REFLECTING ON TRAJECTORY OF OUR DEMOCRACY

On 2024-09-18, Representative Haley M. Stevens (D-MI-11) delivered a floor speech titled "REFLECTING ON TRAJECTORY OF OUR DEMOCRACY" in the House. The speech addressed the economy and also covered climate policy, the environment. It referenced legislation: HR552.

REFLECTING ON TRAJECTORY OF OUR DEMOCRACY

Congressional Record, Volume 170 Issue 145 (Wednesday, September 18, 2024) [Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 145 (Wednesday, September 18, 2024)] [House] [Pages H5434-H5438] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [ www.gpo.gov ] REFLECTING ON TRAJECTORY OF OUR DEMOCRACY The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Burlison). Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 9, 2023, the gentlewoman from Michigan (Ms. Stevens) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader. Ms. STEVENS. Mr. Speaker, I rise before you here this evening, a stormy evening in Washington, D.C., in our Nation's Capital, to make an address on behalf of my constituents in my district in Michigan, Michigan's 11th District, representing and covering the bulk of Oakland County. I make such an address this evening to reflect on the trajectory of our democracy, to reflect on events that have occurred since I booked this Special Order hour address back in July, and also to make some pronouncements around reforms, revisions, and efforts to come together for the health of our Union. {time} 1900 Make no mistake about it, Mr. Speaker, I absolutely recognize the profound and humbling reality that it is to be a duly elected Member of the House of Representatives speaking and maintaining the privilege to speak in this Chamber to anyone who seeks to be watching back at home and on behalf of this profound nature of the discourse of our democracy. I booked this Special Order hour because so much happens in the days of Congress, the session days of committee markups, of meetings with stakeholders and constituents, and conversations with colleagues who hail from every ZIP Code around this great Nation. Something that I would like to tell the people back at home is that I have friends, such as the woman from Oakland County, Michigan, who is a champion for advanced manufacturing. Somehow now I have friends from Alaska to Tennessee to Maine to the coasts of California and inland into Nevada and the like, and the experiment of America and the experiment of American democracy really truly manifests in this very Chamber. Of course, we recognize that all too often it is not celebrated, and it is not covered in the media outlets from the national news to the print journalism to the ongoing nature of social media when and how we come together on behalf of this Nation. Something that we just witnessed is a failure to vote on passing our budget, and the clock is clearly ticking. The Democrats and Republicans couldn't come together. In fact, Republicans joined Democrats to tank Republican legislation to fund the government. So we are again faced with the scenario that we have seen ourselves in time and time again in the 118th Congress where the minority party comes forward to act to save the worst from happening. Proudly, President Biden in the last year of his Presidency can now just about claim that the government hasn't shut down once under his watch. We have not defaulted on our debt, and, of course, just last term in the Congress, we rescued this Nation from the worst effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, investing in communities, investing in the incredible county I am so privileged to represent in Oakland County. We gave Oakland County $300 million, so we didn't have to go back to our taxpayers and ask for more. We are a donor-rich area. We all know that. We pay more than our fair share of taxpayer dollars, and then when we want to do more in the communities we have to go back and excise new tax. We have got to do millages. Oakland County is under the great leadership of Dave Coulter. He is someone whom I am so proud to call a dear friend and collaborator. He is someone I work with really closely on behalf of the constituents of the 11th District because we believe in the table setting of government. We believe that government works best when Federal, State, local, and municipal come together to utilize taxpayer dollars effectively. So what Coulter and his team were able to do with the moneys that came down from the great American Rescue Plan Act, the tiebreaking vote that Vice President Harris placed to pass it, is that they have invested in dozens of senior centers. Senior centers like the one in Waterford that was going back time and time again for a millage and couldn't achieve that millage, and now they have their funding. Birmingham next has their funding. Medical debt for the people of the 11th district and Oakland County is wiped out. Money is available to invest in 3-D printing, a program designed by Automation Alley, which is now being replicated in several other counties and has received funding from the State. So that was just one bill that was passed at the beginning of the 117th session of Congress when President Biden rightfully took his oath and was sworn in as the 46th President of the United States. We didn't stop there, and we did become bipartisan when we passed an infrastructure bill. Who knew that infrastructure would become so partisan? It was somewhat partisan for some who were adamantly against the bill and now they go home and take the credit when the bridge is being repaired and the road is being paved. It is absolutely enormous that, for once, instead of just authorizing, we appropriated money to say we are going to do the maintenance and repair, and we are going to put the contractors to work. We are going to make sure we have got a prevailing wage and good wages and a seat at the table for our unions. I talk to my building trades. They tell me they are all very busy and that they couldn't be busier. Of course, when matched with the incredible infrastructure bill, which has done a lot for our water systems and our lead pipes and public transportation as well, of course, Oakland County passed a major transportation millage as well. Here in the Motor City, we now have busing that works very well and goes east to west. It was quite the triumph last term. What we also have noticed, though, here is that when we did the clean energy investments, when we looked global competition in the face and said: In the last administration in a bipartisan way, we renegotiated NAFTA, we halted USMCA, we plussed up buy American content, we said we are going to have the rules of the road for our auto industry to succeed, a platform for us to go into markets. Yes, this happened under President Trump with Speaker Nancy Pelosi. We renegotiated USMCA. Then in the next term we said: We are going to make investments in clean energy, not subsidies, not ownership structures, but large capital-intensive investments in industries of scale. Mr. Speaker, that is so we are not overly reliant on our adversaries on the global stage, the Chinese Communist Party for one. Gosh knows what is going to totally happen over there. We want to have domestic technologies in innovations. We want to have an ownership structure so that we are not forced to go and buy from overseas markets. We have learned this lesson over and over and over again. We have, frankly, learned this lesson with semiconductors, the microchips that go into anything from our general electronics devices, our cell phones, our [[Page H5435]] computers, our music players, if we are still listening to those, too, of course, the automobile. The pandemic hit, and all of a sudden, we couldn't get the shipments in, and we were making all these beautiful cars. We really do salute our autoworkers for their great efforts during a very trying time, certainly protecting and maintaining their safety but staying dedicated to the production and the production efforts of their enterprise as well as their innovation ecosystem. So you see, Mr. Speaker, Michigan did something enormous. We responded to the industrial call to action during the COVID-19 pandemic. It was, of course, our manufacturers, large and small, that were addressing the supply chain disruptions, from the personal protective equipment to the ventilators that we were running low on, and all that. Then they continued to innovate, and here we stand at the precipice of this incredible, new mobility moment that is being led by the auto industry. I think some want to say: Oh, my gosh, this is the government dictating the terms. Of course, I just received an incredible briefing today from the MIT Sloan School of Management. They work across the aisle. They have this unbelievable dataset that shows what we need to do to stave off the 5- degree warming of the planet, and it is a whole host of things. Of course, to my capitalist focused friends and my capitalist focused countrymen and -women, those are all profit-making endeavors. We are here, Mr. Speaker, to talk about the future, and we should be celebrating it and not cowering and clinging to the past. We should absolutely be saluting and recognizing the freedom of our fellow countrymen and -women who are going to buy the automobile they want to buy. Of course, we have 1 million new electric vehicles that were sold in the United States of America, 75,000 from GM, 75,000 roughly from Ford. They are being honest and transparent about what they want to do. Every week I go and I visit a manufacturer, and I meet them where they are at, and I sit in their conference rooms. I walk their floors. I am in my sixth year of doing this. Really tremendous things are happening all across southeast Michigan with our automotive supply chain. They have been very dedicated to some of the transition that their customers, the OEMs, the original equipment manufacturers, are professing to make if they want to be zero emissions maybe in total. We want to win the future, and we want to be innovators and technology leaders. Of course, I mentioned chips and microchips were running short during the global pandemic, and Michigan really responded to it in a tremendous way. We also, frankly, Mr. Speaker, learned a big lesson which is that the United States, Gordon Lawrence and the brainiacs out West,

Referenced legislation: HR552