Tepid Economic Results

Floor Speech

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Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, as we begin the new year and the new decade, economic results feel tepid for working communities across our country.

The President touts and newspapers parrot his misguided belief that America is experiencing the greatest economy for everyone.

No, not for everyone.

Sure, many indicators prioritized by Wall Street and Washington support and reflect this statement, but speak with millions and millions of lower and middle-class workers, Americans across our country--especially in the heartland, in the Midwest--and you will find they feel quite differently. They are falling deeper into debt.

Despite President Trump's exaggeration, a soaring stock market is not indicative of a strong economy for all. Most Americans do not have a significant stake in the stock market. They work paycheck to paycheck. They have to pay higher prices for everything.

According to fact-checkers at PolitiFact, Americans of modest incomes are significantly less invested in the stock market than wealthier Americans.

No surprise there.

Other groups, including minorities and those without a college education, also lag in stock ownership, meaning that the stock market rally President Trump and the Republican Party so loudly brag about misses--bypasses--the large majority of Americans.

While unemployment numbers are relatively low, tens of millions of Americans continue to live and work below the poverty line. If you take look at their paycheck, many of them have to get food support through the government because they can't make ends meet--working people who are poor, millions of them.

Millions more are unemployed and working multiple jobs just to make ends meet for themselves and their families. Others have given up on finding work altogether, especially in towns and cities, where good work has simply disappeared and not been replaced. These families simply exist.

Since NAFTA's passage in the early 1990s, communities across America--especially in our industrial heartland--have endured the outsourcing of living-wage, middle-class jobs to Mexico and other penny-wage environments where workers are exploited to produce goods for pennies on the dollar.

Because of disastrous trade policies such as NAFTA and lack of enforcement by governments like Mexico, our young people have grown up in the shadows of shuttered factories they have never seen in operation. For too many, the pain of NAFTA's and other trade agreements' broken promises remain raw and real.

So, while job creation numbers may be up in one place, one must wonder: What sort of jobs are being created and how many are good jobs? The answer is: not nearly enough.

Many of the lost living-wage manufacturing jobs weren't only outsourced to Mexico; others shifted to China.

What has the President's unpredictable posturing with China has given our heartland? Desperate farmers and even more pain for manufacturing workers.

The 18-month-long trade war with China has undermined business investment. It pushed the manufacturing industry into a recession and cost an additional $42 billion for American consumers who have paid more for needed goods, according to a new Federal Reserve Bank study.

This year brings small relief for the 7 million lucky Americans who live in cities and States that will see wage increases; but this is no thanks to the President or the Senate Republicans who still refuse to move the Raise the Wage Act the House passed last year for the millions of workers who live at the lowest level of paid wages in our country.

Millions of American workers remain left behind by the $7.25 minimum wage, or $15,080 for a full year's work, because the Federal minimum wage remains stagnant. American workers haven't had the benefit of a Federal minimum wage increase in over a decade, yet the prices of everything have gone up--right?--medicine, housing, food, cars, local taxes.

There isn't a single congressional district in our Nation where a full-time minimum wage worker can afford a two-bedroom apartment. How about that?

Factor in the rising cost of healthcare and education, and more American families continue to live at the breaking point and are going deeper into debt. This President continues to push for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, despite no plan to replace it.

Here is another example of President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's failure to act to support workers: Our House passed the Butch Lewis Act--with bipartisan support, it passed this Chamber-- to address the worsening multiemployer pension crisis.

Currently, there are about 1,400 multiemployer plans covering nearly 10 million people across our country who are retired--60,000 in Ohio alone. These plans are certain to run out of money to support those retirees. It is estimated that 1.3 million retirees and workers are set to lose these benefits.

Mr. Speaker, the Senate should pass the bill that we passed here for these retirees; and we all, as a country, should work to improve the economic outlook for millions and millions of working Americans who, frankly, are left out of this economy.

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