Make It in America
Floor Speech
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Cicilline, it does not surprise me at all that you have a passion for this issue. You come from a part of the United States that really started the industrial revolution, the Northeast, and your State in particular, the industrial revolution started there.
And over the years it gave great strength to this Nation, and it was the manufacturing that provided the economic underpinnings for the growth of the American economy. Unfortunately, your part of the State, perhaps for a variety of reasons, some of them having to do with national policies, began to lose its industrial base.
But with your representation and your passion for this issue, I have absolutely no doubt that once again the Northeast will find the resiliency and the right national policies to rebuild the manufacturing base there and across the rest of the Nation.
We are already beginning to see it as a result of the stimulus program, and some of the specific laws that were built into that program are now rebuilding the manufacturing base in the Midwest.
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Specifically, a requirement that for the high-speed rail systems and the rebuilding of the American intercity rail programs, those goods, trains, rails, electronic systems, control systems, have to be built in America. And guess what? International companies are establishing, reestablishing, and building manufacturing facilities in America to take advantage of that money that was in the stimulus bill. Simple, little things, not an increase, but rather using our Federal money wisely. We can do it. We must do it. We will make it in America once again, and it will be the great American manufacturing sector. And when we do this, America will make it.
There has been a lot of discussion here on the floor today about deficits. What are we going to do about the deficits? Are we going to raise the debt limit? Of course we're going to raise the debt limit. We have to. America stands behind its debts. We will pay. It will engender a debate. Fine. Let's make this part of the debate. Let's make this part of the debate.
In dealing with America's deficit, are we willing to put in place the policies that will rebuild the American manufacturing sector? And I know it is the Democratic agenda to do just that, that we will rebuild the American manufacturing sector. And in doing so, we will rebuild the American economy and provide one of the critical bricks in solving the deficit problem. Without a growing economy, without a strong middle class, the deficit will never be solved. So we ought to do it.
How can we do it? Well, how about our legislative agenda? Why don't you start us off on a couple of the bills and see where it takes us?
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Mr. GARAMENDI. If you would yield, the infrastructure bank is a great idea, and it is one which allows us to build immediately. And over time, as those projects pay off, they repay the loans. It is a very, very wise investment to create an infrastructure bank. Other countries have it. And in the United States, there are certain localities and States that also have it.
Another piece of legislation dealing with infrastructure actually is a bill that I put together that says, we spend a lot of money. It's part of the excise tax money that goes out to build highways, to pay for buses, trains, light rails and the like. And my bill is pretty simple. It's our tax money. Use that tax money to buy American-made equipment. Why would we send our tax money off to China to buy a Chinese bus? Hey, we make great buses. We make a great bus in the Bay Area. The GILLIG Corporation makes a bus that is a superb bus. And we need to spend our taxpayer money buying American-made buses, trains, light rails and the like.
We're going to spend billions. Is the money going to be spent in America or is the money going to be spent overseas? My legislation says buy American-made equipment. Pretty simple. After all, it's our tax money. One of several bills--the infrastructure bank and this particular bill--in building the American infrastructure.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. It's always good to talk about your legislation. This is a great way to get things started. This is a great way to do it. It came from a fellow from the East Coast, the great State of Rhode Island, and it basically is a block grant program to jump-start the infrastructure programs all across the Nation.
The thing that's really good about this is it's a competitive block grant. You're just not going to go out with earmarks because somebody has seniority, but it's going to be based on the quality of the program, the jobs that are brought, the necessity of moving people.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. I only want to take a second here. I notice one of our colleagues from Texas has joined us. She is a strong advocate of returning American manufacturing.
I want to thank our colleague from the great State of Hawaii for bring to our attention the critical importance of transportation on the sea and in the American flag. Just for a moment, she caused in my mind a memory to return about an article that I read about where the ship is flagged. That is where it is licensed. I recall that I think it is from Florida, the Carnival Cruise lines, a billion-dollar operation with the ships actually flagged, I believe, in Panama. Interestingly, the tax that they pay to the U.S. Government, that is their corporate income tax--zero, nada, nothing--largely because they are able to avoid the American laws by flagging their ship offshore.
We need these ships flagged in America for many reasons, and certainly the issue that she raised about national defense. Corporate tax policy, the R&D tax credit, another one of the bills that the Democratic Caucus has put forward to permanently put in place the research and development tax credits so that we can expand the genesis, the beginning of tomorrow's manufacturing, which actually comes through the research. I can go on and on about that.
Representing California, we think research is really, really important. That is why we supported, without any Republican support, the STEM program, science and technology, which is research and also the education that goes with.
One of the things that I found so disturbing was the effort by our Republican colleagues to back off the research, to reduce the research in America, when in fact that is where the future comes from.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. I was just listening to you discuss the situation with General Motors and Chrysler. That was a very courageous move that the Democratic Congress, together with President Obama, made when they made a decision to save the American automobile industry.
Many people, particularly the Republicans here in this House, said don't do it, government shouldn't interfere with business, let the good go and the bad die. Well, this was several hundred thousand small businesses across the Nation that are supply chains that would have died. But the decision was made--a very courageous decision by the President--to support the foundation of one of the great industries in this world and one of the great industries in America. And so General Motors and Chrysler did receive a bailout. And here we are today with two companies back at it, making cars, making it in America, and by golly, we're going to ``Import from Detroit.'' You know, that was one of the greatest advertisements there ever was. But that's what this is all about, that's what this Make It in America agenda really is.
There is another piece of this agenda that we really must pay attention to, and that is the future energy sources of America are going to be renewables, together with gas and nuclear, but these new industries need support in their early days. And this is a tax policy. There has been in place for about 7 or 8 years now a very robust tax policy to support the new renewable industries. The production tax credit. When you put a solar panel up on your roof and you draw down the energy, there is a tax credit available to homeowners. Those are very, very good. We need one more little twist to it. I saw this in my own district with those wind turbines down there. They were being made offshore, and yet our tax money was--appropriately--supporting the energy, but if you add to it one additional fact, and that is the tax policy that supports a wind turbine made in America so that our tax money uses American-made equipment.
Another piece of legislation I have simply says, in the green technologies, wonderful, we need to do it, but let's make sure that those solar panels, those wind turbines are made in America.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. A pretty basic thought for me is that it's our tax money; spend it on American-made equipment.
The other piece of this is that these tax policies, these subsidies really work. And I want to give you an example. About a century ago, nearly a century ago America decided it needed a new energy source called oil. Over the years, subsidies were put in place to encourage investment in the oil industry and it worked, it worked phenomenally, created the best, most profitable industry in America, the petroleum industry; $970 billion--just slightly short of $1 trillion--of profit after taxes for the petroleum industry. And after a century of being subsidized by taxpayers, it's time for those to end. Let that industry help us with the deficit.
End the subsidy for Big Oil. Return the money to the American Treasury. Bring down our deficit. There's a lot of money here. Depending on how you count it, it's somewhere between $2 billion, $3 billion, or $12 billion a year in subsidies for this industry. Let's end that. But unfortunately, we're involved in a debate here in Congress over whether we keep the tax subsidy for Big Oil and shift the burden of solving the deficit to seniors, an incredible policy put forth by our Republican colleagues that would force seniors to pay more for their medical insurance and literally terminate, end Medicare for everyone that's not yet 55 years of age. Terminate Medicare, shift the tax burden to them, and keep the tax subsidy for Big Oil. Hello? What's that all about? Big Oil doesn't need any more help. The deficit needs the help. Don't give the tax breaks to Big Oil. And for heaven sakes, don't terminate Medicare and force today's seniors and tomorrow's seniors to add the burden while keeping the benefit to Big Oil.
This is about choices here. This is about choices. How do we use our tax money? For the future energy industries? Do we use our tax money to benefit Big Oil and force seniors and nursing homes to pay more? That's not out there 10 years from now, that's right now, because the Republican budget reduces Medicaid. The biggest single part of Medicare is to subsidize seniors and nursing homes. So seniors and nursing homes, their families would pay more while Big Oil is protected.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. We heard a debate here earlier, and while we're on Make It in America, this kind of moves us a little bit away, but they were saying earlier that in the health care reform, the Affordable Care Act, money was taken out of Medicare. Not true. Money was taken out of the pockets of the insurance industry who were given, back in the Bush era, an additional subsidy. It terminated a subsidy of $500 million that the insurance companies had to participate in Medicare. Why in the world we would subsidize the health insurance companies who this year are showing record profits, I don't know, but the Republicans perhaps want to keep that subsidy there for the health insurance companies just as they want to keep a subsidy there for Big Oil, rather than taking care of our seniors, shifting the subsidies to tomorrow's energy sources.
These are policy choices. And the policy choice of the Democratic Party is to protect seniors, to make sure that Medicare is there today, tomorrow, and forevermore. Let me be very clear about this. If you want to have a fight on this floor, then you fight with us over Medicare. We will not tolerate the termination of Medicare, period. And we don't want to shift costs to seniors. We want to make sure that those companies that are profitable, the oil industry, pays its fair share and terminate the subsidies to them.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. If anyone understands the history and the importance of manufacturing, it's the gentleman from Rhode Island. The Black River down through Rhode Island was the very first place that America started its manufacturing base, using water as a source.
And today, as we look to the future of American manufacturing, we do have to deal with the energy issues. And we probably should take a full night here and just talk about how the American economy can benefit from a new energy strategy.
Tax policies we've discussed here a little bit.
One of the things we didn't discuss here on tax policy was we put forth a bill last year that took away $12 billion of subsidies that American corporations had when they shipped jobs offshore. I have no idea how such an incredibly stupid policy got into the Tax Code, but it did. It's gone. It was a Democrat agenda to eliminate those tax subsidies that shipped jobs offshore. Unfortunately, not one Republican joined us in eliminating that crazy tax subsidy. That money is now back to help deal with the deficit.
Labor policies, education--another full night can be taken on just education. We talked a little bit about science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, the STEM programs. But it's much, much more. It's the reeducation of our workforce. Intellectual property, research, how you protect that, critically important. We did have a good discussion about infrastructure.
This is our agenda. This is the American agenda. This is the agenda about the future. And it is so much an important part of dealing with the deficit. There is not an economist out there that tells us we can actually deal with the deficit unless we get people back to work. And the people that we want to get back to work is American middle class. The American middle class needs to be rebuilt along with our manufacturing base, and we can do it with the set of policies that we're putting forth here.
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