[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 4]
[House]
[Page 5521]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   ADDRESSING UNEMPLOYMENT IN AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Burgess). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I want to talk for a moment about 
Vice President Cheney's trip to Dayton, Ohio. But before that, I just 
want to mention that the Medicare drug law that my friend from Ohio 
mentions just happened to be legislation written by the drug and the 
insurance industries. The drug industry will get $140 billion 
additional profits under this law. The insurance industry gets a $46 
billion direct gift subsidy from taxpayers.
  This bill was written for the drug industry, written for the 
insurance industry. In fact, the word in Washington is that President 
Bush will receive about $100 million in contributions from the drug 
industry. I think that is probably all you need to know. And that is 
why seniors simply do not like this drug bill, do not like the new 
Medicare law; and that is why the Republican Party, the President, is 
spending upwards of $80 million in taxpayer dollars to advertise to try 
to convince America's seniors that this is good legislation, that it is 
good law. It is clearly not.
  As I said, Mr. Speaker, the Vice President came to Dayton, Ohio, last 
week to try to explain away what has happened to the Ohio economy. One 
out of six manufacturing jobs has disappeared since President Bush took 
office; 300,000 in Ohio have been lost. That is 2,000 jobs every single 
week of the Bush administration. That is 260 jobs have disappeared 
every single day in Ohio since George Bush took office.
  In response to the bad economic news which cascades across my State, 
bad news almost every week on the economy, 600 people just laid off 
from a phone center in Trumbull County, near the district of the 
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. 
Ryan).
  In response to the bad news, the President has got two solutions 
every time: more tax breaks for the most privileged in our society, 
with the hope that some of these benefits trickle down to the rest of 
the people in this country. That has not worked. And the second 
response, the second solution is more NAFTA-like trade agreements that 
continue to ship jobs overseas, that continue to hemorrhage jobs. We 
have lost hundreds of thousands of jobs in this country, manufacturing 
jobs, because of these trade agreements. They simply are not working.
  The question always is, How out of touch can our government's leaders 
be? The answer to that is I do not know. Something seems to be new 
every day. The economic report of the President, which came out a 
couple or 3 or 4 weeks ago, signed by George Bush, signed by the 
President, the economic report of the President talks about outsourcing 
jobs, one of the biggest problems in our economy; and the President's 
Chief Economic Adviser, Gregory Mankiw, said outsourcing jobs is a good 
thing because it makes the economy more efficient.
  Well, let him look in the eye of a computer operator, let him look in 
the eye of a clerk who has lost her job, let him look in the eye of a 
steel worker who has lost his job and tell him that outsourcing is a 
good thing because it makes us more efficient.
  Then in the same report, Mr. Mankiw, the President's top economic 
guru, the top economic adviser, said that we will this year create 
200,000 jobs a month. Well, after he said that, even the President's 
people, including the President, said we did not really mean 200,000 a 
month, because the first month they fell 199,000 jobs short, and every 
month they have fallen way, way short of this job creation they 
promised.
  Then the President's economic adviser said, you know, maybe in 
response to this, and this really shows how out of touch they can get, 
maybe in response to this we need to reclassify what manufacturing is. 
Perhaps, because a bottling company is a manufacturing job, you take 
the syrup in a Pepsi or Coke bottling plant with 200 or 300 employees, 
and you take the carbonated water and put them together, that is a 
manufacturing process.
  Maybe, they suggest, the President's top economic people, that we 
should reclassify fast food, I am not making this up, this is in this 
report, the fast-food restaurants, maybe they should be considered 
manufacturing. Because you have the hamburger and you chemically treat 
it, you cook it; you take the cheese and you chemically treat it, you 
melt it; then you put the bread on, and you create these manufacturing 
jobs. Then you take the syrup and you push the button so the syrup and 
the carbonated water mix. This administration actually is thinking 
about reclassifying those service jobs as manufacturing jobs.
  Now, I am not making fun of people working in fast-food restaurants. 
In fact, if the Bush administration is going to reclassify those as 
manufacturing jobs, let them pay more than $7 an hour; and let them 
give these young men and women, or older men and women in these fast-
food restaurants, decent wages and decent benefits, if they are going 
to call them manufacturing jobs.
  Then the last point I wanted to make is in terms of how out of touch 
this government can get. One of the leading Republicans in this 
institution, the chairman of the Committee on Rules, recently was 
complaining that Democrats and others are saying that we have lost 
manufacturing jobs.
  He said, the fact is that you Democrats, you critics, you media 
people, you economists, you workers who are complaining about lost jobs 
are simply not looking at the economy right.
  Here is what he said. He said there are 430,000 Americans who make 
their full-time living selling on ebay. This is not reflected in the 
economy.
  So are we going to count garage sales as economic growth? Are they 
going to pay them health benefits? Is that where my friends want to 
take the U.S. economy?

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