Make It in America: Manufacturing
Floor Speech
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, our previous speaker spoke about the need to revitalize the American economy, and he talked about the regulatory environment as being one of the impediments. Certainly, there are many, many regulations that could impede economic development, but there are also regulations that might enhance economic development. Today I want to continue with what is now a 6-year effort--oh, yes, let's get this right side up. There we go--to Make It In America. Specifically, today, it is about manufacturing because manufacturing matters.
When I first came to Congress in 2009, we were in the midst of the Great Recession, and millions of Americans had lost their jobs. We saw the Rust Belt literally collapse; we saw factories close; we saw our shipyards opened with nothing happening except in the U.S. naval yards. So here we are some 6 years later: the economy is recovering, and we can talk about regulations; but what I would like to talk about tonight are positive regulations--regulations and laws that grow the American economy, not regulations that would hinder. Specifically, as part of this Make It in America agenda, we have these fundamental policies. If we are going to rebuild the American economy, a big part of it has to be manufacturing. It does matter.
So what are those issues that are involved in rebuilding the American economy?
There are trade issues, and we have heard a lot about that in the recent Presidential campaign. Undoubtedly, the Congress will deal with that;
Taxes. The debate about taxes really was not very clear in the Presidential election, but we are certainly going to be dealing with tax policy here, and we should. There is no doubt that the American tax policy hinders economic growth in many, many ways for small companies and encourages large companies to leave town--to leave America--and leave American workers and communities behind. We have seen too much of that; so tax policy becomes a very, very important part of this;
With regard to energy and labor, I am going to go specifically to those; but just quickly are the educational policies. There is a lot of jabbering around here, on the floor of Congress, and out around the world about educational policies: Are our schools good enough? They don't measure up. We need to have charter schools. We are going to go into that in a big way with our new President; but one of the most important parts of education, when we talk about rebuilding the American economy, is that we have properly trained workers whether they are in the computer field--in computer science--or whether they are in the shipyards welding the parts of a ship. A well-trained, well- prepared workforce is absolutely essential for the growth of the American economy; but education is not the subject today, nor is research;
Infrastructure. It is part of what we are going to talk about today, and I am going to try to do this in, maybe, 10 minutes, but not much longer than that.
What I want to focus on is energy policy and labor. Did you know-- does America know--that the United States has become a net exporter of natural gas?
Yes. We do have a boom in the energy industry. It has slowed down a little bit with the drop in the value of crude oil and natural gas; but, nonetheless, as of today, the United States is a net exporter of natural gas. That gas is exported to Canada and Mexico and other parts of the world. When it is exported to other parts of the world, it is exported in ships in liquefied form, called liquefied natural gas, LNG. On ships, liquefied natural gas is part of that export that has turned America from an importing country to an exporting country, which is good for all of us; but let us realize that that natural gas and, for that matter, crude oil, which is also now being exported, is a strategic national asset, a strategic national resource. It is absolutely crucial to the American economy.
I will give you one example--Dow. The big chemical company is bringing back to the United States much of the manufacturing that it once did overseas of plastic and other products because of the strategic national asset called natural gas. The price of natural gas was low enough that that big, international, domestic, American company--Dow--is returning to the United States to manufacture. It is the same thing with oil. These are strategic national assets that we are now exporting.
The question for us in public policy is: Can we, in some way, use this strategic national resource to expand the American economy?
The answer is: absolutely, yes.
It is not just to the benefit of the energy companies. Maybe we could wish them well as they export our strategic national asset to places around the world and gain a healthy profit--okay--but shouldn't that be shared with the rest of America?
I believe it should, and I know it could. Here is how, and it deals with this issue of labor and manufacturing: Make It In America. Manufacturing matters.
Here is the deal. Those export facilities for LNG are big operations--lots of pipe, lots of plumbing, lots of containers, all of which are or could be made in America, creating American jobs. Now, once that natural gas is liquefied--that is, compressed into a liquid-- and goes on a ship, the questions are: Where did that ship come from, and who are the sailors on the ship?
It used to be, back when the North Slope of Alaska opened up, that the steel in the Trans-Alaska Pipeline and the ships that would then take that oil to the West Coast ports would be American ships with American sailors. It was the law. It was the regulation. Here you had a situation in which the law and regulations created American jobs for mariners and for the American shipyards.
If we were to apply that same principle to the export of LNG, that strategic national resource, think of what would happen. This year, 2016, the first export facility in Louisiana, Cheniere, began exporting LNG on ships. They were not American ships. There were no American sailors on those ships. The policy of the North Slope oil was not extended to the export of LNG, to the detriment of American jobs.
So here is what we ought to do. There is an energy bill floating around somewhere in the Senate and the House. Nobody knows exactly where it is. But in that energy bill, there is a section that enhances and speeds up the licensing of six other LNG export facilities around the United States on various coasts--on the East Coast, the Gulf Coast, as well as the West Coast.
Why not take what we did with the North Slope oil, requiring that it be on American-built ships with American sailors, and apply that same principle, same law, to the export of LNG as these new facilities come online?
It is said that the facility on the Gulf Coast, the Cheniere facility in its first part--there are three different pieces of that that will come in over time--the first part of that facility will take 100 ships to export the liquefied natural gas from that one facility. We are probably talking about a few hundred LNG ships to export the liquefied natural gas not only from the existing facility in the Gulf Coast, but to the other facilities that will be built in the future. Perhaps as much as 12 percent of the total natural gas, that strategic national asset, will be exported, requiring hundreds of ships.
What if we passed a law called Energizing America? I like that title. In fact, we are going to introduce it tomorrow, Energizing America. It is a piece of legislation that would require that we provide 15 percent of the total export on American-built ships. Think about it.
Perhaps over the next decade, our shipyards would be building maybe as many as a hundred ships. But let's just say it is 10, 20, 30 ships. Perhaps more than 100,000 people could be employed in the construction of those ships. This would be a good regulation, wouldn't it? It would be a regulation that would put Americans back to work.
It would be a law that would say a strategic national asset of this Nation will also benefit another strategic national asset: the American shipyards.
Our U.S. Navy depends on those shipyards. Every U.S. naval ship is built in America in American shipyards. And if we were to expand those shipyards, we would find more competition for the naval ships, perhaps a lower price. Perhaps we would also be able to employ marine engineers, welders, plumbers, steamfitters, steelworkers, not only at the shipyards, but in the manufacturing of the engines here in the United States.
Make it in America. Build it in America. All it takes are a couple of paragraphs of law. That is all it would take, a couple of paragraphs of law that say between now and 2024, in the next 8 years, 15 percent of that liquefied natural gas must be on American-built ships with American sailors.
Now, it turns out that these American ships and the sailors are a strategic necessity for our U.S. military. Because it turns out that if you are going to project American power around the world, you have to be able to get there with the men, the women, and the materials--and that means ships.
So we would build the U.S. merchant marine. We would build American shipyards so that they would be competitive around the world, and we would employ tens of thousands--and perhaps even hundreds or more thousand--of American workers in our shipyards. It is possible. All it takes is a law.
So when this energy bill starts moving around--and maybe here in the lameduck session--I would propose a simple amendment: between now and 2024, 15 percent of that export of LNG would be on American-built ships with American sailors.
Oh, by the way, there are some older American LNG ships that could be reflagged for the purposes of meeting at least part of that 15 percent in the initial years. And then after 2025, let's ramp it up to 30 percent. Let's keep our shipyards busy. Let's keep our steelworkers, our welders, our plumbers, our marine engineers, our factories busy in the future with a very simple law that would be a really good regulation.
Oh, I can hear the whining of the oil industry and of the natural gas industry, ``Oh, it is going to be too expensive.'' It is not nearly as expensive as not having American jobs and not be being able to project American power because we do not have a robust merchant marine and a robust number of American ships.
Consider this fact: after World War II, we had 1,200 American ships, American sailors on them, all American flagged. In the 1980s, we had 500. Today, we have less than 80.
We are seeing the disappearance of the American merchant marine. American sailors, American-flagged ships, American shipyards are all diminishing and very rapidly disappearing. It is up to us, your elected officials--myself, my colleagues, 434 other Members of Congress and the 100 Senators. And, I guess, the new President is interested in making America great again. Hey, here is how you can do it, President-elect Trump. Do it in policies that once again call for making it in America.
So what are my colleagues going to do? Let this opportunity slip? Let this opportunity disappear? Forget about the strategic nature of energy in the United States, the strategic necessity of being able to project American power with American sailors and American ships to go wherever we want?
Oh, yes, I heard somebody say, well, we could contract to have ships sent to move our military: Oh, yeah, hello, Mr. Xi. Oh, yeah, I am phoning. Yeah, I'm phoning from Washington, D.C., and, yeah, can you folks in Beijing send over ships so that we can send men and material to the South China Sea?
It is not likely to happen, right?
We can't depend on other countries. We have to depend on our own abilities, our own shipyards, our own mariners. We can do it.
There are many bad regulations to be sure. There are some that hinder the economy. But I would propose to you that a very good law could be used to build the American economy by simply requiring that the export of liquefied natural gas be done on American ships, 15 percent between now and 2024, and thereafter, 30 percent, echoing what we did back in the 1960s when the North Slope of Alaska opened up and that oil came south.
American steel pipe and American-made ships with American sailors, we can do it once again for the benefit of our country, for our national security, and for American workers and American businesses.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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