Political Quotes

“I thank my colleague from Delaware for his leadership on this issue. He has been indefatigable. He has been very strong on this issue. I think it is one of the most important issues that faces us. I am not an economist; I am a country lawyer from Maine, but one of the things I know about any economy is you can't build an economy by taking in each other's laundry. Somebody somewhere has to make something, and that is the basis of wealth creation. Somehow in the 1980s, 1990s, and the early part of this century, we sort of lost sight of that and manufacturing took an enormous hit. We lost 32 percent of our manufacturing jobs in the decade from 2000 to 2010. We lost 42,000 factories--not people, 42,000 factories. Manufacturing was literally withering away in this country. I think a lot of people sort of wrung their hands and said: Oh, well, I guess that is just the way of the world. It is all going to Asia, China, and Mexico. It is going to low-wage countries, and that is just the way it works. The problem is, as my colleague from Delaware pointed out, Germany has gone in the opposite direction, and their country has the same standard of living, the same labor standards, the same employment cost levels, and yet 20 percent of their economy is based upon manufacturing; whereas, it is only 10 or 11 percent in this country. So that tells me it is not impossible. It tells me there is an opportunity here and that we can't just lay back and say: Well, I guess that is going to go away.…”