[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 98 (Friday, June 26, 2009)]
[House]
[Page H7691]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          SAD DAY FOR AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Souder) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, this is a sad day for America, and I don't 
mean because of the death of Michael Jackson; I mean because if this 
legislation we just passed were to become law, tens and hundreds of 
thousands of people would lose their jobs.
  In my district, we are already getting green jobs. We will have 
thousands of green jobs, but we are going to lose tens of thousands of 
other jobs. My congressional district in northeast Indiana is the 
number one manufacturing district in the United States. One county has 
57 percent of the people working in manufacturing. I heard on this 
floor that we don't have any manufacturing jobs left in America 
anymore. Oh, yes, we do.
  In my district, we have 30,000 jobs related to the recreational 
vehicle area. We have 40,000 jobs related to auto and truck. We make 
boats. We have tire factories. We have axle factories and windshield 
factories. We are the manufacturing center, along with Joe Donnelly's 
district in the South Bend area and Pete Visclosky's in northwest 
Indiana.
  We still have an industrial base, an industrial base that has tried 
to adjust and accommodate and make the changes they need to make. We 
have the most efficient steel factories in America. We have two steel 
factories that were roughly a billion dollars each to build, five new 
core facilities; the only two steel companies in America that haven't 
lost money because they have cut their costs 75 percent. They have 
their labor cost down at 4 to 5 percent, yet we are looking at energy 
costs that could go up 80 to 100 percent because, you know what, you 
can't power a steel plant in Indiana with solar panels. You cannot do 
this with windmills. Manufacturing takes an incredible amount of 
energy.
  Now let me be honest. I admire the Amish. My great, great grandpa was 
one of the first Amish settlers in the State of Indiana. My great 
grandpa left about 1880. It is fine if you want to be Amish with no 
electricity and windmills and ride around in a horse and buggy, but 
that should be a choice, not pronounced on you by the Federal 
Government.
  For people who want to come to the Notre Dame games in South Bend, I 
worry that in a couple years you can go over to Elkhart County, one of 
the largest Amish settlements, and go, Oh, look at that Amish farm. 
There's no electricity there. They're riding around in a buggy; but it 
won't be Amish, it will be everybody in the area because that is county 
that has 57 percent manufacturing, a county that the President went in 
with the stimulus package and said, This is the highest unemployment 
area in the United States, and we are going to bring you jobs. And 
instead, we are bringing death to manufacturing.
  I just don't understand it. Maybe my district should introduce 
legislation to make it a national historical industrial park area where 
people could go and see what steel mills used to look like. They could 
go and see what axle companies used to look like. What it looked like 
to make the Silverado and the Sierra pickup before we drove them to 
China, before we moved the last companies out.
  And in between, you could see soybean and corn farms, and apparently 
we made some change here, but it is amazing we even had to make this 
change, that ethanol soy-diesel, we have the biggest integrated soy-
diesel plant in the world. Dreyfus was worried down to the original 
draft of this bill they were going to be put out because they were 
cutting down trees to plant soybeans and corn for ethanol, except our 
trees are already cut down. Oh, you mean they were going to cut down 
trees in Brazil? Well, not our companies. But because we are 
internationalists now and we're trying to be one world, if we grow 
soybeans in Indiana, then we have to offset it with trees in other 
places, and now maybe we won't have to offset it and maybe we won't 
wipe out soy-diesel and ethanol. What kind of joke is this?
  I honestly did not think that this House could pass this bill.
  These are hardworking, blue collar workers. Many in my area, if not 
most, union members. Look, they are not necessarily big fans of Mark 
Souder or Republicans. It is their constituency who they are putting 
out of work, people who didn't necessarily have a college degree, who 
worked in steel mills, who worked in auto places, who got up early in 
the morning and worked a hard day and thought they could make it in 
America.
  But no, we are shipping their jobs away from America because now they 
are dirty, even though now they will go to other countries where it 
will be dirtier air?
  What about farmers who get up and they work hard all day, six, seven 
days a week in the peak season, and now they are going to be told that 
their energy costs are going to go up. The REMCs in my area, which are 
huge, when I have gone to their meetings, 1,400 and 1,500, they say it 
is going to be $60 to $80 minimum a month on each of their people who 
are working hard ever day and are trying to figure out now, with a 15 
percent average unemployment in my district, that they are supposed to 
take this kind of a heating bill.
  I do not understand this. If you don't have steel, how do you have a 
military? Are we going to build our big aircraft carriers out of 
bamboo? What are we going to do here? Maybe we can have China build the 
steel for our military. That will work real well. They are our good 
buddies.
  Before, when we heard the day of infamy from Franklin Delano 
Roosevelt, we at least had a manufacturing base to respond. This day of 
infamy, if this bill becomes law, we won't have a manufacturing base to 
respond.

                          ____________________