Devastating Harm Caused By Trump Administration

Floor Speech

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Mr. MANNION. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congresswoman Kaptur for her leadership.

Mr. Speaker, as the final speaker tonight, let me take you to upstate New York, Syracuse, central New York, the Mohawk Valley, just west down the Erie Canal from my good friend, Representative Tonko, who represents the capital region.

This is a place where I have lived and loved my entire life. These are communities that know firsthand what happens when Washington breaks its promises and when jobs and investments disappear.

We remember back home when Griffiss Air Force Base closed. We remember when Carrier left. Those were our sheet metal workers. We remember when New Venture Gear and a Chrysler plant closed. Those were our UAW brothers and sisters. There were others that have left our region behind.

It is through that prism that we see the Trump administration's $30 million clawback of Federal funding awarded to Syracuse, New York. This was funding for a project that had bipartisan support and passed in a Republican-majority House. It is a piece of one of the largest infrastructure projects in the Nation and the largest in the history of upstate New York. That is the reimagining of Interstate 81.

That money was meant to build roads and sidewalks, reconnect utilities, and restore opportunity where an elevated highway divided a community of color in the early 1960s.

Pulling those funds away is a betrayal of the working families who were promised progress and, instead, are left with fewer jobs, less opportunity, and delayed urban renewal. It is uncertainty that has existed over the last 9 months, and that uncertainty is part of a great American city that I have lived in for my entire life.

Mr. Speaker, this is not the only bad policy that is hurting the region and the people I represent. Our economy is tied deeply to Canada. In fact, New York's 22nd District, which doesn't even border Canada, exports $1 billion in goods and $227 million in services to Canada each year.

This is a longstanding trade relationship that supports more than 6,400 jobs locally and directly employs 1,400 people at Canadian-owned businesses. Slap-shot tariff policy and volatile trade policy have put those jobs at risk.

Our manufacturers who rely on metals, equipment, and machinery are watching the costs rise. Just yesterday, in a hearing in the Agriculture Committee that I serve on, farmers were talking about their increased costs. Those increased costs are often related to automated farm machinery that they can get only from outside of the United States.

They don't have time to wait and see if, possibly, domestic manufacturing will occur. They need help now.

As my colleague stated before, it is under our purview as Congress. Article I, Section 8, gives us the authority for imposts and excises, not the executive office.

Our manufacturers rely on those things. Our farmers, especially our dairy and specialty crop producers, are losing access to stable export markets. Our small businesses, like local breweries that depend on Canadian aluminum for cans, are feeling the pinch.

When tariffs slam the border, it hits the bottom line for small businesses in Syracuse, Utica, Auburn, Cortland, and other communities across my district.

While we are fighting those challenges, the Trump administration is also attacking renewables, a fast-growing private-sector employer in New York State. That is not just in my district. In Representative Stefanik's district, a hydrogen fuel cell plant was not going to be completed by the same company that was going to build in California and Texas.

It is not about a red State or a blue State. It is about the demand that we have for energy as we move into the future.

As my colleagues also stated, we are falling behind. Canada is beating us. It is time to invest. We need more energy. Without that energy, we are going to continue to fall behind.

What jobs were lost in that project for hydrogen fuel cells not even in my district? In Massena, New York, jobs like the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, IUPAT, and others do not have those jobs that were promised. They pulled the plug because those hydrogen fuel tax credits were pulled.

We are fighting that challenge. The cuts, the loss of these jobs, and the loss of promises and tax credits are impacting our ability to hit our clean energy goals and lower our utility bills for consumers. It is making it harder to attract investment and job-creating opportunities in my district and around the upstate region.

We have fought for clean energy manufacturing. I did so in the State senate as the cosponsor of a piece of legislation called Green CHIPS, which has brought Micron Technology into my district, producing semiconductor chips using clean energy. I was the co-prime sponsor of that legislation. This is the largest private investment in the history of this country.

That is where we are: broken promises on I-81; reckless tariff policy that destabilizes trade for the agricultural sector, manufacturing sector, and small businesses; and shortsighted cuts to energy programs, which will make power generation more challenging and cost jobs and investment while driving up energy costs.

I can tell you this: New York-22 communities are resilient. We have rebuilt before, and we are building again. We are building with Micron and others, with investments in advanced manufacturing, with world- class dairy farmers and growers who continue to feed the Nation, and with workers who never stop fighting for a better future.

Washington should be our partner in that progress, not a roadblock. I will never stop fighting for my hometown and the working people of this country. I will always keep telling the truth to my constituents and the American people.

It is bad policy that is hurting our country, leaving us behind, and costing Americans more. The people I serve deserve nothing less than a Congress that works together and does the work that they have been constitutionally given the right to do.

No one should cede our House of Representatives' constitutional power to Donald Trump. We can fix this. We can put our country over politics and workers over partisanship. That is the way forward, and that is what I will be working on to deliver for the people of central New York, along with my Congressional Labor Caucus partners.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) for the time.

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