Second GOP presidential debate: on Jobs

Mike Pence: Right of every American to join a union or not

PENCE: I'm from the 2nd-leading manufacturing state, per capita. As Governor of Indiana, we brought 12,000 factories back to America. I know something about manufacturing. And while the union bosses are talking about class warfare, and disparity in wages, I really believe what's driving that is Bidenomics has failed. Wages are not keeping up with inflation. Autoworkers and all American workers are feeling it. And families are struggling in this economy. Joe Biden's Green New Deal agenda is good for Beijing, and bad for Detroit. We ought to repeal the Green New Deal, get rid of the mandates and subsidies that are driving American gasoline automotive manufacturing, into the graveyard. As President, I'll be standing with workers, all across America, for the right to work, [for the right] of every American, to join a union or not join a union, as they decide.

Tim Scott: Unions can't get more benefits with fewer hours

SEN. TIM SCOTT: Obviously the President cannot fire anybody in the private sector. One of the challenges that we have with the current negotiations is that they want four-day French workweeks, but more money. They want more benefits working fewer hours. That is simply not going to stand. I sat in a Finance Committee hearing when a widow came before the committee whose promised pensions from the unions, $4,000 a month. Unfortunately it had been cut to $1,000 a month. We must make sure that we honor the commitments that we make. And one of the ways we do that, do not over-promise and then under-deliver and leave the taxpayers on the hook.

Tim Scott: Made in America plan: create 10 million jobs

SCOTT: If you look at our national debt of $33 trillion, I would love to have this country pass a balanced budget amendment. That would constrain the spending in Washington, number one. Number two, if you want to actually reduce our national debt, you have to grow our economy. In order to grow our economy, you need to create about 10 million jobs to grow our economy at 5 percent.

You can do that in three specific sectors. Number one, the energy sector. Number two, we've lost 100,000 factories in the last 25 years. If we continue with my Made in America plan, we could bring jobs back to America in a similar fashion that we did when I wrote the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

We actually lowered the corporate tax from 35 percent to 21 percent. Reshore or repatriated $1.7 trillion. We brought the unemployment rates for African-Americans, Hispanics and Asians to the lowest level in the history of the country.

Vivek Ramaswamy: I have sympathy for workers but no patience for union bosses

RAMASWAMY: I don't have a lot of patience for the union bosses. I do have a lot of sympathy for the workers, however. People are going through real hardship in this country. I've been through hardship growing up. I understand that hardship is not a choice. But victimhood is a choice. You know, if I was giving advice to those workers, I would say go picket in front of the White House in Washington, D.C. That's really where the protest needs to be. Disastrous economic policies that have driven up prices, that have driven up interest rates and mortgage rates, at the same time wages remaining stagnant.

Vivek Ramaswamy: We pay people to stay home; put people back to work

RAMASWAMY: [We can both] address the national debt as well as bring down prices. Put people back to work. We are using taxpayer money to pay people more to stay at home than to go to work. That is wrong, that contributes to our supply chain crisis. It contributes to inflation. That's the easiest way to unlock this economy.

Donald Trump: America First includes gas-powered cars made in Detroit

"Joe Biden claims to be the most pro-union president in history," said Trump, talking up the "America First" themes. He asserted that Biden's push to make more of them would hamstring the U.S. industry. "The things that you make in Michigan, they don't need any of it," Trump said of electric car manufacturers.

The number of auto manufacturing jobs held relatively even during Trump's administration, adding about 35,000 jobs from January 2017 to February 2020.

Joe Biden: First sitting president to join a union picket line

Biden's re-election campaign, meanwhile, promoted a new cable TV and digital ad aimed at Michigan voters, specifically in Detroit, Grand Rapids and Lansing. "He says he stands with autoworkers," a narrator says of Trump. "But as president, Donald Trump passed tax breaks for his rich friends, while automakers shuttered their plants and Michigan lost manufacturing jobs." Biden, the ad asserts, "doesn't just talk; he delivers."