Jobs for Americans
Floor Speech
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, it's good to be back, and I hope all of my colleagues had as enjoyable a Thanksgiving as I did with my family and with our constituents back in our districts.
We have much to be thankful for. After all, this is America, and this has always been the place of dreams. This is America. It's always been the place where people have found opportunity; where, whatever they wanted to do, they could achieve it; and it's still that America today.
But it's up to us, in the third year of this recession, to restore the American Dream, and there are ways that we can do it. And tonight, together with my colleagues who will soon be joining me, we will talk about various ways in which the Democrats in this House will and have made numerous proposals to restore the American Dream.
I was out in the district for five of the days that we were gone, talking to people. In fact, one fellow who has a book binding company--a man who's 85 years old and is about to retire and turn that company over to his employees--was talking about the enormous strength of this Nation, and he was sharing the story of himself and his employees and the way in which they came here. And many struggled from very bad situations in other countries, but they came here with optimism. They came here with a true belief that in America you can make it, that if you follow the rules, if you work hard, you can make it. You can have a good life. You can take care of your family.
Unfortunately, for all too many Americans, that's not the case today. So restoring the American Dream is our task, and we can do it.
The President, more than 2 months ago, proposed the American Jobs Act, a proposal that would put 2 to 3 million Americans back to work immediately. And tonight, on the other side of this Nation's Capitol, the U.S. Senate is debating a portion of that American Jobs Act, a portion of it that is a very, very significant tax cut for men and women that are working. Their Social Security payments would be reduced by 50 percent. No longer would they pay 6.2 percent of their wages into the Social Security fund. They would pay 3.1 percent--and for their employers, the same reduction--providing a very powerful incentive for individuals to have money in their pockets, about $1,500 a year, money in their pockets so that they could participate in buying gifts for their children. As we look to Christmas, we know there are many, many Americans that are not going to be able to do that.
Mr. Speaker, it's time for us in this House to follow the lead of the President and to give every American worker, 98 percent of Americans, a very significant tax reduction, $1,500, by reducing that Social Security tax. And for their employers, the same. If their employers are up to $50 million of payroll, they can reduce, by 50 percent, their Social Security tax so that that employer has more money to hire people. That debate is going on in the U.S. Senate today. Unfortunately, here in this House, we've not been able to even take up that issue. We should, because it's part of what we must do to put Americans back to work, to give them a break.
Joining me in this discussion tonight as we talk about restoring the American Dream and about the things that we can do to make that happen is my colleague from the great State of New York (Mr. Tonko). We have often been here. We call ourselves the East-West Team.
It is good to see you back. I hope you had as good a Thanksgiving as I did, and I'm sure you worked as hard in your district as I did during those days. Please share with us, and welcome back.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you so much.
The experiences that we have as we return to our districts and talk to our constituents and share with our families, these are the stories of life. These are the stories of real Americans that are out there. Not that we're not real. We've got a very special task as their Representatives to represent them here, and they do want jobs. They want to go back to work. We know that many of them are unable to find jobs.
In American Jobs Act, in addition to the tax issues I just talked about--and I must say we actually got something done just before the Thanksgiving recess--there was another provision, and that was for the veterans. This was part of the President's proposal that actually did become law. What he wanted to do--and we agreed with him--was to give veterans, those men and women that are out there fighting for this country in Iraq and in Afghanistan and even way back into the Vietnam War and the first Gulf War, a chance for a job. There's a very special tax provision that's totally paid for, not borrowed, that we actually voted out of here so that employers got a tax credit, which is a reduction in their taxes, for every veteran they hired--$5,600 for an unemployed veteran or $9,600 for a disabled veteran. I'm very, very pleased that we were able to do that for the veterans.
That's one very important slice of the American public that is facing unemployment; but there are many, many more. And if I can just pick up for a second on a couple of words you said; you talked about investment. In the American Jobs Act, there is a very, very important investment, and you mentioned it. It's the education investment. The President proposed that we spend about $30 billion to keep teachers in the classroom now so that our kids would be able to continue to learn. That's the future; and if they miss a year of learning, they're going to be behind the rest of their lives. And so he proposed that. It's still out there. It's open, and it hasn't had a chance to come forward yet. We'll see, maybe we can get that one done. That's a critical investment in our children. What's more important than our children.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Tonko, you were talking about the need for investment; and, indeed, in the area of education and research, critical functions, I do want to stay with that subject for a while.
Our colleague from the great State of Ohio, Ms. Betty Sutton, has joined us. Thank you very much for being with us this evening. I know you, too, had a family and a constituency to work with this last week, so please share with us your thoughts.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Well, indeed, you are carrying many pieces of legislation. I like your one--what was it, don't flush America down the drain--having to do with rebuilding our sanitation systems here in the United States.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. I appreciate your correction of my characterization of the bill. Nonetheless, it's a great piece of legislation; and it's part of the Make It In America agenda, using our tax money, in this case to build the sanitation systems, the water systems, and requiring that that money be used to buy American-made equipment.
I have a bill that would do the same thing for solar and wind programs--wind turbines and solar, as well as for trains, buses and the like. It's our tax money; use it to buy American-made equipment. That's part of the Democratic agenda. And it works. I can give some examples a little later. I do want to thank you because there is nobody working harder in this entire Capitol building--Democrat, Republican, or the Senate--than you are in rebuilding the
manufacturing center of America, the great State of Ohio.
Now, Texas is a little far from Ohio, but you've got a few things going for you in Texas. Let me introduce Sheila Jackson Lee. Thank you for joining us once again.
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Mr. Garamendi, let me thank you for your long-standing history of putting things back together. I'm not going to call you the Humpty-Dumpty man, but recognizing that we can put America back together and make it in America. Let me share some anecdotal uniqueness to this whole question of make it in America. I hope everybody had a wonderful Thanksgiving. It's a special holiday where we find time to say thanks. I heard that the gentleman from New York might have been giving away a ham, made in America. And I know the people who received the ham were grateful for it.
I had the opportunity to work with those, we had over 800 turkeys--made in America--to be able to give to seniors and families. The joy was, of course, that it was in the giving. But more importantly, it was a product that we made from start to finish. Yes, it's food. As we went down the aisles of many grocery stores, since the highlight of that season is eating, people were buying goods in most instances that were made in America. And they bought them.
And then, of course, that famous Friday that we can now tout to be the best Friday over a number of years, certainly 2010; $52 billion was spent by Americans in many instances on the electronic goods that were made in America. Steve Jobs is no longer with us, but he created that infrastructure of technology and software and the sophistication of pretty things that many Americans went to buy, some $7 billion over 2010. And the studies indicated that--and that's all right to my good friends out there--that Americans were buying first for themselves those electronic items that they wanted to have for this holiday season.
As I begin to look at legislation to talk about jobs, I'm going to try to make the energy industry a little bit more friendly. And we'll be introducing legislation that talks about creating jobs in that industry, but working in the environmental aspect of it--fixing the coastline, for example.
As you well know, we have suffered through Hurricanes Rita, Katrina, Ike and the deterioration of the coastline, so if somebody wants to stop us from going down the drain, I want to stop us from a disappearing coastline. I want you to have the beautiful beaches, whether it is in Alabama and Louisiana and Texas, Florida. Those coastlines have been deteriorating. We can find work. Individuals can have work in fixing the beautiful coastlines. Even in South Carolina, I know that the gentleman wants the coastline to be fixed. So there is not a lack of opportunity-to-fix work.
I just heard my good friend from Massachusetts in the Rules Committee indicate that there are bridges in the State of Massachusetts--my good friend, Mr. McGovern--that are older than some States and that they need to be fixed. And that would be a sharing of the wealth to many, many different districts and States if we were to engage, as the President wanted us to do, to look at how we do the infrastructure.
But making it in America is happening. Right now, in the Carolinas, a young lady is bringing her company back from Sri Lanka, and she is using the textile industries--I don't have its full name, but it begins with ``Mic''--using the textile industry to now make her product.
So I came today to say that I have hope. I'm an optimist, and many of the economists that we've been listening to--Jeffrey Sachs, for example, and Mr. Spence, who I think I heard in the last couple of days, has indicated that we worry too much about the deficit and the debt, not to ignore it but we really should be worrying about investing in America, rebuilding, make it in America, investing in infrastructure, creating jobs. And Americans will do what they did on last Friday, November 25, and they went out and they bought goods, by and large, made in America.
Let's do more of that. Let's have the incentives that they need. And, by the way, let's add the small business component to it. We had the buy from a small business on Saturday. These small businesses are in America. And if you support a small business, you support one or two or three or four employees.
So I am grateful, as I said. I'm going to do this coastline bill. I can see just persons for eons being put to work. I can see moneys going in to reduce the deficit. We'll join that with the drain, if you will, or the infrastructure for our sewage and wastewater. It comes under homeland security, by the way. We have to protect that. The infrastructure of security provides jobs as well.
I want to close on this note, which sound as if it's not tied in, but it is. It really is tied in. We have, in the Thanksgiving backdrop, was the acknowledgment--I'm not going to call it failure--by the supercommittee that they could not complete their task. Let me, on the record--I have said it in public settings--thank the colleagues that accepted the challenge. But I want to say to my colleagues, let us not be nonoptimistic. Let us not be unhappy or disappointed or sad. Frankly, the job of the Congress is to formulate the vision going forward on behalf of the American people.
Let me tell you why I see we have been given an opportunity. Some people only talk about defense. I talk about 46 million Americans that are on SNAP. Here's our chance. We can take the works of a Jeffrey Sachs. We can take the works of Mr. Spence, who talks about infrastructure investment. We can find these long-term cuts of a trillion dollars, leaving out Medicare and Social Security and Medicaid, and we can find them in a way that talks about Bush tax cuts but has a thoughtful way of looking at tax reform, and then we can put our vision forward that includes making it in America.
My friends, we make defense products in America. I don't want to be a war promoter--I want our troops home--but I believe in military preparedness. Those are jobs. We have a year to do it. We can throw off the shackles of partisanship and thoughtfully put forward a legislative initiative which the President will not veto if there is a plan that includes deficit reduction. Don't be afraid of doing it on jobs.
So I'm willing to say we have been given an opportunity, just like my Cougars are being given an opportunity for a championship this coming weekend at the University of Houston, which will, by the way, create a lot of revenue with folks coming in from all over.
But we have been given an opportunity. And I am glad that we're here on the floor to point out that it is not the end, but it is the beginning. I simply ask there
be friends on the other side of the aisle that will join us in revenue, job creation, deficit reduction, revenue, job creation. We can pass these bills. We can join the Senate. We can do the payroll tax relief for a little bit and the unemployment, but we can create jobs.
I thank the gentleman for allowing me to participate with you. I'm excited about the legislation that my colleagues have. I know I have worked with Mr. Tonko for all that he has done in the legislative initiative and, also, you. Thank you so very much.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you very much. You are always on top of the issues and you're always so very, very correct. Sheila Jackson Lee, thank you for the enormous amount of work you have done for your constituents in the city of Houston.
You mentioned the supercommittee. We ought to spend at least a few moments on that. Everybody says it was a failure and they did not achieve the goal that was set out; however, the public needs to know that the legislation that set up the supercommittee actually reduced the deficit of the United States by $2.1 trillion. A $2.1 trillion reduction in the deficit in the legislation that established the supercommittee. One trillion of that is already going into place. The other $1.1 trillion, it was the specific task of the supercommittee to try to find out if there was a better way to make the cuts, or adding revenue. They were unable to put the revenue together, but the cuts remain, and those are going to go forward.
You're quite correct, Ms. Jackson Lee, that we do have the next 13 months, almost 14 months, to figure out a better way. Maybe it's revenue or less cuts. Maybe it's different cuts that are currently across the board in the Defense Department as well as in the discretionary funding. But we have a chance to do that. We have time to do that. It's not all lost. The deficit has been reduced. Now we need to do it in a smarter way, one that actually promotes American jobs, puts people to work, and creates more jobs and manufacturing in America.
Mr. Tonko, you come from a State that really started the great American Industrial Revolution and an area in which it actually began, the Hudson River Valley, so why don't we carry on our conversation here. You were talking about research, or take it wherever you would like to go.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Ms. Jackson Lee, you've talked about the investments; you've talked about the international aspects of our economy. Mr. Tonko, you were so correct when you talk about what happens when those infrastructures are not there.
Now, in the American Jobs Act, which we ought to be working on and passing, there is $50 billion over and above the ongoing money. This is new money, additional money, that would be immediately available to restore the coastal areas of the United States, to rebuild the infrastructure and those areas that have been hard hit by the floods of this year, to improve the 100-year-old-plus bridges in America. Those are all things that we need to move our economy.
Ms. Sutton from Ohio talked earlier about the sanitation and water systems. Each and every one of these should be framed in such a way as to create American jobs, not just the construction jobs but the rest of the story, which is the concrete, the steel, the bolts, the pumps. All of those things that go into the infrastructure can and should be American made if we have a policy.
Now, on the floor here 3 weeks ago, we were talking about this; and our colleague from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky) brought something to the floor that just blew me away. She brought a document that was prepared in 1788 by George Washington, and it was a manufacturing policy for America. He told Hamilton, who was then the Secretary of the Treasury, to go out and to develop eight steps for an American manufacturing policy.
So this is not new in America, folks. We need a manufacturing policy in America. We call it Make It in America. It's a tax policy, an educational policy, an infrastructure policy, and it is an international trade policy where we don't give it away, but we require fair trade--not free trade--fair trade. These are American manufacturing policies of today. Thank you, George Washington, for setting us on the course. We need to continue it.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. If I might interrupt you for just a moment. Every hour we're here we're joined by men and women who are working hard on behalf of the American people. The stenographers taking down our words here deserve a praise of thanksgiving; not that our words are so worthwhile to put into the American Record, but they do it, nonetheless, and I want to thank them for their good work, and for the staff behind us as we go through this hour.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. If I might take up, after interrupting you, some of the things that you were talking about. Down through the years, from the very earliest days of this country, there has been a joining of the government and the private sector to accomplish, really, the building of America. And it's been done in many, many ways.
I was startled and surprised and frankly, very, very happy when Ms. Schakowsky brought that document in from George Washington's administration about the establishment of industrial policy that placed the American government in synchronization with the then-new manufacturing program industries in America.
You talked about the mill towns. They didn't just happen. They happened because there was a government policy working with them, those entrepreneurs, to create these new businesses, these new jobs. And down through the centuries, more than 2 1/2 , almost 2 1/2 now, we have been able to use this synergy, this government working with the American public, the private sector, to create this incredible country we call America and really, to create the American Dream that all of us possess or have participated in.
Today, we're in a discussion, if you will, with the American public about whether to continue that coordination of the public governments--State, local, Federal governments--working to achieve a goal in the private sector. There's a different vision out there that basically says, get out of the way. Get government away and things will go well. Eliminate all regulation, eliminate all of the programs, and let the free market do it.
It's never worked, and the proof of it is found in the first decade of this century. In the first decade of this century, that philosophy of push government aside, deregulate, reduce taxes, and get government out of the way actually created a situation of the Great Recession and no jobs; in fact, 8 million American jobs lost.
We need to go back to the policies that actually created growth in America, the policies of Franklin Roosevelt, carried out by Truman and Eisenhower. Even Ronald Reagan and Lyndon Johnson carried out the very basic policies that, working together, we can build a great country.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Before I turn to my colleague from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) who has just joined us, I want to pull up this chart. If only you had had this next to you while you just made this statement about the change in the nature of America's wealth. This chart has become, I think, rather famous--or infamous, I think, is a better word.
The blue line here is a chart that shows the growth in the wealth, the income of the top 1 percent of Americans. And down here is what the rest of Americans have had over the last 20 years or so. What we've seen is basically a flat-lining for the middle class, and certainly for the poor--no improvement, or very, very little improvement, in their situation. This is the 99 percent here. This is the 1 percent.
This is the anger that you now see on the streets of America, and it's exactly what you were talking about, Mr. Tonko, with a few, 1 percent of the American public, getting an ever increasing share of the American income and wealth, creating a bifurcated society, one with very few that are extremely wealthy, and the rest that are actually growing poorer.
With that, I'd like to turn to a woman from the great Midwest, the State of Ohio that is enduring this exact hollowing out of the American middle class.
Marcy Kaptur, thank you so much for joining us, and thank you for years of work representing your part of what was once the great industrial strength of America. I know that you want to share with us tonight some thoughts that you shared with me earlier this day, as you went home, as you talked to the men and women in Cleveland. Please.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. We have maybe 10 more minutes here.
You talked about the purchasing power of Americans. On January 1, unless we act, American workers will lose about $1,500 of purchasing power. We must renew and continue the reduction in the Social Security tax that American workers are paying and businesses are paying. And by the way, it's totally paid for by those superwealthy--a 3.5 percent increase on their taxes over a million dollars a year. So it's totally paid for. It's part of the American Jobs Act.
I was just talking to the gentleman from New York, and it came about because of what you said about those men and women that have spent their lifetime working here in America. And I want to end on this between the three of us.
We Democrats have made a promise to America. It's not a contract. It is a promise. It's a pledge. And that pledge is to protect Social Security and Medicare, two of the most fundamental American programs, both of which are at risk of being significantly modified or, in the case of Medicare, destroyed by our Republican colleagues.
I want to make it very, very clear and get the comments from my two colleagues here about our commitment to these programs.
Social Security is the bedrock foundation for every American's retirement; and given the way the stock market gyrates because of those financial institutions and the games they play, you can't count on your 401(k).
But here's the promise to America from the Democrats: you will always be able to count on Social Security. If they want to fight about it, then this is the fight we will have and we will win.
On Medicare, millions of seniors are not in poverty today and alive today because they have Medicare insurance, a fundamental American program.
Mr. Tonko.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Tonko, you are absolutely correct. This is where we stand. This is where we fight.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. We have much to be thankful for. We are thankful for those men and women that served here in this House over the years that brought us to where we are--the world's strongest, greatest country with the greatest opportunity. Even with all of the troubles we have today, it's still a country with great opportunity.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. It's a country in which the American Dream lives, and we have the obligation to make sure that it's there for future generations.
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