Providing for Consideration of H.R. 1217, Repealing Prevention and Public Health Fund

Floor Speech

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Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I thank the gentleman from Florida.

Mr. Speaker, in Washington over the last few months, we have seen a lot of what we are seeing today, a lot of talk from my Republican colleagues about ideological budget cuts and about divisive social issues. And today, once more, we are here debating repeal of part or all of the health care bill.

But back home, we are hearing about one thing and largely one thing only, and that is job creation. Now, I appreciate my friend from North Carolina dressing up her remarks with some talk about jobs, but this debate today isn't about creating jobs. It is about a political agenda to take on the Democratically passed health care bill.

But we need to start plugging into where Main Street is and having a real conversation about job creation in this country, and so I am here today to talk about one idea in particular that can reach out to the 5,000 manufacturers in my State, and the tens of thousands more of manufacturing employees who are looking for good middle class work and help from Congress that hasn't been forthcoming in the last 3 months.

Since 2001, this country has shut down over 42,000 manufacturing plants. We have lost about 5 million manufacturing jobs; but during that same period of time, we have increased spending on defense manufacturing in this country by 81 percent. The problem is that 81 percent increase hasn't gone to factories in Connecticut or North Carolina or Florida or anywhere else. It has gone overseas because after building loophole after loophole into our domestic sourcing laws, like the Buy America Act, we are hemorrhaging manufacturing jobs in part because we are spending more and more taxpayer dollars overseas.

So we need to defeat this previous question so we can bring a commonsense jobs bill to the floor of the House of Representatives, the American Jobs Matter Act.

Now, let me explain what this bill does. It is pretty simple. It says that anytime a Federal agency is awarding a contract, in particular the Department of Defense, that they can give a leg up, that they can give preference to the bidder who promises and guarantees to create more U.S. jobs. Most of my constituents think that already happens. They already think we have some system in place to make sure that our taxpayer dollars are being used to give preference to American companies rather than foreign companies. It is not happening. The law doesn't allow it.

So let's pass today the American Jobs Matter Act. It will make sure that our money gets spent on our jobs here at home.

A quick story from Connecticut: I have a company that makes copper nickel tubing in Waterbury, Connecticut. They are the only American company that supplies that product to the Virginia submarine class. There is one company in Europe that makes it. But because we can't give them preference by law today, they have lost one of their two most important contracts to that European supplier, and along with it dozens of American jobs. That is our money going overseas, and we need to do something about it rather than debating the health care bill all over again.

When people really care about building back those manufacturing jobs, we should in fact be spending every day in this Congress talking about bills like the American Jobs Matter Act. Instead, we are talking about defunding Sesame Street, about destroying Planned Parenthood, and once again today talking about repealing the health care bill; and, in fact, a part of the health care bill that is going to create jobs through preventive health care services.

It is no wonder that Americans think so little of this Republican Congress, because they are not focused on what people out there are focused on, J-O-B-S, jobs. The American Jobs Matter Act, if we bring it to the floor today, is a commonsense measure to simply target taxpayer money to the creation of American jobs. We don't have to spend any more money to create American jobs. We just have to spend the money we are already spending better. We spend half the military dollars in the world coming out of the U.S. budget, and this engine of expenditure should be used not only to make this country stronger militarily, but also to make it stronger economically.

The American Jobs Matter Act is one way to get there. I urge my colleagues to defeat the previous question so we can get to the real business of this country--creating good-paying middle class jobs.

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