American Jobs Act

Floor Speech

Mr. TONKO. Absolutely.

Representative Garamendi, thank you. Thank you for leading us again in another very thoughtful hour of discussion about the importance of deciphering the facts out there that will springboard the comeback--the economic recovery--of this Nation, and it must be done with the deepest and most profound sense of academics. The American public is counting on Congress working with the President to make jobs more abundant in our society.

You talked about skills and the development of skills. Recently, during our district work period, I traveled to Schoharie County in my district and saw the benefits of the investment of automation in manufacturing. I was reminded by Wynn Kintz of Kintz Plastics that it's important for us to develop the skills that are required today in manufacturing. He's involved with a CAT center--a center for advanced technology--in the Capital Region. He works with RPI and other institutions. He works with the private sector community in that compact that really puts together the vision and the need, the compact that expresses the need for manufacturing.

Now, there are those who would suggest that manufacturing is dead, that we've seen our heyday, that it's over, that it's history. Well, when you talk to America's manufacturers, they will tell you that they need to develop the human infrastructure, that they need today's skills to meet today's competition. They will tell you about doing it smarter so as to be that sharpest competitor on the global scene, and they will talk about innovation.

Just how does innovation happen?

It's taking ideas and moving them along, investing in R&D, building a prototype, developing that impact in manufacturing, and making certain that we are at the cutting edge, that we're investing with America's brainpower--its know-how--that we're pulling together the intellectual capacity and making it work; but when we introduce innovation, we need people with the skill set to run these automated mechanisms in the manufacturing line.

So it is absolutely essential, it's so vitally important to develop the skill set, the know-how in order to put people to work and make us competitive. It's happening as we speak.

Mr. Kintz advised me that across this country, from my end of the country to your end, Representative Garamendi, we need skilled labor of the newest kind.

I can tell you, there are many people who have been displaced from the workforce through no fault of their own. Their job may have been shipped offshore. They have a high work ethic, they have tremendous skill, but now it needs to be honed into present-day application, training, retraining, enabling us to advance innovation, advance manufacturing. These are important aspects to the work that needs to be done.

In the Make It In America efforts where we enable people to dream the American Dream, where we cultivate that climate where you can tether to the American Dream, we can introduce the source of policies that it takes to advance Make It In America.

The President has done that with his American Jobs Act. We, as Democrats in the House of Representatives, have made it our mantra over and over again stating ``make it in America,'' and that takes on tremendous meaning. It takes on a variation of meanings. You can make it in America, produce it in America. You can make it in America. You can survive and grow economically in America.

There's all sorts of making it in America themes that are interpreted through that statement. And it does incorporate sound trade policy. It incorporates an investment through incentives that provide the tax initiatives that will enable people to be strong. It takes that energy core ingredient, gives us the opportunities to be innovative in the energy costs, which could shave a tremendous amount of price off the final product: labor, investing in the human infrastructure, education from pre-K, from pre-K all the way to advanced degrees.

We need to invest in education, higher education and research. Without cultivating ideas, without inspiring that sort of genius that comes up with very clever concepts, we are nowhere as a society.

Finally, the infrastructure, putting together the sorts of efforts that will enable us here at home to ship our products, to have the infrastructure not only of the ordinary, traditional type, but to invest in broadband so that communications could be state-of-the-art, so that we invest in a grid system that enables us to reach through the arteries and veins of the network, the transmission and distribution networking, making certain it's state-of-the-art.

We saw what happened, did we not, in August of 2003 when a failure in Ohio put out the lights on Broadway in New York City and impacted my district in upstate New York for weeks upon weeks.

These are the factors, these are the motivating disciplines within our efforts to enable us to boldly say that's a Make It In America initiative. We're going to make it happen. We're working really hard. We're proud of the efforts made by the White House. It's a plan. It's a vision, laser sharp in its focus, on putting people back to work, restoring the dignity of work.

We've talked about it, gathering around the table, the dinner table at home. It's so very valuable when we can talk about having people bring home that paycheck. People have been denied that opportunity in far too many homes--14 million Americans, unemployed. They ought not wait 14 months for Congress to work with this President to get something done.

I'm just happy to join you on the floor of the House of Representatives and thank you for the leadership that you exert on this issue.

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