Youngwood, Pennsylvania
Friday, October 20, 2023
Thank you, Brian—thank you for your great leadership of this.
It’s so great to hear you, Senator Casey, talking about where this area’s come from, where it’s going.
Gov, so great to be with you. I’m a former governor of Michigan, so we govs, we call each other Gov. So Gov, it’s so great to be with you.
Ali, Gayle, Phil—all leaders determined to make this happen. Make this happen.
And so it is a privilege to be able to be the Administrator [of President Biden’s Interagency Working Group on Coal and Power Plant Communities & Economic Revitalization.]
But I just, from what Senator Casey was saying, I just want to sort of foot-stomp this notion of the importance of this—for areas of the country where workers have, through no fault of their own, lost their jobs.
When I was Governor of Michigan, it was during the Great Recession. And at that point, the auto industry was going bankrupt.
If any of you remember, you know: GM, Chrysler, Ford almost going bankrupt, all the suppliers went bankrupt. In Michigan we had the highest unemployment rate in the nation. Jobs were leaving like crazy.
And I get this call from—and we’re a manufacturing state, too. So I get this call from our economic development agency. Gov, you’ll know this, because it was a bad news call.
And they said, “We have a huge manufacturer”—in this case it was a manufacturer of refrigerators, Electrolux—“that is about to leave, and leave a small community completely without jobs.”
The size of the community in Greenville, Michigan was 8,000 people. The size of the factory—they employed 3,000 of the 8,000 people. So it was essentially a one-company town.
And I said, “I’m not going to let this happen.”
So we put together a SWAT team. We went to Electrolux in Greenville. And we made them an offer we thought they couldn’t refuse.
We put every incentive—you know, zero taxes for twenty years. We were going to build them a whole new factory. The UAW, who represented the workers, were offering so much in concessions, they didn’t want anybody to know.
We gave the company this list of incentives, and they walked outside the room, for seventeen minutes.
And they came back in and said, “There is nothing you can do to compensate for the fact that we can pay $1.57 an hour in Juarez, Mexico. And so we’re leaving.”
Different circumstance than what you face here. But the same feeling—of a community that imploded when this factory left.
In fact, on the last—the month that the last refrigerator came off the assembly line, the employees had a gathering at a place called Klackle’s Orchard Pavilion. It was called “The Last Supper,” the employees called it.
It was basically a community wake. It was grieving the loss of these jobs.
And I went to this event, even though I was not invited, because I was not able to keep the factory open. But I was grieving with them, too, because I felt so helpless.
And I went in and, you know, everybody was sitting around eight-top tables. And they were eating out of box lunches. There was a sad band playing—or, a band playing sad music. It was probably a sad band, too.
[Laughter]
But anyway, I went up to the first table and this guy, this young man, stands up and he says, “Gov.” He said, “I want you to meet my two teenage daughters. I’m 38 years old. I’ve worked at this factory for twenty years. I went from high school to factory. My father worked at this factory. My grandfather worked at this factory. All I know,” he said, “is how to make refrigerators.”
And then he looks at his girls and he puts his hand on his chest like this [thumps chest] and he says, “Gov, so tell me. Who is ever going to hire me?
“Who’s ever going to hire me?”
And that question was asked by everyone in the room that day.
That question has been asked by every community in America that has been hollowed out by the loss of jobs.
In fact, 60,000 factories left this nation between 2000 and 2015. 60,000 communities—like that.
And that doesn’t even count what is happening when the steel industry collapses…when the coal industry collapses…when people are left behind.
My point in saying this, is that this is what this Interagency Working Group is all about.
We are going to invest in rebuilding and repairing communities that have been hollowed out.
That’s what this President is all about.
To the Senator’s point, we now have an industrial strategy in America, as a result of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act. Two laws that were instrumental, and shaped by Senator Casey.
Without him, these laws and this industrial strategy would not be here.
And so now, we have billions of dollars to invest in America…
To make products for this energy economy, in America…
To have them stamped “Made in America,” made by American workers…used by us…exported elsewhere.
We’re not going to stand by and watch our jobs go overseas.
We’re not going to stand by and watch communities collapse.
And that’s why this effort is so critical. Because the strategic and targeted investments that you will have access to, to formulate plans, to be able to invest in communities and workers, are just so critical.
And that’s why I love this President, honestly.
That’s why he asked me to do this job.
It’s because he knows that whether you’re from Scranton or from Detroit, it is so critical for America to have a manufacturing backbone, in order to be a strong nation.
So the phoenix is rising.
It’s rising here in western Pennsylvania…it’s rising in Appalachia…it’s rising across the country…because we have the resources now, to execute on an industrial strategy in America.
You know, just the last month, you’ve seen some of this happen around here.
Turtle Creek. The battery manufacturer Eos is going to build four new production lines for their energy storage systems, creating 650 new operations jobs for workers.
In Fayette County, one of the two—you know, you’re the only state to get two Hydrogen Hubs. One of them, in Fayette County, the new Hydrogen Hub’s going to build a plant—there will be a plant there to generate clean hydrogen for low-carbon aviation fuel and heavy-duty trucking.
We expect this western Pennsylvania arm of the Hub to create thousands and thousands of jobs.
Last Wednesday—this is all part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law as well—we announced an investment in your electric grid. In fact, between public and private investment, the announcement was the single-largest federal investment in the nation’s grid.
You all got—$340 million was announced between public and private investment. Huge.
Duquesne is going to modernize their grid infrastructure, adding new technology to be able to make it more efficient. And so the Pittsburgh area grid’s going to be renovated as part of that project.
By the way, they’re going to be doing job training. They’re going to be creating a Community and Workforce Coalition with community benefit organizations, and the IBEW, and workforce training.
All of that in just a matter of weeks!
And finally…the phoenix is rising here because we’re doing everything we can to connect you and the organizations that you represent to these resources.
So thanks to the Interagency Working Group’s staff and partners, we’ve been able to spend the last couple of years on the ground, and talking directly with mayors, and city councilmembers, and economic development officials, and labor leaders, and academia, and you know, philanthropies, and project developers—just like we’re going to be doing today.
And we’ve put the most exciting opportunities—more than $500 billion’s worth—in one place, which is EnergyCommunities.Gov.
So we’re bringing in philanthropy to help force-multiply these public investments. Phil Smith is here to talk about one of those philanthropic efforts.
And just yesterday, I was announcing that we are hiring a new team of the IWG—the Interagency Working Group—of Navigators.
You know, the federal government can be really hard to navigate sometimes. Very complicated. And you know, you almost need a PhD just to know where to turn…who to call.
So we’re going to have real human beings, and not just bots, as part of the Navigator team, to connect you with the right person when you’re ready to apply. And I know Ali is going to be talking about the Rapid Response Teams that Brian also mentioned.
And we want to make sure that you’ve got the ability, when you get that call, or in the aftermath of a call of a plant going down or a mine closing…the plan will be benefitted from the Interagency Working Group’s “Getting Started Guide.”
It’s actually ten steps, getting you from taking the call or anytime in-between, to the next opportunity.
It’s full of worksheets, and playbooks, and case studies, and sample proposals, and do’s and don’ts, and all of that.
I wish that I had had this resource when I was Governor, and I got the call. And I hope you’re able to take full advantage of it. EnergyCommunities.Gov/GettingStarted is what it is.
So the bottom line is: we are so excited about the phoenix rising.
You know, Pittsburgh has been such a great example of that over time.
But we want that Pittsburgh spirit of community gathering, and figuring out how you’re going to plan to lift a community from its knees.
We want that to be spread—just like the phoenix has to spread its wings—with these new resources, the new funding, the new firepower, the new coordination.
I have every confidence that we will see this industrial strategy soar.
Thank you.