[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 64 (Wednesday, April 9, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2497-S2499]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Maiden Speech
Mr. BANKS. Mr. President, it is the honor of my life to be here
representing Indiana in the U.S. Senate. I want to start out thanking
Hoosiers for sending me here to serve them, my State, and my country.
It is an incredible honor. It is humbling and thrilling, truly,
speaking on the floor of the U.S. Senate for the very first time.
You know, I grew up in a trailer park in Columbia City, IN, a small
town of less than 10,000 people. I still live there today with my wife
Amanda and our three young daughters, and, really, it is the best
hometown in America.
But when I was a kid, we lived on the very south end of town, on a
dead-end street with about a dozen trailers. I often drive by that
boyhood home, and I point it out to my daughters, and I say: That is
where I came from.
Unfortunately for them, it is on the way to school. So they hear me
say that a lot, and they get annoyed every time I say it.
But I have a lot of great memories growing up in that trailer park. I
remember my dad teaching me how to ride a bicycle in the cul-de-sac at
the end of the street.
I remember his cream-colored Ford Bronco. The top would come off. He
would wax it on the street and drive it around town. He was so proud of
it.
I remember the bunkbed at the front of the trailer that I shared with
my brother Chad. I remember the swing set in the side yard.
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I remember deer hunting season. My dad would bring the buck home that
he was proud of. We would can the meat, and we would live off it for
the winter.
You see, my parents didn't have much, but they worked hard, and they
provided for my two younger brothers and me.
My mom and dad were high school sweethearts. They didn't go to
college. They had me at a young age. My mom started working when she
was 13 years old at a local nursing home called Miller's Merry Manor,
and she only recently retired from working there for most of her life.
My dad worked at a local Dane factory, where they made axles for cars
and other vehicles. My uncle, my grandpa, many relatives, and many
friends of our family also worked in that same factory. In fact, it was
my grandpa, my mom's dad, who got my dad his job there when he started
dating my mom.
When I was growing up, that factory provided good pay and
opportunities for so many families in my community. During all three
shifts, 24/7, the parking lot would be overflowing as workers earned a
wage that was good enough to support their families. That was our
American dream. Those were exactly the kinds of jobs that allowed my
parents to put food on their table and raise their boys.
To so many Americans like my parents, the American dream isn't just
some concept that think tank experts in Washington, DC, write about. It
is real. It is what they have lived in their lives, like my mom and dad
did, because to my mom and dad, the American dream is, if you work
hard, then perhaps your kids might have a better shot than what you
did.
I want to take a moment, like the Good Book says to do, and I want to
honor my mom and my dad. It is because of them that I have lived the
American dream. Look at where I am today: on the floor of the U.S.
Senate, from humble beginnings in a small town in Northeast Indiana,
the first of my family to go to college, and the great honor of wearing
the uniform and serving my country.
I served my country in the U.S. House of Representatives and now here
in this historic Chamber, the U.S. Senate. My oldest daughter Lillian
is in the Gallery with us today. And just like my parents, I want my
three daughters to be better off than what I was. That is the American
dream.
This really is the greatest country in the history of the world. That
American dream is always worth fighting and protecting.
But sadly, the country has changed a lot from when I was a kid
growing up in that small town. There used to be plenty of those good-
paying factory jobs like the one that my dad had, with pay that kept up
with the cost of living and companies that treated their workers right.
It is no accident that a lot of those jobs have disappeared, and the
working class is falling further and further behind. You see, it is
clear: It is the result of bad policy choices that put corporate and
foreign interests ahead of those workers like my dad. Decades of
America-last policies have hollowed out our industries and crushed our
workers.
Wall Street shipped factories overseas and stripped our companies for
quick profits. For a State like Indiana, the top manufacturing State in
the country, that is a huge blow.
We have lost 6 million manufacturing jobs since 1980, while our
population grew by over 117 million people. Like President Trump said
last week, we have also lost more than 90,000 factories since NAFTA was
signed. Adjusting for the value of the dollar, working-class wages for
men haven't gone up at all. They earned about $850 a week in 1980, and
they still earn about $850 a week today. About 600,000 jobs went to
Mexico over two decades since NAFTA. In the 1980s, it took about 40
weeks of work for a factory worker to earn enough to support their
family. Today, it takes about 62 weeks, which means those working-class
families are growing debt and falling further and further behind.
For too long, empty lots, boarded-up buildings, and dead store fronts
could be seen all over America because of the choices that our Nation's
elites made. It was a tremendous failure of leadership. They opened up
our borders, they cut wages for workers, and, as a result, cheap labor
flooded into our country.
Indiana is also the top steel-producing State in the country, but the
steel industry has shrunk by two-thirds. In 1980, the United States
made one-sixth of the world's steel. Now that has dropped to one-
twentieth.
Foreign companies have used their low wages and subsidies to dump
cheap steel and take over our market, while American steel companies
have struggled to keep up.
Today, America produces 1 percent of all of the cargo ships in the
world. But in 1980, we made over 50 percent of them. It costs over
double to build a ship in the United States than it does in China and
South Korea, and they heavily subsidize their shipbuilding industries.
You see, in Columbia City, my small hometown, the best paying jobs
are at a local steel mill called Steel Dynamics. A lot of guys I went
to high school with, a lot of friends of our family work there today,
and they do really well and provide for their families.
But we have lost way too many of those kinds of jobs around the
country to China and foreign countries that have taken advantage of us
and our workers. It was great to see leaders from that steel mill--
Steel Dynamics--in the Rose Garden last week when I had a front row
seat to celebrate President Trump's tariffs announcement, which will
massively help our steel industry in places like Columbia City, IN. For
too long, our leaders have turned a blind eye when our enemies like
China took those good-paying skilled jobs away from us.
One of the really memorable moments from the Rose Garden, last week,
of President Trump for me was when he said that it is hard to fully
blame foreign countries when it was the lack of leadership on our own
part that allowed those countries to take advantage of America.
In fact, he kept pointing back to the Oval Office and saying that we
are in the position that we are today because many of the men who sat
in that office behind him did nothing while foreign countries took
advantage of us and our workers.
President Trump understands, like we all do, that we can't pass the
American dream on to the next generation if we let China dominate us.
In fact, he is the first President of my lifetime to call China a
threat to the American way of life. That is why I believe that letting
China into the World Trade Organization was the worst economic mistake
of my lifetime.
For too long, they have stolen our technology, they have copied our
products, and they have built up their industries with slave wages that
American workers can't and shouldn't have to compete with. No one has
held them accountable until now. Too many of our leaders have been
playing footsie with China instead of pushing back and standing up for
our workers.
In 2001, our trade deficit with China was $84 billion. By 2024, that
deficit more than tripled to $295 billion. Nearly 25 years ago, China
accounted for 8 percent of the world's manufacturing output, but by
2020, that number has gone up by 35 percent.
The Chinese Communist Party wants to make the United States
irrelevant in every key industry: steel, aluminum, nuclear power, AI,
semiconductors, telecom, planes, ships, cars, and many more.
They are making us weaker and dependent. And here is the worst part
about it: the CCP conned American investors into footing the bill. They
rolled out the red carpet to corporate America, and Wall Street poured
nearly $1 trillion into Chinese companies that destroyed American jobs.
Some people believed naively that China would become freer, more
open, and more like America; the complete opposite has happened. Now,
they are our biggest adversary, and it is past time that we fight back.
During my time in the House, I made it my mission, my biggest
priority to stand up to China, and only one President in my lifetime,
once again, has understood that threat. In the U.S. Senate, I intend to
help and stand with President Trump to stand up to China and put
America first.
When President Trump first came down that escalator over 10 years
ago, my dad, a retired union factory worker, was for him from day one.
I wasn't so sure about it, but my dad knew that
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Donald Trump was going to fight for the working class, and, boy, was he
right.
President Trump tapped into the American people's hopes in a way that
few leaders before him ever have. And that is why I was so inspired in
just the first couple of weeks on the job as a U.S. Senator to be in
that Rotunda for President Trump's inauguration when he talked about
ushering in the golden age of America. It was so encouraging and
inspiring to real people in real places like my hometown.
I feel like I am living through some of the best parts of our
history, and I stand with President Trump in his commitment to put
those working families first. He is removing the ``kick me'' sign from
the backs of our workers and our producers. He is doing what the voters
elected him to do, and he is keeping his campaign promises.
He is putting our attention on the issues that matter most to working
Americans, like being able to afford a home, a car, groceries,
education, and healthcare.
He is standing up against global companies that are selling out to
our enemies, and he is bringing back a country that builds and makes
things. Just last month, so important to Indiana, we heard that Honda
is going to build their new Honda Civic in Indiana, not in Mexico. And
last week, GM said that they would increase truck production just a few
miles from my hometown in Fort Wayne. Our steel mills are roaring back
to life. Our tech companies are hiring in America again.
And Eli Lilly, also based in Indiana, plans to invest $27 billion in
American manufacturing. So far in just 10 weeks, President Trump has
announced $6 trillion in new investment in the United States of
America. That type of investment is helping to bring back the American
dream for hard-working Americans.
On election day this past November, I took what ended up being a long
and nostalgic walk with my dog Marshall. He is named after Thomas Riley
Marshall, the 28th Vice President of the United States, who is also
from my small hometown.
In fact, his Vice Presidential statue is right outside the west door
as you enter this Chamber. In fact, on election day, we walked right
past his home, which today is a museum in his honor to his history.
When I was in elementary school, we would go to field trips to the
museum, and the teachers would say: Look what this guy did coming from
a small town like this. If you work hard and dream big, maybe you can
do something like that too.
I went on this dogwalk with Marsh, and we walked past the museum, we
walked past the courthouse and the town square in my hometown. We
walked past the hot dog stand that was where I had my first job as a
teenager, and then we ended up in that trailer park that I mentioned
earlier where I grew up.
I have driven past it many times, but it was the first time that I
have actually gone through alone and walked through and down this
street since I was a kid. It was just a couple of hours before the news
would call my race and name me the Senator-elect for the great State of
Indiana, so this was rather an emotional experience for me. As memories
of my childhood flooded back, I realized how incredible of a life and
opportunity that I have been given.
But as we were walking down that street, I noticed a mom sitting on
the steps of her trailer, smoking a cigarette, watching her two boys in
the yard who would have been about the same age as my brother and I
would have been when we lived in that trailer park too. As I watched
them, I couldn't help but wonder if those boys would be able to achieve
what I did or if the deck was so stacked against them today that that
kind of opportunity for them was way out of reach.
Later that evening as the results from election night poured in, it
became apparent to me that America decided to turn the page to a new
chapter for this great country. And as someone who has lived the
American dream, I have got great news for those boys and their mom: The
golden age of America is here.
It has only been 5 months since election day when I took that walk,
and we have already seen a major shift for hard-working Americans. For
too long, Washington has not cared about people like those boys and
that mom, but I do. And I know that all of you do, and I know that
President Trump does too.
As leaders in this country, we have a duty to fight for those boys
and those moms like her for their American dream.
To my Republican colleagues and my colleagues across the aisle, we
must stand together more than ever before to fight for those working
families.
It is going to take everyone in this Chamber working together to do
it. There is so much in this fight that we can all agree on as
Republicans and Democrats, and now is the time for leadership of both
parties to step up for American workers and families.
We are kicking off a new era of peace and prosperity like we have
never seen before. Again, Indiana, thank you for this incredible
opportunity. To my colleagues, it is a privilege to serve with you. I
am so excited about what lies ahead.
I yield the floor.
(Applause.)
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Indiana.