Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, we in the industrial Midwest and Great Lakes heartland know firsthand why the Presidential election was so hard fought and close in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Our reasoning has endured a grim reality with a decades-long economic struggle to produce good jobs with good wages and benefits, but what we have experienced is a continuous outsourcing of millions of jobs to penny-wage sweatshops in Mexico, China, Bangladesh, and beyond. To the people of America's heartland, it feels like jobs are being moved just about everywhere but into the Midwest and Great Lakes. Daily we witness trainloads of imports flooding into our Nation, as closed and protected markets abroad block mutual exchange of exports. America hasn't had balanced trade accounts for three decades, and workers in those nations struggle to survive on measly wages and without spare cash cannot buy much of what they produce anyway. Meanwhile, pink-slipped U.S. workers have endured a painful toll-- annual wages now $7,000 less per year on average in northern Ohio-- while the cost of education expenses, health care, and everyday life rise and further squeeze pocketbooks. Please don't tell us robots took the jobs. This daily reality was the major backdrop to this recent election and deserves closer attention in the coming days. America's trade policy must result in trade balances, new jobs here, and preferably trade surpluses for our country, not job loss.…”