[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 64 (Wednesday, May 11, 2011)]
[House]
[Pages H3213-H3216]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
{time} 1940
LOST JOBS AND THE TRADE DEFICIT
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 5, 2011, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is recognized
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, jobs need to be America's number one
priority. When people go back to work, it seems fairly obvious that
we'll not only balance family budgets, but we'll be able to balance
America's budget. They're tied together. But for some reason, too many
officials here in Washington, both elected officials and those who
lobby, simply haven't gotten that message. At the end of last month,
The Washington Post ran an excellent piece, asking, ``What is it about
the word 'jobs' that our Nation's leaders
[[Page H3214]]
fail to understand?'' ``How has the most painful economic crisis in
decades somehow escaped their notice?'' and ``Why do they ignore the
issues that Americans care most desperately about?'' Very good
questions. I tried to answer them myself, as I have fought the
resistance to try to help reemploy those who seek work across our
country.
I would have to say that, in some ways, some here in this city are
privileged. They've really led very privileged lives. They've been
insulated, insulated from living in a family that gets a pink slip,
insulated from being in a family that knows what it's like to live on
an unemployment check and wonder if you will ever be able to get
regular checks again, insulated from families that desperately worry
when their unemployment checks expire and there is no job.
A lot of people here inherited their wealth, and they truly are
insulated, but for the rare few. Others had their educations paid for.
They didn't work for them. It's unbelievable. There are a lot of people
here just like that. Some of them always had enough to eat. They really
never had to scrimp and choose whether they'd have milk, whether they'd
have water, whether they'd split a cabbage in order to get their family
through the weekend. So there really is a lot of distinction between
what people have had to endure in their own lives. And frankly, there
are a lot of people in this capital city that make a whole lot of
money. I'm going to talk about some of them in a second.
But recent polls tell us what the majority of Americans are thinking
about. And according to two recent polls, four out of 10 Americans
believe our country is heading in the wrong direction. I agree with
them. And as gas prices rise and have climbed to record levels, 71
percent of our citizens are experiencing financial hardship. More cars
are along the roads in Ohio where people just simply run out of gas. Or
you see them at the pump, and they only put in $20, and they hope that
maybe a week from now, the price won't be as bad.
I want to dedicate my time this evening to talking about jobs, about
America being held hostage to what the gentleman ahead of me was
talking about, Big Oil, and policy changes we need to make to get our
economy running strongly here at home. And I want to just point out a
couple of measures of our predicament so that people are thinking about
different aspects of what we face so that we can really fix it.
Now, this first chart up here shows that for the last quarter century
or more, America has not had balanced trade accounts. What does that
have to do with the budget deficit? When you are in the red and you are
importing more than you are exporting, you are having to actually
borrow money to pay the difference. Somebody else is making the money
off of us. We have not had balanced trade accounts since the 1970s.
Every single year, more and more of America's wealth has been
outsourced to someplace else. Every American knows that. You see the
jobs that have disappeared from your own community.
I use the Maytag Washer Company in Newton, Iowa. I'm not from Iowa.
I'm from Ohio, but I still have my old Maytags, great product. Those
jobs ended up in Mexico after they were actually outsourced because of
a big buyout that happened in that company. And that's happened in
company after company after company. That's what's happened to all of
our manufacturing jobs. But this chart here shows the U.S. trade
deficit, every single year. In 2010, last year, we had $500 billion
more in imports into our country than exports going out. This is a
serious part of the problem.
Now, those trade deficits result from agreements America has signed
that were supposed to result in exactly the opposite, job creation in
our country. Probably the best known is NAFTA. In 1993, this Congress
passed an agreement called NAFTA, and the people who voted for it said,
Oh, it's going to create all these jobs in the United States, and we
won't have to worry. Relations with Mexico will be terrific. Well,
guess what? Ever since NAFTA passed, there hasn't been a single year
when we have had even a trade balance with Mexico. No. Every year, our
deficit with Mexico--more imports coming in here from Mexico than
exports going out--has gotten worse.
And what about in Mexico? In Mexico, over 35,000 citizens of that
country were shot last year related to the illegal drug trade. We are
receiving the reciprocal of that across our border as people flee just
to try to have a better way of life. Because you see, the farmers in
that country, the small holders, were thrown off their land as a result
of NAFTA. Two million people desperate to earn a living. We said that
would happen. People didn't care. They simply didn't care. And so we
lost that vote on the margin of about 12 votes. But what we said would
happen in '93 has happened, and we've had over $1 trillion of trade
deficit with Mexico.
The balance of trade with South Korea. Knowing the terrible trade
record that this country has had with every country we've signed one of
these free trade agreements with, what is the administration proposing
and the majority here proposing? They want to bring up more, more
NAFTA-like agreements. They want to bring us Korea. They want to bring
us Colombia. I don't know what else they're going to throw in. But you
know what? We've already got a trade deficit with Korea. We take
hundreds of thousands of their cars. They take a few, a few thousand
from us. And the agreement that the last administration and this
administration has reached with Korea won't bring us trade balance with
Korea. There is no requirement that it's a tit for tat, a reciprocal
agreement, or it's one car there for one car here. So we are going to
lose more jobs if that agreement moves through here.
This is a pattern that Americans need to understand. And if you look
at that overall trade deficit that's been going on and getting worse
and worse every year, what is the top category of that deficit? The top
category is imported oil. I agree with some of my colleagues who have
pinpointed the problem, but we can't continue to hold ourselves hostage
inside our own Nation on the spear of petroleum. We have to support
additional exploration; and we are doing that on our own continent with
the Alberta oil sands project, for example, in Canada, the largest
construction project on our entire continent. But we also have to
diversify. We have to be smart. Prior generations were smart. We need
to be smarter.
Today, The Washington Post just published an article on the latest
trade numbers. They tell us a lot about our economy. There was some
good news. We sold more exports and services. And why wouldn't that
happen? The value of the dollar has dropped as we've hemorrhaged jobs
here in this country. But a funny thing happened--the trade deficit
grew again. More imported oil. High-priced oil keeps pushing us further
and further in the red. That $500 billion trade deficit from last year
that I referenced, according to the Manufacturing Policy Project,
represents a loss of 7 million American jobs. In other words, this hole
that's been accumulated over the years, 7 million manufacturing and
other jobs lost across our country. That means jobs outsourced
someplace else, and then they're imported here. We keep shooting
ourselves in the foot over and over and over again.
We can no longer afford to add hundreds of billions of dollars
annually to our trade deficit. We need a different trade model that
results in trade balances at a minimum and hopefully trade surpluses
because you simply can't balance our Federal budget or family budgets
when our trade accounts are so costly and so out of whack and so many
jobs have been moved offshore.
{time} 1950
We hear that the majority wants to bring up more NAFTA-like trade
agreements, and one of the countries they're talking about is Colombia.
They're talking about Korea; they're talking about Colombia. What
Colombia is really about is oil, more imported petroleum, when you
really get into the weeds and you look at what that agreement is about.
And the question for America really is, If this is the history of
imported consumption of petroleum, is that really the future that we
want for this generation and the next and the following?
The red lines here represent the growing share of petroleum
consumption in our country that's represented
[[Page H3215]]
by imports. It's increased steadily over the last quarter century. That
is not a path for American liberty nor American economic success.
We need a trade policy that is results oriented, that results in
balance and energy independence here at home. We need to grow our
exports, yes, and create jobs here in our country by moving our Nation
toward energy independence here at home.
And we need for somebody in the executive branch to stand up and
fight for reciprocal trade agreements. I said that to President Obama.
What's wrong with a trade surplus? What's wrong with a trade balance?
Why do we keep going in the red? Why would anyone accept that as a
solution for America?
The unemployment rate rose this past month, I contend, because of
rising gas prices. It was not good news for an economy that has been
struggling to recover. And if we look back again at the last quarter
century, and this chart looks a little complicated, but what it shows--
the red line is oil prices--is that every time oil prices peak, what
follows? Higher unemployment. It's a very predictable pattern. It
happened in the 1970s twice. Here we go, high oil prices with the Arab
oil embargo back in the '70s. What happened? Rising unemployment.
If you go back to the late 1980s, early 1990s, same thing. Higher oil
prices, higher unemployment. And certainly, now, with the greatest
recession since the Great Depression, an enormous rise in 2008 when the
stock market crashed. What preceded it was an increase in oil prices to
over $4 a gallon. And what happened? The crash. Yes, it's a housing
crisis. Yes, it's an unemployment crisis. But what triggered it? Gas
prices over $4 a gallon.
The American people, once they understand what's happened, will fix
it. America really is a hostage in her own land as a result of imported
petroleum.
Just as America is starting to re-grow her economy now, Big Oil wants
to steer our country back toward recession.
Now, look at this chart. In the first quarter of 2011, just one of
the companies, ExxonMobil took in $10.7 billion--that's a B--in profits
in one quarter. That's a 69 percent increase over last year.
Occidental, that's the group that wants to drill more in Colombia,
and they need a free trade agreement to do that and bring it in here.
Their profits are up $1.6 billion, 46 percent increase.
Conoco Philips, $2.1 billion. Their profits are up 43 percent in one
quarter, and most of these profits are being pocketed tax-free.
While working Americans earning less than $20,000 paid 15 percent of
their income in taxes, Chevron, which made $6.2 billion in one
quarter--their profits went up 36 percent--they only paid 4.6 percent
in taxes on their total of $32 billion in profits last year.
Now, I heard my colleague earlier talking about, oh, gosh, we should
really feel sorry for them because, my gosh, they're making all this
money, but they need more tax preferences because they won't invest.
What are they doing with all this money? These are the largest profits
in American history.
Oil companies aren't paying what they owe in taxes. I'll tell you one
thing they are doing with their money. They're handing out handsome
campaign contributions.
The Koch brothers of Texas, who made a whole lot of money in that
industry, generously donated more than $2 million last year and
recently bankrolled Governor Walker in Wisconsin and the anti-worker
movement that they're pushing in that State.
Overall, the big oil and gas industry donated $27 million last year
to political campaigns and, get ready, spent $146 million on lobbyists.
That's over, gosh--for each Member of Congress it's like they've
assigned one or two people to each one of us. No wonder Congress voted
against closing $53 billion in tax loopholes to Big Oil. That's a 300
percent return on their investment, more than they can make searching
for new sources of energy.
In 2010, the biggest oil company, ExxonMobil, paid only 2.3 percent
of its profits to the United States. That's scandalous when businesses
in my district are paying at a 35 percent corporate profit rate. And
you know what? They don't ask me for all those special privileges. The
businesses working hard in my region, gosh, I can think of bakeries and
of factories and of machine tool companies. They don't ask for special
privileges. They want to help America. They want to do their fair
share.
But this group, they're wired in here.
The year before, ExxonMobil received an $838 million tax refund.
Meanwhile, those in the majority would take away unemployment benefits
for working Americans. And I can tell you what: you can go across this
country in the food lines in community after community, and you know
who's lined up? So many of our veterans who have come home to no work.
I say take some of this, create a civil works program, let our
returning veterans lead it and improve communities across this country.
Let them take unemployed Americans and move around this Nation, fixing
up roads, fixing up bridges, painting up what needs to be done,
reforesting, doing what Franklin Roosevelt knew how to do a century
ago.
Of course, you know, looking at these numbers is British Petroleum.
British Petroleum, over the last 5 years, instead of paying taxes,
actually took over $48 billion in tax breaks. And in the first quarter
of this year they've already made $7.2 billion more, a 16 percent
increase over what they earned last year. That's despite the terrible
oil spill down in Louisiana and along the gulf.
So it's clear who the winners are. Since January, crude output has
actually risen slightly. And although demand has remained steady,
prices have climbed by 23 percent. Meanwhile, oil stock prices have
risen. Just at Chevron, the stocks have risen 14 percent.
Tax loopholes, corporate welfare, government subsidies, does this
really sound like a free market to Americans who are listening tonight?
I urge my colleagues to reject more giveaways for oil companies who
are raking in money by holding the American people hostage. It's time
to hold them accountable. They ought to pay their fair share. Other
businesses do. Americans do.
Let's cut the billions of dollars in corporate welfare and focus on
getting hardworking Americans back to work. We need to create jobs in
this country and close those trade deficits. We need to stop
outsourcing our jobs through these so-called free trade agreements that
really aren't free, and we need to move to balanced trade accounts.
We need to reform the NAFTA trade model and not pass the same kind of
deal for Korea or Colombia. We need reciprocal trade, not trade
deficits. Our country, for too long, has been held hostage to these
agreements.
And we need energy independence to help restore our own liberty.
Wouldn't it be great if we could put all Americans to work that need a
job and helping to create these new sources of energy? And I know full
well it is within the capability of American people to do this.
But we shouldn't put all our eggs in the basket of Big Oil. We ought
to give them some competition on price. We ought to look at hydrogen-
generation facilities across this country. We have the capability to do
that.
We need to move into biofuels. Through the Department of Agriculture,
working with our renewable energy community, we are fully capable of
unlocking the power of the carbohydrate molecule in this century just
as we did the hydrocarbon molecule in the last.
{time} 2000
We need to bring our natural gas resources forward. We really need to
crack the clean coal riddle and find a way to use our huge reserve of
clean coal. We need to keep investing, yes, in solar and in wind power
and in geothermal. We are just bringing up these technologies around
the country and creating thousands and thousands of jobs.
I represent one of the three solar platforms on the continent, and
for the last four decades those who have worked in the glass industry
and the silicone industry have been transforming and creating companies
like First Solar, which was the hottest stock on Wall Street a couple
years ago, companies that are involved in green energy production.
Is it perfect yet? No. But neither was Edison's light bulb when he
invented it in Milan, Ohio, where he did so much of
[[Page H3216]]
his work, a community that I represent, and we are about to put his
statue over in Statuary Hall.
So America has to think about a full set of energy sources and not be
so dependent on just one that, for whatever reason, lack of competition
probably, but also abuse of power has just come to play too important a
role in our economy and in our people. It hurts our people too many
times over and over and over again.
Fifty percent of what we could actually save in energy comes through
more judicious consumption. We have tried to provide incentives for
Americans to insulate their homes, to put in new kinds of windows.
There are new building materials coming on the market, new types of
insulation, building your home in a manner that uses less energy in the
way that it is sited on the spot, using the full energy of the sun
where you can. We are much smarter about the way we are building than
we were 30 or even 20 years ago, and those improvements need to
continue.
Imagine an America where every roof was a solar producer where there
is enough sunshine to make a difference. Imagine an America where we
captured the power of the wind and properly stored it and moved it to
grid. Imagine an America where what you put in your tank, if you even
put something in your tank to fuel it, that it is grown and renewable
in this country. Imagine an America where you could have plug-in
hybrids that move around this country and our gas stations become a
different type of fueling station. That is all possible.
We are working through the U.S. Department of Defense, and I will
just sort of end with this, because I believe that the Department of
Defense knows better than any aspect of our society what we are paying
as an oil hostage. Our soldiers are deployed all over the world and
very close to oil reserves. I think they are worth more than that. I
think their genius can be used inside the boundaries of this country to
make us energy independent again. Our energy dependence is our chief
strategic vulnerability.
Go to the Marine Corps Web site. I salute the Marines. They are
taking the lead inside the Department of Defense in trying to create
new solutions, not just on their own bases, but as their troops move
around the world.
I salute the Navy. Some of the incredible inventions that they are
coming up with to move power from one point to another with not a loss
of one kilowatt, are unbelievable, some of the superconducting work
that is being done inside Navy today.
I congratulate the Air Force for trying new biofuels and helping to
push America forward in terms of its ability to power itself
internally.
And I salute the U.S. Army. Your work on solar tents, your work in
trying to capture the power of the Earth, to power the systems that you
are involved with today is something that is absolutely technologically
amazing.
You inspire us all. And there is a way for America not to be so
dependent on those who would extract from us but in fact use our genius
to restore our liberty and independence again.
Imagine how many jobs we could create in this country if we could
bring our military back home and could spend the trillions of dollars
that have been spent in oil-producing foreign lands here, at home.
Literally, we could rebuild the transmission grid of this country from
one end to the other. We could bring up the genius of patent holders
who, as we are here this evening, have ideas that can be brought to
market and put that money to work for the American people. They deserve
it.
God bless America. God bless the future of this country.
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