Political Quotes

“Representative Kaptur, you have been at this for a long time. You come from an area in this Nation that in recent decades has been called the Rust Belt. I think that is not the situation, with your leadership. We have seen a resurgence in American manufacturing; and 20, 25 years ago, we had just under 20 million Americans working in manufacturing with those middle-income jobs. This is the middle class. They were able to support their family, educate, get a boat, go on vacation, buy a house, provide the food, and take care of their family, just as you described. And then we have seen in the last 20 years an enormous decline--from 20 million down to just under 11 million manufacturing jobs, and a lot of that decline had to do with American policies. You mentioned trade programs. Clearly, that had a lot to do with offshoring tax policies that encouraged corporations to send jobs offshore rather than keeping jobs here. And there are other labor policies and the like that made it difficult for the American family to earn that living. Our challenge is to reinvigorate the working American families' opportunity. And to address that, I will say that I heard a remarkable speech by a freshman. And it is not that I have been here so long. Steve Horsford from Las Vegas gave a speech on the floor here about a week ago, talking about these issues and talking about the challenge that American families face. I asked him to join us.…”