Dan Kildee: “I come to the floor today just to take a few minutes to call attention to a problem that I have been trying to raise in…”

“I come to the floor today just to take a few minutes to call attention to a problem that I have been trying to raise in this body and in my work before I came to Congress for some time, specifically, to describe the conditions in my own hometown of Flint, Michigan. The subject that I am addressing is the unique and really difficult challenges facing America's older industrial cities, cities like my hometown of Flint, Michigan, a city that is the birthplace of General Motors. It is where the first UAW contract was created, was signed. But it is a city that has really struggled as it has made this transition from the old to the new economy. It is a city that had 200,000 people just a couple of decades ago and now hovers right around 100,000 citizens, a poorer city than it once was, a city that has lost 90 percent of its manufacturing jobs. {time} 1815 I raise this because I believe that this Congress and the Federal Government have an obligation to reinvest in these communities, communities that helped build this country and that can have a significant effect on our future. These are the cities where innovation took place and where it can take place again. But my own hometown right now is struggling, struggling with a problem, unfortunately, that is not entirely of its own making. My home of Flint, a city that was once really the center of the auto manufacturing universe, can't even guarantee to its citizens one of the most essential functions of government.…”