National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012
Floor Speech
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Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Chairman, the amendment before the House now is a relatively simple one. We have, over the last 10 years, lost 42,000 factories in this country. We have lost 5 million jobs in manufacturing. And we've had a long discussion here in this Congress over the past 3 years as to what we can do to stimulate that engine of middle class job growth and security.
This amendment seeks to increase our defense industrial capacity without spending any additional money. What the amendment before us simply allows is for the Federal Government to be able to consider at their leisure the amount of jobs being created here in the United States by a particular bid for U.S. defense work.
Frankly, most of my constituents think this already happens. Most of my constituents think that there is an ability for the Federal Government today to factor in, when awarding a particular bid, which bid is going to create more jobs here in the United States versus overseas. This amendment is purely permissive. Frankly, if it were up to me, I would make it mandatory. But this amendment, which in bill form came out of the Government Oversight Committee last Congress unanimously, allows an individual contractor in their bid submission to state how many American jobs they are going to create, and then simply allows the contracting agency to factor that into their bid award, and then requires a report back to Congress as to how often that information, that job impact statement was used.
This seems like common sense to me. The reason to make sure that our taxpayer dollars are spent through the Defense Department on U.S. jobs is certainly economic in nature. At 9 percent unemployment, we should be better stewards of U.S. taxpayer dollars, on making sure that to the extent possible they are spent on U.S. jobs.
But it is also a very important strategic defense policy for this Nation. As our supply chain for DOD gets internationalized on a daily and weekly basis, we're putting this country at jeopardy. In my own district, I have one of the last--in fact, the last American company that makes copper-nickel tubing for the sub-fleet. Because there is one foreign manufacturer that is on the verge of putting them out of business, we are about to lose our only domestic capability for a critical component of that sub-fleet. It makes sense to give them some capacity to at least make the case to the U.S. contracting agencies that this work should stay here.
I think this is an important amendment for job creation but, frankly, just as important for U.S. strategic purposes.
I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I will make three quick points in response.
First, the amendment does not require that contractor to be debarred. It just simply allows for the possibility of debarment if they have significantly undersold or oversold, frankly, the amount of jobs that are going to be created. It is just an ability, frankly, that would exist under current law as to permissive debarment.
Second, I think my constituents are reflective of most people's constituents here. I think they expect that when they send their taxpayer dollars to Washington that there will be a preference for U.S. jobs. Most people I talk to are surprised that it's not a factor.
And third, we have to look at the holistic cost about sourcing to the Federal Government. It may be so that a particular part for a jet engine is 10 percent cheaper to buy it from a Chinese shop than an American shop. But when that American shop goes out of business, it costs the U.S. Government more money, not less, because we then have to pay unemployment compensation. We lose all of the tax revenue. We likely have to pay other social safety net costs.
So we have to start being smart about how we use taxpayer dollars and recognize that when we buy something overseas, the contract price may be 10 percent less, but the overall cost to the U.S. Government is much more.
With that, I reserve the balance of my time.
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