[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 189 (Friday, November 30, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H9752-H9753]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               WE NEED TO MODERNIZE OUR INDUSTRIAL POLICY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2017, the gentleman from Ohio

[[Page H9753]]

(Mr. Ryan) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority 
leader.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I rise today as the Congressman from 
the General Motors Lordstown plant. We had some bad news this week that 
we are going to lose 1,600 jobs in Lordstown. When you factor in the 
supply chain, four, five, six times the amount of that in our 
community--seat manufacturer, logistics company, trucking, and all the 
rest. Many communities in the last week have been dealt a pretty bad 
hand. I think this speaks, Mr. Speaker, to the broken economic system 
that we have in the United States.
  This company, many years ago, got a rescue package from the taxpayers 
in the United States. When many years later, last year, they got $157 
million in a tax cut that we were told was going to be spent for 
workers, factories, and jobs in the heartland, and turned around and 
cut 14,000 jobs and their stock price goes up 6 percent, that is a 
broken economic system that we have in the United States of America.
  We need an industrial policy in this country where the government, 
the agencies, the departments, the Tax Code, and the investments in 
infrastructure and education are all moving in the same direction that 
will create manufacturing jobs here in the United States. We have to 
have policies that move venture capital out of the three main States, 
California, New York, and Massachusetts, which is 80 percent of all 
venture capital.
  I am not sure, Mr. Speaker, that the people on Wall Street or the 
people in the high-tech centers of our country fully appreciate what is 
happening in communities all over the United States of America. They 
are being hollowed out and disinvested in.
  We need this government to begin to modernize itself and to look at 
the world as it is, and to recognize that globalization may yield great 
benefits and great wealth but that those benefits aren't shared 
everywhere in the United States of America.
  They are not shared in the industrial Midwest. Wages have been 
stagnant for 30 years. People work hard, play by the rules, and still 
get to their retirement, and they lose their pension or their pension 
is cut in half.
  This is not working. This is not working, Mr. Speaker, and the 
American people are fed up.
  How much can the worker take? How much can their families take?
  Year in and year out for 40 years, this has been going on in this 
country. People who have money continue to make money. The top 1 
percent continues to do well. I don't hate anybody because they are 
rich. But my goodness gracious, when everyone else is suffering, when 
communities in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, western Pennsylvania, Kentucky, 
and Minnesota that have done so much for so long, whether there is a 
war or manufacturing, it has been these communities who have responded. 
Now they have been cut loose, and the stock price goes up.
  It is time for us to reclaim the American Dream for these communities 
and these workers who have done nothing wrong. They have done 
everything right. They support their church; they support the Little 
League; they sit on the boards of the booster clubs; and they coach 
football. They have done everything right. Everything our society would 
ask of them, they have done, and they get cut loose. Now we live in 
communities that have blight; they don't have broadband; and they don't 
have investment.
  Some people will say: Just cut taxes for the wealthiest people, and 
all that wealth will trickle right down to the Lordstowns, the 
Youngstowns, and the Gary, Indianas of the world.
  Do you know what, Mr. Speaker? We have been trying this for 40 years. 
Since 1980, the supply-side economic policy has been pushed in this 
country. If it is so damn good, then why isn't it working for working 
class people? That is what I want to know.
  If this economic philosophy is so great, why does the worker in 
Lordstown get screwed and the stock price for the company goes up 6 
percent?
  Why do the CEOs of these companies get 350 times the amount of money 
that the worker on the factory floor gets? Does that seem fair to 
anybody?
  These people work hard and play by the rules. They can't get 
healthcare. People out working hard, pension gets squeezed, kid gets 
sick, can't afford it, got to go to the emergency room, opiate 
epidemic. Try to work hard and go to college, end up $30,000 in debt, 
$40,000 in debt, have to move out of your own community.
  The systems are broken in the United States, Mr. Speaker, and it is 
our job here in Washington, D.C., to remember these families who have 
done everything right.
  That is our commitment. Our responsibility is to fix this broken 
system. There have been a lot of promises made over the last few years 
for these communities. Things are moving in the wrong direction, and it 
is our obligation to fix it.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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