[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 154 (Wednesday, October 29, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H10114-H10117]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        THE DISMANTLEMENT OF OUR MANUFACTURING AND ECONOMIC BASE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 2003, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is recognized 
for 30 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, this evening I would like to address the 
issue of the economy in our country and the dismantling of our 
manufacturing and economic base.
  President Bush owns the worst record of job creation since the 
Presidency of Herbert Hoover. More than 3.2 million Americans have lost 
their jobs since this President was installed in office.
  The Bush administration's destruction of jobs across our country 
indeed has spread like wildfire. From Massachusetts to the Carolinas, 
from the Midwest to California. Now, they have even tried to take away 
our overtime pay. Isn't enough enough?
  Accelerating job loss under this administration is the norm, not the 
exception. Indeed, in less than 3 years the Republicans have lost 3.2 
million jobs and at the same time added $3.3 trillion to our national 
debt. Today 9 million of our citizens are out of work and cannot find a 
job.
  The gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Hooley) has a discharge petition in 
this House, so that we can extend unemployment benefits to those who 
simply cannot find work inside the boundaries of this country. That 
bill should not require a discharge petition. It should come to this 
floor immediately because it is necessary for those who will lose their 
benefits by the end of this year.
  President Bush has the worst record of job creation, actually he has 
created no new net jobs, of any President since Herbert Hoover during 
the great depression. Every President since World War II has created 
jobs but for this President.
  This year, the United States is going to lose more manufacturing 
jobs. It will mark job loss in the manufacturing sector every single 
year of his Presidency. And if you look at the accelerating loss of 
manufacturing jobs, this has never happened since World War II in our 
country. We have lost 2.5 million manufacturing jobs.
  The Great Lakes States are being hollowed out in the steel industry, 
in

[[Page H10115]]

the machine tool industry, in the automotive parts industry. The 
Carolinas are being hollowed out in furniture, in textiles. 
Massachusetts has suffered enormously, as much as any other State in 
our Union.
  There seems to be no end to the job killing across our country. More 
bad news on job losses hit California today. And more people are 
looking longer to find work. Mr. Speaker, 5 million people are working 
part time because they cannot find a full-time job.
  So the Bush administration's record on jobs is abysmal. But the rich 
are getting richer thanks to President Bush's massive tax breaks for 
millionaires. But half of America's families get nothing from his tax 
package.
  And the middle class is getting squeezed as usual. In return for 
meager tax cuts, they are facing enormous increases in local and State 
property taxes, gas taxes, special levies. And tuition rate increases 
for college students are going up across our country and going off the 
charts. In Ohio, for instance, our State has raised tuition 40 percent. 
It has recently suspended new entrants into what is called the Ohio 
Tuition Tax Authority, the 529 program, that allows parents to save for 
their children's college education. They do not want any more people in 
the program because there is not any money for it.
  Our State is closing libraries on Sundays and forcing the burden of 
paying for libraries not on the general tax duplicate for the whole 
State, but they are pushing it down on property taxes.
  So the middle class has had a net increase in taxes since this 
President took office. The middle class is getting squeezed as State 
and local governments rack up record levels of debt, cut important 
services, and raise taxes and user fees.
  This Congress just approved an enormous amount of money for Iraq and 
yet not a single dime was approved for our States and localities that 
are running record deficits and are being forced to cut services. More 
pressure on our families, more pressure on our workers.
  Listen to these numbers. Nine million Americans out of work, the most 
in a decade. Almost 4 million Americans, 4 million, out of unemployment 
compensation. That is 13 million Americans right there. 151,800 
manufacturing jobs lost in Ohio under this President's watch. 145,300 
manufacturing jobs lost in North Carolina. 297,700 manufacturing jobs 
lost in California. 215,300 more unemployed people in New York since 
Bush took office.
  We witness daily the real and deepening crisis in manufacturing. 
Between January 1998 and August of 2003, U.S. manufacturing employment 
dropped by 3 million persons. During the Bush years, the pace of job 
washout has accelerated dramatically. In fact, manufacturing share of 
our Gross Domestic Product fell below 14 percent last year. As the 
Economic Policy Institute notes, the manufacturing sector occupies a 
special place in U.S. economy because productivity growth in 
manufacturing has historically outpaced the rest of our economy, 
driving real increases in our standard of living. We know that well in 
our part of the country, the Midwest.
  Good paying jobs in factories with good benefits are the key to our 
great middle class, the key to achieving the American dream, to buying 
a home, to putting your kids through college. Manufacturing fosters 
supply and demand growth, providing the basis for durable economic 
growth for the wider economy. But total employment in manufacturing in 
the United States used to be about 18 million workers, ranging between 
16.5 and 19.5 million. However, that has plummeted to 14.6 million 
workers as of August of this year.
  This record low level of manufacturing employment in our country 
coincides with the largest trade deficits our country has ever 
recorded. For the first time in almost 40 years, despite an increasing 
population, we have record low employment in manufacturing. The net 
result is a lower standard of living, greater economic pressure on our 
families, a fracturing of communities, a diminished tax base for 
schools, local governments and angry citizens, among other things.

  The jobs did not just disappear like the horse and buggy. They have 
gone to other countries. Americans are still driving cars, but American 
workers enjoy less of a market share compared to foreign companies. 
Americans still use refrigerators, but they are more often made in 
Mexico or China, rather than Iowa.
  I present this particular chart this evening on the U.S. trade 
deficit, the balance, because every single year it has gotten worse and 
worse and worse until this past year of 2002 and this year of 2003 we 
are hovering at half a trillion dollars in more imports coming into our 
country than exports going out.
  And just in that one year alone, that level of trade deficit 
translates into an additional 1 million lost jobs. Because for every 
billion dollars of trade deficit, of more imports coming in here than 
exports going out, you lose 20,000 jobs. So multiply $500 billion by 
20,000 and what do you come out with? An additional million lost jobs.
  We have never hemorrhaged jobs and income to this extent. Americans 
still use steel for bridges and buildings and vehicles and appliances, 
but our steel industry is under siege from dumped steel and foreign 
competition.
  Americans still eat food, but more and more of our food is coming 
from foreign countries as farmers across this country bite the dust. 
And the average age of farmers in our Nation is now 58 years of age. 
Americans still use telephones and electronic equipment. They still 
watch television, but those products are now made in Mexico or Asia. 
Our demand has not changed, in fact, it is greater than ever, but the 
problem is on the supply side. Our factories have lost market share, 
which translates into fewer orders, which translates into fewer jobs, 
which translates into greater unemployment and the dismantling of our 
mighty industrial and agriculture economy.
  How long can this go on? Can America regain its competitive edge? The 
staggering rise in this U.S. trade deficit, particularly with China, 
claims millions and millions of more jobs. And these are the figures 
for China. The U.S. trade deficit with China alone this year will rise 
to over $103 billion. That means 2 million lost jobs just related to 
China. And it is no surprise if you think about your own experience 
when you go to the store, look at the tag. Where is it from? That job 
is being created somewhere else at slave-level wages, but it certainly 
is not being created in this country. And that creates a siphoning off 
of income by our citizens somewhere else.
  The staggering rise in the U.S. trade deficit with China, I mean look 
at this, it is absolutely gigantic, never experienced before in our 
Nation's history, is claiming millions and millions of more jobs every 
year. It is a product of bad deals, bad deals, bad trade deals such as 
NAFTA and the World Trade Organization and most favored nation status 
for China, giveaways on the part of the U.S. Congress, and the Bush and 
Clinton administrations.
  Selling American workers and our companies down the river has been a 
bipartisan effort by some here in Washington, but the bill is coming 
due. Between the first quarter of 1995 and the second quarter of 2003, 
the overall trade deficit skyrocketed to over $411 billion, dominated 
by over $408 billion in the deficit in manufactured goods.
  Since 2000, the year Congress approved permanent normal trade 
relations with China, a communist country, the largest U.S. trade 
deficit in American history has been amassed with China. The deficit 
with China exceeded $100 billion last year alone, and this year shows 
no sign of slowing.
  The manufacturing trade deficit, according to the Economic Policy 
Institute, alone for all of the nations from which we are importing 
goods reached $491 billion by the end of 2002. The Bush administration 
says it wants to solve the problem with China alone by manipulating 
currency rates, and I can tell them it will not work. Because it never 
worked with Japan.
  I can remember back in the 1980s when they patted me on the head in a 
very patronizing way as a young Member of Congress and they said, 
Marcy, do not worry about the trade deficit with Japan. When the yen-
dollar relationship reaches maybe 90 yen to the dollar, everything will 
work out. You know what? It never did. It did not matter whether the 
yen was 90 to the dollar or 230 to the dollar. When you have a 
controlled economy and you

[[Page H10116]]

prohibit imports, and you have Keiretsu supplier chains into which 
other country's companies cannot bid, you will never balance the trade 
accounts of this country because other nations do not play by the same 
rules.
  And so Americans still buy cars and trucks, and still drive cars and 
trucks, and still buy refrigerators and stoves, and televisions and 
computers and DVD players, and still consume vastly more than any other 
people in the world, but we are losing manufacturing jobs at a record 
pace. And it is dragging down our entire economy. Have you noticed?
  Mr. Speaker, this is not just a regional issue. It is not just about 
the Midwest, although we in the Midwest understand the importance of 
manufacturing to our economy. Earlier this week on Capitol Hill, a 
Republican polster told a briefing that the jobs in the Midwest are 
going and they are not coming back, and he explicitly mentioned Ohio. I 
refuse to accept that. And I know my dear colleague, the gentleman from 
Ohio (Mr. Brown) refuses to accept that because we know we cannot 
withstand the loss of millions more of our manufacturing jobs and this 
type of hemorrhage, and turn this republic over to our children and 
grandchildren in better condition that we found it.
  Mr. Speaker, I have some comments I want to make about when these 
countries get these dollars from the United States, what they end up 
doing with our dollars, but I would be very happy to yield to my 
colleague, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) who fought with us so 
valiantly in our efforts to amend NAFTA before its passage and to deny 
this kind of trade access to China without getting something on the 
other end.

                              {time}  2130

  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman, my fellow 
Ohioan, with whom I share one county, Lorraine County. I appreciate the 
good work the gentlewoman does there and throughout our State and 
especially the leadership that the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) 
has shown. People that watch C-SPAN and people who have followed these 
issues know that the gentlewoman from Toledo has done more for justice 
and trade agreements than perhaps any Member of this body. Way before 
my time when we started working together against NAFTA in 1993, she was 
doing this for the decade before that also. So I thank her for that.
  The gentlewoman has done a particularly good job in talking about the 
big picture. I want to talk a bit about Ohio and what it means in a 
State of our size, the seventh biggest State in the country, I believe, 
and a State that has been hit, not quite the hardest but darn near the 
hardest of any State in the country in terms of lost manufacturing 
jobs. One out of six manufacturing jobs in Ohio is gone. That means for 
every six people in manufacturing, the day that George Bush put up his 
right hand and took the oath of office, one out of those six people 
across my State, our State, has lost his or her job in manufacturing.
  Those are the best-paying industrial jobs. They are the jobs that 
send kids to college. They are the jobs that buy homes. They are the 
jobs that buy cars. They are the jobs that put food on the table.
  At the same time, we have seen this economy managed by President Bush 
go from a major budget surplus to now a $500 billion budget deficit. 
And that is not counting the $87 billion that the President is pushing 
through the Congress to spend on Iraq, where one-third of that money 
goes to private contractors and much of that money goes to unbid 
contracts to the President's friends. Halliburton, the largest 
contractor in Iraq, is still paying Vice President Cheney $13,000 a 
month. It boggles the mind. While Americans are suffering, jobs are 
lost, the manufacturing basis is worst than decimated, literally, that 
we are helping to enrich a company with private contracts where it is 
still paying the Vice President of the United States $13,000 a month.
  When you talk about the trade deficit the gentlewoman mentioned, we 
now have a $450 billion-a-year trade deficit. The trade deficit for 
August of this year was greater than the trade deficit for the entire 
year of 1992. In 1992 we had a trade deficit, if I recall, of about $39 
billion. The trade deficit of a couple of months ago, 1 month was $42 
billion.
  As the gentlewoman said, every billion dollars in a trade deficit 
translates into 20,000 lost jobs. So when we are talking about a trade 
deficit of $40 billion, $45 billion a month, you are talking about 
hundreds of thousands, millions of jobs certainly in the course of a 
year, we are losing in manufacturing; $100 million trade deficit with 
China in about a decade ago. Now we have a $100 billion trade deficit 
with China, a thousand times greater than just about a decade ago.
  President Bush's answer is always more tax cuts for the most 
privileged. The average millionaire in this country gets a $90,000 tax 
cut. Half of Ohioans got zero dollars in tax cuts; $90,000 for 
millionaires, zero for half of Ohioans, and only a few dollars for most 
of the rest of Ohioans, while one out of six Ohioans who worked in 
manufacturing has lost his or her job.
  The President's answer, tax breaks for the most privileged and more 
trade agreements. The President is now in the middle, as the 
gentlewoman knows, working to negotiate an expansion of NAFTA. He wants 
to expand NAFTA to Central America, something called CAFTA, the Central 
America Free Trade Agreement. He then wants to expands CAFTA and NAFTA 
to the FTAA, Free Trade Act of the Americas. That will double the size 
of NAFTA. It will quadruple the number of low-income workers in the 
free trade area, the Western Hemisphere area.
  What does that mean? That means a continued hemorrhaging of jobs. We 
know we have lost in our State, I believe the gentlewoman said, 150,000 
manufacturing jobs. We have lost 150,000 manufacturing jobs in Ohio. It 
is not like a normal recession that this President helped to cause. It 
is not a normal recession where people get their jobs back after 6 
months or a year. These jobs are lost. They are in Mexico. They are in 
China. They are in these places that the gentlewoman was pointing out.
  When the President's answer to every economic problem is more tax 
cuts to the most privileged on the one hand, and more trade agreements 
that hemorrhage jobs to Mexico and China on the other, it troubles me 
to think what our future is.
  It is so clear what we need to do in terms of restoring American 
manufacturing, but it is so wrong what the President has decided to do. 
More tax cuts for millionaires, $90,000 on the average; more trade 
agreements, expanding NAFTA to Latin America and continuing to 
hemorrhage thousands, hundreds of thousands in the case of our State, 
manufacturing jobs south of the border, east of the border, across the 
ocean or wherever.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman for raising 
several critical issues this evening, including the disparity between 
those Americans who are losing their jobs and certainly very privileged 
people in this country including the Vice President of this Nation.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to follow up on what the gentleman was saying 
about the compensation that the Vice President receives from his former 
corporation, Halliburton Corporation. The gentleman is absolutely 
correct in what he says; and in addition to the figures he has placed 
on the record, the Congressional Research Service issued a report that 
the other body requested, including not just the funds that the 
gentleman mentioned for the Vice President, but also deferred salary 
and stock options, 433,333 of them to be exact, and Halliburton stock 
owned by the Vice President. And here is what these benefits pay him.
  In deferred salary, according to this report, in 2001 Vice President 
Cheney received $205,298 from Halliburton while he is serving as Vice 
President and permitting no-bid contracts to go from the Department of 
Defense to this Vice President. In 2002 he received $162,392; and 
similar payments are to be made in 2003, 2004, and 2005. So there is an 
ongoing corporate obligation paid to him in company funds.

  In addition, he has these stock options, 433,333 of them in three 
different traunches. The value of those stock options today alone are 
valued at over $26,674,990. It is not as though he does not have an 
interest in what happens

[[Page H10117]]

to that company. And this is in addition to a $20 million retirement 
package paid to him by Halliburton after only 5 years of employment 
that he held with that company and a $1.4 million cash bonus paid to 
him in Halliburton in 2001, and additional millions of dollars of 
compensation paid to him while he was employed by the company.
  Now, compare that to the people in our country who are losing their 
jobs and those we are having to fight for here on this floor to get 
extensions of unemployment benefits. One of the aspects of the job loss 
in our country and related to the trade deficit with China and with all 
of the nations is the fact that when these countries, the people in 
these countries sell us goods, financially our dollars go back to that 
country and the companies in that country. And it is very interesting 
what they do with their dollars. First of all, they purchase pieces of 
us so that the brain of the corporation is no longer located in this 
country, but rather wherever those companies are located which means 
that we become a derivative economy.
  Secondly, those dollars that end up in the hands of foreign interests 
are being used to purchase our public debt. And one of the hidden 
aspects of this horrendous trade deficit that we are racking up is that 
countries like Japan and China and the Middle Eastern oil kingdoms are 
buying larger and larger pieces of us. In fact, they now own well over 
a trillion dollars of our debt on which we are paying them interest.
  Is that not a fine how do you do?
  According to the latest year for which I have figures, we paid over 
$85 billion in interest to these foreign creditors to the United 
States, the largest being Japan. In 2001, we paid her $26.1 billion of 
our tax money. Those are dollars we did not pay to our citizens. We did 
not sell savings bonds to our citizens and ask them to pay the interest 
to them. We paid the interest to Japan, which will not open our markets 
to their products and continues to exclude our suppliers in their 
automotive supply chain, but we paid them $26.1 billion.
  We paid China and Hong Kong, this was back in 2001, before this 
deficit was going up as much as it is now. It was horrendous back then, 
but it is getting worse. We paid China back then over $10 billion, $10 
billion. So just China and Japan alone we had over $36.5 billion in 
interest. That is more money than we put into NASA. In one year NASA's 
budget is about $14.5 billion. We could run three NASAs for what we are 
paying just in interest to Japan and China.
  Now, to the oil kingdoms we paid over $6.7 billion, $6.7 billion. 
Could that not put a lot of our young people through college? Could 
that not educate new doctors for the future for free, for free? We 
could pay for their tuition and ask them to serve in the underserved 
areas of this country.
  We paid Korea and Taiwan $5.6 billion. So if you total everything up, 
$85 billion in interest as of 2 years ago to these foreign creditors, 
people who are buying our debt because we cannot self-finance anymore. 
The hole of the debt is getting bigger and bigger. We cannot even buy 
it ourselves. We are pawning it off to foreign interests. Literally, it 
has gotten so bad that nearly half of the Treasury securities that are 
sold every year in our country are being purchased by foreign 
interests.
  So the share of foreign ownership of our debt is growing every year. 
Because when these countries that are responsible for our trade deficit 
end up getting our dollars, they buy a piece of us. Think about that; 
$85 billion dollars, we could take care of all the disability 
compensation for our veterans. We could increase hazard pay for our 
young men and women in the Armed Forces who are giving their lives 
every day. We had a measure on the floor last week for $1,500 which was 
defeated despite our objections. We could triple it.
  We could take care of TRICARE for our Guard and Reserve and the 
families who are part of that system. The Republican leadership will 
not allow that bill on the floor. We could create a real whole health 
care system for not just active duty but for our Guard and Reserve 
across this country.
  We could build new water systems all over this country for $85 
billion. Only a portion of that would it take to modernize water 
systems under every city in this country. So the cost of this kind of 
trade deficit with China, with all of the other countries, the lost 
jobs here at home, and then the insidious erosion of our own financial 
independence, because of the transfer of those dollars to others would 
then essentially weaken us because we end up owing them rather than 
paying bills when they come due.
  Mr. Speaker, in closing this evening I think it is important to place 
on the record our deep concerns about the Bush administration wanting 
to expand NAFTA to include all of Latin America. As the gentleman from 
Ohio (Mr. Brown) has indicated, if we had a balanced trade account with 
Mexico and with Canada as a result of NAFTA, would it not make sense to 
do that? But, in fact, after NAFTA's passage, we went into a gigantic 
deficit with Mexico, the largest in our history, the same with Canada, 
which means that we are sucking in imports with these countries when, 
in fact, they promised us with NAFTA that we would be creating jobs in 
our country by exporting to those countries. That is not happening. It 
is working exactly the reverse, both in industry and in agriculture.
  Now the Bush administration wants to use that flawed template in 
order to expand to a larger portion of the hemisphere. In whose 
interest is that? When the original NAFTA is not working, why would you 
want to expand it? Why do you not fix it so that we do not continue to 
hemorrhage more jobs and continue to fritter away our financial 
independence as a Nation?
  CAFTA will be considered here before the end of the year or perhaps 
before next June, we are not sure; but we ought to think hard about not 
making the same mistake again and think about how we are go to repair 
these big holes of deficit that we are building both on the trade front 
and on the deficit front for our Treasury accounts.
  Mr. Speaker, we will have more to say on the condition of the economy 
of the United States in the days and months ahead; but surely the Bush 
administration cannot be proud of its record, and surely we need 
leadership, new leadership here in Washington, to help us get our 
Nation in a stronger situation for the future generations than we have 
found it.

         MANUFACTURING JOBS LOST: STATE-BY-STATE, SEPTEMBER 2003
------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                              Manufacturing   Jobs lost
                    State                      jobs lost in   since Jan.
                                                September        2001
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alabama.....................................  .............       39,500
Alaska......................................         3,500   ...........
Arizona.....................................  .............       35,700
Arkansas....................................  .............       29,500
California..................................  .............      297,700
Colorado....................................         1,700        38,900
Connecticut.................................           900        33,500
Delaware....................................  .............        3,700
D.C.........................................  .............          700
Florida.....................................           900        59,200
Georgia.....................................         1,100        66,100
Hawaii......................................  .............        1,600
Idaho.......................................  .............        6,400
Illinois....................................         1,800       125,800
Indiana.....................................         2,200        67,200
Iowa........................................  .............       26,600
Kansas......................................           300        22,000
Kentucky....................................  .............       33,600
Louisiana...................................  .............       21,600
Maine.......................................  .............       15,500
Maryland....................................         1,000        20,500
Massachusetts...............................  .............       78,500
Michigan....................................         8,200       127,000
Minnesota...................................  .............       48,100
Mississippi.................................  .............       35,500
Missouri....................................           600        40,900
Montana.....................................           100         3,900
Nebraska....................................  .............        9,600
Nevada......................................  .............          400
New Hampshire...............................           500        21,700
New Jersey..................................  .............       63,500
New Mexico..................................           100         6,400
New York....................................         4,000       132,700
North Carolina..............................         3,800       145,300
North Dakota................................         1,200         1,300
Ohio........................................         5,800       151,800
Oklahoma....................................  .............       25,900
Oregon......................................  .............       28,900
Pennsylvania................................         2,200       132,500
Puerto Rico.................................  .............       17,700
Rhode Island................................           200        12,000
South Carolina..............................         1,400        55,200
South Dakota................................         1,600         6,400
Tennessee...................................           200        57,700
Texas.......................................           900       156,200
Utah........................................  .............       15,000
Vermont.....................................           700         9,500
Virginia....................................         2,200        51,400
Washington..................................           900        65,100
West Virginia...............................           400         9,000
Wisconsin...................................         3,200        73,100
Wyoming.....................................           100         1,200
Virgin Islands..............................  .............          300
------------------------------------------------------------------------

                                                             

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