[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 68 (Thursday, April 26, 2018)]
[House]
[Page H3582]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    PHILIPS LIGHTING FACTORY CLOSING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Massachusetts (Mr. Kennedy) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. Speaker, earlier this year, I stood in Fall River, 
Massachusetts, and told our country the story of that proud and 
resilient city.
  Today, for nearly 200 working families, that resilience is being 
tested because, this week, after celebrating $342 million in profits, 
Philips Lighting announced that they would be closing their factory in 
Fall River and moving those jobs to Mexico. Almost 200 loyal, lifelong 
employees are left behind, careers upended, savings lost. Mortgages, 
healthcare bills, tuition payments will be missed.
  For the 61-year-old worker who is near retirement and paying off his 
daughter's student loans, a meager investment in workforce retraining 
is not worth all that much.
  For the countless workers who sit around dining room tables in 
southeastern Massachusetts tonight trying to figure out how their 
family budget can absorb impossible cuts, bland lip service given by 
this White House yesterday means nothing.
  But that is not even the whole story. Philips Lighting shareholders 
are being showered with $187.4 million in stock buybacks because of 
Donald Trump's tax plan.
  Make no mistake, that is the legacy of this tax bill: working 
families that are left sorting through the wreckage while CEOs bask in 
windfalls; lights turned off on empty American factory floors while 
shareholders grin around boardroom tables; success somehow defined in 
dividends and return on investment rather than in jobs, in paychecks, 
in families supported, retirements earned, and dreams realized.
  Yes, Fall River is a unique city, but across this country, other 
families and communities find themselves in the same impossible place 
as economic afterthoughts in a Republican economy increasingly tilted 
towards the privileged and the powerful with a government that refuses 
to hear their voices.

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