American Jobs

Floor Speech

Ms. KAPTUR. Congressman Garamendi, I want to thank you for your leadership coming from California. And my dear, dear colleague Tim Ryan from the eastern quarter of Ohio, what a privilege it is to be here with you as well and to be a voice for we the people--we the people, not just the superrich people, not just the people running the six biggest banks in the country that just took the rest of America to the cleaners, but Americans who speak for the vast majority who, like that chart states, want a better deal for America. We want investment in America. We want to make goods in America because we know, when we create here and we make here, we create jobs here and we create real wealth here for everyone, not just the privileged few.

It's really an amazing fact to think about that General Motors, when I was growing up, was the biggest employer in the country, and northern Ohio just hummed. Plants had 14,000 workers, 10,000 workers. Now you're lucky if a plant has 1,200 workers, and you see shuttered plants around our country. Thank God for the recovery package and what was done to resuscitate and refinance the U.S. automotive industry so that other countries can't eat our lunch, that they can't eat our investment capital and all of the investment that still exists around this country, the millions of families and retirees that depend on a healthy automotive sector.

When you think about it, today, Walmart is the largest employer. We have gone from General Motors being the largest employer to Walmart being the largest employer. And this week, Walmart announced that even though it's the largest employer, even though it's making so much money for its shareholders and top executives, if you work for Walmart and you put in under 24 hours a week work, you're not eligible for their health insurance. Yup, I can just think of all those women, all those people that are working in Walmart around the country, their standard of living will drop.

I agree with what Congressman Ryan says about the middle class. We believe in people earning a living and, as a result, being secure in the middle class--earning a decent wage, getting a decent health benefit, and having a retirement program you can depend upon.

I'm really happy that the cost-of-living increase will give, on average, to seniors across this country 360 extra dollars--360 extra dollars a year on average--because they're going to be able to buy some food, better food for themselves. They're going to be able to pay their utility bills. Do you know the first thing they will do? I'll tell you the first thing they'll do. They're going to buy their grandchildren presents. They're going to go spend that money. They're going to spend it in the economy.

Every single business in this country, what do they

say? We need customers. We need customers. We don't have enough people working--carrying 14 to 24 million people unemployed or underemployed--to really get this economy to hum. They're waiting for customers. Every Member of Congress, if they're awake, knows that.

And so when we see a call for a better deal for America--for all the people, for we the people, not just for the Wall Street bankers who brought us to this juncture who, by the way, are doing very well and controlling two-thirds of the financial system of this country, which is part of the problem we are facing--too much power in too few hands. But as we look across our country to say what can we do, as Members, in order to create more of an investment climate here, you create investment when you create customers. And, honestly, you don't create customers and create wealth at the same time when you just take all the stuff that's made in China, bring it here and sell it. That money goes--most of it goes back to where those goods were made.

We have a real challenge in our country to reward Make It In America, to make goods here and to sell goods here. And as Congressman Ryan says, for those countries that don't play by the rules--and China doesn't--whether it's on currency, whether it's on the environment, or whether it's on the fair treatment of workers, they're not even living in the same universe as we live in. Who would want to live in Beijing? You'd need a gas mask to survive. Is that really what we want to do is downgrade our standard of living for the American people to that level? And that is the course we are on. That is the course we are on, Congressman Garamendi.

When you talk about how many people in America are poor today, do you think they like being poor? God loves them just as He loves everybody in the upper class and the middle class. They don't want to be poor. They want a job.

Here's the figure. Let me put this one on the table. I was talking to one of the major rail executives today, and I was inviting him to come out to our region because we have a lot of railroads, and they're hiring. He said, Congresswoman, I want you to know something. We posted 4,000 jobs in rail across this country. And he said, Guess how many applications we got? Five hundred thousand. Five hundred thousand applications for 4,000 jobs.

Think about what the American people are saying to us. Austerity will not bring prosperity. What will bring prosperity is investment in America, making goods in America, creating goods in America, growing products in America, processing products in America, and holding our trade partners accountable for their actions, whether it's currency manipulation or renegotiating trade agreements that are not operating in the interests of the United States and that are far out of balance.

Let me tell you, the most out-of-balance trade agreement is with China. And if you go back to NAFTA when it passed here in 1993, they said, Oh, my goodness, there are going to be millions of jobs. Well, they're not in the United States. They're not here. In fact, we've amassed a $1 trillion trade deficit with Mexico since NAFTA passed. So all those people must live somewhere in outer space to think that that has actually created wealth in America. It has been a sucking sound, a sucking sound to other countries--not here.

All you've got to do is know the math. Know the math. Just look at the numbers. You don't have to believe me. Look at the trade accounts. It's written in black and white every month. We aren't winning. We are losing the trade wars all over this world, and it is costing us investment here. It's costing us jobs here. It's costing us wealth here. And that is where those poverty figures are rising, because we aren't reading the math and we aren't making goods in America and balancing our accounts here at home by putting people back to work.

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