Political Quotes

“Mr. President, this morning I drove from Cleveland to Youngstown. I was in Youngstown, OH--Mahoning Valley--at Teamsters Local 377 talking to workers. There were maybe 200 of them in the room, mostly retirees who are in danger of having their pensions cut-- pensions they earned over a lifetime of hard work. To understand how that happens, when workers are at the bargaining table, whether it is Teamsters, electricians, Steelworkers or SCIU, they so often are willing to give up wages today in order to have a secure retirement in 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years. That is what these workers chose to do. They chose to give up wages. Whether they worked for Schwebel's in Youngstown, whether they worked for Roadway, over the road, whether they were working for any number of companies, they were willing, at the bargaining table, to give up higher wages today to have money to set aside that was then invested often in Wall Street. We will get to that in a minute. It is bad enough Wall Street squandered those workers' money. It is worse that the government that is supposed to look out for these workers simply isn't doing it. One of the retired workers, Ed Barker, told us: We did our part. Now it is time for Members of Congress to cross party lines and do theirs. We talk a good game in this body about how we respect workers and respect their work, but I am not sure we always live that.…”