Political Quotes

“I thank my friend from Michigan. This is the mask of the Allegheny-Fayette Labor Council, which represents the coal miners that President Trumka loved so well. Madam Speaker, before he was the president of the AFL-CIO and an internationally known figure, he was a western Pennsylvanian. Rich Trumka was a football player, a deer hunter, a member of a great family. What I respected about him so much is that the western Pennsylvania part of Rich Trumka never went away. It always shone through. I heard him speak one time where he said one of the problems with our opponents in politics is that they want you to think the economy is just like the weather. It is just something that happens to people, and we might be able to predict it and prepare for it, but there is nothing we can do to change it. He knew that in parts of the country, like ours in western Pennsylvania, people had heard versions of that for so long at such high volume with so much corporate money and messaging behind it that it threatened the basic fabric of our community. The unions built the middle class not just in America but particularly in western Pennsylvania, and that has eroded over time. The benefits and the value of the labor movement have receded in a lot of people's minds.…”