[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 42 (Tuesday, March 10, 2009)]
[House]
[Page H3132]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    AUTO INDUSTRY FACTS AND FIGURES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to rise 
today.
  Madam Speaker, over the course of the last 30 years, pockets of our 
country have been facing some very difficult times. And I have the 
honor of representing an area in Northeast Ohio, from Akron over to 
Youngstown. This is an area that was built on steel and rubber and auto 
and manufacturing. And I want to make one comment, as I rise to talk a 
little bit about the auto industry, about my friend, the gentleman from 
Arizona, who was commenting about earmarks and investments that Members 
of Congress are constitutionally required to make and spend money on 
behalf of the people of this country.
  In areas like mine who, for 30 or 40 years, were booming, had the 
highest per capita income in the country when the steel mills were 
going, we were taking our tax dollars and we were sending that money to 
Washington, D.C.; Washington, D.C. was sending that money to help build 
the West, to help build up States like Arizona, and to implement water 
projects and dam projects to take the Colorado River into the desert.
  These congressional districts in Arizona and New Mexico, they didn't 
just pop up. There was a significant Federal investment to say that we 
want to develop the West. And now, Members of Congress who are looking 
for the opportunity to rebuild their community, to take specific 
projects and specific money and invest it in Youngstown State 
University, Akron University for Polymers, Youngstown State for Defense 
Center of Excellence, Youngstown State for Metrology and Materials 
Science Development, these are investments that we need to make to 
rehabilitate some old industrial areas to get them on the cutting edge, 
and I think our obligation is to do that. But in our area, what has 
transpired just over the last few months has been significant. And I 
will give you one example.
  Earlier last year, in the summertime, General Motors at a local 
Lordstown plant said that they were going to put on a third shift. We 
had the governor in; there were state tax incentives, $350 million. And 
eventually, because of the credit crisis and globalization and 30 years 
of bad trade agreements, the third shift was pulled. Then the second 
shift was pulled. And now we have a fraction of the workers that we 
used to have there.
  But the minute GM announced that they were going to lay off 900 
workers, a couple days later the seat manufacturer laid off a few 
hundred; a couple days later the logistics company laid off a couple 
hundred workers; Delphi laid off. And on and on and on the ripple 
effect goes throughout the community, to the point where Trumbull 
County's unemployment rate last year, Madam Speaker, was 7 percent.

                              {time}  1515

  It is to the point where Trumbull County's unemployment rate last 
year, Madam Speaker, was 7 percent. Today it is 14 percent. It doubled 
in a year.
  And the point of my rising here today is to say to anyone who will 
listen and to the powers that be in Washington, D.C., that we need a 
manufacturing policy in the United States of America. We can look at 
the Dutch, the Spanish and the Brits. When 20 to 25 percent of their 
gross domestic product became finance, where people are just shuffling 
money around, where it is a Ponzi scheme and Wall Street is making a 
lot of money, and wages don't ever go up, then eventually you get to 
where we are today. And that is a collapse of the financial system.
  We have a system now that is set up, Madam Speaker, that if an 
average family makes some mistakes, they are on their own. We cut them 
loose. But if the financial markets make a major mistake and do illegal 
and unethical acts, that they have the system so rigged that the whole 
thing collapses. And so everyone has to jump in to save it.
  And so as we move over the course of the next few weeks and next few 
months, we need to recognize that the auto industry has a multiplier 
effect of five jobs for every one job in the plant, and finance has two 
jobs for every job in the finance industry. And we can talk about 
companies like Wheatland Tube, who have closed factories down in 
northeast Ohio and western Pennsylvania because of the tubing coming in 
from China. We could talk about auto. We could talk about Severstal 
Steel, who laid off 1,000 people. We could go on and on and on, Madam 
Speaker.
  So let me suggest that as we talk about financial reform and 
universal health care, that we also add a manufacturing policy to the 
United States plan for the future.

                          ____________________