[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 57 (Thursday, March 31, 2022)]
[House]
[Pages H4011-H4012]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         GREAT LAKES AUTHORITY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I rise today with considerable anticipation 
as Great Lakes Members introduce legislation to create the Great Lakes 
Authority.
  The Great Lakes Authority is an instrumentality that will unlock our 
freshwater, industrial heartland's full potential for the century 
ahead.

[[Page H4012]]

  The Midwest communities our Members represent are home to people who 
make, build, and grow that which makes, builds, and grows America.
  For decades, however, our region has borne the brunt of job losses 
associated with disastrous trade policies, underinvestment, and 
deindustrialization.
  Since the passage of NAFTA in 1993, China's entrance into the World 
Trade Organization in 2001, and CAFTA's passage in 2005, over 91,000 
factories have closed across our country.
  Nearly 5 million good-paying jobs have been lost, and our region has 
been very hard hit and is clawing its way back.
  But our workers and their families in Ohio, Minnesota, Wisconsin, 
Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New York, in the Great 
Lakes watershed have suffered enormously as middle class jobs 
evaporated.

  The tragedy does not end there. Local governments have been left to 
scramble as declining revenues led to the collapse of their budgets and 
the accrual of crushing bonded indebtedness.
  The size and scope of these accumulated economic challenges are too 
much for any one city or county or, indeed, State to overcome alone. 
Places like Toledo, Ohio, Lorain, Detroit, Buffalo, Flint, Rochester, 
all the towns along the old Erie Canal struggle to recover from the 
outsourcing of manufacturing jobs to penny-wage countries.
  Chicago, Cleveland, and Erie, Pennsylvania, alone are limited in 
their ability to halt climate change and reverse its increasing effects 
on their shorelines and neighborhoods.
  The Great Lakes region needs a boost through accelerated investments 
and strategic and coordinated support to get back on track.
  Last year, President Biden and congressional Democrats accomplished 
what many had tried but failed to do, and that is pass an historic 
investment in jobs and infrastructure. That is step one.
  This support will help empower our communities to begin planning the 
necessary steps to rebuilding roads and bridges, improve ports, rail 
lines and airports, modernize energy and water infrastructure, and 
protect all of our lakes, the freshwater kingdom on this continent.
  But to maximize the impact and turbocharge revitalization, our region 
really needs a strategic plan to coordinate these resources along, 
importantly, with private investment to reboot our future.
  The Great Lakes region is the only major economic region in our 
country that lacks a Federal entity dedicated to supporting its long-
term coordinated economic development and conserving its natural 
environment.
  The West's water is served by the Bureau of Reclamation, or if you 
look at the Delta Regional Authority, it helps 10 million people in the 
Delta Region. And more than 400 counties from Mississippi to West 
Virginia are served by the Appalachian Regional Commission.
  The Great Lakes deserves no less. The Great Lakes Authority Act is 
long overdue and will create an instrumentality to serve the Great 
Lakes fresh watershed which will become even more important in the 
decades to come with each passing day.
  The Great Lakes Authority will be a Federal/State instrumentality 
like the others to spur job creation and world-class worker education, 
training, and adjustment in communities left behind.
  It will foster innovation to build forward the struggling core U.S. 
manufacturing and industrial base. And it will promote new advances in 
renewable energy technologies like solar, wind and hydrogen while 
conserving and stewarding our precious environmental assets.
  It will allow us an efficient multi-modal transportation shared 
network with our closest neighbor, Canada, that connects people and 
goods with where they need to go. Indeed, Canada is our largest trading 
partner.
  For America to compete in this century, we simply need a Great Lakes 
Authority, and I urge my colleagues to join us in this important 
effort. Please help us help the Great Lakes region.

                          ____________________