Hilda L. Solis: “The gentleman just hit a real soft spot for me in my heart. My mother, who is now retired, worked for about 25 years for…”

“The gentleman just hit a real soft spot for me in my heart. My mother, who is now retired, worked for about 25 years for a big toy maker in my district, standing on her feet most of her 20 years there, and now has some very serious problems with her legs. That company employed over 2,000 people in our community. They left. They went to Mexico, then they went to China. We now import those same toys. Many of those toys place harm upon our children because they do not meet our consumer safety standards. And nobody is crying out saying, wait a minute, what have we done here. We let go of these jobs, we let go of those pensions, those health and welfare benefits that went with those families and jobs. They went somewhere else, yet the people making those same items do not have any protections and maybe get 10 cents a day for producing products that they end up sending back here that somebody buys for $20 or $30. That is wrong.”