incredible effort on the part of workers in this country who transformed our economy into an industrial force that was able to supply our soldiers with the weapons that they needed to defeat Hitler and the Japanese.
Where are we today in terms of our manufacturing capabilities? As I mentioned earlier, a couple of weeks ago, my wife and I went shopping for Christmas presents, literally, in just a plain old department store. It is literally very hard to find a product not manufactured in China. It is very hard to find a product, a gift that we could buy that was manufactured in the United States of America.
I think people understand instinctively that this country will not be a major economic player in years to come if we allow our manufacturing base to continue to decline. Again, just under Bush, we went from 17 million manufacturing jobs down to 12 million jobs, in 8 years of Bush. How do we survive as a strong industrial power if our manufacturing jobs disappear?
Today there are fewer manufacturing jobs in this country than there were in April of 1941, about 8 months before the attack on Pearl Harbor; fewer manufacturing jobs today than in April of 1941. Those manufacturing jobs that are left—that are left—in many cases pay lower wages, with fewer benefits, than they did a generation ago.
In other words, we are moving not only in a decline in our manufacturing jobs but in the wages our workers earn and the benefits they receive.
I raise all of these issues to put this agreement between the President and the Republican leadership in a broader context. Today—and this is just an incredible fact, and it is absolutely frightening to the future of the middle class in this country—today, entry level automobile workers at General Motors and Chrysler now earn half as much, half as much as their peers made just 1 year ago. Instead of making $28 an hour, a middle-class wage, they are now making $14 an hour. This is in the automobile industry which has always been the gold standard for manufacturing jobs in America. If workers with a union in the automobile industry are making $14 an hour, what do you think workers in New Mexico are going to be making without a strong union?
So what you are seeing is a dissolution of the middle class, wages are going down, and in this remarkable example, a 50-percent reduction; the older workers making good wages, new workers half the wages.
Is this the future of America? Is this what our kids have to look forward to, that they are going to be earning half the wages their fathers made, that their mothers made? Is that the future? In the midst of all of that, we run up a huge national debt, send our jobs to China, and we give tax breaks to millionaires? Is that the future these kids have to look forward to? I certainly hope not. We are going to have to be tough, and we are going to have to take on some very powerful special interests to turn this whole thing around.
Today I have devoted a lot of time to our national debt, $13.7 trillion, and to our deficit, which is $1.4 trillion. But we cannot ignore our trade deficit. In 2008, our trade deficit was nearly $700 billion. Last year our trade deficit with China alone was almost $227 billion. In other words, we are purchasing a whole lot more products than we are selling.
Sometimes I get a kick out of hearing the defenders of our trade policy talk about all of the products we are exporting. Well, yeah, we are exporting a lot, but we are importing a heck of a lot more. So I think what you have is a major economic issue. That economic issue is that we are losing millions of good-paying jobs because of our disastrous trade policy. Furthermore, the jobs we have, on those jobs, we are seeing a decline in wages and in benefits.
I think the bottom line of this is not just an economic issue, it is a moral issue as well, and that is when companies such as General Electric and all the rest—I do not mean to be picking a lot on General Electric, but I have a quote I want to make. This was a few years back. I think it is important because it applies not just to General Electric. But I want people to hear this. GE is, of course, one of our major corporations. The manufacturer's recent disclosure pointed out, the taxpayers of this country, through the Fed, provided $16 billion in bailout to General Electric during the recent crisis. This is what the head, the CEO of General Electric, Jeffrey Immelt, said in 2002, December 6:
When I am talking to GE managers, I talk China, China, China, China, China. You need to be there. You need to change the way people talk about it and how they get there. I am a nut on China. Outsourcing from China is going to grow to 5 billion. We are building a tech center in China. Every discussion today has to center on China. The cost basis is extremely attractive. You can take an 18-cubic-foot refrigerator, make it in China, land it in the United States, and land it for less than we can make an 18-cubic-foot refrigerator today ourselves.
Gee. A couple of years ago when GE had some difficult economic times, and they needed $16 billion to bail them out, I did not hear Mr. Immelt going to China, China, China, China, China. I did not hear that. I heard Mr. Immelt going to the taxpayers of the United States for his welfare check.
So I say to Mr. Immelt, and I say to all of those CEOs who have been so quick to run to China, that maybe it is time to start reinvesting in the United States of America. But it is not just Mr. Immelt. I do not mean to just pick on him. It is all of them. They all see the future in China, in Vietnam, in countries where people work for pennies an hour.
Mr. Immelt came to his decision in the footsteps of the former CEO of GE, Jack Welsh. What Jack Welsh was famously quoted as saying:
Ideally—
This is the guy who was head of General Electric before Immelt. He said:
Ideally, we would have every plant we own on a barge.
Do you remember that quote? He said:
Ideally, we would have every plant we own on a barge.
What did he mean by that? What he meant by that, if you are on a barge, you can move your plant to any part of the world where the labor is cheapest. So if it gets too expensive in China, and you have to pay people 75 cents an hour, you go to Vietnam. If it gets too expensive in Vietnam, maybe you can go to North Korea and have people work under marshal law. I do not know.
But what he was saying is, his goal was to make sure that GE would create jobs in those countries in the world where workers were paid the lowest possible wage.
Former GE executive vice president Frank Doyle said:
We did a lot of violence to the expectations of the American workforce. We downsized, we delayered, and we outsourced.
He was honest enough to admit that. But, again, I do not mean to just pick on Jeff Immelt or General Electric. It is a history of corporations all over America.
Let me just mention that the CEO of Cisco, John Chambers—and this is what he says. You know, we tell the young people: The future is in information technology. We want you guys to be smart. Learn how to use the computers. You are not going to work in factories.
This is what the CEO of Cisco, certainly one of the large IT companies in the United States, said:
China will become the IT center of the world. And we can have a healthy discussion about whether that's in 2020 or 2040. What we are trying to do is outline an entire strategy of becoming a Chinese company.
This was in 2004.
Furthermore—
He says, October 15, 2004—this is Cisco:
we believe in giving something back and truly becoming a Chinese company.
Meanwhile, when Cisco needs tax breaks, they get it from the taxpayers of the United States of America. Boy, are they taking us for dummies. They outsource their jobs to China and so forth.
In the last campaign, one of the folks who ended up getting a lot more publicity than he usually does is the president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a gentleman named Tom Donohue.
(Mr. UDALL of New Mexico assumed the chair.)
Mr. SANDERS.Again, my point is not to just pick on individuals. Every quote I am giving can be multiplied 50, 100 times over. This is what corporate America believes. They believe it is totally appropriate to throw American workers out on the street, move to low-
