[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 69 (Monday, April 29, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2478-S2479]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                      Nomination of Stephen Moore

  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, over the past few weeks, we have learned 
more and more about the President's pick, Stephen Moore, for the 
Federal Reserve.
  We now know he has made all kinds of offensive, disparaging comments 
about women, even about women who play sports. He has even questioned 
women who are in broadcast booths. We know he is against child labor 
laws. He thinks we should have 11-year-olds working. He has said that 
he wants people to start working at 11, at 12. He has said he is a 
radical in this.
  Think about this. The President is about to nominate for the Federal 
Reserve a gentleman who says he is an economist but who really isn't. 
He didn't get his degree and didn't get a Ph.D. in economics, as 
Federal Reserve people often do. Yet put that aside.
  He said: I am a radical in child labor. I mean, who thinks that way 
in the year 2019?
  Other things we know, he was banned from the op-ed page of the Kansas 
City Star after publishing an editorial with all kinds of factual 
errors. See, the editor knew he was a conservative. The editor may have 
been a conservative. I don't know. That is not the point. The point is 
it was filled with factual errors, and the editor said: Those kinds of 
factual errors are just unacceptable. We are finished with him--not 
that the editor doesn't agree with certain viewpoints, but she just 
said: We are not running him anymore because he doesn't tell the truth.
  We have him on videotape showing breathtaking contempt for people in 
the middle of the country, from places like Arkansas and Kentucky and 
Tennessee and my State of Ohio. Here is what Mr. Moore said, and it is 
on tape and many people have seen it:

       If you want to live in the Midwest, where else do you want 
     to live besides Chicago? You don't want to live in 
     Cincinnati--

  The home of Senator Portman--

       or Cleveland.

  My home. He said:

       You don't want to live in Cincinnati or Cleveland or these 
     armpits of America.

  That is what he said.
  President Trump is showing his disregard for Cincinnati and Cleveland 
and Kentucky and Arkansas and Tennessee and the middle of the country 
by nominating someone who is so out of touch and has such contempt for 
the middle of this country. ``The armpits of America'' is what he 
called two of my State's great cities.
  Make no mistake, he wasn't just insulting Cleveland and Cincinnati; 
he was insulting Little Rock; he was insulting Nashville; he was 
insulting people who get up every day and work hard. He was dismissing 
millions of Americans. He was undermining the dignity of work by 
dismissing them, people who have been ignored by Washington and have 
been preyed upon by Wall Street.
  Across the industrial heartland, tens of millions of Americans raise 
families; they serve in our military; they power our companies; they 
contribute to our country.
  Mr. Moore, how dare you demean them and diminish them with those 
kinds of comments? How dare you insult them and their hometowns?
  You can't fight for these Americans when you don't know the first 
thing about the places they live. You don't understand that all work 
has dignity. You don't understand the dignity of work. You don't 
understand honoring and respecting work.
  It is particularly ironic where Mr. Moore made these comments. He was 
speaking at an event sponsored by a think tank called the Heartland 
Institute, located, I believe, in Chicago. Can you believe that?
  Take a look at who is really behind this group, the Heartland group. 
I mean, people can name themselves whatever they want. They call 
themselves the Heartland Institute, but they are funded by ExxonMobil, 
the biggest oil company, I believe, in the world. They are funded by 
Philip Morris, one of the tobacco giants--Big Tobacco--that poisons our 
children. Four hundred eighty thousand people die every year from 
tobacco in this country--480,000 people. You know what that means? It 
means Philip Morris has to find 1,300 new customers every day just to 
make up for the people tobacco has killed.
  So the Heartland Institute is funded by ExxonMobil; it is funded by 
Philip Morris; it is funded by the Koch brothers--or at least we used 
to know they were funded by these groups.
  Today, unfortunately, they don't disclose who their individual donors 
are, which is pretty shocking. The Heartland Institute didn't want 
people in the actual heartland to realize they are nothing but a 
corporate front--a corporate, special interest-funded front.
  What have they done with those donations? Well, you can expect them 
to do the bidding of ExxonMobil; you can expect them to do the bidding 
of Philip Morris; you can expect them to do the bidding of the Koch 
brothers, and those interest groups have certainly gotten their money's 
worth.
  The Heartland Institute has pushed junk science on behalf of tobacco 
companies to try to block and stop and neuter anti-smoking public 
health laws.
  As recently as the late 1990s, their president wrote an op-ed. I 
mean, this isn't really funny at all. I don't know why I laughed, but 
it is so ridiculous. The president of that group wrote an op-ed 
claiming that moderate smoking--moderate smoking--doesn't raise your 
risk of lung cancer. You know, getting those 15-years-olds to start 
smoking only a little bit, I guess that is OK because that doesn't 
increase their chance of lung cancer. That is their notable 
achievement.
  So, of course, we shouldn't be surprised that the men in the room--
and it was almost all men. You could tell from the video and the audio 
that the men in the room, when Mr. Moore talked about my city, 
Cleveland, Senator Portman's city, Cincinnati, talked about them being 
armpits of the Nation, the men in the room howled with laughter because 
look who comes to the Heartland Institute. It is a bunch of lobbyists, 
a bunch of drug company people, a bunch of oil company men, a bunch of 
tobacco men, a bunch of gun lobby people. All these people who come to 
the Heartland Institute, of course, they were laughing at those people 
in the industrial Midwest, in Cleveland, in Mansfield, in Toledo, in 
Zanesville, and all over our country. That is what these phony, 
rightwing, tobacco-funded think tanks really think of America's 
heartland.
  President Trump likes to pretend he cares about people in places like 
Cincinnati and Cleveland. He likes to

[[Page S2479]]

make big promises to the people in the heartland, but look at whom he 
puts in charge--these conservative elites. Make no mistake, they are 
far-right conservatives, and they are elites. They all think they are 
better than the rest of the country. These conservative elites, whether 
they are on Wall Street, whether they are in Trump Tower, whether they 
are at the White House, where the White House looks like a retreat for 
Wall Street executives, whether these conservative elites are going in 
and out of the office doors of the Senate majority leader with their 
requests for tax cuts in hand, these are people who have contempt for 
the people they are supposed to serve.
  Stephen Moore says he doesn't want to be judged on all the extreme 
and offensive articles he has written; he wants to be judged by his 
economic record.
  So let's do that. Let's look at his economic record. It is just as 
bad. It is in line with views of all these rightwing elites. It stems 
directly from contempt for ordinary people. You see it in their 
policies: Make it easier for Wall Street to pay these huge--$1 million, 
$2 million, $5 million, $10 million--bonuses that Wall Street elites 
get, so often at the expense of workers.
  I was at my high school reunion in Mansfield, OH, some time ago. I 
sat across the table from a woman who had worked at one of America's 
largest banks. When I grew up and I used to put my family farm paycheck 
into this bank, it was called Farmers Bank in those days. It has been 
bought and sold and bought by other bigger banks. The point is, she had 
worked as a teller in this bank for 30 years. She was making $30,000 a 
year. Yet Wall Street continues giving million-dollar bonuses, massive 
tax cuts for corporations, for billionaires and pennies for working 
families.
  Look at what happened in Kansas, where Stephen Moore was banned from 
writing in the newspaper because he lied so much. He helped design the 
tax cut boondoggle that bankrupted the State. It was the plan that 
eliminated taxes entirely for LLCs and passthrough corporations. The 
people who paid the price were millions of ordinary Kansans. There was 
no money for teachers. There was no money for healthcare. There was no 
money for higher ed.
  When Republicans in the State finally rebelled and repealed that 
Stephen Moore far-right tax plan, Kansas had fallen behind the rest of 
the country. They were actually losing jobs in Kansas, a once 
prosperous State, while almost every other State was adding them.
  One advocate in Kansas who saw his work up close said: ``I wouldn't 
let Stephen Moore within 100 yards of my enemy's piggy bank, let alone 
put him on the Federal Reserve.''
  So why on Earth would we want to hire that guy to help run our 
national economy? It is pretty clear that creating jobs for workers in 
the heartland doesn't really matter to Stephen Moore and his crowd. 
After all, they don't even want to set foot there.
  It comes back to the dignity of work. We need people in office who 
understand, who respect work. Whether you punch a clock or swipe a 
badge, whether you work on a salary, whether you work for tips, whether 
you are raising children, whether you are taking care of an aging 
parent, it comes down to honoring and respecting work--something 
apparently Stephen Moore and his far-right elitist crowd know nothing 
about.
  The last thing we need is another conservative elitist looking down 
his nose at American workers, at Ohio workers, at workers in Arkansas, 
at workers all across this country.