Make it in America

Floor Speech

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Ms. KAPTUR. I want to thank you, Congressman Garamendi, for your continuing leadership on jobs in America and Make It In America.

It is a pleasure to join also with Congressmen Norcross and Sherman, who are here tonight after hours as we attempt to bring the cause of the American people here to our Nation's Capitol.

I want to thank you for the logo of ``Make It In America.'' We in the Midwest would also say ``make it and grow it in America'' because agriculture is a major underpinning of Ohio as well, and I know it is of California.

I want to begin my remarks tonight by saying that the American economy, in a way, is upside down. We have seen two-thirds of the manufacturing jobs in America eliminated over the last three decades, and it isn't just because of technology.

It is because those jobs have been outsourced to third-world environments, where people work for penny wage jobs, and their livelihoods don't really increase. They aren't bettering themselves. They are basically not starving. They certainly don't live a middle class way of life.

But two-thirds of the manufacturing jobs, gone in America. And at the same time, we see the financial sector growing in power. Six banks headquartered on Wall Street mainly controlling the investment that occurs that allows the outsourcing, the very same characters that brought this economy down and hurt the world through the development of derivatives.

It has been interesting to read about the Greek financial crisis and to see that Goldman Sachs is right in there again, creating a derivative instrument that can't hold water. So the inner tube is just leaking all over the place.

It is important for the American people to see that manufacturing jobs have gone down. We have lost two-thirds of them. And the financial sector, meanwhile, has gained power, the very same characters that are outsourcing these jobs.

Because who has the money to invest in third-world environments? It sure isn't the community banks that I represent.

Let me point out that, over the last 30 years, we haven't had a single year where the United States was able to send more out--export goods--than import from other places.

So we have been upside down as an economy now for going on 30 years.

And from my region, that means the average family has had their income go down, their net effective buying power, $7,000 as the middle class hemorrhages.

Let's look at the numbers. We have had over $10 trillion of trade deficit since the mid-1970s, when the first free trade agreement was signed. That $10 trillion probably translates into a loss of over 40 million jobs over that period of time.

We are growing now sluggishly, sluggishly, because the ``make it'' and ``grow it'' parts of America have been very, very trimmed back.

If you lose two-thirds of your manufacturing jobs, you have growing poverty and you have sinking wages and sinking buying power across our country.

Now, there is a book. I recommend it to everybody. ``American Theocracy'' by Kevin Phillips. In chapter 8, he talks about the financialization of the U.S. economy: loss of manufacturing jobs, increase of jobs in the financial sector, high rewards for the people that sit at the top, but for everybody else, sinking wages and a shrinking middle class.

The derivative instruments that hurt our country and the collateralized debt obligations that threw us into a spin back in 2008, those weren't invented by people in Toledo, and I doubt they were invented by people in Cleveland or central California. They were invented by money-changers.

And they had figured out how to trade away American jobs, make huge, huge profits for their shareholders at the expense of the rest of the American people, the 99 percent.

On agriculture, I want to say that what has happened over the same period of time--because we have a vast underpinning of agriculture in this country. But even with it, 15 percent of our food is now imported. It used to be about 3 percent.

Start looking at the shelves and you are going: Oh, what did we trade away for that or that or that? And certainly, in pharmaceuticals, we have traded away most of those jobs someplace else.

And isn't it interesting that the cost of pharmaceuticals hasn't gone down, as we have just seen an avalanche of drugs coming in here, whether they be generic or brand-name.

There are people who are financing this outsourcing, and they are sitting fat and happy in the major financial center of our country.

I can go through my region. I can look at companies like Dixon Ticonderoga. It didn't close its doors in Sandusky, Ohio, because it couldn't make its crayons and school supplies anymore. It was moved to Mexico, where it sits near Mexico City. It moved from Sandusky, Ohio, down there.

Delphi moved from the same general area, Port Clinton, Ohio. Ford Focus just last week announced 4,000 jobs out of suburban Detroit down to Mexico. Champion Spark Plug in Toledo, closed. Acklin Stamping in Toledo, closed. Dura, Dana, Chase Bag, Textile Leather, the list goes on and on. Ford's Maumee Stamping, there couldn't be a better Ford stamping plant in America than the one in Maumee--doors shut, jobs gone.

Two-thirds. That is just one part of America. Two-thirds of the manufacturing jobs of this country, lost.

Our economy is lopsided. It is benefiting a few. We are seeding the field, and that is why the American people feel the pinch.

I just wanted to make one other important point where the gentleman references research and innovation. There will be a patent bill coming up here very soon which I hope people will vote against because it will further dampen the ability of individual inventors and those working in our universities inventing the new products of the future and will reward only the big companies.

And I say to my colleagues, if you haven't decided how to vote on H.R. 9, I hope you will vote ``no'' on what is being called the Innovation Act because what it is, it is a transfer of more power to the biggest global corporations to say to their patents: Full steam ahead.

But if you are an individual out there in America or you are a person who doesn't have a whole legal team of lawyers who are being paid at your behest, you don't have a chance. You won't have a chance with H.R. 9.

We have a bill, H.R. 2045, that I hope people will look at as an alternative. It is supported by all of the research universities, small inventors across our country, who can't afford any longer to put their invention out there because they don't have the legal or financial capacity to defend it.

There is something really insidious about what is going on with our patent system and will make it so much harder.

And I give as proof, I read in our local newspaper the other day--they listed all the patents that had been approved this year over the first half of the year from my part of the country. There wasn't a single individual patent approved. Every single patent that was approved belonged to a company that had already been successful.

There wasn't even a university patent approved. I thought: Oh, my goodness. This is really not going to support innovation. This only supports the very same big-pocketed folks who already hold all the power in this society and have far too much sway in this Congress.

So I thank the gentleman for allowing me to add my two cents to the discussion this evening and to say the American people deserve a better deal than this.

I hope that Members will look at our Glass-Steagall Act as well. That is my bill, Elizabeth Warren's bill over in the other body, to break up the big banks and to have more democratic activity among the financial institutions of this country and not just lodging over two-thirds of the power in the big six.

It is really warping our society, and it is making it much less representative. It is harming manufacturing. It is harming agriculture. It is harming innovation.

Thank you, Congressman Garamendi, for the phenomenal work that you do in allowing all of us whose districts have been so impacted to add to the American fabric and represent all of America, not just the wealthiest part of it.

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Ms. KAPTUR. I just want to place on the record that our Glass-Steagall bill to essentially break up the big banks and take the investment side of the operation away from the prudent banking portion of it is H.R. 381.

We have over 60 cosponsors of our bill here in the House, and I am hoping, as the American people hear our message tonight, they will encourage their Members of Congress to sponsor our Glass-Steagall Restoration Act, H.R. 381.

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