[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 1]
[House]
[Pages 71-72]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




        HEARTLAND FIRES ARE BURNING ON EVE OF PRESIDENT'S VISIT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Simpson). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, this evening the President will address this 
Congress and America. Tomorrow morning he will travel to northwest 
Ohio, the region in which I reside and represent. Ohio's snow-covered 
fields and towns this time of year give a placid impression, but they 
mask the fire that is burning inside the homes that dot the real Ohio 
that the President will not visit. It really is too bad. Air Force One 
will pass over most of us in northern Ohio on Wednesday morning, 
tomorrow.
  Sealed off from the general public in a tight security bubble, the 
President

[[Page 72]]

will land at an airfield and travel by interstate as highway patrol and 
sheriff's deputies close overpasses and hold people back in half-mile 
cordons. The President will not see them. The dutiful national press 
corps, with credentials issued by the White House, will be subjected to 
a similar fate, never meeting the folks who really live there. The 
motorcade will lock in its guests, ushering them to Owens College, 
where tuition has just been hiked by 9 percent. An invitation-only 
audience will await. The White House is staging photo ops and messages 
less than 6 weeks before Ohio's primary on March 2. But taxpayers and 
not the President's brimming campaign coffers are paying for Air Force 
One on this visit to the heartland in Ohio.
  So let this message go forth. The President has the worst jobs record 
since the Great Depression and Herbert Hoover: 2.7 million Americans 
are jobless. In December, only 1,000 new net jobs were created 
nationwide. 300,000 Ohioans are out of work. Their unemployment 
benefits and health insurance are evaporating. College tuition across 
our State is skyrocketing. The average graduate ends up a debtor with 
$17,000 in debt as they begin their careers. 1,300,000 Ohioans have 
lost their health insurance, nearly 80,000 more than when this 
President assumed office. Since 2001, another 167,000 of Ohio's 
manufacturing jobs have disappeared. High tech, ballyhooed to have been 
our salvation, has been on a precipitous decline with hardware and 
software jobs being outsourced to India and China.
  America and Ohio are being emptied of our wealth-producing jobs. Our 
trade deficit is at record levels. In 2003, imports exceeded exports by 
$484 billion. NAFTA has hurt us deeply. These are not just numbers. 
These are people. Each billion dollars in trade deficit costs us 20,000 
jobs. Hoover in Canton is gone, as is Dixon Ticonderoga in Sandusky and 
Acuity Lighting in Vermillion which is closing; Campbell Soup in 
Sidney; GE in Bucyrus; Goodyear Tire in Greenville; Honeywell in 
Elyria; International Paper in Cincinnati; Lucent Technology in 
Columbus; Mr. Coffee in Glenwillow; Philips Electronics in Ottawa; and 
now Electrolux just across the border in Michigan.
  When the President visited our region on September 6, 2001, I 
respectfully handed him a letter on Air Force One inviting him and 
President Fox to travel with me to meet the thousands of workers in 
Ohio who were losing their jobs to NAFTA and their Mexican counterparts 
who are also sliding backwards. He never bothered to answer. I 
mentioned this to him at the White House Christmas party that year and 
asked him about a reply. He winked and joked, and this is a quote: 
``The letter must have gotten lost in the shuffle.'' He did not ask for 
another.
  Is it any wonder the heartland fires are burning? The trade deficit 
is not mashed potatoes. Jobs lost to Mexico, China and India drag down 
our Nation's economic growth by nearly a third and every year of the 
Bush presidency it has worsened. The President will speak in Wood 
County, Ohio's largest corn-producing county, and my hope is he will 
urge new ethanol and biodiesel production to offset rising petroleum 
imports from foreign countries. They equal 60 percent of what our 
Nation consumes, the highest ever.
  As gas prices in northwest Ohio just topped $1.65 per gallon and the 
per barrel cost of oil now at over $35 per barrel, do we not want 
America to transition to energy independence? Since 50 cents of every 
farm dollar earned today is Federal subsidy, what a gigantic job-
creating gift the President could give to Ohio and to America by 
helping launch us on energy independence.
  Mr. Speaker, when the fires burn in the heartland, we know America 
will feel the heat.
  Since 50 cents of every farm dollar earned today is federal subsidy, 
let's put it to work to remedy the nation's chief strategic 
vulnerability--reliance on imported crude, a key component of our trade 
deficit. Promoting bio-fuel independence would create vast numbers of 
new jobs here at home, far more than Mars exploration or the billions 
being spent for Iraq rebuilding.
  Ohio is plagued by deficits due to the poor economy. Declining 
revenues have used the state to raise taxes--fuel taxes, sales taxes, 
cigarette taxes, property taxes. Whatever federal tax relief the Bush 
Administration might have envisioned has been eaten up by rising state 
taxes. Even with Mrs. Bush's Reading campaign, our local libraries 
suffered state cutbacks, had to close down services, and were forced to 
seek a local levy to sustain normal hours.
  The public sector isn't the only pressure point either. Ohio 
bankruptcies broke a record with over 10,500 last year, and the Pension 
Benefit Guarantee Corp just announced a troubling $11.2 billion deficit 
threatening the solvency of our nation's private retirement plans. This 
is serious indeed.
  Each year of the Bush Presidency, his budgets have ballooned the 
federal deficit. 2003 goes down as the worst red ink in history!
  The bipartisan Concord Coalition calls the Bush budgets the ``most 
irresponsible'' ever. Our national debt has now broken $7 trillion, and 
we are adding $2.03 billion to the debt each day. This poor management 
threatens the long-term solvency of Social Security and Medicare.
  The International Monetary Fund has warned that these net financial 
obligations, heavily floated through borrowing from foreign countries, 
pose ``significant risk for the U.S. and the world.'' The U.S. economy 
as a whole will end up paying 40 percent of its total earnings in a few 
years, to pay interest on this ``unprecedented level of external debt 
for a large industrial country.''
  It doesn't have to be this way.
  For 8 years, Congress and President Bill Clinton labored to balance 
annual budgets, on a track to pay down the long-term debt.
  Now the President will come to Northern Ohio to talk about jobs and a 
$120 million national new job training initiative. Ironic since Ohio, 
due to abysmal Republican management in Columbus, still has failed to 
obligate $242 million in job training and transition funds for which I 
have voted, the second-most of any state in the nation. Ohio is under 
watch and being fined for poor performance in federal job training 
efforts. These dollars were meant to help unemployed workers gain a 
foothold in this economy. I hope that during his visit, this President 
will join me in my efforts to recapture these funds for Ohio's workers 
despite an inept State government. Ohio's workers could use his help.
  In Ohio, we are grateful to be a battleground state in Election 2004. 
Ohioans seek good jobs with good wages; health and retirement benefits 
that can't be taken away; affordable education for youth; and 
prescription drugs under Medicare for seniors. We seek respect for 
veterans, in theatre and afterwards fiscal responsibility and energy 
independence.
  Every citizen must ask the question in this Presidential election 
year: Am I, and America, better off now than we were four years ago?
  When the fires burn in the heartland, we know America will feel the 
heat.

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