Rep. Tim Ryan on Friday said the federal government needs to develop a sweeping industrial policy for the country aimed at sharing corporate profits with workers and steering venture capital to a broader range of states.
Ryan, D-Ohio, spoke after the news broke that GM would lay off 1,600 workers in his state. Ryan fumed on the floor because GM is one of the companies that was bailed out in the Great Recession and benefitted from President Trump’s tax cut last year.
“And turn around and cut 14,000 jobs, and their stock price goes up 6 percent,” Ryan said. “That is a broken economic system that we have in the United States of America.”
“We need an industrial policy in this country where the government, the agencies, the departments, the tax code, the investments in infrastructure and education are all moving in the same direction that will create manufacturing jobs here in the United States,” he said. “And we have to have policies that move venture capital out of the three main states, California, New York, and Massachusetts, which is 80 percent of all venture capital.”
Ryan said he doesn’t think Wall Street or high-tech centers in the country understand what’s happening to workers.
“They’re being hollowed out, disinvested in, and we need this government to begin to modernize itself, to look at the world as it is to recognize that globalization may yield great benefits and great wealth, but that those benefits aren’t shared everywhere in the United States,” he said.
“How much can the worker take? How much can their families take?” Ryan asked.
Ryan said the bust-boom story has played out the same way each time over the last four decades under Republican economic policies that he called “trickle down.”
“We’ve been trying this for 40 years, since 1980, this supply side economic policy has been pushed in this country,” he said. “And if it’s so damned good, why isn’t it working for working class people?”
