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[Page S2479]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Falcon Transport Layoffs
Mr. President, last month, GM laid off thousands of workers in
Lordstown, OH, and around the country. Lordstown is a community near
Youngstown and Warren in Northeast Ohio.
Many of us warned the President that if he let this happen, the
layoffs wouldn't stop with GM. Those job losses would work their way up
and down the entire supply chain--the people who stamp the metal, the
people who make the components, the people who make all kinds of
products that only go into the production of a car, the assembly of a
car--but the President did nothing other than rub salt in workers'
wounds by boasting about imaginary new factories coming to Ohio that
were supposedly going to open.
Now, this weekend, we found out that the additional layoffs we feared
are starting to happen.
Falcon Transport was part of the auto supply chain in the Mahoning
Valley, transporting parts for GM Lordstown. This weekend, with no
notice, they closed their doors, leaving 500 Ohioans out of a job.
They didn't just close their door; workers found out about this with
an email, I believe, the night before or early Monday morning in their
inboxes or people saw posts on social media telling them not to show up
for work the next day. Some drivers were left stuck all around the
country when they found out.
Workers in my State everywhere deserve better than an email letting
them know their livelihood has been taken away. The entire community of
Lordstown and Trumbull County and Mahoning County deserve better than a
President who breaks his promises.
Remember, President Trump came to Mahoning Valley many times during
the campaign, but he came there since the election as the President of
the United States, and he said: Don't move. Don't sell your house. We
are going to fill up those factories or we are going to rip them down
and build new ones. Don't move. Don't sell your house. We are going to
fill up those factories or rip them down and build new ones.
People trusted him. A lot of people had voted for him. They put their
faith in him. They believed what he said.
What did Trump do? Instead of working to save their jobs, he turned
around and handed corporations a 50-percent-off coupon to send their
jobs overseas.
Here is how it works. If you are producing in Dayton, OH, you are
paying a 21-percent corporate tax rate. If you move your production to
Mexico, you pay 10.5 percent. So the President of the United States, in
the tax bill a year and a half ago that passed this Congress--the
President of the United States essentially gave a 50-percent-off coupon
to American companies on their taxes. So if you move overseas, we will
give you 50 percent off. It is part of the President's phony populism.
Call yourself a populist, but if you are a populist, you are never
racist, you are never anti-Semitic, you don't give tax cuts to rich
people and then stick it to the middle class. That is what has happened
over and over again--a betrayal.
I am calling on the President--maybe he should try keeping his
promises, maybe he should actually fight for autoworkers, maybe he
should actually stand up and support workers up and down the auto
supply chain for a change. End the tax cut for corporations that--
again, they shut down an American plant; they move overseas; they get a
50-percent-off coupon on their taxes.
If you love your country, you fight for the people who make it work.
