The Road to Economic Recovery

Floor Speech

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Mr. GARAMENDI. I will, and thank you very much for this discussion of what is one of the most important national security issues facing this Nation, which is our energy policy. It is a situation in which we are finding about $1 billion a day of our money is being transferred offshore to people and countries who are really not our friends at all. So the American energy policy is crucial to national security. We need to break our addiction to oil. And you are bringing out not only the necessity of breaking that addiction to oil and reducing the amount of money we are sending to very dangerous places in the world, but you are talking about creating the jobs of the future.

Now, I represented California. I was the lieutenant Governor there, and throughout the State of California we are looking to the green economy as being the next great opportunity.

We talk about Silicon Valley, and certainly 30 or 40 years ago the move to computers and silicone chips and all of those things did create a huge industry. Now, what is the next step? Everyone in Silicon Valley says the next step is the green economy, and the venture capital community, the scientific community, the research is all moving to the green economy.

We see it in my own district. The biggest wind farms in California are in my district, in the Montezuma Hills and Solano County and the Altamont Pass. Those are the industries of the future, and as we move to those green economies, we free ourselves from oil.

It is a huge issue. You so correctly pointed out that the stimulus program, the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, pushed us in that direction by providing research dollars. The biggest increase in research in the last 12 years has occurred as a result of that stimulus program.

We have another piece of legislation that was on this floor last week, and it was the COMPETES Act, which is the next step in giving us the opportunity in America and in California to compete internationally with science, research, and the educational system that we need to have those engineers and scientists and technicians educated.

Unfortunately, right here on this floor last week the Republicans put forth a motion to reconsider that gutted that legislation, took away half of the potential money and stopped it cold in its tracks. It was one of the worst situations I have seen. Every other business group, the American chamber of commerce, all said we have to have that piece of legislation, yet the Republican Party, for pure political reasons, stalled that legislation, derailed it.

We are working hard to put it back on, because this is the future of America. We cannot any longer be held hostage by those countries that control our oil supply in the Middle East, in Venezuela, and even in the Gulf of Mexico. We now know how risky it is even in our own Gulf to rely upon oil. We need these new sources of energy.

The next step is going to occur this week when we vote on the American Jobs and Closing Corporate Tax Loopholes legislation. That bill is going to be up on the floor of this House this week. What it does is to provide a very significant amount of funding for small businesses, increasing the Small Business Administration loan potential. It provides funding for research for green technologies. It provides tax credits and subsidies so we can advance the green industries, so that future jobs of this Nation are going to be advanced.

I know what is going to happen. The Republican Party on that side of the room is going to do everything they can to stop this critical piece of legislation, 250,000 summer jobs for youth that are otherwise going to be on the street causing trouble.

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