Make It In America

Floor Speech

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Mr. TONKO. Well, you know, it's great to represent Schenectady, which is dubbed The City that Lights and Hauls the World. It was the birthplace of an energy revolution over a century ago. And to have the President visit just the other day, on Friday, to tout the efforts at GE, where he speaks to the vibrancy of American manufacturing. You know, we lost a third of manufacturing jobs during the decade that preceded this administration. I think it was through neglect.

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Mr. TONKO. Right, and I think it was through neglect on manufacturing. They focused on the service sector, primarily the financial services. They ignored agriculture, they ignored manufacturing, and now we are paying the price. Even though we lost a third of the manufacturing jobs in this country, we are still perched as number one in the global race. However, if we are to allow that neglect to continue, we would eventually fall out of the number one position.

So the 4.6 million jobs lost, manufacturing jobs lost due to that neglect, that trend has to be turned around, and I was so delighted to hear the President speak to a progressive agenda, a proactive quality, to the tone he was establishing at that center with his speech. He talked about the strength of America's manufacturing and how we can impose a strong uplift for the middle class of this country.

You know, 66 percent of the wealth that was generated, of the recovery during 2001 and 2007, went to 1 percent, of the top 1 percent of wealth in this country. So they accumulated all that wealth, and it's middle class America that needs to get that clout now. We can do that because the investment in R&D, the investment in basic research that transforms into jobs that allows us to be more productive in our starter-up small businesses and in our big industries like GE.

If we introduce a soundness of basic research in R&D that then equates into jobs that translates into an empowerment of the middle class. I think that's an important message that was shared by this President, and the Nation accepted that speech. It was shared across this country, and it was emanating from GE, from the floor, from the factory floor where innovation and invention were coming from the working class on the assembly line.

It was their ideas, their creative genius that allowed us to have all the mills in that Erie Canal corridor that I so proudly represent become the epicenters of innovation and invention in their heyday. That is still within our DNA. That is our pioneer spirit that is uniquely American. The President wants to tap into that spirit, and he wants us to be that innovation economy.

You know, the other day, many of us on this floor here shared in the fiftieth anniversary celebration of JFK, that remarkably strong and powerful and inspirational inaugural address. And so many people highlighted many of the challenges that President Kennedy issued in that address, amongst them, exploring the heavens, exploring the heavens.

And what it did was empower us, just the tone he established, enabled us as a nation to embrace with a great degree of passion a resolve to win that race. And we entered that global race in space to win it. And we won it, and we unleashed untold, untold amounts of technology, science and technology that has strengthened every dynamic of life.

Here, fast forward some 40 years later, some 40-plus years later, a rather youthful President is challenging a nation to enter a global race, this time on the clean energy economy, the innovation economy. We should have within us the fortitude to go forward and invest in a way that allows us to empower our working families, the middle class of this country, through investment, in soundness of manufacturing that enables us to build it in America, make it in America again and be proud of that.

So, Representative Garamendi, thank you for bringing us together this evening to voice our support for the President's vision, for the vision that we share as a caucus in this House, I think it's the empowering vision that enables us to go forward with a Make It in America mantra that enables us to promote the correct policy and the resources associated with that policy to truly make a difference.

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Mr. TONKO. We flew up from Washington on Air Force One and then returned with the President because we had our jobs conference in Maryland.

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Mr. TONKO. Absolutely. Thank you, Representative Pallone. The importance I think of hosting an event like that which the President joined is that we can showcase that there are great things happening. I for one am not going to submit to this notion that manufacturing is dead in America. I cannot, with a pioneer spirit that I detect all the time, for one, for any moment submit to that logic or that thinking. As the President was hosted by GE, specifically by its CEO, Jeff Immelt, he and so many others believe in the workforce and in the creative genius, leaders, labor leaders like the late Joe Battaglino who was a union voice for GE workers, Helen Corinne in the past, all of whom fought for the dignity of the worker because that worker was providing the intellect to take us to the next plateau.

And so what they talked about here was the fact that not only are American workers producing a high-quality turbine, but were also exporting to places like India.

And as the President said in his speech, we have bought many a Chinese good in this country. It is time for China to buy our products. And I think he is setting a good tone so that there is this fairness that is associated with the trade out there and that we as a Nation not only need to make it in America, but we have to put an emphasis on exporting. And when those emphases are put into play, we will then prosper as a Nation.

You talk about the turbine and the manufacturing going on at GE, but the President was also updated with right next door and the activity right next door which is an advanced battery manufacturing center. And it's not the traditional lithium ion of which many people speak as the cutting-edge battery.

This one that GE is creating can deal with heavy fleets, specifically helping that niche of battery application. It can be used for energy generation. And then perhaps one of its greatest functions, it can be used to store intermittent power. So if we reach to the sun, the soil, and the wind to produce our energy needs, and it has an intermittent nature to it, we then put value added into that supply of energy because of the storage potential of this new battery.

And then they also have, across the street from this plant, GE's global renewable energy center. And what they're doing there is doing this global strategy on renewables. And so the turbine blades that are manufactured there, all of this is that cutting-edge technology that enables us not only to create jobs, made in America, exporting around the world, but also growing our own energy independence and our energy self-sufficiency, which to me is a strategic bit of policy.

So this should not be about Republicans fighting Democrats or Democrats competing with Republicans. This should be America moving forward with a progressive plan, with a laser-sharp focus joined with the message of the President to make certain that we compete not with each other but with other nations. Is it robust? Probably. Is it very hard-fought? Most likely. But we've got to be in it, and we have to have the passionate resolve to make a difference by investing in those key functions like education, higher education, basic research, R&D and modernization of our manufacturing centers.

People will tell me when they hear this manufacturing thing, they said we can't compete. Other nations will do it cheaper. We don't have to do it cheapest. We need to do it smartest--smartest. And when we do it smartest, we win. We sharpen our competitiveness, and we can win on the global scale.

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Mr. TONKO. I again thank the gentleman from California.

Look, I am ecstatic about the President's choice of Jeff Immelt, the CEO of GE, to be the chair of the Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. We can probably remove a lot of the struggle that occurs on this House floor by listening to the business minds out there, who will advise us about the strength we can provide to create jobs through invention and innovation.

Here is a voice that's highly respected; he is tremendously strong in his beliefs in American manufacturing again. And so we must let those voices speak and resonate in this discussion, in this dialogue on where we go and how we build our economy.

The President made it very clear: he spent his first couple of years stopping the bleeding of the recession. We were losing 750,000 to 800,000 jobs a month, 8.2 million jobs lost to this economy. Now our assignment is to plan strategically the growth of jobs, what is sustainable.

What is sustainable? Manufacturing, because it incorporates from the trades people over to the Ph.Ds. Everyone has a shot at that economy. It's the muscle we need, it's the American know-how, it's the American intellect. And I thank you again for bringing us together this evening.

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