Political Quotes

“I rise, first, to thank my colleagues, including the Presiding Officer, for supporting cloture today. It is the second major step in this body, passing the largest bipartisan jobs bill we have seen in this body in years. The bipartisan jobs bill has the potential to create or save around 2 million jobs, without cost to taxpayers, because it is simply standing up for American companies and American workers. For a change, we put American workers and American manufacturers first. It is important to, for a moment, consider how we got here. This effort did not begin this week or even this year. Efforts to combat Chinese currency manipulation have been underway for over half a decade. It began in earnest around 2005. Since then, the situation has grown worse for workers and businesses. In 2005, there was an intense debate inside the National Association of Manufacturers, which was representing a whole range of American manufacturers, from the small tool and die shop in Akron to the medium-size manufacturing company in Toledo, to GM, Ford, and other huge manufacturers. The division was smaller companies, generally--not in every case, of course, but smaller companies generally supported taking action against currency manipulation with China. Larger companies, many of which had already outsourced production to China, generally were opposed to standing up to the Chinese.…”