Political Quotes

“I rise to talk about the trade debate we are having in the Senate. I know we have heard a lot of debate on both sides. I wish first to talk about some of the background before I get to what is in front of us in terms of the process in voting, amendments, and things like that. I represent the State of Pennsylvania, which, like many States, suffered through the devastation of not just the 1980s--when it comes to job loss in, for example, the steel industry, we know that, for example, in a very short timeframe, about 5 years, for example, the steelworkers lost half of their jobs in southwestern Pennsylvania--in just those 5 years. They went from around 90,000 steelworkers down to below 45,000 in just 5 years. That is only one example of job loss that families in southwestern Pennsylvania have lived through, as well as other examples from around the State that we don't have time to recite today. So that is kind of the backdrop. And, thank goodness, the steel industry and the steelworkers came together and were able to recover somewhat--obviously, not fully, but they were able to recover over time. And in that time period--we are getting into the 1990s and then into the 2000s--we have had a lot of assertions made that if a trade agreement is brought into effect, we would have job growth and it would help those who had been displaced. But, unfortunately, what has happened over time is that folks in parts of Pennsylvania have seen some of the history.…”