[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 4 (Wednesday, January 8, 2020)]
[House]
[Pages H58-H60]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               PUT MANUFACTURING ECONOMY AT THE FOREFRONT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2019, the Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from Michigan 
(Ms. Stevens) for 30 minutes.
  Ms. STEVENS. Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to recognize a new year 
and a new decade in which we find ourselves, the second half of this 
session of the 116th Congress, an incredible delegation of individuals 
who have come together on behalf of the American people, for the 
American people, to usher in an agenda of renewal, of standing up for 
everyday hardworking Americans: to protect their healthcare; to 
advocate for infrastructure and good, sound infrastructure spending; as 
well as to stand up for hardworking Americans who have always played by 
the rules and have worked for their retirement savings, my pensioners 
back home in Michigan.
  It was a delight to close out the end of the decade back home in my 
district with so many of my beloved constituents and the community 
members who make us so strong.
  Mr. Speaker, it is a fact that on January 3, 2020, this new year, 
this new decade, 1 year from when this Congress was sworn in, this 
session of Congress was sworn in, the headline became pronounced that 
industrial activity has come down to its lowest point since 2009, since 
the heart of the recession, with production, inventories, and new 
orders falling.
  These are real headlines. These are headlines that affect the heart 
of America. And while so much hums in our national media and in our 
national news, this is a reality for so many. This is a reality for 
Michigan's 11th District.
  We were delighted, we were pleased to see us pass the USMCA 
overwhelmingly bipartisan for the manufacturers, for the manufacturing 
economy, for the hardworking union members who will get a better deal 
because we are advocating for buy American content.
  We know the road to implementation will be long, but it is an 
implementation that the suppliers in my district, from Auburn Hills 
down to Plymouth, an implementation they are planning for. Yet the 
reality is such that a manufacturing recession hangs before us, a 
manufacturing recession as marked by low levels of productivity.

                              {time}  1900

  Over the last 6 months of 2019, manufacturers lost a net of 23,000 
jobs and average hours worked fell to its lowest levels in 8 years. Who 
is talking about this? Your Congresswoman from Michigan's 11th District 
is talking about this here tonight.
  The reality of tariffs has cost us. Tariffs imposed have cost U.S. 
corporations $34 billion as of October 2019, as marked by that day 
since they were implemented.
  Also, as October 2019 has marked, manufacturing taxpayers have paid 
$1.8 billion in 2019 in additional tariffs, in additional money. I talk 
to these employers. I talk to these small businesses. I talk to the 
lifeblood of the American economy, and they are paying more. They are 
squeezed. Their margins are tight. Can this continue? No, it cannot.
  So that agenda that we are ushering in here the first month of 2020, 
is that we do not forget that we need to address the problem of tariffs 
for our manufacturers. We have given certainty with USMCA. We knew we 
needed to give that certainty, in part, because the jobs were going to 
go elsewhere. The investment was going to be made elsewhere. It wasn't 
going to be made in the American workforce.
  We are in a global race to compete. We have got to compete as 
Americans. We have got to compete as manufacturers in small 
communities, in suburban communities like the ones that I have the 
privilege and honor of representing. Comprised within that are the 
people who are going to work every single day: in snowstorms, in 
rainstorms, on sunny days, in the middle of summer, putting food on the 
table.
  We look at wages and we ask ourselves as we are now in this third 
decade of this millennium of this century: What has transpired with 
wages? The alarming headline as we were closing out 2019 was that the 
richest, the wealthiest 500 individuals increased their wealth in 2019 
by $1 trillion, by over $1 trillion, when wages for our middle class 
have remained stagnant; where wages for the lowest earners in our 
economy--we are still advocating to raise the minimum wage from $7, 
just about. It is the year 2020.
  Who is working those jobs, by the way? Single mothers; people who 
have played by the rules and who have children, who aren't just working 
temporary jobs. This is the promise of America. This is the dream of 
America, Mr. Speaker, that we are representing, and that I am fighting 
for all of you, where my sleeves are rolled up. The things that I am 
eyeing here.
  Because if we don't start addressing this, we stop winning. We stop 
having

[[Page H59]]

an American-first agenda. So we have got to put the manufacturing 
economy at the forefront. We have got to look at the plight of exports. 
We saw that with the USMCA, the passage of the USMCA.
  Over 95 percent of the world's consumers are outside of American 
borders. We want to sell the best-in-class, American-made product from 
Michigan by the best-in-class Michigan workforce to the world. We want 
to get it into these markets.
  So we look at how we can be smart. We can look at the things that we 
did during the big recession, right, the big recession of 2008-2009, 
and what got us out of that, the strategies and the policies that we 
put forward in export agenda, Mr. Speaker.
  The Speaker knows this from where the gentleman sits. I acknowledge 
my friend from South Carolina who is in a port destination.
  We got smart about how we sold American product. We invested in small 
business, awards--the States Small Business Act is what I am talking 
about. It awarded money through the Small Business Administration to 
States like Michigan. We qualify for these dollars. This was $200,000 
that the State of Michigan got and made awards to companies who 
applied, who met the qualifications, the small businesses, and gave 
them seed money that they matched with their own money to go sell their 
products in Europe and overseas and to different consumers. The results 
were exponential. That money paid for itself.
  Then the political tides changed and we got rid of it, and we are 
still here 10 years later trying to figure out how we are going to make 
those investments.
  Well, let's go back and look at the States Small Business Jobs Act of 
2010. Let's figure out how we can get in front of a manufacturing 
recession. It is technical. Look at auto sales. They are down. They are 
down in 2019. Not as dramatic as it was in 2008 when we had the largest 
drop in automotive sales in the history the automobile.
  Auto sales are down because hardworking men and women put things on 
the line. They went on strike. They asked for better healthcare. They 
asked for fair wages. They asked for retirement packages. When we talk 
about middle-class job growth, when we talk about growing our middle 
class, what are we talking about? We are talking about lifting people 
out of poverty.
  The facts are clear: productivity is not at its highest level. 
Productivity is at some of its lowest level, and inequality is at some 
of its highest level; inequality matched by wage disparity, Mr. 
Speaker.
  Then we have this interesting reality with our skills gap in this 
country, and this is something I hear all over my district. Every time 
I am talking to a manufacturer, or an educator, or a champion in my 
community, it is: Where are we going to find the workers?
  Just today, I was talking with folks from the coding organization, 
Hour of Code, and they gave me a few minutes. And I had the opportunity 
to be reminded that we have tens of thousands of open computer science 
jobs in this country, and we are not graduating the level of computer 
scientists that we need to graduate to fill those jobs.
  We have got to invest in our own. This is something in Michigan we 
know very well. We have got great universities. Our students stick 
around. We want them to stick around. That is part of my charge here. 
It is what I am trying to represent as your Member of Congress, the 
attraction agenda, the boomerangs, those who maybe took a job or an 
educational opportunity elsewhere but have come back to invest in our 
community. We see that all over. We see that in the rich innovation 
transpiring throughout the district: two-to-one patents in autonomous 
vehicle technology; 75 percent of the R&D taking place here.

  And then we remind ourselves, in the previous Congress, in the 115th 
Congress, there was a big tax bill that got passed into law. It was so 
partisan in certain respects. And now, the effects of this tax bill are 
playing out. Who has benefited and who hasn't? The wealthiest 
individuals, Americans, have seen their wealth increase by over $1 
trillion. Our middle class is still paying. They are not seeing the 
growth that they have expected to see.
  Many large, multinational corporations are paying nothing in taxes, 
while we all pay, and, yet, our deficit has ballooned yet again. In 
this case, it ballooned astronomically, Mr. Speaker. It ballooned by 
$1.5 trillion as projected from this tax scam.
  When are we going to start investing in the middle class? That is 
what we are up to here. That is what the second part of this session of 
Congress is about, the infrastructure guarantee. When we say, guess 
what? Every single American has got the right to clean and safe 
drinking water, to fresh air to breathe, to safe and maintained 
roadways and bridges so we can continue to create jobs.
  This is why I created the Congressional Plastic Solutions Task Force 
in partnership with our Congressional Recycling Caucus. We have a 
plastics problem globally and in this country. Why? Because of a 
fallacious trade war, tariff war, that has been started.
  China stopped taking our recycled goods. They stopped taking our 
plastics. So you talk to your municipalities, and who is paying? They 
are. Who is paying? You are; our taxpayers, yet again; our communities, 
yet again. If you didn't know that, your municipality of residence pays 
to do the recycling.
  Now, let's think about this really clearly, because I believe we have 
the greatest opportunity to create and awaken an incredible supply 
chain in recycling technology in this country.
  As the chair of the Research and Technology Subcommittee of the 
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, I had a hearing about 
this. It was absolutely brilliant: industry, research, academia, and my 
municipality--Paul Sincock, the Plymouth City manager--all saying the 
same thing: Give us standards. Mark the goods. Tell us what to do with 
them. And then let's think about how we can invest, and pilot, and 
inspire; more so, get strategic about how we actually want to do 
recycling in this country to create jobs.
  Because if we think about the sorting and the materials and what goes 
into it, the onus is on all of us. It is on us as a Federal Government 
and as a partner with local government, State government, and 
individual consumers, and the companies who want to see the reuse of 
these materials.
  So we are quite enthusiastic about these opportunities, but it begins 
with investing in R&D, research and development. And this is what kind 
of gets my goat with the tax bill that was passed before I got here. 
Because according to the International Monetary Fund, only one-fifth of 
the tax gains to businesses were directed toward capital and R&D 
expenditures, so we are not seeing that investment going to the new 
technologies that will create the new jobs, that will employ more 
people.
  We know it is exciting. We know it is there. We know if we gave every 
municipality in this country the opportunity to recycle to their full 
potential, to reduce, reuse, reuse those materials, we would not only 
gain back those materials that we have sourced, but we would have new 
jobs as a result of that.
  Mr. Speaker, as we talk about the jobs and as we look at the skills 
that our employers are looking for, that we are training for in this 
year 2020, in this new decade, some reference that we are in this 
fourth industrial revolution of which I am a champion.
  This is where I came out of before I was in this body. I was working 
in the industrial Internet of Things space, collaborating with 
nonprofits and universities and community colleges and local school 
districts, like my good friends in Novi Community School District.
  We had a lot of fun and we are identifying those skills. We have 
identified them. We codified the job roles: technology and computer 
skills; digital skills; an understanding of the ones and zeros; 
programming skills for robots and automation.

                              {time}  1915

  These are things that have great meaning to those of us in Michigan's 
11th District because I am home to the company that has the largest 
robot, with FANUC in the world in Rochester Hills/Auburn Hills.
  It is really quite exciting, working with tools and different 
techniques, different technical skills and critical thinking.

[[Page H60]]

  These are things that don't know partisan lines, by the way. These 
are things that make you stand up and say: I am going to be a champion 
for this, addressing the root pain that is seeping into our economy.
  These are realities. Last year, Michigan lost 6,200 factory jobs, yet 
we are creating and innovating at exponential rates. We decided to go 
it alone with tariffs, and we are paying the price. We are being 
squeezed.
  I believe we can all work together to solve this. I am not being a 
naysayer because we all know we need to hold China accountable. This is 
something that has been a project of mine throughout my career, which 
is how to take on the bad actors with the illegal dumping, the currency 
manipulation, the stealing of our patents, and the unfair playing field 
that affects our workforce.
  We still know that we value American work and that we value the 
craftsmanship and what goes into making a regional economy like mine 
hum in really exciting and exponential ways. We understand that, and we 
recognize that we can come together in meaningful ways.
  We also continue to call on the Senate to pass the bills that we have 
sent forward, the many bipartisan bills, the very bipartisan Butch 
Lewis Act, to protect the pensions of our hardworking Americans, those 
who did everything right and are still waiting.
  I have not forgotten in 2020 that we are still working to get that 
deal done. We are still working to increase the wage. This is something 
in Michigan that we voted on, to increase the minimum wage, to raise 
the wage. One job should be enough. Your valued work should be enough.
  We are not seeking to overregulate and get rid of good deals, but 
what we are looking to do, Mr. Speaker, is to stand up for individual, 
hardworking Americans, those who are counting on us. It is incumbent 
upon us.
  We sit in this body of 435 individuals. They increased that number 
the last time in 1913. Many, many years later, the population has 
grown.
  History is important, my friends. I encourage you to read your 
history. I encourage you to learn the facts and figures of our past and 
embrace how that has changed our future. We are in some trying times.
  We closed out 2019 in this session of Congress with some things that 
I was very proud of. I got my first bill signed into law, the Building 
Blocks of STEM Act--bipartisan and bicameral--signed by the President 
on December 24, I believe it was, a bill that will support investments 
in early childhood education. I want all of my Michiganders lining up 
for this. It is the National Science Foundation. We get a lot of NSF 
dollars, millions, in Michigan.
  The investment in early childhood education, Mr. Speaker, is 
priceless. That continuity for those jobs in the future is how we get 
in front of the skills gap. That is how we start addressing some of the 
rumblings in our regional economy.
  We also, though, recognize that the headlines that we have embraced 
in this new year and in this new session of Congress have many 
Americans concerned. Many individuals are asking: What is going to 
happen? What is taking place in the Middle East? What does this mean 
for my family?
  Constituents say to me: ``I have teenage sons. Are they going to be 
drafted?'' We take that responsibility that the Congress is charged 
with very seriously.
  Mr. Speaker, I look to this, which is that President Barack Obama 
gave us the words that change will not come if we wait for some other 
person or some other time. He said: ``We are the ones we have been 
waiting for. We are the change we seek.''
  That is what our House majority is about. That is what our For the 
People agenda is representing. That is what we are taking up this week 
when we say no to war, Mr. Speaker.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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