Manufacturing

Floor Speech

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, thank you very much.

I want to spend this evening talking about manufacturing. Manufacturing matters. It is the foundation of any solid economy. It is the one part of the American economy that is seriously hurting, and with the great recession, the manufacturing sector in America has even further weakened.

I would like to start this discussion with just a quick review of what has happened with regard to jobs over the last 3 years.

If you will look here on this diagram, you will notice that, beginning in 2007, jobs in America slowed down and began to decline, so much so that, between 2007 and November of 2009, some 700,000 jobs a month were being lost in the fall and into the early winter of 2009.

When the Obama administration came in, it was at the lowest possible point of some nearly 800,000 jobs lost in December and January. As the administration came in, very strong action was taken--the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in February, which was an effort to move the economy and to put people back to work.

It was a major tax cut in that. The largest middle class tax cut ever was part of that. There was an effort to build roads and streets and infrastructure, and money was sent to school districts to continue to employ teachers and to stabilize the American economy. It worked. It worked, and slowly we saw a decline in the number of jobs that were lost. We didn't see an immediate growth in jobs. It didn't happen.

It takes a long time to recover from a very serious recession, in fact, the worst recession since the 1930s. But over the months that followed, each month, improvement, improvement, improvement, so that this year we're beginning to see the effects of the efforts of the Democratic Congress, some Senate help, and the President in turning around the economy, so that in 2010, in the most recent months, we're beginning to see job growth. In fact, we've added nearly 600,000 jobs this year. No longer a decline; stabilization and now job growth.

So with this background, we can begin to understand the efforts that are being made here in Congress by the Democratic Party and by the President.

An historic piece of legislation was signed today that deals with the underlying collapse and the reasons for the collapse of the American economy and, indeed, the economy of the entire world. Today, around 11:30 today, President Obama signed the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, a very important law--clearly, the most important financial regulation law since the 1930s--designed specifically to deal with the underlying problems that led to the collapse of Wall Street. Many parts of it, the kinds of excesses and gambling with our money that took place are going to be history. They're not going to be allowed under the new law. A consumer protection agency has been put in place to provide consumers with a place to go with their complaint and to protect them.

Now, I know about this. I did this for two terms as the insurance commissioner in California. I know the importance of a consumer protection agency. We will soon have such an agency in the United States to help us, as consumers, to make sure that those mortgages are no longer subprime and hidden costs with hidden resets. All of that is in law now, as a result of what this Democratic Caucus did, and with the help of just three Republicans over in the Senate passing the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

Now, what has been done is good, and I'll talk about some other bills as we go through this afternoon, but I want also to make it clear that it is not enough.

Manufacturing matters. We need to rebuild the manufacturing base of America. We need to make it in America, and we can. I don't think there's a person on this floor that doesn't want to walk into a Target store and find ``Made in America'' labels on everything. We're not going to get there immediately, but we can sure get there much, much faster if we pass the correct laws.

Joining me today in this discussion are several of my colleagues from around the Nation who are going to tell their story and what's happening in their community. I'd like to start on the far east coast. Now, I'm a west coast person. I'm from California, but there is another side to the continent. They'd like to say it's the right side, and sometimes they call California the left side.

But my colleague from the great State of Pennsylvania would like to inform us about what's going on in Pennsylvania and, more specifically, in the Philadelphia area.

I yield to the gentleman.

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