American Jobs
Floor Speech
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to present here on the floor the solution to the question that was just raised by my colleague from the Republican side of the aisle.
A month ago, the President laid out a plan that would create millions of jobs here in the United States. It was the American Jobs Act. We are going to talk about this tonight. Before I get into the details of it, last week, in fact 1 week ago, I held a town hall meeting in Fairfield, California.
At that town hall meeting the question of jobs was on everybody's mind. What are you doing about jobs? What is Congress doing about jobs? It just seems as though nothing is happening, and all we're seeing from Congress is talk of the deficit and cuts.
Every time there's a cut, we have another job loss here in our area. Maybe it's a school teacher that's laid off or some highway project that's not going forward. So what's happening with the jobs?
And I then began to explain the American Jobs Act, and we're going to spend some time this evening talking just about that issue, the American Jobs Act.
As proposed by the President, it does address a variety of ways in which American jobs will be created, and not increasing the deficit at all, but rather fully paid for.
I would like to start off this evening by asking my colleague from the great State of New York (Mrs. Maloney) if she would like to express the view from the East Coast, and then I'll move to the West Coast.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. I thank you very much for bringing us the overall view of this. You are quite correct about the small businesses. Let me just put this pie chart up here.
Small business is where 64 percent of all new jobs have been created over the last 15 years. Big businesses actually lost many, many jobs as they have offshored jobs. In fact, it was just last December that the Democratic-controlled House passed a tax bill that terminated tax breaks for big businesses sending jobs offshore. That was about $12 billion of tax breaks that were terminated so that American businesses would not get a tax break to send jobs offshore. I would just like to point out that not one Republican voted to end that tax break that sent those jobs offshore.
But the point here is that small businesses really do create 64 percent of the jobs. Now, in the American Jobs Act, as my colleague from New York said, there are some very, very important provisions that deal directly with small businesses, encouraging them to hire. For example, we've got some 6 million people that are unemployed more than 6 months, so those are the long-term unemployed. If a small business were to hire one of the long-term unemployed, they would receive an immediate $4,000 tax credit. That is off the bottom line of their taxes, providing a very powerful incentive to hire the long-term unemployed.
Now, I think the entire Nation is sick and tired of our wars, but the wars are real. Those wars have created a situation where a very, very high percentage of the veterans that come back are unable to get a job. These may be those veterans that have been off in Afghanistan or Iraq. There's a tax credit again for a veteran returning from the wars, a $5,600 tax credit for hiring an unemployed veteran. Now if that veteran happens to have a service-connected disability, and we've seen the terrible tragedies of those disabilities, arms, legs, and other problems that have befallen the veterans as they serve our country, there's a $9,600 tax credit in the American Jobs Act for those small businesses that hire the veterans. So by hiring new people, small businesses will be able to receive a very, very significant benefit as a result of this American Jobs Act.
If the gen tle lady would like to continue on with some of the reasons why this is important to New York, please, Mrs. Maloney, if you would take care and have at it.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. I can go through each one of those numbers that my colleague from the wonderful State of New York talked about. California, similarly, would receive very, very significant benefits.
However, we need to look at the reality of what is happening here in this Chamber where the Speaker of the House refuses to even allow a vote on the President's proposal. All of the things you talked about that would benefit New York will come to nothing unless the Speaker of the House will allow these proposals to come to a vote.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Over on the Senate side, the leader of the Senate, Mr. Reid, brought the issue to the Senate floor and was unable to even get a vote on the Senate floor because of the Republican threat of a filibuster and the 60-vote requirement to end that filibuster. And so even though on the Senate side they almost came to a vote, they were stopped short by a filibuster. And the reason, apparently, was that the Republicans did not want to raise a one-half of 1 percent tax on those very small number--the top 1 percent of Americans that are earning more than a million dollars of adjusted gross income a year. And so with that small tax increase, they refused to go along.
So here we are in this House without a vote and on the other side because of the threat of a filibuster, and 280,000 teachers are not going to be hired unless we're able to break through. The only way to break through is for the American public to rise up, the 99ers out there, and say: Enough. Give us our jobs. Give us the opportunity to go back to work.
I yield to my colleague.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you very much for joining us this evening.
Before I turn to my colleague from California, I want to just emphasize the point that the President's
American Jobs program is balanced, fully paid for. It's paid for with a fair tax.
We know that over the last 12 years now the upper income, that top 1 or 2 percent, has enjoyed an enormous tax break that was put in place during the George W. Bush first and third year. They've had it good. They've really seen their share of income in America grow extraordinarily fast while the great middle class of America has had basically a flat situation. They've seen no improvement in their income. And then in the last couple of years, they've seen a very precipitous decline.
The President has also proposed--and I know I agree very strongly with this--end the tax breaks for the oil companies. Why does the oil industry need another $5 billion or $6 billion a year of tax breaks when in fact over the last decade they've earned more than a trillion dollars in profit?
Our colleague from California is ready to go. This is Maxine Waters, representing Los Angeles, a colleague of mine dating back to our years in the California Legislature, which was just a few years back.
If you would care to share with us your thoughts on how we're going to get Americans back to work.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. You said something that came to my mind--I'm going to do this quickly before I turn to my colleague from--Rhode Island? You mentioned student loans. Now, the President has been out in California, in Los Angeles and in San Francisco, near my district, and he's been saying something that really caught my attention, and that is: we can't wait. Speaking for the American people, we can't wait for Congress to act. We can't wait.
And he did something that is really, really close to home. My daughter and son-in-law just finished medical school. They have huge loans that they took out to go through medical school. But across this Nation, about $1 trillion of loans have been taken out by young men and women--and older--who have gone back to school to improve themselves, to get an education, to learn a skill, $1 trillion out there. And many of those loans are at a very high interest rate, and they may be from different sectors.
And the President says, we can't wait to help these people. These young men and women and others who have these loans, they need help today. And so he put together a new program based upon a law that we passed last year--the Democrats passed last year--that said we're going to do some consolidation. So he's taken that step. He's going to allow for the consolidation of these loans into one loan package and allow the interest rate to be reduced, on the average, at least a half percent interest rate and stretched out--and a small percentage of the income. And many of these young men and women--I'm just going to say men and women, they're not all young--aren't able to get a job other than just a minimum wage, and so they can't pay. So he's giving them a break.
And that's what we want our President to do. We want our President to go out there and say we can't wait for Congress--even though I'm ready to go and I know my colleagues are--and giving them a break. This is really important that he has done this.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. I thank the gentleman from Connecticut. My apologies, Rhode Island being not too far away. Thank you very much. And thank you for pointing out that it's very, very difficult in America if you're poor. One out of six Americans now live in poverty and are dependent upon food stamps and other kinds of subsistence in order simply to stay alive.
And we cannot forget that, although we ought to remember that here on this floor very recently there was an effort to reduce the food stamps. So I don't quite understand why anybody would want to do that, given the poverty rate.
You also spoke to the issue of fairness in taxes. Eighty-four percent of all of the wealth in this Nation is now controlled by the top 20 percent, and the bottom have become more and more poor.
Now, one of the States that is struggling to get back into the American Dream is the State of Ohio, and there's a lot of conflict going on there about labor and politics and the like.
But I know, Mr. Ryan, that you're focused solely on trying to get people back to work in your community. If you would please join us. If I recall correctly, you're from the eastern part of Ohio.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. And we can't wait. We cannot wait.
I'm just going to toss out two more statistics here. The top 1 percent of Americans in 1974 had about 9 percent of income of all sorts--capital gains, interest, dividends, as well as earned income, about 9 percent. In 2007--that was 4 years ago--they had 23 1/2 percent. So you've seen the income of the very few at the top grow extraordinarily from 9 to 23. It's probably up to 25 or 27 percent this year. The top one-tenth of 1 percent--this is 15,000 families in America--have raked in more than $1 trillion of income in 2009; just 15,000 families, $1 trillion of income.
Yet, when the Senate took up the bill to provide about 2 million jobs for America to be paid for by these men, women, and families that have had this extraordinary growth in their income, just a small percentage of a surcharge, 5 percent surcharge on that additional income, the Republicans in the Senate refused to pass that bill. So 280,000 teachers are not going to get a job, 100,000 police and firemen will not be back on our streets protecting us, and $50 billion of construction programs will not be built, 35,000 schools will not be renovated, and all across this Nation the pain of the middle class will continue.
It's time for us to have a better deal for America. The American Jobs Act can do that. And I think it can help Ohio in the central part.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Let me tell you how that could be done. It's in the President's American Jobs Act.
He has suggested that we establish an infrastructure bank. Every one of the projects that you just described is a cash flow project. There is a fee for sewage and there is a fee for water. There are fees that come traditionally with each of these services. If we had an infrastructure bank--and the President has suggested we put $10 billion into it--we know that we could get the various public pension funds around to invest in it and that we could probably have $100 billion within several months that could be invested in each one of the projects that you talked about, and those projects over time are able to repay. Do keep in mind that the Federal Government is now able to borrow that money at about 2 percent for 10 years. So this is an investment opportunity to build for the future.
We've got about 5 minutes. So, Ms. Kaptur, if you'd like to take it, then we're going to wrap this thing up.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Indeed, we can.
This piece of legislation, H.R. 613, is one that I've introduced. It simply says that this money that we want to invest in our sanitation systems--high-speed rail and energy systems, whether those are the wind turbines or similar systems--is American taxpayer money. This bill says, if you're going to use American taxpayer money, then you're going to spend that money on American-made equipment. Make it in America. It's our money. Use it here in America.
The Chinese currency bill ought to be passed. I know that our Republican colleagues are going to be following me here in a few minutes, and they're probably going to say the solution is to end regulation. They had a bill on the floor that would end the regulation that would prevent the despoiling of our air with such things as mercury and arsenic and dioxins and other kinds of poisons. We can't build America by ending the regulations that protect America: the food safety regulations, the environmental safety regulations, the clean water regulations. That's not how we're going to build America. That's how we'll destroy this country.
We will build America through the kinds of programs that the President has proposed with the American Jobs Act, which is fully paid for with a fair tax system, one in which those at the top end of this economy, who have prospered so well over the last 15 years, will now pay just a little bit more so that Americans can go back to work and so that those unnecessary tax breaks that have been given to the oil industry for a century--that 5, 6, $7 billion a year that they've received on top of their trillion dollars of profit over the last decades--will go back into America's Treasury so that we can build America once again. We will make it in America.
The President is quite right: we can't wait. Americans can't wait. It's time for Americans to go back to work. The American Jobs Act will put Americans back to work without increasing the deficit and, in fact, by creating tax revenues for the American Treasury.
With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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