Jobs
Floor Speech
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I want to take this opportunity to talk about what's on the minds of the constituents in my district, and that's jobs. They're worried about the economy, they're worried about jobs, and they want to find an opportunity to get a job.
Unfortunately, it's actually 11 weeks since the Republicans took control of this House, and there's not been one job bill. The big bill that passed here 4 weeks ago was the continuing resolution for the year, and that piece of legislation actually disposed of 700,000 jobs. It was all couched in the terms of how we're going to solve the deficit, but the reality is you're not going to solve the deficit by making small cuts through multiple programs, and that's what it did. What it actually would have accomplished is to destroy 700,000 jobs here in America.
What we need to do is to take the long view. We need to look at the overarching problem, and we do have a deficit problem. Most of it, frankly, was created during the George W. Bush administration. If you look back to the year 2000 when the Clinton administration ended, there would have been, if the same policies had continued, a $5 billion surplus. We would have wiped out the American debt. That didn't happen. Policies changed, two wars, tax reductions, and an incredible deficit, and the collapse of the American and the worldwide economy.
So where are we today? We're left with a problem. We're going to talk about that today.
I've asked my friend from New York (Mr. Tonko) to join us and my good friend from Illinois, Jan Schakowsky, to join us.
Mr. Tonko, if you would start us.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you, Mr. Tonko.
I would also point out that in the continuing resolution, H.R. 1, that passed this House by the Republican Party, the innovation was essentially destroyed. There had been a layoff of over 6,000 researchers at our national laboratories; money for the ARPA-E, which is the advanced energy research program which was decimated, literally stopped, so that the energy issues you talked about would not be funded going forward. And in the National Institutes of Health, cancer research, heart ailment research, those were also cut. So one thing after another, all that new technology, including technology for the health of Americans, was defunded.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. If the gentleman will yield, not more than 23 minutes ago, the House, under the Republican leadership, voted to remove almost $120 million of funding for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That's where the information comes from about the tsunami. The tsunami warning came from that agency. And here we find the Republicans pulling money out of that not more than 25 minutes ago here on the floor.
I would like now to turn to our colleague from the great State of Illinois. Jan, if you would share with us. I know that you have got a project underway, a bill that you are about to introduce. Perhaps you can share it with us.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. That kind of legislation is the type of policy we ought to be pushing forward here, one that rewards American corporations that are actually making
things in America and employing Americans.
I'm going to turn to our minority whip in just a moment, but this Make It in America slogan was created by Steny Hoyer, and there are about six, seven different policies, some of which we have already covered. We haven't talked about trade yet, but tax policy, which is what you just brought forward, a tax incentive for corporations to be good citizens here. Mr. Tonko talked about energy policy. Labor, certainly that's part of what you talked about; education, which we haven't yet covered; intellectual property, which is, in fact, that research agenda; and the infrastructure. These are all elements of the Make It in America agenda.
Mr. Hoyer, this is your concept of using this term ``Make It in America.'' Would you share with us where we are today with this whole agenda and how things are moving along.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. I thank you very much, Mr. Hoyer. And we thank you for your leadership on this entire agenda because this is about middle class America. This is the middle class America that was rapidly disappearing over the last 15 to 20 years as we exported American manufacturing jobs. Your agenda, the Make It in America agenda, brings those jobs back to America.
I will note that there are a couple of pieces of legislation that you could add to that list.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. I'll come to the future, but I'd like to add one to the past, and that is, in the legislation that we passed last December, without any Republican votes, there was a provision that gave to every business in America the opportunity to immediately write off, against their taxes, 100 percent of a capital investment. So if they wanted to expand their business they could write off immediately, not depreciate over several years, but immediately. Not a Republican vote for that.
There was also in that piece of legislation,
actually in a previous piece of legislation, a tax provision, one of the things we talk about here on our agenda, that would eliminate a tax break that American corporations had when they offshored a job. When they sent a job offshore, American corporations received about $12 billion in tax breaks every year. Well, what's that about? We eliminated it. Again, we had no help from our colleagues on the Republican side.
So our agenda started way before this year. We're going to carry it forward with your leadership. And we've got an agenda here of seven different elements in that, tax policy being one of them.
Thank you so much for your leadership on all of this.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. You're kind, but Mr. Tonko's been there this entire time. Let me turn back to Mr. Tonko.
Thank you very much, Mr. Hoyer.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Tonko, your passion and knowledge on this is extraordinary and so well placed.
If we look at what has happened here on the floor in the last 11 weeks, it has only been about destroying jobs immediately. The continuing resolution that was passed by the Republicans 4 weeks ago actually would destroy, if it became law--fortunately, it hasn't--would destroy 700,000 jobs.
And it's not just those immediate jobs that are lost. As you so correctly point out, the key investments in tomorrow's economy were similarly destroyed. The research agenda for the energy economy was wiped out. The program called ARPA-E, Advanced Research in Energy policy, the program, was wiped out. Those are where the clean energy jobs, those are where the conservation, where the new lights, the new energy systems that we need to deal with the reality of our dependence on foreign oil and the climate change issue, just wiped them out.
Similarly, in the National Institutes of Health, where you are talking about cancer research, research in diabetes, the things that hold back the American economy, because people do get sick. And when they are sick, they are not able to work. So this whole array of research, which is one of the fundamental ingredients of future economic growth, was wiped out by the Republican agenda.
Just today, if I might just add this piece to it, I was looking at the details of the continuing resolution which passed this House some 50 minutes ago. On agricultural research, we know that we have a food crisis coming up. There are going to be 7 billion people in this world. We have a food crisis that is imminent; and in fact, much of the disruption that is going on in the Middle East is in part due to the price of food. There are food shortages. Agricultural research to the tune of over $220 million to $230 million wiped out. Where are we going to get the food for future generations? They like to talk about that.
One final point before I turn it back to you is all of this discussion about the deficit. We have to deal with the deficit. But you can't deal with the deficit by cutting off the ability of the American economy to grow and to perform in the years ahead. So it is the research, it is the Pell Grants for education. All of those things are critical for tomorrow's economic growth.
And you cannot deal with the deficit in 1 year. This is a multiyear program. Therefore, we need to be very careful where we are spending our money so that we create the jobs for tomorrow and we create the opportunity for America to make it, to make things in America once again.
Mr. Tonko?
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Tonko, if I could just pick up on one of the issues you raised, which is the ways in which we spend our money.
Now, we all pay gasoline tax. Right now, it seems as though we are being taxed by the oil companies an extra 50 cents or $1 because the price of gasoline is way up there, but actually the Federal tax on gasoline is about 18.5 cents and on diesel some 25 cents. That money is used to build our infrastructure, our streets, our roads, the interstate highway system, as well as trains, buses, and the like.
The question is, where do we spend that money? Now, previously we would spend that money on buses that were made overseas. We would spend that money on trains and light rail cars that were made overseas. But our agenda here is to bring it home to America. If it is our tax money, we want that money to be spent on things that are made in America. Let me give you a couple of examples on transportation.
Buses: Are they made in America? Our tax money, is it being used to purchase buses that are made in America? It can be. I have a bill that I have introduced that says if it is our tax money, it is going to be spent on American-made equipment. It happens to be the exact same policy that China is following, and it is a good policy.
You have talked about solar and you have talked about wind, the energy future of tomorrow. People and economists that look at the energy issues say that if we go to renewable energy, clean energy sources, we can have an enormous new economy in America. But if we fail to take up the challenge, that economy will be overseas.
How can we jump-start the American economy in the new energy sector? We can do it by using our tax money to support American-made solar systems, whether they are panels like this or the new solar thermal programs, the wind systems. It's our tax money that is allowing these systems to be built.
But are those American-made? My legislation would say, yes, they must be American made. I will give you one example of where this has worked, and this is the President's agenda on high-speed rail. It happens to be mine. I introduced a piece of legislation in California in 1989 that established the High-Speed Rail Commission. We need to do that. And in the legislation, and this was the Recovery Act, the stimulus, it said: money for high-speed rail must be spent on American-made equipment. So Siemens, Austin, other companies are establishing manufacturing facilities in America. We can do it with wise public policy.
I know that you have talked about this and you have introduced some legislation of your own. So if you would share with us your views on how this is working.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you very much, Mr. Tonko. You are a tremendous representative of New York State and America. Your passion for the build it in America, Make It in America agenda, is so very obvious. We thank you for that.
I want to wrap this session up by going back to what we dealt with on the floor earlier today. Earlier today, we dealt with a continuing resolution that would go for 3 weeks, and it has a series of cuts in it. Some of those cuts are appropriate. Some of them are very, very detrimental.
For example, about $120 million of reduction in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That is where we get information on tsunamis. That is where we get information on hurricanes. Why we would cut that out, I have no idea. It is going to be very, very detrimental to America.
On research, we have talked about that, not only in this bill. Agricultural research, so we can move forward once more with a new green revolution so that there will be food for the people of this world and for ourselves, that was cut out of this budget.
And if you love to have germs and other problems with your food, well, you will love what the Republicans did earlier this afternoon when they cut some $24 million out of the animal and plant inspection services. Why we want to have contaminated food, I don't know, but apparently our Republican colleagues do know. So, anyway, that has been done.
But if you take the whole thing in context, I want to point out here that in December, with the continuing resolution in December that was a Democratic-sponsored resolution to continue funding the government for about 3 months, we cut $41 billion out of the budget; $41 billion out of the budget.
Now, when the Republicans came in, they decided to do a new resolution a couple of weeks ago, and that resolution would actually eliminate some 700,000 jobs in America. Is it going to lead to a solution to the deficit? Not really, because we are talking about the discretionary spending, which is a very, very small part of the American budget. As such, there is no way you can really solve the deficit problem in that way.
Yes, we need to make reductions. That is why we did $41 billion back in December. But those were targeted cuts that continued to allow America to invest in those things that create jobs.
We are now into a new set of continuing resolutions, 2 weeks 2 weeks ago, another 3 weeks this week. That is no way to run a government, but that is apparently what we have been reduced to.
Now, I understand the argument that we didn't get an appropriation bill last fall. Why wasn't there an appropriation bill last fall? The reason is that it was blocked in the Senate by a handful of folks that threatened a filibuster. That is why we don't have a resolution. That is why we have been thrown into this continuing resolution problem.
What we need to do is take the long term. In President Obama's budget, the long-term deficit is dealt with over a period of 5 years, bringing down the deficit to a point where it is an acceptable part of the American economy. It allows the economy to grow with investments that are made now in infrastructure, education, investments made in research and development, so that we can grow the economy for tomorrow. That is a wise way to do it. But a feeding frenzy of cuts that actually would eliminate 700,000 jobs is not the way you grow the American economy.
We have to be wise. We have to have the long term. And we have had the long term before. During the Clinton administration, we actually balanced the budget for the last 2 1/2 years of that administration; and had those policies gone forward during the Bush administration, had those policies been kept in place, we would have eliminated the American debt. It would have been gone.
But those policies were radically changed by the George W. Bush administration; two tax cuts, not paid for, most of those benefits going to the high end of the economy, to the very, very wealthy, resulting in a significant increase in the deficit; and then an increase in the Medicare program for drug benefits, again not paid for, increasing the deficit; and two wars, neither of which were paid for, the Afghanistan war and the Iraq war, not paid for but, rather, borrowed money from China and other places.
The result of that was an enormous increase in the deficit followed by the Great Recession, which was basically caused by greed, Wall Street greed and the elimination of regulation. It was as though you had an NFL football game and you wiped out the sidelines, you took the referees off the field, sent them back to the locker room, and said, Okay, play ball, boys. You know what would happen. Chaos. That is what we got in the financial sector when regulation was removed, and we
wound up with the Great Recession.
We need to put in place sound regulation, good regulation, and we need to have the referees on the field. We also need to have a long-term vision on how to deal with the deficit, and you cannot do it by just, in a feeding frenzy, wiping out critical programs that create future economic growth. Unfortunately, that is what our Republican colleagues have suggested we do.
We are not there yet. H.R. 1, the resolution that would have lost 700,000 jobs, was stopped in the Senate. We are now into a process of short-term continuing resolutions to keep the government going.
Be wise as you put forward those resolutions, I would ask my colleagues on the Republican side. It is a great challenge. It is a challenge that we must and we will meet. We need a balanced, long-term vision, bringing the economy along, allowing it to grow and to build in the future, whether that be the green tech economy of the future, the medical systems, the health care systems. We have great opportunity, but those opportunities will not be met if we are not wise and if we have the wrong kinds of deficit reduction plans, which, again, we saw today on this floor not more than an hour ago.
I thank my colleagues for their participation.
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