Make it in America: Manufacturing Matters
Floor Speech
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I want to join with my colleagues this evening to take up an extremely important subject. This is about the heart and soul and the opportunity of the middle class of America. This is about, once again, rebuilding the great American manufacturing machine. Through the last century, America came to prominence for many reasons. But one of the most important was that we knew how to make things. This was the manufacturing heart of the world.
Just 20 years ago, nearly 20 million American workers were employed in manufacturing, and that gave rise to the great middle class and the stability of this Nation, and the opportunity for an individual to get an education, go into the manufacturing sector as an engineer or as a line worker and earn enough money to buy a home, take care of their family, and pay for their education--lead and live that good middle class life.
But that was yesterday. Today, we have about 11 million people in manufacturing. We've seen the decline of manufacturing in the United States keeping pace with the decline of the middle class.
It doesn't have to be that way. Tonight, my colleagues and I are going to talk about policies that we can put in place here in Congress--policies that we must put in place--to rebuild the American manufacturing machine. Joining me is Mr. Blumenauer of Oregon, Ms. Jan Schakowsky from Illinois, and a couple other of my colleagues who are coming in a little later.
What this is all about is government policy. We already, on the Democratic side, have taken steps to begin the process of reversing this very awesome and dangerous trend. For example, a year ago December, we introduced and passed a piece of legislation that took away from American corporations over $12 billion of tax breaks that they received for off-shoring jobs. I know it's hard to believe, but they were actually getting a tax break for every job that they off-shored. Those days are significantly reduced. That's just but one example of what we have been working on.
I'd like now to just point out to you this logo. Those of us in the Democratic Party here in the caucus keep this on our desk, and we've got it on our coffee cups, to remind us that it is our mission in the
Democratic Caucus to push for legislation to create American manufacturing jobs. And we're going to talk about some of these tonight.
Mr. Blumenauer from Oregon, I know that you're very interested in an important piece of this. I see you've got a bicycle on your lapel. Perhaps that has to do with transportation. And I will note that we do have a major transportation bill coming up here in the House later this week, or later, on the new transportation program for the next 6 years. I know you have some concerns about this, so please share those with us.
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