[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 51 (Tuesday, April 20, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H2169-H2170]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      THE PRESIDENT'S INATTENTION TO MANUFACTURING AND THE ECONOMY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, a week ago this evening right around 
this time, President Bush held his third news conference in 3 years 
during prime time for the American people to examine his record and for 
them to watch the President answer for some of his policies, good and 
bad.
  The President, if you recall watching that news conference, was asked 
by a reporter if he would outline what his largest mistake or one of 
his biggest mistakes was as President. And the President literally 
could not think of a mistake that he had made.
  Well, tonight the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky), the 
gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Tierney), and I are going to help the 
President a little bit, not to make the President look bad, that is not 
really our mission, but to help the President help the Nation 
understand what some of those mistakes are by pointing them out, 
perhaps forcing the President to think a little more about them, 
because I do not think he has given a lot of thought to his mistakes 
and some of the wrong directions and wrong courses that he has taken 
the country and ultimately to learn from those mistakes and then to 
correct those mistakes.
  I was speaking with the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel) a 
moment ago. He said when he was a child he was taught over and over, 
and probably everybody in this Chamber has been taught, that one of the 
first things you do is you learn from your mistakes. But obviously you 
need to recognize those mistakes.
  This chart here tonight just gives an idea of some of the issues that 
the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky) and the gentleman from 
Massachusetts (Mr. Tierney) and I and others this week will discuss 
about some of the President's mistakes with weapons of mass 
destruction, with Medicare, and veterans, tax cuts with small business, 
with manufacturing, with Head Start, the energy bill, flip-flopping on 
a whole host of issues, the environment, and many others that we will 
get to later.
  But I want to talk tonight about the President's inattention to 
manufacturing and to the economy. And to me, I do not think there is a 
person watching when the President kind of stood back almost in shock 
and said I just cannot think of any mistakes. I just cannot think of 
any mistakes.
  I think almost every American thought about our economy, how there 
are schools in decline, in part because of Federal inaction and Federal 
wrong action, about the environment, about the job situation, about 
their communities. And tonight I want to point out that the President's 
largest mistake on the economy may have been embodied in this economic 
report of the President, something that the President's chief economic 
advisor put out not too long ago signed by the President on page 4.
  In this economic report, the President and his chief economic adviser 
kind of trumpet their success in the economy. They say we predicted 2.6 
million jobs would be created this year, even though they have already 
lost 3 million jobs.
  Then the President's chief economic adviser, and probably his largest 
mistake in showing how he really has not thought about this, the 
President's economic adviser trumpeted outsourcing, saying that 
outsourcing, our losing jobs to other countries, whether they are blue 
collar manufacturing jobs, they are steel and auto machine tools, 
chemicals, whatever, or whether they are white collar jobs, maybe phone 
operators, maybe computer programmers, maybe even radiologists as we 
have outsourced those jobs, the President's chief economic adviser said 
outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade. More things 
are tradeable than were in the past, and that is a good thing.
  Secretary Snow, the President's appointee as the Secretary of the 
Treasury, said outsourcing is part of trade. It is one aspect of trade, 
and there cannot be any doubt about the fact that trade makes the 
economy stronger.
  It is hard for me to think that the American people when they hear 
George Bush say I cannot think of a mistake I made, that they do not 
think about the lost manufacturing jobs in this country.
  My State of Ohio, we have lost 2,000 manufacturing jobs in my State 
every week. We have lost more than 200 jobs every single day in 
manufacturing in the Bush administration. One out of six manufacturing 
jobs in Ohio, not temporary layoffs, those jobs have gone to China, 
those jobs have gone to Mexico, those jobs have disappeared.
  The President's answer, when he does reflect on his mistakes, when he 
does reflect on the economy, he has had two answers. He said we need to 
do more tax cuts for the most privileged, trickle down economics, 
hoping that will perhaps create some jobs in the country. It clearly 
has not. We have lost 3 million jobs in the United States. His other 
answer is outsourcing. His other answer is more trade agreements, more 
NAFTA-like trade agreements that ship jobs overseas, that hemorrhage 
jobs to China, that hemorrhage jobs to Mexico, that send our good-
paying industrial jobs abroad.
  And as we tonight, as the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Tierney) 
and the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky) and the gentlewoman

[[Page H2170]]

from California (Ms. Woolsey) tomorrow night and many of us try to help 
the President through this, remind him of the mistakes that he has 
made, we also have an obligation to talk about what we should do. And 
what we should do with this economy, we can talk about these mistakes, 
but what we should do is we should first of all extend unemployment 
compensation, second we should pass the Crane-Rangel bill, which gives 
incentives for those corporations that actually produce manufacturing 
jobs in the United States instead of rewarding those companies that 
ship jobs overseas.
  The President's mistakes can be fixed. We need to fix them by doing 
some of the things I just talked about.

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