[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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