May 1, 2019 - Issue: Vol. 165, No. 71 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 1st Session
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Opportunity Zones (Executive Calendar); Congressional Record Vol. 165, No. 71
(Senate - May 01, 2019)
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[Pages S2546-S2548] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] Opportunity Zones Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, I thank Senator Ernst for allowing me the opportunity to talk about opportunity zones. So much has happened since President Trump has been elected that I think has brought opportunity. The economy is obviously booming. In the State of Indiana, for instance, we have 156 opportunity zones in 83 different cities and 58 counties. That is a lot in one State. This is investment into these areas that need jobs. Capital investment is hard to measure. Thank goodness it has come along and has been an opportunity that we in the Hoosier State have taken advantage of. We are one of the lowest unemployment States in the Union. I am from Dubois County, from the town of Jasper, which supports the lowest unemployment rates in our State--a State of enterprise, a State of commerce. Workforce development is probably the most critical issue that faces our State, but we do a lot of other things well. We live within our means. We addressed infrastructure back in 2017 by repairing roads and bridges and by doing a lot of things well. We have 80,000 jobs in our State that need one simple thing, and that is proper training. When I went to school back in the seventies--it dates me a little bit--I took industrial arts. You had a shop class. You had a welding class. You had practical training that led you into good-paying jobs. Somewhere along the way, we kind of almost stigmatized that pathway called career and technical education. We have schools like Ivy Tech. When I was a State legislator, there were 19 different programs, and we were spending nearly $1 billion a year, but we were not providing proper training for high-demand, high-wage jobs. In our State, we are shipping out twice as many 4-year degrees as we use. Something is not right. I just spoke with an online college, which is another issue I want to mention. The cost of these 4-year degrees has gotten way out of hand. Many graduates spend $80,000, $90,000, $100,000. They take on that debt and have jobs that are not marketable. We need to pay attention to the simple things that most States need by reorienting the focus of education and providing proper training for jobs that [[Page S2547]] in many cases pay more than 4-year degrees, those that start in the neighborhood of $40,000 to $60,000 and have good benefits and potential wages of over $100,000 a year. In our State and in most States across the country, those are the jobs that need to be filled. In my own company, 80 jobs can't be filled because, really, there needs to be a better curriculum at the high school level, one from which you get basic skills taught rather than the misguided approach of overemphasizing 4-year degrees. There is nothing wrong with that, and everyone should aspire to that, but the market doesn't necessarily need it. It will pay more for a lot less education, and you will not be walking away with the debt that so many students do in this day and age. Tax reform then came along. As a business owner, I can clearly say that there has been nothing in the 38 years of building a little Main Street business into a national company that has catapulted our ability to do more for our employees than what has happened with tax reform. An opportunity zone is a great idea. We need to have more of it, and we need to make sure this institution starts to set an example across this country whereby we live within our means and not create $850 billion deficits annually on top of $22 trillion of debt. We all know that is going to lead us nowhere other than into despair down the road. Again, I am here to tout what tax relief and the JOBS Act did, as well as opportunity zones, which we have run with in the Hoosier State. We also need to fix a few things, like matching training and education with high-demand, high-wage jobs. If we do that across the country, I think we will be into decades of prosperity that will prevent us from maybe going down that trail of some of the things we have heard about recently, like the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, and a lot of things that we know we can't afford and that will not work. Thank you. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Perdue). The Senator from South Carolina. Mr. SCOTT of South Carolina. Mr. President, I thank Vice Chair Ernst for putting this event together on the floor to talk about the success of opportunity zones and what they could mean for so many Americans who desperately need the assistance in so many places. Without any question, this is a great part of the tax bill that has not received enough attention. A lot of folks know about opportunity zones, and a lot of folks are excited about opportunity zones. I would like to spend a little time talking about the success of our economy and touching on some of the issues that my colleague Senator Braun spoke about as well, those being the importance of workforce development and of making sure our workforce has the skills that meet the jobs of our current economy. One estimate said that perhaps there are a million more jobs than there are people looking for work, and a part of the reason why that is so is because we still need to make sure that we harmonize the skill set necessary to do the work with the skills being taught or trained to our younger folks and folks looking for work. This has been an amazing journey from an economic perspective, when you think about where we are financially as a country. This past quarter we saw the announcement of a growth rate of around 3.2 percent. That is astounding because all of the estimates were so significantly lower. We finished 2018 with a growth rate of around 3.1 percent. Now, we have not seen that acceleration in our economy in a very long time. So it is really good news for those folks looking for work. Our unemployment rate is near a 50-year low--somewhere between 3.8 and 3.9 percent. This is something we haven't seen in a very long time. African-American unemployment is near 7 percent. Some of the lowest numbers ever recorded in the history of the country for African- American employment are there now. Hispanic unemployment is in the same range--very low, record lows. We have seen wages in the last several months continue to increase. Wage growth is now hitting the bottom quintile of our workforce at a 3- percent growth rate, which is really good news because it was another one of those targets that we knew was important for us to reach. Said differently, income disparity is shrinking because of the success of our Tax Code and the success of our regulatory reset, and that is good news for everyone. The economic recovery, however, has been uneven. Part of the challenge that we see is that there are areas of our Nation that are not doing as well as the numbers I have just indicated. That reinforces the fact that, as a whole, the Nation is succeeding and the people of our country are succeeding at a much higher level and at a faster clip. However, rural America still lags a little behind and needs more tools in the toolkit, more arrows in the quiver to address some of the challenges that are endemic and specific to those rural parts of our country. I am thankful to have partnered in the opportunity zone legislation with folks who are compassionate and who are committed to making sure that rural America realizes its full potential. I have had an opportunity to travel this country on my national opportunity zone tour. I have gone from places in Florida, with Senator Rubio, to parts of our country that I have really enjoyed seeing, but I can't articulate fully the passion that I saw in folks from West Virginia, New Hampshire, and Iowa when we had a chance to tour these three States and learn more about the rural economy and the potential in those rural economies. I remember vividly walking down in Huntington, WV, with my good friend Senator Capito. We had a great visit in Huntington, WV, and what we realized there was the passion of the people and the willingness to work were evident and that we needed to bring more resources to the table so that the employers and would-be employers would make the investment in Huntington, WV, and in other parts of rural West Virginia. We left there encouraged and enthusiastic because the opportunity zone legislation was seen as a true tool in the toolkit for rural America that needed to be rolled out. At that time, it hadn't been rolled out like it has been now. So today we see over $100 billion migrating toward opportunity funds. That means good news for rural America. If we are able to continue that progress, we will see rural America live its full potential, and that is great news. I enjoyed visiting New Hampshire with Governor Sununu, where the unemployment rate is 2.4 percent, one of the lowest in the country. But even in a place like New Hampshire, where the unemployment rate is really low, the rural parts of the State were still devastated and needed an infusion of hope and opportunity. The O zone, or the opportunity zone, has presented itself as one of the many solutions necessary to confront some of the rural issues that we saw in New Hampshire. I enjoyed my time in West Des Moines with Senator Ernst, as we had a chance to visit a potential housing project incubator at a church, where folks were fascinated by using the tax deferral to encourage and to attract more investment into West Des Moines because the people are willing to work. There is dignity in all work, and they understood that. They were passionate about opportunities, and they needed another tool to make it happen. Opportunity zones are a part of that toolkit, and I will say, without any question, that when you think about great leadership, it is hard to have missed the compassion and the passion that Joni Ernst has for her constituents and her business owners and her willingness to partner with legislation like the opportunity zones and partner with the entrepreneurs of her State and the folks who are looking for ways to reinvest in their own neighborhoods to help encourage and to support a willing workforce. That tool of opportunity zones can be brought to bear against some of the strongest and hardest challenges in rural America, and I am here to say thank you to my colleagues for, a, making sure that opportunity zones are a reality; b, for taking this time on the floor to encourage others, especially our rural Americans, to stay hopeful; and, c, to continue to address some of the challenges that Senator Braun mentioned about the workforce [[Page S2548]] development and harmonizing the skill set with the workforce in a way that allows for those folks to realize their full potential and live the American Dream. I yield to Senator Capito. Mrs. CAPITO. Mr. President. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia. Mrs. CAPITO. Mr. President, I want to thank my colleague Senator Tim Scott from South Carolina. I am going to talk a little bit about our visit later, but our visit was really tremendous in West Virginia.
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