WASHINGTON, D.C. –United States Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Chairman of the Senate Banking Subcommittee on Economic Policy, joined Banking Committee members today to receive testimony from the Federal Reserve System on monetary policy and the economic outlook. Ben S. Bernanke, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, presented the Semiannual Monetary Policy Report to Congress. In response to the hearing, Brown issued the following statement:
 
I spent last week touring Ohio, holding roundtables and meetings throughout the state with business owners, workers, and community leaders.

I want to tell you what I am hearing.  I’ve been meeting with people on the front-lines of the economic crisis since I came to the Senate, and what I am hearing is getting worse.

Ohio has lost 200,000 manufacturing jobs in the last eight years. The plant closures haven’t stopped, and in many cities that rely on the manufacturing sector, a company’s abandonment means the erosion of an entire community’s fabric and identity.

I hear from companies that want to grow, but are having trouble finding the credit they need. I hear from companies that want to hire qualified people but can’t find those with the training they are looking for. I hear from people who are struggling just to get by—to put food on the table or send a child to college. I hear about manufacturing towns that are losing their economic base—workers being displaced and families struggling.  

Jobs are disappearing all around Ohio. These aren’t just numbers.  They are people’s lives.  They represent families who have made the industrial heartland.  Communities that helped build this nation.

We can’t turn our backs on them. The last eight years have shown us what happens when business is left to its own devices and government either is left out of the loop or in many cases becomes an enabler of the system.

For eight years, leaders in Washington viewed government as a burden and argued it was best for big business to be left alone. For eight years, we heard over and over about the evils of big government, of the wealthy paying their fair share, or government getting in the way.
For eight years, trickle-down economics hasn’t worked. Now, after eight long years of being unregulated, unchecked, and in some cases aided by the government, big business has asked for a handout.

Citigroup has received $40 billion in government bailout help.  Instead of investing the Bush tax breaks they received, it appears the big banks used that money to buy Gulfstream jets and gold-plated bathrooms for their top executives

These so-called barons of business, who decried the evils of government intervention, are now saying they will go under unless they receive a government bailout.

Which is it? Is government bad? Should it stay out of the business of business?  Or should government be a partner and a regulator to make sure that those who play by the rules get ahead?

Unregulated credit markets encouraged people to buy homes they could not afford. The fly-by-night brokers got their money; and investment bankers on Wall Street got theirs.  Now, it is the government left holding the bag, trying to help those who are facing foreclosure.

And now, here we are with the false choice of either helping the big banks or helping people stay in their homes.

This should not be news to anyone.  We’ve seen this before in the Roaring Twenties.

Today, no one is surprised that the stock market crashed in 1929.  People were buying stock with money they didn’t have. All was well in the world until the market collapsed on itself.

In many ways this isn’t much different from what happened in the last eight years. During the Great Depression in Ohio, more than 40 percent of factory workers and two-thirds of construction workers were unemployed. By 1932, Ohio's unemployment rate was 37.3 percent.

While we aren’t there today, due in large part to the lessons we learned from the 1930s, Ohioans are still hurting.

And, like the 1930s, the government is coming to the rescue, by putting people to work and creating a regulatory strategy that allows for the economy to work for those who play by the rules.

The Obama Administration’s “all hands on deck” approach of combating the economic crisis is what we need to do to correct the eight years of neglect that led to the problems we face today.
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