[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 39 (Tuesday, March 5, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1666-S1667]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
GM CLOSURES
Mr. BROWN. Madam President, this week, General Motors is set to lay
off thousands of workers in Lordstown, OH, and around the country.
Tomorrow is the day that most of the first shift lose their jobs.
Several months ago, the second shift lost their jobs. A couple years
ago, the third shift lost their jobs. That totals about 4,500 human
beings with families.
What is the President's response? He boasts nonsense and rubs salt in
these workers' wounds. Last week, as if he didn't know about Lordstown
and other places, he said: We have car companies opening up in Michigan
and Ohio and Pennsylvania and so many other places.
I don't know where those mystery factories are in Ohio that the
President brags about. They aren't in Lordstown, where people are about
to lose those jobs. President Trump's remarks, his uncaring feelings,
and his ignorance of even knowing what has happened in Ohio--the State
he seems to boast about and credit for his victory--are a slap in the
face to the workers, and there is the fact that he has done nothing to
help.
Think about the workers who are out of a job at the end of the week.
Think about their families. Think about the other families in Lordstown
who are about to lose customers.
Senator Portman and I spent a lot of time working with General
Motors, visiting a restaurant near the plant and talking to the workers
there who know their jobs are affected as fewer Lordstown workers come
to that restaurant. Multiply that with hardware stores, police and fire
jobs and teacher jobs and all that afflicts the Mahoning Valley when GM
does what it does.
Remember what Donald Trump promised people in communities like
Youngstown. He said that he would fight for them, that he would fight
for their jobs. Last year, he told the people of Mahoning Valley--
Mahoning Valley is Youngstown, Warren, Lordstown, and that area:
``Don't move.''
These are the President's words:
Don't move, don't sell your house. We're going to fill up
those factories or rip them down and build new ones.
He said:
We never again will sacrifice Ohio jobs and those in other
states to enrich other countries.
Think about that. The President of the United States comes in, in the
midst of these GM layoffs, and says: Don't sell your house. Don't move.
We are going to fill those factories up. If
[[Page S1667]]
we don't fill them up, we are going to rip them down and build new
ones.
He went on to say: Workers will come back. Jobs will come back from
these countries.
Then, even when I called and talked to him about the second-shift
layoff, he didn't even know about it. I am not sure what his staff is
telling him. Maybe FOX doesn't cover these stories, but the mainstream
media does. These are real stories. These aren't political opinions.
Some 4,500 people lost their jobs, and the President doesn't seem to
know or care.
Those weren't the only promises he made. Over and over, Candidate
Trump and then-President Trump promised American autoworkers that he
would fight for their jobs.
In Warren, just a few miles from Lordstown, in 2016, he said: ``If
I'm elected, you won't lose one plant, I promise you that.'' ``If I'm
elected, you won't lose one plant, I promise you that.''
In Michigan in the fall of 2016--another State with a lot of auto
jobs--he said: ``We will bring back your auto manufacturing business
like you have never seen it before.''
In February 2017, he promised again: ``A lot of jobs are going to be
coming back into Ohio and Michigan and Pennsylvania and all the places
that have been hurt so badly.''
In March 2017, he said: ``The assault on the American auto industry,
believe me, is over.''
Last year, after GM announced the layoffs, he said: ``Ohio is going
to replace those jobs like in two minutes.'' ``Ohio is going to replace
those jobs like in two minutes.''
First of all, why would he say this stuff? Second, does he not ever
follow the news? Does his staff not tell him what has happened in the
seventh largest State in the country and the State that he in part
credits for his election? He lost the popular vote by 3 million votes.
He won the electoral college because of Ohio and because of two or
three other States. But wouldn't he know that a valley of 450,000
people, just during the time since the election, has lost 4,500 jobs
just in that plant alone, and another 5,000 manufacturing jobs that
make the components that go into the Chevy Cruze, and another 5,000 to
6,000 to 8,000 to 10,000 jobs? Nobody knows for sure how many they will
lose in restaurants, hardware stores, and car dealerships and cuts in
public dollars because the local governments have lost tax revenue so
there are fewer police and fire and street cleaners and people who work
in the cities, the counties, and the school districts.
The workers who are going to be out of a job by this week are still
waiting. These people trusted him. President Trump did really well in
the election in this valley of 450,000 people. He did really well.
He did really well. He did better than Republicans ever do, but what
did he do for them after he made those promises? I am going to make a
statement that is provably true but almost doesn't even make sense that
it could be true. His tax bill says: If you do your production in
Lordstown, OH, you pay a 21-percent tax rate, but if you move your
production to Mexico, you pay a 10.5-percent tax rate.
In other words, because of Trump's tax law that, frankly, was written
down the hall in Senator McConnell's office but with the President's
signature on it, these companies get a 50-percent-off coupon for moving
overseas. Think about that. If these companies move overseas, they get
a 50-percent-off coupon on their taxes.
I talked to the President about that. I asked him to reconsider that
law, and he said: ``Where did that law come from?''
I said: ``Well, Mr. President, it was in your tax bill, and you
signed it.''
Then I talked to him about the American Cars, American Jobs Act and
how he can fix this. Here is what the bill does. Customers who buy cars
made in the United States get a $3,500 discount at the dealership. If
the American car is electric or a plug-in hybrid, they get an even
bigger discount. These are the cars GM said it was going to start
making instead of the Cruze. There is no reason they can't make them in
Lordstown instead of Mexico.
Second, companies that cut the number of American jobs they had on
the day the GOP tax bill passed, if they move those jobs overseas, they
lose their tax breaks. Under my bill, the American Cars, American Jobs
Act, they lose their tax breaks, they lose that 50-percent-off coupon,
and then that money they have to pay because they lose their tax break
goes to car consumers at the dealerships, meaning they will buy more
American cars. So what will happen is it will actually do what
Candidate Trump said he wanted to do and promised that he would do, and
that is to bring American jobs back.
This President who says: ``I am the workers' best friend, and I fight
for these jobs,'' that is phony populism. Do you know something?
Populism is never racist. Populism is never anti-Semitic. Populism
doesn't divide people. Populism doesn't push people down to lift people
up. Populism doesn't give tax cuts to rich people and then turn around
and cut Medicare and Head Start. Populism fights for people and fights
to lift up all workers. That is what we are not seeing here now.
I am calling on the President, again, to try keeping his promises and
actually fight for autoworkers, fight for these communities like
Lordstown, and help us pass the Americans Cars, American Jobs Act, end
the tax cut for corporations to shut down American plants and move jobs
overseas, and take this 50-percent-off coupon away that some of the
richest people and biggest corporations in this country enjoy when they
send jobs overseas because if you love your country, you fight for the
people who make it work.
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