A Discussion About Jobs - Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. GARAMENDI. I thank you so very, very much for raising the critical role of small business in creating jobs. It is where many of the jobs are created, as you so correctly stated.

You also referred to two bills that passed this House, H.R. 5297, which was the small business lending program, and it did all of the things you said. There is actually $30 billion in that that would be available to community banks to deliver loans to small businesses, $30 billion made available to them.

There is also a requirement that they would have 10 years to pay back those funds. So it would go on the books of the bank as a loan, but it would be a long-term loan so that they would have the capital. I am told by the small businesses in our area that they were able to get $1 million of capital, which this provided up to $30 billion to small banks. If they could get $1 million of capital, they could then make $10 million of loans. So there is that kind of leverage involved here.

That bill passed this House with 98 percent of the Republicans voting no. Now, I don't know how many times I have sat here on the floor and listened to our colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle talk about their support for small businesses. But here where they had a concrete chance to help community banks and small businesses, 98 percent of them voted no.

You mentioned the small business tax incentive program, $3.5 billion of tax incentives for small businesses to specifically help small businesses weather the storm. It also granted tax relief from penalties that they may have had from mistakes that were made in the past. Again, a bill specifically designed to help small businesses.

Ninety-seven percent of our Republican colleagues voted no on that. So don't come to the floor and say you are for small businesses when you had a chance to vote for legislation that would specifically help small businesses.

There is another one that just came to me. We actually passed it and it is a good bill, it is important for many reasons. But I got a phone call last Saturday from a friend who was--``was'' is the right word--was a home builder in California. He built many homes, high quality homes, was deeply involved in making those homes as green as possible, large energy conservation in solar and the like.

He said, JOHN, you have got to make sure that the HOME STAR programs that provide an incentive for homeowners to upgrade their home so that they can install triple pane windows, insulation, the cash for caulker things. They are really important, because it gives the homeowner a chance to reduce their annual energy bill, whether it is heating in the winter or air conditioning in the summer.

He said, beside that, it is my new business. It is my new business. I am not building homes for a while because of the market in the area in which he was working, but he said I am going to existing homes and giving them the chance to make their homes energy efficient. I can make some money, they will make some money.

There are other programs that are out there that provide additional assistance such as tax credits, and I want to come to that in a few moments.

So when that bill was on the floor, what happened? Where do you stand? Do you stand with homeowners and small businesses such as I just described, or are you standing for Wall Street?

Well, let's find out. Ninety-three percent of the Republicans on this floor voted against the HOME STAR energy program. I don't get it. I don't get it. We are saving energy, helping us consume less energy, giving people an opportunity to work and homeowners an opportunity to reduce their energy bill.

I don't know what that means in Ohio, but I do know what it means in California. It is a chance for a small contractor to change his business model and to move in a direction that is good for him, good for the homeowner, and good for America.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. These are the kinds of jobs that really don't require a Ph.D. People can take these jobs that were working on the line in a manufacturing industry or working in the housing industry. They may already have some skills that are available to them. But there is an enormous, enormous potential here. And the other pieces of legislation provide for a tax credit to the homeowner to put in these systems. So we need to really move along on these kinds of things.

I am going to just run through another series of bills here that are very important to us, I believe. Again, this is the Jobs For Main Street Act that creates jobs for firefighters, for teachers, and to rebuild highways and the like, extending health care benefits for those who had lost their insurance because of the downturn, something as sensible as keeping teachers employed, something as sensible as making sure that firefighters are still there.

Yes, it is the Federal Government helping local governments. It is true. And it is a deficit issue. But what if we don't have teachers? What if there are teachers being laid off and the classroom size goes from 20 to 30? What about the next generation's ability to compete internationally, their educational opportunities are stifled? That is not a what-if. That is my daughter's classroom. She is a teacher, first grade. She has gone from 20 to 30.

The economy is down. The State of California is in financial trouble. The Federal Government has the ability to help here, to keep people employed, teachers in this case, others in schools, and, more importantly, make the most fundamental investment, which is the investment in the education of our children.

You may be seeing something like that in Ohio. I know it is a major problem all across this Nation.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Well, these things are critically important.

One more bill that I want to take up before I turn to what we can do next is a bill that dealt with the fundamental reason that the American economy crashed in 2007-8, and that was the meltdown of Wall Street.

The extraordinary greed, the games that were being played, the gamble that was being made with our money by Wall Street led to the collapse. Obviously, the housing industry, the subprime mortgage market, the collateralized debt obligations, the derivatives, all of those games were being played on Wall Street. For more than a year--almost 2 years now--this House, the Democrats, have fought to rein in Wall Street; to force Wall Street to operate with rigorous rules that hold them accountable and responsible. We finally succeeded late last year to pass a Wall Street Reform Act. It went over to the Senate. It took almost 9 months for the Senate to gestate a bill. Conference committee took place. The conferees met. The bill came to this floor. And we added a few provisions to the--the bill came to the floor and it passed with provisions that were added during the conference committee. A good bill. It does rein in Wall Street, does set clear rules. It makes it impossible for a bank to fail and for taxpayers to bail out a bank--a big bank. There are things in it that went beyond that. Providing opportunities for small banks. Some of the additional benefit to small banks. They were given a break so that the heavy-duty regulations that were imposed on the major banks were not imposed on the small banks.

Where do you stand? Do you stand to rein in Wall Street and finally bring to heel the bankers that brought this Nation's economy to its knees and doggone near tanked the economy, putting us into a Depression equal to 1930? Do you stand with that kind of regulation or do you stand with the Wall Street bankers that said say, Oh, trust us. We'll never do it again.

The Democrats in this House carried the burden of reining in Wall Street, setting in place the regulations, setting in place the rules of the road going forward, hopefully preventing, and I think will prevent, the kind of meltdown that we had. Our colleagues on the Republican side to a person voted ``no'' when it came time to discipline Wall Street. They voted ``no'' when it came time to discipline Wall Street. You know where you stand when you vote here in this House. In this case, do you stand with the regulation of Wall Street or let them continue doing what they did? It's clear where we stood as Democrats.

Now, Representative Wilson, would you like to add to that?

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Mr. GARAMENDI. I was back in the district over the Fourth of July week and somebody said, Well, it's kind of like an NFL football game. I said, What do you mean by that? He said, Well, you used to play football at the University of California Berkley and you could have been in the NFL but you decided to go in the Peace Corps. I said, Yeah, it was a good decision. But what's the point here? He said, Well, you know, this Wall Street bunch, before your reform, it was like an NFL football game without any rules, and the referees were sent into the locker room. And you can kind of imagine what the outcome would be. Wild chaos and a lot of mayhem. He said, That's exactly what happened on Wall Street. The regulators during the Bush period stepped out of the room. The rules were not there to prevent the kind of excesses--if there were rules, there was nobody to make them obey it. And we wound up with the problem we had.

Let's move to the future here. So what are we going to do next? In the financial reform, Wall Street reform, there was a provision, and in another bill that we passed earlier there was a provision that is extraordinarily important to the American worker. In existing law today and for the last couple of decades there's been a tax break for corporations who offshore jobs--a tax break that literally gives a tax reduction when an American corporation sends jobs offshore.

You say, Excuse me, did I hear what you said, Congressman? You did hear what I said. What I said is, in the law today there is a tax break for sending jobs offshore. We have twice passed on this floor legislation that would end that tax break and annually restore to the American Treasury $14.5 billion that now sits in the popular corporations that have offshored American jobs. Must stop. It's got to be over. The Republicans voted with the corporations to keep that tax break in place. I'm not there. And I suspect you're not there, Mr. Wilson, either.

So we need to make sure that that bill that's sitting over there in the Senate where the power of one senator can simply stop everything, that it is busted loose and comes back so that corporations--American corporations--no longer get a tax break when they send American jobs overseas. Issue one. Let's get with it, Senate.

Secondly, this one really drives me crazy because this is really California. We've got solar in California. We started that in California. In 1978, I passed a law as a California State Senator that gave a tax break for the solar industry. The first in the Nation. And it started the solar industry. It also started the wind turbine industry in California. Right now, we're spending about $5 billion a year of tax money on buses; we spend billions of dollars supporting the solar industry with tax credits, some of which we've talked about; and the wind industry. We need, in my view, a law that says if it's our tax money, then it will be made in America. It will be used to buy American-made buses, trains, light rail. It'll be used to pay for solar panels and tax credits on the homes of Americans; panels and equipment that are made in America. It is, after all, our tax money. And with the windmills or the wind turbines.

In my district, we have two of the biggest wind farm areas in the Nation. We've got the Montezuma Hills in Solano County, which I represent, and we have the Altamont Pass area in Alameda, and San Joaquin County. Many of the new turbines that are being put up are made overseas--and most of them are made in China. And I'm going, Wait a minute. We're giving them a tax credit, those companies that own these machines? We're giving them a tax credit to buy turbines that are made where? China? No way, no how. There ought to be a law. And I believe this Democratic Party and this floor is going to put such a law together.

I think we've got about 10 minutes left, and I just noticed a colleague from the great Midwest just arrived. Congresswoman Kaptur, thank you so very much for joining us. I know you and I have had conversations about jobs, and I know that your part of the country used to be manufacturing center one. I guess the two of you can debate that. But let's talk about these kinds of things. How do we restore American manufacturing?

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Mr. GARAMENDI. I thank you so very much, Congresswoman Kaptur, for joining us.

The heart and soul of America's manufacturing sector was the Midwest, and Ohio at one point was the strongest part of America's manufacturing economy. I know it can be restored. And right here in this area with the rolling stock of America's transportation system, with the new technologies, whether they're wind or turbine, if we use our tax money to support these industries rather than to support industries that are located in China or other countries, I think we can then provide the kind of strength that will return to America once again in the manufacturing sector.

We're nearly out of time, and this has been a great discussion. I just want to turn for a few moments to another colleague from California. We do think that we are the biggest part of the American economy. And a big part of it happens to be where Congresswoman Watson lives, which is the entertainment industry.

Congresswoman Watson, I think we're out of time.

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