Jobs for Americans

Floor Speech

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, thank you for the opportunity this evening. I'm joined by my colleague from Ohio, Marcy Kaptur.

I want to thank our colleague from Texas for the explanation he gave about the tragedy at Fort Hood. It was, indeed, an American tragedy, as were other acts of violence against this country, both within the country and around the world.

No doubt that there is radical Islam, no doubt that it is killing, not only Americans, but others around the world. And it is part of our task to find an appropriate way to deal with it. It's also part of our task to appropriately recognize the tremendous sacrifice made by our soldiers, both here, as in the Fort Hood incident, and certainly in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Today marks a very, very special day in American history. It is the end of one of the great American tragedies, and that is the war in Iraq. No matter how we may think of this today, I think we can be very confident that this war of choice was, indeed, a very bad choice. More than 4,000 Americans have been killed in this war, and perhaps several times that number injured.

Physical injuries, we often see them just off the floor as these men and women return from their medical treatment at the Bethesda hospital, and we mourn their physical loss.

The mental problems that our veterans have incurred after multiple deployments in Iraq will go on for years, as will the physical injuries. Post-traumatic stress syndrome is a major,

The rest of the time we have tonight I'd like to talk about jobs for Americans. As much as we may want to think about the wars, and today we did, we passed the Defense Authorization Act, we have to also think about

Americans here at home that need a job. We've been working for some time on a program that we call ``Make It in America,'' a rebuilding of the strength of the American manufacturing industry.

Over the last 20 years, we have seen a rapid decline in the manufacturing base of America because that's where the middle class found its place. That's where the middle class found their opportunity to use the skills, whatever training they may have, whatever education they may have, and get a good, solid job that would support a family. Twenty million Americans were employed in manufacturing 20 years ago. Today, it is just over 11 million, almost a 50 percent decline.

We can't let this continue. We cannot allow the outsourcing of American jobs. We have to bring those jobs back home, and there are many ways that we can do that. And our ``Make It in America'' agenda by the Democratic Party here in Congress is taking root. And tonight we're going to talk about many parts of that.

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