday American Americans, virtually every American, are suffering from rising costs, struggling to get, not just to get by, it's hard to get ahead.
We had some of the examples in the roundtable talking about the challenges people are facing.
Someone, 40-year-old person working, making a living by selling things on eBay, who lost his Medicaid because it didn't quite fall within the categories that the Republicans redefine for people trying to make ends meet.
We heard about families struggling to make their rent.
We heard about young people who are struggling with issues.
And over the past year, life has gotten not just gotten more expensive for the American people, it's gotten to the point where the American dream seems out of reach and for many people, an impossibility, an impossible dream.
Meanwhile, President and Congressional Republicans have not only failed to lower costs at every turn, they've made it worse.
The American people are tired of the broken promises.
They want a real plan with real solutions.
I'm proud that last week the New Democrat Coalition released our affordability agenda.
I am privileged to chair the coalition, and I can tell you that the agenda is the culmination of more than a year of work where we talked about addressing five core costs that every American faces: cost of groceries, the cost of housing, cost of health care, utilities, and the cost of family care, whether it's caring for young children still at home or caring for aging parents.
We believe affordability and lowering costs are an essential part of that American dream that every person should have an aspiration and an ability to achieve.
Affordability means not just getting by, it means being able to get ahead, to build a better future for yourself, for your community, for your family, to pay your bills, to save for your future, and maybe even to take a vacation.
While the President jerks from one ill-conceived policy scheme to the next, all to try to deflect from the harm being inflicted on our working families, I'm proud that Democrats across our caucus are doing the work to figure out how we can help lower costs and make life better for the American people.
And speaking of Democrats doing the work, I am proud to be here with our leader, Hakeem Jeffers.
And with that, let me turn it over to him to talk about what the Democrats are focused on to make life better for the American people.
Well, good afternoon.
It's an honor and a privilege to be here in the 10th Congressional District of Illinois in the Chicagoland area, and certainly to be here with my good friend and amazing member of Congress, Brad Snyder, who is doing the work each and every day in Washington and here on the ground to make life better for the people that he represents.
And it was a great honor to have the opportunity to participate in this roundtable with everyday Americans, with civic leaders, with business leaders, with non-for-profit leaders, people who are doing the work to try to make life better for people who are struggling in this economy to make ends meet.
The state of the real economy in America right now is a mess.
There is an affordability crisis that is not a hoax.
It is very real.
And that point was brought home clearly during this roundtable discussion.
People are struggling with housing costs.
People are struggling with health care costs.
People are struggling with the cost of groceries.
People are struggling with child care costs.
People are struggling with the cost of running a small business, particularly as a result of the Trump tariffs.
The state of the real economy is a mess.
The affordability crisis is one that we are committed to dealing with decisively.
And the need to do that with great urgency with the fierce urgency of now was reinforced by this roundtable discussion.
All across the country, Democrats are holding similar discussions because rather than talk at the American people, we want the American people to talk to us, to lay out their real on-the-ground experiences.
So when we go back to Washington next week, we can continue to press forward to do what we have to do to lower the high cost of living in this country, to make life more affordable, to ensure that people who are working hard and playing by the rules can not just survive, which is hard to do in this environment, but can thrive here in America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world.
That's the least that we can do.
Make sure that when you're working hard and playing by the rules, you can live an affordable life, a comfortable life, and live a good life.
That's our commitment to the American people.
The road ahead of us is not going to be easy because our colleagues on the other side, led by the president, who promised to lower the cost of living on day one, are doing the exact opposite, making life more expensive for the American people.
So I thank Congressman Snyder once again for hosting me.
It's always wonderful to be back here in the Chicagoland area.
And I look forward to our continued work together, inspired by the stories that I heard from each and every one of the participants in the roundtable that Congress needs to act.
We need to act decisively.
We need to get this situation turned around so we can bring the American dream to life for everyone.
Great, thank you.
Let me now turn it over to our Township Supervisor here in Nutrier Township, Gil Schnitzer Schnitzer Eisenberg.
Good afternoon.
Thank you to Representative Schneider for inviting me and to Leader Jeffries for joining us here in Nutrier Township.
As Township Supervisor, I work with residents who are doing the quote right things.
They're working hard, they're raising families, contributing to our community, and still they're feeling the squeeze of the cost of living.
Affordability is not an abstract policy issue for them.
It's a daily reality.
The gulf between the minimum and the living wage helps to explain that reality.
Here in Cook County, the minimum wage is $15 an hour.
That's already more than double the federal minimum wage.
But the living wage, the minimum income necessary for workers to meet their basic needs like housing, food, child care, health care, and transport, for a family of four with two working parents is over $29 an hour, $42.65 if only one parent is working.
At the township, we see the results.
More families turning to food pantries like ours.
Usage is up 110% since 2015.
More residents seeking emergency financial help due to hardships, 82% of which is for housing.
And more residents seeking assistance for child care special needs.
These are not people who lack work ethic.
The numbers simply cannot add up.
They must rely on a combination of local, state, and federal aid just to make those ends meet.
And once such federal aid is threatened, be it health care subsidies, child care funding, SNAP, Medicaid, those economic stressors are amplified and the emotional toll is severe.
Our role at the township is to be a bridge, to provide those emergency services and social programs to help people stay on their feet.
We can only address individual needs.
The larger challenges of affordability are systemic, requiring partnerships across governments, employers, and community organizations.
A strong community is one where working families can live with dignity and stability.
And that's a goal we can all be working towards.
Thanks, Gil.
I'd now like to call up the Township Supervisor from Waukegan Township, Supervisor Mark Jones.
I did have a prepared statement by my colleague, Township Supervisor, said a lot of it, so I won't be redundant.
And instead, I'll just focus and get straight to the point.
We are fortunate to have legislators such as Congressman Snyder and Lear Jeffries that took time to come here today to speak to us about these real issues that as township supervisors we see every day.
We hear messaging of growth and prosperity economically.
However, in our offices, we see the exact contrast of that front.
We see the mother having to decide between putting clothes on her child's back and food on the table due to the cuts of Medicare.
We see that grandmother or that grandfather who has to decide between groceries and medication.
It's been a strain all around for everyone across the board, regardless of socioeconomic or educational levels.
And again, to have legislators in D.C. and state fighting on our behalf is very encouraging for us in the work that we do because we know if we cannot provide help through our legislatures, we can certainly provide hope.
Thank you, Mark.
Let me now call up the President of the Community Partners for Affordable Housing, Rob Anthony.
Good afternoon.
I also want to express my gratitude for Congressman Schneider and Leader Jeffries for having this important conversation with us.
Community Partners for Affordable Housing works on housing issues.
And what we're seeing is that rent and home prices are increasing at two to four times the rate of income.
So home prices are going up like this, incomes are going up like this.
There's a widening gap.
And it's not that people are not working hard or doing what they're supposed to be doing, but there's a structural problem where income is not keeping up with home prices and it's creating a widening gap for people.
In the Chicago area, someone would have to earn $33.87 per hour just to afford a two-bedroom apartment.
Compare that to the minimum wage of $15 per hour.
So someone would have to work more than two full-time jobs to afford a two-bedroom apartment.
30% of homeowners and 50% of renters in Lake County are housing cost burdened.
In Lake County, we need more than 8,000 affordable housing units.
And as we talked about in the session prior to this, SEPA is one of the organizations generating the most number of affordable housing units.
But on a good year, we're adding 40 to 50 affordable housing units per year.
And so, if you do the math, that's 160 years until we've reached the 8,000 goal that we need.
So the structure needs to change.
We need to address this differently.
And the impact of that is that it's creating housing instability, financial insecurity, negative physical and mental health outcomes, diminished school and work performance, intergenerational poverty.
Seniors can't remain in the communities where they live.
Families are pushed out after a death or a divorce or a job loss or a health crisis.
Most of us are one crisis away from needing affordable housing.
And young people who grew up in communities can't afford to return to those communities.
There are a number of challenges facing the addition of affordable housing units.
Construction costs have skyrocketed in recent years.
The tariffs are certainly not helping.
We've experienced steel tariffs on affordable housing developments that we're working on right now.
And we appreciate the cooperation with our representatives to try to address some of these issues.
And finally, I just want to make the point that there's a very strong connection between housing and economic development.
I was on a long call this morning with an employer, a large employer who has their headquarters in Deerfield.
And they were trying really hard to recruit someone for this job.
And this person really wanted the job, but they could not accept it because they couldn't afford housing in the area.
And so housing is where jobs go to sleep at night.
Families Struggling with Disabilities00:11:11
And so it's vital to the economic development and thriving economies.
Thank you.
Thanks, Rob.
And I now want to invite Del Suerkees, the Executive Director of Mono Mono Family Resource Center.
Good afternoon all.
My name is Duane Sartiz, D-U-L-C-E-O-R-T-I-Z.
I'm the Executive Director at Mano Amano Family Resource Center and for over 20 years, Mano Amano has served the immigrant community across Lake County and parts of McHenry County, including Waukegan, North Chicago, and the Rom Lake area.
Last year alone, we served more than 15,000 community members, more than triple what we've served just a few years ago.
Our mission is simple: to ensure immigrant families can fully participate in their communities they call home.
They are your neighbors, your small business owners, taxpayers.
And just like some of you, they are parents.
They are parents raising their children who will shape the future of not just the great state of Illinois, but this country.
This year has been incredibly difficult.
What used to be classrooms for ESL, GED classes, and workforce training now has become a makeshift food distribution center.
Families who were once focused on improving their English, finding better jobs, and building stability are now asking how will they pay for rent, how will they renew a work permit, or put food on the table.
Through our immigration clinic, we have already exceeded 100% of our annual goal for immigration applications, with months still remaining.
Because fear and enforcement are driving desperation, when a parent is detained or disappeared or is too afraid to go to work, household income vanishes overnight.
That is just not an immigration issue.
That is an affordability crisis.
At the same time, that working families are losing access to health care, SNAP, and education supports, programs that were already underfunded.
We are watching taxpayer dollars redirected into expanding DHS enforcement.
The Trump administration and MAGA congressmen have doubled down on violence at the expense of programs that families across the country rely on.
Let's be clear: investing billions into ICE LUSH Fund while cutting safety net programs does not lower costs for families.
It raises them.
It destabilizes entire local economies.
I stand here as an immigrant woman, a daughter, a mother to say that it does not have to be this way.
It is time for our leaders to say no to uncheck DHS funding and yes to working families.
To Leader Jeffreys and Congressman Schneider, I truly appreciate the opportunity to highlight what we are seeing on the front lines and highlight the injustices and affordability challenges happening here in the state of Illinois and all over the country.
For this reason, I ask for you and your Democratic Party to stand firm on redirecting ICE funds to food access, education, legal stability, and economic opportunity.
Because when immigrant families thrive, all communities thrive.
Thank you.
Thank you, Dulcie.
And for our last speaker, I want to invite Jennifer Phillips, the President and CEO of Keshup, Keshet Disabilities and Inclusion.
Thank you for this opportunity.
Thank you.
When we talk about cost of living in Illinois, I want to emphasize that for families of individuals with disabilities, affordability is not an abstract.
It determines whether someone can live safely in the community, whether a parent can remain employed, and whether a child can access the right educational environment.
Many Illinois families are already stretched by the rising cost of food, transportation, and health care costs.
For families raising a child with disabilities, those pressures are magnified.
Therapies, specialized education, transportation, caregiving responsibilities, and increase expenses while often limiting earning capacity.
Many families are single-income households, not by choice, but by necessity.
And beyond predictability of expenses, there are constant unexpected costs: broken adapted equipment, emergency medical needs, insurance denials, behavioral crisis requiring additional support, or sudden staffing gaps.
For most families, an unexpected expense is stressful.
For families of individuals with disabilities, it can destabilize housing, employment, and long-term planning.
For adults with disabilities, the community-based services are funded primarily through Medicaid waivers administered by the Illinois Department of Human Services.
These services allow individuals to live in homes, work, and participate in their communities rather than institutions.
But reimbursement rates have struggled to keep pace with inflation.
Providers face rising costs of wages, insurance, transportation, utilities, and housing.
At the same time, we face a serious workplace and workforce crisis.
Direct service providers are essential to health care workers, yet providers compete with retail and fast food wages.
Without sustainable funding tied to real labor markets and inflation, staffing instability continues and families feel the impact immediately.
Adults with disabilities are also living longer, which is a success story, but parents have been lifelong caregivers, are aging.
Increasingly, families ask what's going to happen when they are no longer here.
Too often, when a parent passes away, their child with disabilities faces housing instability or long waiting lists for residential supports.
Community-based disability services are not optional.
They are infrastructure.
They support workforce participation, prevent costly institutional care, and allow individuals to contribute meaningfully to their communities.
If affordability is truly our goal, we must protect Medicaid funding, invest in direct service professionals' workforce, mobilize SSI asset limits, and expand sustainable housing options for adults with disabilities.
Affordability means stability across the lifespan, and for individuals with disabilities, the stability depends on policy decisions made here.
Thank you.
With that, we have two questions.
All right, I guess we have time for two questions.
I'll squeeze through.
Steve, I have a question for Mark Jones and all CRPs.
Can you please, each of you, share a story about a family in your area that has had to make a family or individual a really, really hard choice between one of the five things that the congressmen laid out in their, you know, in their plan, in their five areas of need.
I can go first.
So something that I share in the roundtable was that ICE agents were in Lake County this weekend and fortunately the family was not there but they didn't feel safe staying in that home.
That home is owned by loved ones and so where they were paying $1,600 on a monthly basis.
They would love to stay within that area.
That's where their child with special needs goes to school to receive the services but they can't afford it.
The market right now for a three-bedroom apartment is $2,800 and so they're going to have to make a very difficult decision of having to pull their special needs child from a school they've been attending for years and they're also going to have to figure out how are they going to get to work.
They have no transportation.
They already were using the train.
Grocery stores were within walking distance and so moving to a very different community having to make those very difficult choices because they cannot afford the rent.
It's something that it's incredibly hard on our families.
Leader Jeffries, can you answer some questions?
I'm going to try to get to everyone's question.
So go ahead, Shift.
He's here.
No, I'm going to say, go ahead.
So Democrats sent that latest funding offer to the White House yesterday.
Did you guys give in at all on the issues of judicial warrants or agent masking?
You know, are there situations where somebody could go into somebody's house or an agent might wear a mask?
We believe that the Fourth Amendment is not a mere inconvenience.
It is a requirement.
And so judicial warrants absolutely should be mandated before ICE agents can storm private property, rip everyday Americans or law-abiding immigrant families from their homes in ways that have horrified the American people.
At the same period of time, our view is that ICE agents should be conducting themselves like every other law enforcement agency in the country.
Police officers don't wear masks, county sheriffs don't wear masks, and state troopers don't wear masks.
And we haven't been provided a shred of justification from this administration as to why ICE agents are conducting themselves differently.
And our overarching premise is that taxpayer dollars should be used to make life more affordable for hardworking American taxpayers, not abused to brutalize or kill American citizens, as was the case with Renee Colgood or Alex Predi, or violently target law-abiding immigrant families, which is what we're seeing here in Chicagoland and all across the country.
Reverend Jesse Jackson: Legacy of Justice00:04:12
Sorry, I'll call you.
Go ahead.
I'm going to do two quick ones.
I have a question for Eleanor Hubby Jeffries.
So, Congressman, we're just wondering if you have thoughts on the passing of Reverend Jesse Jackson.
And can you tell us what did he mean to you personally, and did he influence your involvement in politics?
Well, Reverend Jesse Jackson is an iconic, legendary, true American hero who really fought hard throughout his life to bring the American dream to life.
He fought for social justice, racial justice, and economic justice.
And to ensure that every single person who's part of the rainbow coalition that he talked about and built could experience the American dream.
When I woke up this morning, I received the news, of course, deeply saddened by it.
But, you know, his life, his legacy, and his leadership, we're so thankful for.
We all in different ways stand on his shoulders.
He certainly inspired me probably when I was 14 years old in 1984.
I'm giving my age away.
But when I was 14 years old, his first presidential run, I still remember the t-shirt that my grandmother gave to me, Action Jackson, because she was so excited by his presidential run.
And that, of course, in turn excited myself and my younger brother.
Redistricting question?
Well, I'm going to wrap up.
Just give me your thoughts on Jesse Jackson, too.
I'll do it.
Okay.
Are you any closer, do you think, on Maryland possibly making a move on redistricting this SPRS with a new map?
Well, our view from the very beginning was that we were not going to let Donald Trump gerrymander the national congressional map as part of some toxic effort to rig the midterm elections.
That it's the American people who are the ones who should decide who serves in the majority after the November elections, not Donald Trump.
And we've succeeded across the country in ensuring that we've stopped this toxic gerrymandering scheme dead in its tracks.
We still have a few states to go, including, you know, some great action that has occurred in Virginia and now a ballot initiative that will be put before the people in April and some work to be done in Maryland with the support, of course, of Governor Westmore, the bill that has passed the House of Delegates, and we're looking forward to an up or down vote sometime soon in the Maryland State Senate.
Will you be at the State of the Union?
It's my present intention to be at the State of the Union.
We're not going to his house, he's coming to our house.
And it's the people's house.
And having grown up where I grew up, you never let anyone run you off your block.
Thank you, everybody.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, everyone.
Have a great day.
Thank you.
Thank you all.
Thank you.
Thanks, buddy.
The Reverend Jesse Lewis Jackson has died at the age of 84.
Known for his many years of activism in the civil rights movement, Reverend Jackson also gained national attention in politics when he launched a 1984 bid for the White House, becoming the second African-American to mount a national campaign for president as a Democrat.
He came in third place during the primary behind Gary Hart and former Vice President Walter Mondale.
He ran a second campaign for president four years later, but lost that nomination to Michael Dukakis.
Continuing his political service, Jesse Jackson served as a shadow senator for the District of Columbia from 1991 to 1997.
His primary role in the unpaid position was to lobby for D.C. statehood.
Throughout his career, Reverend Jackson established several advocacy organizations, which later merged into the current Rainbow Push Coalition, which champions for social justice, voting rights, and economic equality.
In 2000, Reverend Jackson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award.
Statehood Lobbyist Jesse Jackson00:02:05
Just last year, he was diagnosed with progressive supernuclear palsy, a rare brain disease that affects body movements with conditions similar to Parkinson's disease.
Reverend Jackson is survived by his wife, Jacqueline, and their five children.
All day on C-SPAN 2, we're showing programming from our archives of Jesse Jackson in his own words, speaking at conventions about his life and legacy and his presidential campaigns.
You can also find appearances and events with Jesse Jackson in our video library at c-span.org by searching his name.
On Wednesday, a conversation about the state of U.S. democracy.
As the nation marks its 250th anniversary this year, Governors Wes Moore of Maryland, Spencer Cox of Utah, and Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma will talk about finding common ground and solving important problems through civil conversation.
Watch live at 5 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN.
C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app and online at c-span.org.
And we are going to renew unlimited promise of the American dream.
Every single day, we will stand up and we will fight, fight, fight for the country our citizens believe in.
Watch the C-SPAN Networks live Tuesday, February 24th, as President Donald Trump delivers the annual State of the Union Address before a joint session of Congress.
This speech will mark President Trump's first State of the Union of his second term.
The State of the Union Address, live Tuesday, February 24th.
Our coverage starts at 7 p.m. Eastern on the C-SPAN Networks.
C-SPAN, bringing you democracy unfiltered.
As we celebrate America's 250th birthday this year, the organization known as More Perfect has commissioned a series of essays about American presidents and first ladies, written and read by public officials, journalists, and historians.
The project is called In Pursuit.
Its goal is to bring American history to life through compelling stories.