Progressive Caucus

Floor Speech

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Ms. KAPTUR. I want to thank Congressman Pocan for just a phenomenal presentation this evening and for lifting up those across our country who worked hard for a living and have fallen on hard times.

Trying to hold their families together, they go try to get a job, and 1,000 people show up for one job. What are they supposed to do? They have lost footing. They haven't been able to make their mortgage payments. They can't send their kids to college. Many of them get sick. They lose their health benefits. It is not so easy getting a job in today's America.

You have been such a leader not just on unemployment benefit extensions, but also on job creation. Since we are commemorating the second anniversary of the passage of the U.S.-Korean so-called ``free-trade agreement,'' I thought I would bring a startling chart to the floor to show why we have unemployment in this country.

One of the aspects of the U.S.-Korean so-called ``free-trade agreement,'' passed 2 years ago without my support, was that we were supposed to increase exports and decrease imports.

It was supposed to actually be good for America. We were supposed to create more jobs here at home when, in fact, we have actually lost 40,000 jobs when they told us we were going to gain 70,000 jobs as a result of that agreement. Those people who were supposed to have those jobs fell on unemployment benefits, large numbers of them.

Here is a chart that shows what has happened. This gives you a sense of how big the difference is.

All right. The idea is we are supposed to export cars from here to Korea. Well, guess what, folks? This is how much we export; and this is how much they export to us, so we have fallen so deeply in the red.

What happens is, with every $1 billion of trade deficit, you get another 4,000 people out of work. Factories shut down. Suppliers shut down. The math is very simple. You just need to understand it.

Now, you know, if you look at the individuals who stand in those unemployment lines, they were told that we were supposed to sell thousands and thousands of vehicles to Korea.

Well, I will tell you what: we have sold 3,400 more vehicles in that country--3,400.

Guess how much--since the trade agreement was signed with Korea, how many more they have sold to us. 125,000. 125,000.

Now, according to my math, they have sold to us 121,600 more cars than we have sold them. That means unemployment in Wisconsin. It means unemployment in Ohio. It means unemployment across this country. It means unemployment in the steel industry, unemployment in the machine tool industry. You can tick it off.

Now, they tell us agriculture was supposed to save us. Right? We have positive trade accounts in agriculture, and we are supposed to increase our exports to Korea. Guess what has happened. They are off by 41 percent--not just 4 percent, but 41 percent.

Our exports of poultry have fallen since this agreement was signed by 39 percent. Pork exports are down 34 percent. Beef exports are down to Korea 6 percent. U.S. meat producers have lost a combined total of $442 million in poultry, beef, and pork exports to Korea in the first 22 months of the agreement. That means more than $20 million lost every month.

So, Congressman Pocan, I am sure you have seen the impacts of this in Wisconsin. We have certainly seen it in Ohio, and we see these big trainloads coming through on rail of all these cars that they bring in here from the west coast that come from points over the Pacific or the Atlantic coming in to our country.

If you go to those countries and you look around on the streets, they not only don't buy U.S. cars; they don't buy cars from anyplace else but themselves.

So part of what we are doing with unemployment benefits is we are trying to make up for failures in our trade policy that have turned people away, away from the world of work and trying to struggle to make ends meet.

I will insert into the Record tonight a special report done by Public Citizen regarding the impacts of the U.S.-Korean so-called free trade agreement, and if this is the same template that the administration intends to use for bringing trade promotion authority in the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement up here, don't even start. Don't even start, because we have to reduce this and increase this, and until an agreement does that, we are not going to create more jobs in this country.

I will show you something. This is the big hole we are digging out of. We hear a lot about the budget deficit. Well, why do we have a budget deficit? We have a budget deficit because we have a trade deficit. We have had it now for one-quarter century, and every time we get into another one of those trade deals that are lopsided, what happens? We go deeper, deeper, and deeper into trade deficit. More and more companies close down; more and more people lose their work; and then we have to subsidize the differential between imports and exports through unemployment benefits.

We are trying to keep the hold, but we are not addressing this problem. This is after China PNTR. They told us: Oh, that will be so great; we are going to sell all this stuff to China. We fell deeper into deficit.

CAFTA--then they told us: Oh, Latin America, that will make it better. This is after Korea. It went down again.

What are we doing to America? We are ceding away our sovereignty in industry after industry. They have always said that electronics are going to save us. Those big, bad auto States? We are going to do better. Well, guess what? We have now fallen into deficit in advanced electronics. We are not even succeeding in exporting those. The people of this country have to pay attention because the heart and soul is being chipped away piece by piece. Try to find something made in this country--coats? shoes? cars? Some.

What we have is state economies like China competing against merchant economies like our own. And the auto industry got in such shape that it took the Government of the United States to prop it up and save it. We were faced with: Will the United States have an automobile industry or not? That is going to happen in other sectors. That is going to happen in steel, and that is going to happen in shoes. They didn't even fight. But if you look at every sector, unemployment, unemployment, unemployment--appliances, unemployment.

You can see it by census statistics. No matter what community you go to, we have had these lost jobs; and you look over 10 years, 2000 to 2010, poverty quadruples. Don't tell me those people don't want to work. They had jobs. The jobs disappeared.

You can go to these sweatshop countries and you can go find the production. Guess what? You can find TRICO now in Mexico. They used to make windshield wipers in Buffalo, New York. It was a major employer. The man who founded the company had a decent soul. He had a huge foundation that helped that community. It still does to this day. But all those jobs have moved down south of the border. No decent wage, no benefits, nothing. No corporate conscience at all.

That is happening from one end of this country to the other. America has a rude awakening ahead of her. It goes through Democratic and Republican administrations, and the American people know it. They know that it doesn't change here. Unemployment benefits are the least we can do for the American people--the people who went to work, they believed in making a good product, and now they have fallen onto hard times. Don't tell me it is all their fault.

I have done job fairs in my district. Thousands of people show up. There aren't enough jobs for everyone that wants to work. I would invite any President, any former President.

I would like to invite George Bush II to travel with me, because he came to my district. I would like to take him and show him where in Mexico these jobs have gone. Come with me to Guangdong province in China. I will show you where our jobs have gone. I will take you to Honduras. Then, do you know what? I am going to make everybody who comes with me work like those women work, and then you tell me why we face an unemployment benefit crisis in this country and what kind of a society we have here.

Those are earned benefits. Those belong to the people who have devoted their lives to going to work, earning a living, and trying to get ahead in an honorable way and in an honest way, and they deserve them.

So I want to thank you, Congressman Pocan, for giving me time this evening.

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