Make It in America

Floor Speech

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you very much, Representative Clarke. Your passion for this issue was well displayed in that Detroit Chrysler advertisement.

And I would just point out, before I turn back to Ms. Kaptur, that Chrysler and General Motors were saved as an American manufacturing icon by policies of President Barack Obama. It was his policies, supported by the Democrats in the House and the Senate, that allowed for the support that those two corporations needed to reinvent themselves so that there could be jobs in America.

Now, Ms. Kaptur, you come from an area where manufacturing has been, really, the essence of the economy for a long time, and you have been supporting legislation and introducing legislation. Could you share with us those things that you are working on now and the legislation that you are pushing through this House?

Ms. KAPTUR. Yes.

First of all, let me just say, Congressman Garamendi, it is such a joy to have Congressman Clarke here from the wonderful city of Detroit. I really loved that commercial because I think it captured the struggle of our country through the lens of Detroit and, I might say, Toledo, just a few minutes south of Detroit. It talked about how the city had been to hell and back, and the trials and tribulations that manufacturing in our region has really experienced over the last quarter century.

There is, without a doubt, as Congressman Clarke says, that Detroit was the arsenal of democracy, and it still is. All along I-75, from Detroit down through Toledo, that as you take it down through Ohio and into the areas south, the automobiles, the tanks, all of our overland vehicles, the expeditionary fighting vehicle for the Marine Corps, all of that, the Warren Tank Command, is all along that region.

In Toledo, I have to brag a little bit, my hometown, that toddlin' town, still is, for all intents and purposes, home to the Jeep, the general purpose vehicle for which General Marshall ordered production for our troops in the European and Pacific theaters and we won the war. Rosie the Riveter, she had presence in Toledo, Ohio, at places like Champion Spark Plug where our mom worked, or at then Kaiser Jeep Corporation from which our father retired.

One of the most important challenges we have in this Congress is to have patriotic capitalism, to reward investment in America through our tax code. Not to let outsourcing win, but to let insourcing win, in the way we look at the books here at the national level.

In addition to that, I have a bill to renegotiate NAFTA; because back in 1993, NAFTA gave the green light to globalization and outsourcing, and every other trade agreement that has come down the pike has outsourced more jobs than insourced jobs for us. We got away from making it in America, and in sector after sector, closed markets in Japan, in China, in South Korea snuffed out production here as their production grew. But it has reached a breaking point. It has reached a breaking point in our country.

We have had to, through defense legislation we passed, saved the strategic metals industry, beryllium, titanium, magnesium, all of these important metals, both in defense as well as in the commercial industrial sector we could lose to other places. Our ability to do machine tooling, that was one of the first fights I had in here in the President's investment tax credit for investment in the United States to save the tooling, which is located within 300 miles of Detroit and Toledo. That's what America has. Is it any wonder that unemployment is 9 percent when you have these wacko trade deals that outsource more jobs?

The one bill I haven't mentioned, which is short-term, but we have so many people who are long-term

unemployed.

This morning I asked Chairman Bernanke from the Federal Reserve, what do we do with people that want to work in Detroit, in Toledo, in places across this country? And he basically answered the question. I said, ``Please give us your suggestions.'' And he said, ``Well, you know, we ought to tie unemployment compensation to somehow job training so people can be retooled back into the workforce in a very productive way, because I think we could lose the value of the work ethic itself.''

So the issue of training, the issue of education is a very important one, Congressman Garamendi, that you have well outlined there.

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Ms. KAPTUR. Oh, it is my privilege. I wanted to reinforce what you were saying about education and the Workforce Investment Act. In the counties that I represent, whether it is the Source in Lucas County or One Shop Stopping in Ottawa County, every single county has workforce investment boards that try to connect to our community colleges and institutions beyond high school in order to help people transition into education, as well as those who fall out of the workforce and have to retool.
I was shocked to hear today that on the other side of the aisle, they can't bring up a bill to extend trade adjustment assistance to workers who have been booted out of their jobs because their companies moved to Mexico or to Korea or to China and workers are thrown out of work. That program expires February 13, and they were not able to bring up a bill to extend that for the millions of people across our country who have lost their jobs in manufacturing because they moved abroad. I just think that that is simply unconscionable.

I say to the gentleman that the important issue of linking our community colleges, our apprenticeship programs, our university programs, our GED programs to help people move into, and, frankly, many of our small business programs, to help people move into the private sector is something that is so vitally needed and cannot be done in this economy in areas of high unemployment without the Federal Government partnering with them.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. I know that you have spent much time on energy policy issues. It is a critical issue for the Nation's security. It is an issue that really speaks not only to climate change, which some people believe isn't real, but I happen to think it is a fundamental problem facing us and future generations.

But even if you are not into climate change, you have to be aware that we have a very serious energy security issue in the United States, one that really puts our Nation at risk. At any moment we could see the shutdown of the flow of oil from one or another part of the world and, bam, we have got a crisis in America.

We also know that we are shipping off to countries, many of whom are not our friends, $1 billion a day; $1 billion a day of hard-earned American money is flowing offshore as oil from the petro-dictators of the world flows into our country.

So the American energy policy is of profound importance; and all across this Nation, and you have spoken to this also in the past, all across this Nation people are saying, we need an American energy policy that brings our energy sources onshore and gives us the opportunity to capture the green technologies of the future. Solar, solar-wind, solar-photovoltaic, solar-thermal systems, nuclear, all of these potential energy sources, biofuels, are out there in the future for us if we aggressively put in place the public policies that support the creation of these new technologies and the production of those machines, of those solar systems, of those wind turbines, of those advanced biofuels, produce them, manufacture them in America.

Now, I think you were telling me that in your area there is an effort to build some of these pieces of equipment. Could you share with us what is happening in Ohio?

Ms. KAPTUR. For 25 years we have been trying to give birth to the solar sector, and the Toledo region, northern Ohio, is home to one of the three solar platforms on the continent.

People go, well, but you don't live in California. I said, no, but I historically represent the glass industry, which advanced into the photovoltaic industry. So the hottest act on Wall Street a couple of years ago was First Solar. A company called Xunlight is about to send out its first shipment to Italy this spring. We have other companies, like Kelsey-Hayes, that are in the process of bringing up their factory floors. There is Nextronics, one of the solar inverter companies that is hiring and looking for financing to expand their operation. There are many companies that didn't exist 25 years ago when we started. So I actually have seen what is happening.

But my fear, my fear is that the intellectual property will be stolen; that it will be no different than the automotive industry; that you can't staple it down; that we have to have a balanced trade policy and very tough intellectual property protections. I see your intellectual property proposal up there. I completely agree with that, because if they take our property, our intellectual property, we lose our ability to continue to manufacture and be suppliers globally.

So I wanted to say, Congressman Garamendi, you referenced oil. People say, well, why should we incentivize solar and hydrogen and biofuels and all these sectors, as if we weren't subsidizing the petroleum industry by allowing them to book their royalties or not book their royalties and be charged taxes, as though our entire military establishment wasn't deployed around the globe in order to protect those sea lanes so that petroleum can get in here for refining.

We have to realize we are already subsidizing a sector that is going to be more diminished as this 21st century moves forward. So either you live in the shell of the past, or you break out of it and create a whole new independent America, again, from an energy standpoint; and that is why we need to move.

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Ms. KAPTUR. You know, there are some people that live in the past and there are others that are involved in inventing the future. And when you have the major trade deficit category ``imported petroleum,'' and you have marines and soldiers dying all over the world to protect that, pretty soon you begin to think, You know what? This picture has to change.

Every time our country's gas prices go up over $4 a gallon, we go into deep, deep recession. We are trying to crawl out of one just now. And in 2007-2008, gas prices went over $4 a gallon. People forget that. The mortgage foreclosure crisis followed that. But the point was it happened to us again. How many times do our people have to suffer before we realize the source of the problem?

And I had a great experience. I had to go back to the University of Wisconsin, my alma mater, and I gave a commencement address a few weeks ago. It was not a bad speech. It was a pretty good speech. But one of the lines I used was: And America just simply must grasp the future and restore our energy independence. That was the loudest applause I got in this massive audience. And I thought, The American people know it. They know it. We have to do it. We have to make it happen.

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