Creating American Jobs And Ending Offshoring Act Of 2010--Motion To Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I am going to be talking about a very serious crisis of offshoring, but before I do, I want to say a word about the budget. I am glad to hear my Republican colleagues being so very concerned about our budget deficit. My question is, where were they during the Bush administration when the budget debt of this country nearly doubled? We went to a war in Iraq, which some of us voted against, which will end up costing this country $3 trillion--unpaid for. I did not hear a concern at that point.

They gave many hundreds of billions of dollars to the top 1 percent in tax breaks, unpaid for. We didn't hear about the national debt concern there.

They brought forth legislation to bail out Wall Street, unpaid for; they passed a Medicare Part D prescription drug program, unpaid for.

I am very glad today our Republican friends are concerned about the deficit and the national debt. It would have been helpful to this country if they had been concerned about that issue 5 or 6 years ago, while they were in the process of doubling our national debt.

But the issue I did want to talk about this evening is, as I think most people understand, the middle class of this country----

Mr. WICKER. Was the Senator asking a rhetorical question or would he yield for an answer to that question?

Mr. SANDERS. I will be delighted to, when it is your time.

Mr. WICKER. Clearly it was a rhetorical question.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, one of the major reasons the middle class of this country is in decline and why the working class is being decimated and why real wages are going down for millions of American workers who are working longer hours for low wages is that for a number of years now we have been hemorrhaging manufacturing jobs. While this trend has in fact been going on for decades, it accelerated during the 8 years of the Bush administration. During that period, those 8 years, we went from 17 million manufacturing jobs to about 12 million. We lost somewhere near 5 million manufacturing jobs during that 8-year period, a decline of about 30 percent in manufacturing jobs. Today, here in the United States, we now have the fewest number of manufacturing jobs since the beginning of World War II.

As Senator Durbin pointed out on the floor today, from 1999 to 2008, multinational corporations based in the United States laid off nearly 2 million American workers at exactly the same time period as they were hiring over 2 million workers abroad. They laid off 2 million workers in this country and hired 2 million workers abroad.

Under President Bush, our trade deficit with China more than tripled, and our overall trade deficit nearly doubled. Today our trade deficit is over $370 billion. In other words, we are importing $370 billion more than we are exporting.

There are a number of reasons why manufacturing jobs are disappearing, but a very major one is that corporate America continues to increase its bottom line by hiring workers in China, Mexico, Vietnam, and other developing countries instead of employing American workers at decent wages in this country.

In my view, if large corporations want us to buy their products--and they certainly do; you cannot turn on television without corporate America telling us how much we should be buying their products--the time is long overdue for them to reinvest in the United States and build manufacturing plants here and not in China. A country that cannot produce the goods its consumers require and becomes more and more dependent on other countries for what it needs is not a country that will remain a major economic power in this global economy.

The legislation we are debating today, the Creating American Jobs and Ending Offshoring Act, is a good first step. This bill uses the Tax Code to begin to bring more manufacturing jobs back into America. But let us be clear: This is just a beginning. Much more needs to be done. The simple truth is that American workers cannot and should not be asked to compete against desperate people in developing countries, people in China, Mexico, Vietnam--other countries, where workers there are paid pennies an hour, where they may go to jail if they try to form a union, and where there are very few environmental standards. It seems to me to be absolutely unacceptable that our people are forced to compete against folks who are earning so little.

What we should be engaged in is a race to the top, not a race to the bottom. Yet that is exactly what is happening. If the United States is to remain a major industrial power, producing the products our people need and creating good-paying jobs, we must develop a new set of tax and trade policies that work for the American worker and not just for the CEOs of large corporations. The American people are sick and tired of losing decent-paying jobs to China, to India, to Mexico, as multinational companies throw American workers out on the street, go abroad, produce their products for pennies an hour, and then bring those products back into the United States.

In August I had about a dozen town meetings throughout the State. In every single town meeting I had in Vermont, people stood up and they said: It is becoming increasingly difficult to buy a product manufactured in the United States of America. How are we going to create jobs for our kids if we don't have a manufacturing sector?

I very much agree with that sentiment. We have to stop giving large profitable corporations tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas and start giving immediate tax relief to businesses that bring jobs back to the United States. That is exactly what this bill would do and that is why I am a strong supporter of it. But let's let there be no doubt, much more needs to be done. As somebody who voted against NAFTA when I was in the House, as somebody who voted against Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China, I think the evidence is now overwhelming that we need to fundamentally rewrite our trade policy to benefit the middle class of this country and to raise the living standards of people around the world instead of promoting a destructive race to the bottom, which is what we are seeing now.

Supporters of unfettered free trade told us over and over how their policies were going to lead to more jobs and a better life for the majority of Americans. Unfortunately, they have been proven dead wrong. NAFTA turned a trade surplus with Mexico into a huge trade deficit and we lost over 1 million jobs as a result. That is what NAFTA has done.

As a direct result of Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China, we lost over 2 million jobs to China and our trade deficit with that country nearly tripled. Anyone who has shopped at a Wal-Mart or any other large store in this country knows it is almost impossible to find anything made in the United States of America today. We are not just talking about sneakers; we are talking increasingly about high-tech products.

Let me give a few examples. Today, 80 percent of toys sold in the United States are made in China. Today, about 90 percent of vitamin C sold in the United States is made in China. Today, 85 percent of bicycles sold in the United States are made in China. Today, over 80 percent of all shoes sold in the United States are made in China. Today, about 90 percent of U.S. furniture production has moved to China. On and on it goes.

We have to recognize that if this country is going to remain a major economic force in the global economy, if we are going to have decent jobs for our kids and our grandchildren, we must rebuild the manufacturing sector of this country. We must demand and develop policies that enable corporate America to start rebuilding our manufacturing sector rather than moving abroad in underdeveloped countries. The legislation we have before us is a good start but, as I have indicated before, much more has to be done. I hope when we come up with a cloture vote tomorrow we can at least get the support of several Republicans, just a couple who are prepared to stand with the American worker, who are prepared to help us rebuild our manufacturing base so we can create the desperately needed good jobs we have to build.

I yield the floor.

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