WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressman Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI-11), House Republican Policy Chairman, recently spoke on the House floor on the rising cost of energy and its effects on manufacturing. The video and text of McCotter’s remarks are below:
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“Over the recess, I had the opportunity to meet with a manufacturing community in my district; talk to managers, talk to owners, talk to employees. The one thing they all agree on is the cost of American energy is adding to their fixed costs at the very time international pressure is forcing them to reduce the cost of their product. In short, they're facing the nightmare scenario of energy prices forcing them to lay off workers in the manufacturing sector or to, unfortunately, terminate their employment altogether.
What we need in the United States is American energy production, conservation, and free market innovation if we are to protect these jobs and help these workers. It is very cold comfort for the people of Michigan and the manufacturing workers of the United States to hear that some day a green collar job will come and take away your blue collar job. When you're putting them out of work today, the prospects for tomorrow look much more bleak than they do to some academic or to some politician who is engaging in rhetoric that somehow the government will innovate us out of this effort.
We need American production to help protect manufacturing jobs and help provide prosperity for the American people.”
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