00:00Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I will be supporting all of the pieces of legislation that we have before us.
00:10I am pleased that you have focused attention on the need to improve and expand ESOPs and worker ownership.
00:21We live in a moment in American history where we have more income and wealth inequality than we've ever had,
00:28where we have more concentration of ownership than we've ever had.
00:33And I think we live in a moment where millions of workers feel kind of powerless as to what their economic future can be.
00:40Tomorrow, some company can announce they're moving to China or shutting down, and workers have nothing to say about that.
00:47I think an antidote to that, in fact, is what we have been talking about, and I enjoyed very much the hearing that we had last week.
00:55I think all of the witnesses were very good.
00:56How do you empower workers?
00:59How do you create a climate where workers themselves are involved in the decision-making process so that they're not just cogs in a machine?
01:07That is our goal.
01:09And I think the legislation that we're looking at today is a modest, modest step forward.
01:14I have proposed a major piece of legislation which would enable workers and small business owners all over the country to get more information as to how they can move forward to ESOPs or worker ownerships.
01:31I know in Vermont, and I think we heard from the panelists last week, that there are many small businesses, guys who may be a starter to business, work hard, have 20, 30 employees, would just as soon leave that business to their employees if they had the tax breaks and the knowledge as to how to do that.
01:51So we need a bank of financial support from the federal government to help those workers and those employees move forward.
01:59We're not doing that today.
02:00I hope we will do that in the near future.
02:03But having said that, Mr. Chairman, I will be supporting the pieces of legislation that we're discussing.
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