Make It in America
Floor Speech
MAKE IT IN AMERICA -- (House of Representatives - November 17, 2010)
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I thank you for this opportunity.
Coming off the elections, everyone wants to know what the voters had on their minds. I'll share with you a few things that I heard from my voters in my district and throughout California--perhaps experiences similar from around America.
They want jobs. They want to work.
I think all of us in one way or another understands and feels within us the need to work. It's part of our lives. There are a few, undoubtedly, around who don't ever want to work--and okay for them--but for most Americans, they want a job. They want the opportunity to bring home a paycheck, to support their families--to provide for their food, their shelter, their opportunities for education, and to go on a vacation every now and then. That basic instinct--that basic desire to care for your family, to help build a community--I think is part of America. Americans want jobs. If there were ever a message from this year's elections, it's that.
Now, this isn't new to those of us who are here in the Chamber. It's not new to the Democrats, and I'm sure it's not new to my Republican colleagues also; but who actually over the last 2 years amongst all of us in this Chamber and in government have actually been working to create those jobs? I think it's the Democrats. We are going to make that point here today, not only about the past actions that have been taken over the last 2 years, but about what's coming in the future.
Early in 2010, many of us on the Democratic side began to formalize and to formulate a strategy, and we call that ``Make It In America.'' If America is going to make it, then we must, once again, make it in America. We must rebuild our manufacturing industry, which is where we make things.
As a child, I remember looking at the pictures of America, of the great poetry of America's birth of industry, when the robust strength of this Nation was seen in the manufacturing sector. It was heavy industry at the time. It was the steel industry and the auto industry. That enormous strength of America carried us through World War II when we literally built the armaments to take on Nazi Germany and Japan. It was done here in the industries of America. The manufacturing base of this Nation needs to be rebuilt, and it is the Democratic Party and the programs that my colleagues and I will be talking about today which will cause that to happen. America will make it when we make it in America.
Joining me tonight are two of my fellow colleagues--PAUL TONKO, from the once and future great industrial part of New York, and Mr. Ellison, from the great Midwest.
So I would like to turn to them for a few moments for introductory comments, and then we'll turn back, and we'll begin to hit not only what was done over the last 2 years but, also, where we are going in the future.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you very much, Mr. Tonko, and I know that you are going to have to leave us in a few moments, but you just reminded me of one of those little charts that I often have here, and this one really does show what you just talked about. It displays that the gold here are the Bush years. You can see the enormous number of losses of jobs, and right down here, right here at the bottom, that's the start of the Obama administration in January of 2009, and each month thereafter, each quarter, we saw an improvement. We didn't see the jobs really coming back in the private sector until the last several months, but clearly, in the last several months, those jobs are there. Interestingly, the unemployment rate has not dropped because it is the government jobs that are now being lost but, nonetheless, a net gain in the jobs in the private sector.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. You also raised the very, very important part is that the industrial strength of America has almost always occurred as a result of the research and innovation that has been the hallmark of America. You mentioned the COMPETES Act which deals with energy research in the United States. It deals with scientific research. It's an extremely important one, and unfortunately, our Republican colleagues refused to support that bill when it was here on the House floor. We had enough Democrats at that time to move the bill out.
Also, as I recall, I wasn't here and my two colleagues were here at the time--it was the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, otherwise known as the stimulus bill, that created the largest increase in scientific research ever in America's history. Now, the public may not appreciate that, but that research is finding its way into every part of our industrial future, and from that, the billions of additional dollars that were spent, two things happened: scientists, technicians, lab techs, engineers were employed. They had jobs, and they were developing the future industries of America.
Enough from me. Let me turn to my compatriot from the Midwest. Mr. Ellison, you have a very, very important part of the country. It wasn't particularly friendly to us Democrats but friendly to you because of your outstanding leadership. So please share with us your experience there in the upper Midwest.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Well, Mr. Ellison, thank you so very, very much, and it's a busy night for all of us. We've just come back to reorganize ourselves and to go forward.
Earlier today we selected a minority leader for the next year. It is our current Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and as she left the caucus today she very clearly laid out an agenda for the Democratic Party. That agenda was Make It in America: Manufacturing Matters, and Take Care of the Middle Class. These two things go together. If we are going to have a robust economy, if we are going to be able to move up the employment and reduce the unemployment in America, then we must make it in America. As we do that, we will recreate those very, very important, critical, middle class jobs. There's a whole strategy that's underway here.
I used to play football when I was back at the University of California a few years back and did fairly well at it. But there is an analogy that I think we need to keep in mind here to the current economic situation in America.
Let's envision for a moment that the first quarter was the 8 years of the Bush administration. What happened? Well, I had a little chart up here a few moments ago, and maybe I ought to put it back up. The first 8 years of the Bush administration--be with me for a moment here--were the years of the first quarter. What happened? It was a wipe-out. It was horrible. The American team was decimated. We were on our backs. We were losing 800,000 jobs a month in the last year of the Bush administration. It was 8 million jobs lost.
The second quarter, we brought in the Obama team. It didn't start off too good. The first few minutes of that quarter were rough, but it was an improvement. Each minute that went by, each quarter that went by, we saw an improvement; and by the end of that second quarter, we were building jobs. We were building jobs in the private sector.
Now, we're into the second half of the Obama administration. What's going to happen? The Obama team is still on the field. The President's in place. We have a strong minority position going forward in the Democratic Caucus. Our Republican colleagues will take over the management of the House, and we'll see how that goes. On the Senate side, the Democrats are still there. So let's continue the second half as the Democratic half.
Here's our plan: we are going to develop strategies--many of them are already in place--to make it in America so that America can make it, and it is based on this: manufacturing matters. That was the Speaker's message. The minority message going forward in this House next year will be ``make it in America so that Americans can make it.'' It's important to be able to take that paycheck home.
My oldest daughter, now a little bit older--well, I should say more than a little. I'll never forget the day she came back from her first summer job. She came back, and she showed us her check. She held it up like that; and she said, Dad, I've got my first paycheck. She was proud. She was so proud that she was a working American.
And I know for those millions of Americans out there today that can't find a job, they want to be able to come back to their home with that check in hand and tell their children, I'm back at work. I'm working again. I can take care of you. I can provide for your education. I can put the food on the table. That's what they want. And we have a strategy in mind on the Democratic side that will do that.
This first quarter that I was talking about, the strategy was basically to increase the wealth of the wealthy, to start two wars and never pay for them, and to take the referees off the playing field and just let it rip. And we were ripped to a fare thee well. Wall Street just went crazy with ultimate greed. And the result--we should have expected it--you take the referees off the field, take the rule book, throw it off into the shower; and what do you think's going to happen in an NFL football game? Well, that's what happened when Wall Street was allowed to run amok during the George W. Bush years.
It was the Democrats in this House, in the Senate that laid out a structure to stabilize the financial industry. We got most of that money back, and we'll probably get it all back in the years ahead. It was stabilized, not as good as we would want; but it was stabilized.
And then the next piece was brought forward, which was the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. By all accounts, by learned economists, 3 million jobs were created or saved as a result of that. And that wasn't the only piece of legislation. There was in that piece of legislation reinvestment in science and technology and research, reinvestment in our roads and streets and bridges, building the foundation for the future of America.
Followed up later in this session by Democrats with legislation called the HIRE Act, to put people back to work, to give businesses the financial incentive to hire people, to bring people back onto the payroll, subsidizing those rehires so that people can take that paycheck home and say, Dear, I'm back at work. I've got a job again. That's what Americans want. And the Democrats were delivering that.
The last piece of legislation before we went into the election was a piece of legislation to help the governments of America, the cities, the counties, the States, keep people employed in the essential jobs that are the public sector jobs: police, fire, teachers. In California alone, 16,000 teachers are in the classroom this year as a result of that piece of legislation. We want people to work. We put those bills on the floor. Some were actually passed by the Senate, much to our delight; but many, many were not. There were many pieces of legislation that passed here without Republican support, but nonetheless were an effort on our part to put people back to work. We're going to take this thing further in the year ahead and up through the next session of Congress.
Let me put this up here for you to see. My colleague, Mr. Ellison, was talking about wind turbines and photovoltaic. Interesting, but not many of these are made in America nowadays. Most of these are imported: wind turbines from Europe and China; photovoltaic cells now mostly from China; buses from Europe and other places. We can make these things in America. We can make these things in America because we once made them in America. In my own district, in the Fairfield/Solano Counties area of California, we used to make a lot of solar panels. And in the Bay Area, there still is a bus manufacturer, one of the few left in America that actually produces buses, the GILLIG Corporation.
I will never forget the day that I went out to visit the wind farm in Solano County and talked to the companies that were putting those wind turbines up. I asked them, Boy, that's quite a tower. It's 400 feet high, a lot of steel. Oh, yeah, yeah. We bring that in from Korea. That's interesting. And those blades stretching out the length of a football field, 300 feet? Oh, yeah, those are brought in from Europe right now, but maybe we can begin to manufacture those once again in Colorado. And all the gear boxes and all of the electronics, all of it is imported.
And I told them, I said, You want me to continue to support American tax money, subsidizing your wind turbines and your business, and you want those things made overseas? Well, they don't make it in America anymore. And I said, Well, let me put it to you this way: if you want my help, if you want American taxpayer money for subsidies, then you damn well better make it in America; otherwise, our tax money ought not be used to support industries overseas. If it's private money, do what you want to do. If you want to buy a turbine from Europe, fine. If you want to buy a turbine from Japan or China, fine. But use your own money. Don't you use American taxpayer money. But unfortunately, far too much of that has gone on in the years of the past.
I have introduced legislation and others are following along so that our tax money is going no longer overseas for buses, for bridge steel, for photovoltaic systems, for wind turbines. Our tax money, when these Democratic bills pass this House and the Senate and signed by President Obama, our tax money will be used to support American industry.
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