Political Quotes

“Mr. President, first, I wish to thank my colleague who has spoken before me. The reason we are here tonight is because Senators Brown and Sanders said: Why talk about outsourcing of jobs, let's do something about it. That is what we are trying to do tonight. We are trying to actually do something about it. This is not just verbiage. We see before us the faces of the people who have lost their jobs. We see the families, we hear the children, and so there is an urgency to do something. Every place I go in New York--it can be in upstate, an old manufacturing place; it can be on Long Island, supposedly the new economy--I hear about jobs leaving New York and leaving America and going overseas. Then, there is some talk as if this is inexorable. It is not inexorable. That is what we are here to say tonight. We can do something to stop this, and stop it we must. Manufacturing used to be the backbone of our economy. It supported millions of families, was the staple of middle-class communities. It is no secret what happened. Company after company after company began sending jobs to China and Vietnam and Malaysia, to Mexico and Brazil and parts of South America. These countries have lax enforcement of work rules, environmental rules, and pay rules. So it is cheap to produce goods. We have heard the statistics, how the United States lost millions of manufacturing jobs in the last 10 years--in New York, 90,000 manufacturing jobs in the last 3 years alone.…”