Confectioners

Floor Speech

Ms. SPEIER. Mr. Speaker, there is an old saying that says you can catch a lot more bees with honey than with vinegar. It turns out that that is true in business, too.

The confectioners industry employs a whopping 55,000 busy worker bees in the United States--that is 55,000 people who are working directly in the confectionery industry--and indirectly supports another 400,000 jobs in other industries from retail to trucking.

Every confectionery job created in the United States supports another seven; but Congress continues to maintain an unbelievably wrongheaded policy that is destroying these jobs.

The Department of Commerce found that protectionist provisions in the 2008 farm bill destroyed three jobs for every job they saved. They have cost consumers and businesses as much as $14 billion since 2008, and they have cost taxpayers over $300 million in subsidies.

We have lost over 125,000 jobs in sugar-related industries since 1997. We cannot continue to hurt our own workers and consumers alike. This is not a sugar high. This is a sugar low.

I urge Congress to pass the bipartisan Sugar Reform Act so we can provide relief to small- and medium-sized businesses.

Source