April 2, 2019 - Issue: Vol. 165, No. 57 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 1st Session

[Pages S2204-S2205]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              THE ECONOMY

  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, last week the dedicated journalists at the 
Cincinnati Enquirer published the first in a series of reports on the 
Ohioans left behind by the economic recovery. This is a big project 
that seven reporters, three editors, photographers, and videographers 
are all working on. They are doing what reporters do best--going behind 
the headlines about stock market performance and actually talking to 
people from all walks of life in southwest Ohio, in their circulation 
area.
  When you look beyond the numbers, you see a pretty different story 
from what this President and his Wall Street Cabinet like to brag 
about. These reporters traveled the 80-mile road that stretches from 
Middletown to Cincinnati and beyond. They talked to teachers and 
factory workers. They talked to pastors and truckdrivers, people of all 
ages, and people of all races. Over and over they found the same 
things. These Ohioans have simply not recovered from the Wall Street 
recession of a decade ago. They haven't recovered from decades of trade 
and tax policies that funneled wealth to the richest CEOs and the 
biggest multinational corporations.
  These reporters wrote:

       [These workers] may find jobs, but they don't earn the 
     salaries and benefits they once did. They may pay their bills 
     on time, but they're one illness or broken-down car from 
     financial crisis.
       Their savings accounts are stretched. Their health and 
     retirement benefits inadequate. They need more than they 
     have.

  In other words, their hard work isn't paying off. Listen to some of 
the stories these reporters tell. They talked to a subcontractor for AK 
Steel. His employer is renegotiating its contract with the factory.
  The authors wrote:

       If the contract vanishes, someone will still do the work he 
     does, but that's about the only thing he knows for sure. A 
     new company might fire everyone and hire new drivers or 
     decide to cut his pay.

  More and more companies use subcontractors and independent 
contractors as a way to--as they always put it--``cut labor costs.'' 
What they really mean is to pay people less.
  Listen to the story of a Mexican immigrant in West Chester Township 
in Butler County. He is here legally. He has a work permit. He works 60 
hours a week to support his family. Do you know what he told reporters?

       It's real tight with four kids. . . . I'm not here to take 
     anybody else's jobs or money or benefits. . . . I'm here to 
     work.

  Another woman, a cancer survivor, talked to reporters about her 
crippling medical debt. She had to leave her job because of her 
condition, and she owes thousands of dollars because of her cancer 
treatment.
  They wrote that ``the debt took her car first, then her home of 12 
years.''
  Think about that. The debt took her car first because she got sick 
and because we don't protect people with preexisting conditions because 
of the President's comments and antics and all. They took her car 
first, and then they took her home of 12 years.
  Listen to a story of a man in Middletown. He is trying to get a job, 
but he can't yet afford a computer or a car. He is applying for a job 
in an auto parts plant. He has to fill out forms online, and he has to 
have a drug test. That means trying to figure out how to get to a job 
counseling center to use a computer. It means trying to get a friend to 
drive him another 7 miles to the drug testing center.
  The competition for a decent-paying job like that is so stiff that he 
is afraid

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if he doesn't get the application in very soon, the job will be gone.
  Think about the many layers of these stories. The reporting makes 
clear, as they say, that these are not outliers. These are not unusual 
cases. ``Household income is lower today than before the recession in 
almost half the counties in Greater Cincinnati.''
  Greater Cincinnati is partly in Kentucky, represented by Senator 
McConnell and Senator Paul, partly in Indiana, represented by Senator 
Young and our new colleague from Indiana, and much in Ohio, represented 
by Senator Portman and me.

       Poverty is worse in one-third of those counties.
       Wages for the poorest workers have barely budged since the 
     recovery began.

  And we know it isn't just southwest Ohio. It is the whole State. It 
is the whole country. It is the same story we see repeated over and 
over and over in this country. Wall Street recovers, corporations 
recover, and the wealthiest CEOs recover and then some. They all do 
better than ever.
  Corporations spent more than $800 billion with a ``b''--800,000 
million--in stock buybacks last year.
  Remember the President's tax bill? I heard him say in his Cabinet 
Room, every American would get at least a $4,000 raise. Some Americans 
would get a $9,000 raise. He told a group of Senators face-to-face. 
There would be many more good-paying jobs created. He went to 
Youngstown, OH, only 1 year ago and said: Don't sell your homes. Stay 
here. The jobs are going to come back. We are going to build new 
factories. We are going to repopulate these factories.
  Well, on his watch, three shifts of 1,500 people each at Lordstown--a 
GM plant--and Youngstown have been laid off, it appears, permanently.
  The President's tax bill? That money didn't end up in the pockets of 
the company's workers. Stock buybacks go straight to the pockets of 
CEOs and other corporate managers who make the decisions about what to 
do with corporate stock buybacks.
  So do you remember I said $800 billion in stock buybacks last year? 
For the first time in a decade, corporations spent more on buying back 
their own stock, meaning taking the money and putting it in their 
pockets. They spent more money buying back their own stock then they 
did in long-term capital expenditures and investing in their workers' 
pay. They took more money for themselves--as if the President didn't 
know that of his tax cut, between 70 percent and 80 percent went to the 
richest 1-percent of the people in the country over time. He knew that. 
I think he knew that.
  He also knew that in this tax bill there was a 50-percent-off coupon. 
If you produce in the United States, you pay a 21-percent corporate tax 
rate. If you move to Mexico you pay a 10.5-percent corporate tax rate. 
So what the President did and what the Senate did is to give a 50-
percent-off coupon as a reward for shutting down your production in 
Lordstown, OH, and moving to Mexico.
  Corporations spent more on their stock than investing in long-term 
capital expenditures and workers, but ordinary Americans--what happened 
to the people in this story?
  As for this story that the Cincinnati Enquirer wrote about and all of 
the people they interviewed--White, Black, Latino, Asian American, 
young and old, middle class and people falling out of the middle class, 
and low-income people who work hard and aspire to the middle class--
what happened to them? They got left behind.

  We need to change how we think about our economy. It is time for 
people in this Congress and in the White House to stop measuring the 
economy in quarterly earnings reports and stock prices.
  Who thinks that way? People don't structure their lives thinking 
about quarterly financial reports. They don't structure their lives 
thinking of stock prices. People don't think in terms of 3-month 
earnings quarters. They think in terms of school years. They think in 
terms of 30-year mortgages. They think in terms of ``the number of 
years left that I have to work before my retirement, and am I going to 
have enough?'' That is the way that people think, but that is who we 
are here to serve, in South Dakota, Ohio, or anywhere else. We are here 
to serve workers and here to serve families. We are not here on the 
Senate Banking Committee to serve Wall Street. We are not here on the 
Senate Finance Committee or on the floor of the Senate to serve the 
biggest companies in the country that typically reward us by moving 
jobs overseas.
  We need policies that restructure our economy to recognize that all 
work has dignity. When work has dignity, everyone can afford healthcare 
and everyone can afford housing. They have power over their schedules. 
They have the economic security to start a family, to pay for daycare 
or college or both, to take time off to care for themselves or their 
families when they are sick, and they save for their retirement.
  The dignity of work fundamentally is about wages. It is about 
benefits. It is about having power over your own schedule. It is about 
daycare. It is about saving for retirement. It is about being able to 
take off to care for a loved one, whether you are raising children or 
taking care of an aging parent.
  When work has dignity, our country has a strong middle class and a 
prosperous future.

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