Protecting the Right to Organize Act of 2019

Floor Speech

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Mr. GOSAR. Mr. Chair, today I will be opposing H.R. 2474, the PRO Act. Unfortunately, my Democrat colleagues are bringing legislation to the floor that will continue finding ways to pick winners and losers between special interests and businesses in America. Additionally, the legislation puts the heavy hand of government in between the contracts between workers, unions and their employers.

There are ways that we can build up working families in America, protect workers in their workplaces, and advance the growing gig economy in America, but this bill does none of that. Therefore, I cannot support this legislation.

But I want to be clear, I support America's workers.

Yesterday, as Chairman of the Western Caucus I hosted a job forum focusing on the creation of hundreds of union jobs in Northern Minnesota. Union jobs that are strongly opposed by Democrat members from St. Paul. If you want to fight for more union jobs then join us in supporting the development of the Twin Metals mine and the hundreds of Project Labor Agreement Jobs that will be filled as a result of what could be the largest project in the history of Minnesota.

I support the development of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline which will bring 2,000 to 4,000 union construction jobs to West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina but is strongly opposed by Democrat representatives and governors up and down the path.

I support the construction of the Appalachia Petrochemical Complex; a $6 billion ethylene cracking plant being built in Pennsylvania with union workers. A project made possible only by the development and advancements of hydraulic fracturing technology and the natural gas boom made possible by that technology. A technology that Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and a parade of other Democrat presidential candidates want to ban the minute they gain power.

I support the modernization of the ESA and NEPA because we need to get America back to building large projects in a timely fashion. Right now, in America, billions of dollars of investment is held up in long permitting times from Offshore wind in the Atlantic, to mines in Arizona, to pipelines in New York, Nebraska and Pennsylvania.

If we want to support American workers, we need to free our people to invest in American jobs and infrastructure. For too long my colleagues have attempted to promote heavy handed government intervention, like this legislation, rather than freeing Americans to build pipelines, mines, create jobs and build economic opportunity. Rather than siding with radical environmentalists for who no mine anywhere is acceptable or climate change activists who insist that not a single mile of new pipe be built. I am choosing to side with America's workers, union and private.

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