ArcaMax

BUTLER, Pennsylvania -- One of the most underreported crises in American culture is the collateral damage people and communities suffer from government overregulation. Just one little regulation can start a spiral that affects an entire community's ability to prosper and thrive, keep generations of families intact, or give students the tools they need to succeed.

In reaction, most politicians on both sides of the aisle traditionally do one of two things. Either they shrug but do nothing, or they have a press conference to point fingers at the opposing political parties -- while still not doing much.

For once, though, elected officials are doing better. Here, local congressional Democrats and Republicans have joined forces in both the U.S. Senate and the House, in both Pennsylvania and Ohio (and elsewhere), to halt a Biden Department of Energy rule that would force any business manufacturing electric distribution transformers to stop using grain-oriented steel cores and instead use amorphous metal.

The grain-oriented cores are used only by one company in the entirety of the United States, namely here at the Cleveland-Cliffs Butler Works. A rule outlawing use of those cores would cost more than 1,500 jobs here in Butler and at the company's other plant in Zanesville, Ohio, changing the lives and security of not just the people who work here but the thousands of other jobs and small businesses that support the plant.

This is an issue not just important to the men and women who work here and in Zanesville; it affects all of us. The distribution transformer is the most important cog in America's energy grid and in our energy supply chain.

The replacement the DOE is insisting on, amorphous steel, is produced here only in a limited supply. This means we would have to rely on imports from China, Japan and Vietnam to supply the steel for American energy needs. The supply chain for the already vulnerable U.S. electric grid, and thus national security, could be endangered by relying so heavily on imports from the other side of the planet, especially from a hostile power such as China.

Alas for the workers affected, the issue has received too little media attention to pressure decision-makers in the White House and at the Energy Department, who feel no urgency. Yet 20 years ago, even 10, a Democratic administration would have danced on hot coals to make this right.

Union leader Jamie Sychak is fighting hard, however. The president of the UAW Local 3303 is sitting in his office with his vice president, Ray Pflugh, financial secretary, Mark Earley, and contracting chairman, Steve Gilliland, in the building where the Pullman Standard railcar facility used to stand.

"This was a steel mill that was known as the wheel works that made the steel railroad car wheels for Pullman Standard," Sychak explained, referring to steel manufacturing in this same spot for more than 150 years.

Like the Cleveland Cliffs Butler Works, Pullman Standard funneled millions into the local Butler economy that paved the roads, bettered the schools and filled the bankrolls of local charities. According to historical data compiled by the Butler Historical Society, Pullman Standard manufactured more than 7 million artillery shells and bombs in addition to rail cars for the Allies and American forces in World War II. Post-war, it employed 4,000 people in both the factory and offices; when it closed in 1980, it crippled the local economy.

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