When You Make It In America, Every American Can Make It

Floor Speech

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Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I thank the gentleman.

He hit the nail right on the head when he was articulating the kind of things, whether in New York or Ohio or anywhere in the country, really what the essence is, and that's resuscitating manufacturing back in the United States. And that needs to be a goal throughout the country because of what it does for the local economy and what it does for the States, what it does for tax revenue, what it does for the creation of intellectual property, because there are many people on the factory floor actually thinking about how this product can maybe be made differently, manufactured differently, how value could be added to it. It is very important. But what it's going to take, in part, and what's been happening in Ohio is a coalition, I believe, of working class people, of small business people who recognize that we have to make investments into our States and into our country.

And what happened in Ohio last week with the referendum that was trying to dismantle the bargaining rights of public employees, police, fire, teachers--the very people that we need to protect our communities so that we can have good, strong, vibrant small businesses, the very people who are educating our kids and our students who are eventually going to go into these businesses--were under attack.

The upside to this whole thing is that a coalition formed in Ohio, a coalition of working class people who get educated, get trained, have master's degrees, protect us, go into burning buildings, we call them when we get in trouble, they deal with all of the societal problems that go into their classroom, but they are committed to educating our young people. Eighty-two out of 88 counties in Ohio helped beat back this attack, and with over 61 percent of the vote in Ohio, beat back this attack. And the real upside to this whole thing is that a lot of people who are in this coalition of police, fire, teachers, public employees, as well as the private sector unions--the autoworkers, the steelworkers, the plumbers, the pipefitters, the piledrivers and millwrights and the ironworkers and sheet metal workers, there were a lot of these people who used to watch Fox News. They used to listen to Rush Limbaugh. They used to listen to Glenn Beck. And they said, in story after story, after campaigning for this for months, that they realized what's been happening here. They've realized this assault that's been coming in and funded campaigns across the country, big money coming in to try to divide the middle class and try to dismantle the agenda. And I believe that this coalition, Mr. Speaker, is an opportunity for us to have the political coalition needed to recognize what investments we have to make back into our country. That's what happened in Ohio.

People are recognizing that they've been trying to get us divided, who's in a union, who's not in a union, who's in a public sector union, who's in a private sector union, who's black, who's white, who's gay, who's straight; just divide the middle class, divide the working class. And this coalition came together.

And I believe that if we're going to have the kind of investment, if we're going to resuscitate manufacturing in the United States, if we're going to realize that the government certainly can't do everything, but it has to do something, it has to make these investments into engineers and good, solid
public schools, and community colleges, and colleges and Pell Grants, so that you can have the work force available to ignite this kind of economic development that's needed around our country.

These are about investment. And to have 2 to $3 trillion in transportation and infrastructure investments that need to get made, we now need a political coalition to say, hey, let's make these investments. Akron, Ohio does not have $1 billion to finance their combined sewer problem, so let's put these building trades workers back to work, which is going to generate revenue for the City of Akron and Youngstown and Cleveland and Pittsburgh and all these others, which is going to increase their coffers, that they will have money to spend on police and fire and teachers and investments back into the community, and then partner with the private sector.

Ultimately, at the end of the day, the private sector has got to come in and drive this revolution, without a doubt. But it is time for us to make the investments necessary that are going to allow the private sector to come in here and make the private investments that will lead to job creation. So the bills that we have and that we're offering are an alternative vision.

I'll tell one quick story. We were having a conversation one day, a Member of Congress and I, one from the other party, talking about investments into the semiconductor industry. And they were down here lobbying, the semiconductor industry was down here lobbying on investments that need to be made.

And one of our colleagues said well, that's why we're giving you tax cuts, so that you guys in your business can make these investments. And the four or five CEOs said, you don't understand. We're talking about billions of dollars that need to get invested in order for the semiconductor industry to go in and partner and use the technology and the research that has been developed.

So it's the government's job to plant the garden, to till the soil, the sunlight, the water, to grow the plant, and then let the private sector come in and pick the fruits and the vegetables that they may need. That's what we've always done in this country, whether it was military research, NASA, NIH, that's what we did, and that's been a recipe for success for us.

So I'm excited about what's going on in Ohio because I think we finally have the political coalition that is needed to give politicians and leaders in the State and country the backing that they need to push this kind of agenda.

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Mr. RYAN of Ohio. If the gentleman will yield, I think there's really something to this idea that there's a lot of things that happen that support our economy that we take for granted, that we don't see all the time. And I think what you're talking about, with farmers, you know, food just arrives at the grocery store. You know, a lot of us don't pay enough attention to all the intricacies that go into that getting there.

The same with the police, same with the fire, same with the teachers. You take it for granted that this is always going to be there. But these people who are sanitation workers in your city or town are essential to the functioning of our commerce, and so we've got to pay attention to this stuff and reinvest back into it.

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Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And I don't think anybody's of the illusion that somehow a coalition like this is going to agree on every issue. But what happened in Ohio was that there was a prioritization of what really matters, of what are the fundamental issues that it means to be an American, and what's the recipe that America always had that led to our success.

It wasn't an accident that we jumped the Soviet Union in the race to space. It was a concerted effort on behalf of the government, private industry and the people in the country. And we had this recipe that was investments and infrastructure and research and education and making sure we had good regulations in the financial industry. And we were the world power for a long, long time, and we still are.

But we've seen the decrease in wages or stagnant wages for 30 years, and attacking the workers now to say, as they were in Ohio, that it's your fault. You're making too much.

There was a great placard at one of the rallies. The guy said, I make $30,000 a year, I have a Master's Degree and I'm the problem. So this is the kind of coalition I think we need.

I think it gets to, hopefully, a new alternative vision for the country and for our government which, to me, is it's not about government being too big or too small. It's about the government working.

And if the people, the working class people see that the government is working, that it is regulating its markets, making wise investments, recognizing the value of education and the investments we need to make, then they're going to vote in who's ever doing that.

But this shrink it and drown it in the bathtub and don't make the kind of investments that we made for so many different years is not a recipe for success. It's a recipe for disaster.

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Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And a respect for the workers who are ultimately going to elevate this. And we see that within manufacturing, how the ideas and the intellectual property that come from the factory floor are driven by those workers who are sitting there every day thinking about how this can be done better.

We have so much potential within the workforce that is undeveloped, untapped, and not utilized properly that could lift us up and help us create this whole new economy that is going to get created somewhere by somebody somehow, and it might as well be us. And if we make the proper investments, we have the talent and the creativity in the country to make it happen. But I think it gets back to having a general respect for the workers.

We had firefighters that I met make 30 runs in one day on a rig and get paid 40-some thousand dollars a year. And the runs aren't like me and you running over to vote. They're runs into burning buildings.

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Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Carrying oxygen tanks and everything else. And there just has been a disrespect for that kind of work--the sanitation worker, the custodian, the teacher--pushing the blame of all society's problems onto these public workers in that instance.

Then, now in Ohio, for example, they're coming in and they want to make it a right-to-work State. So those building trade folks who we're going to try to get back to work, there's 20 percent unemployment in the trade. We're trying to get them back to work with the infrastructure investments that we need to make. To say to them, ``You're not going to be allowed to have a fundamental right of collectively bargaining and to be able to negotiate contracts, and it's going to diminish the wages and everything else,'' similar to what happened or what they wanted to do in Ohio--it's about respecting these people. And when you respect them, they'll come to perform, but it takes those investments and that general appreciation.

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