Funding Manufacturing Extension Partnership Offices

Floor Speech

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Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to sound the alarm across Ohio. The Trump administration has recklessly frozen all of Ohio's Manufacturing Extension Partnership offices--I repeat, Manufacturing Extension Partnership offices.

Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have worked hard to grow manufacturing jobs in America, in the places we represent, to recover from the four decades of outsourcing of U.S. production.

I am really shocked at what they have done. This impulsive decision is a direct blow to family-owned businesses and American entrepreneurs competing against Communist China, Mexico, and every other low-wage haven in the world.

This decision delays critical upgrades, injects uncertainty into local production lines, undermines new jobs being created, and undermines every worker this Nation depends upon.

The Department of Commerce should release and restore these job- creating dollars immediately. Congress voted for them. They should be expended.

If the Trump administration can send $40 billion off to Argentina to buy foreign beef that hurts Ohio cattlemen, they ought to restore this support to boost U.S. factories, companies, and new jobs here at home.

This is simply unbelievable.

By the way, the U.S. Commerce Department Secretary is a Wall Street magnate. He doesn't understand what it takes to create manufacturing jobs in this country.

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