Political Quotes

“Mr. President, last week the Vice President was in my State in the Mahoning Valley, in the Youngstown area, northeast Ohio. He saw what I have been seeing in my State for the last several months, and he heard what I have been hearing from so many Ohioans in the last several months. He went to the Lordstown auto assembly plant, which assembles the Chevy Cruze. He saw what we have been seeing in my State, where manufacturing finally is coming back. From early 2000 to January 2010, about a 10-year period, the manufacturing sector in this country lost a huge number of jobs--more than 5 million jobs. In the 35 years before that, manufacturing jobs in this country were pretty constant, up and down. In 1997 or 1998, we had about the same number of manufacturing jobs in America that we had in 1965--a smaller percentage of the workforce, or smaller percentage of GDP, perhaps, but roughly the same number of jobs. From January of 2000 to January of 2010, some estimates were as high as one-third of our manufacturing jobs. We know there were at least 5 million jobs and some 60,000 plant closings in that 10-year period, from 2000 to 2010. It is almost impossible not to ascribe at least part of that to trade policy and tax policy--a tax policy that far too often has given manufacturing companies an incentive to shut down and move overseas.…”