Make it in America: Manufacturing Matters

Floor Speech

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Mr. TONKO. Sure. Absolutely.

Representative Garamendi, thank you for bringing us together for an hour of thoughtful discussion, dialogue that needs to be exchanged here on the House floor so as to promote what I believe is a very progressive agenda.

And in my heart, I believe that the President has promoted a budget here that allows us to move forward in a progressive style to be able to talk about sustainable outcomes, to be able to talk about meaningful employment, cutting-edge ideas that will now take us, as a sophisticated society, embracing our intellectual capacity, to move forward with the soundness of job creation in the realm of high tech.

Now, we have been talking on the floor, a number of us for several weeks now, months perhaps, about the vision of reigniting the American Dream, reigniting that American Dream through the underpinnings of small business as the pulse of American enterprise and, certainly, entrepreneurs who are those dreamers and movers and shakers and builders that provide the soulfulness of the vision of how we can move ideas forward that translates into jobs and translates into product development.

Then finally, a thriving middle class, making certain that in any democracy the measurement of a resounding future comes through the measurement of how well that democracy's middle class is performing. And so we know that, through reforms out there, we can go forward with this budget and address small business, entrepreneur development, and thriving middle class dynamics in a way that will build the sustainable outcome.

We cannot, in my opinion, I totally believe that we cannot cut our way to prosperity, cut our way to opportunity, cut our way to an economic recovery. We do it through investment, investment of the soundest order.

Now, to your point, I had served, before entering Congress, as president and CEO of NYSERDA, the New York State Energy and Research Development Authority. And it was there that I got to see programs that we've devised and funded through the State legislature, where I served for nearly 25 years, my last 15 of which were as energy chair. It was quite an eye-opener to see the program development that was providing job opportunities of a new variety, of a cutting-edge opportunity.

And there, not all the research scenarios were, perhaps, a success story; but without that investment, without government joining forces with academia and the private sector, we do not strike that sort of visionary outcome, and what you saw were tremendous investments made that enabled us to pave the way for investments in the Internet, or GPS, or working through the DARPA vision of how we strengthened our military, and then sharing a lot of that information and that intellectual property with the growth of jobs here in this country.

That is the sort of opportunity that is envisioned here by the President in his budget presentation to Congress. And it's that sort of investment that believes in the American worker, believes in a thriving middle class, believes in the strengthening that small business brings to any community, and believes in entrepreneurs, that ``rags to riches'' scenario that has been, you know, very much a part of our American story. The American history is replete with success stories, ``rags to riches'' scenarios where America was seen as the promised land.

Well, we have not abandoned manufacturing. We have endorsed this idea of investing in manufacturing, investing in research; and I am really pleased to see that we're moving forward with soundness, with this budget presentation in a way that translates into jobs, no other higher priority, and we do it by reigniting the American Dream.

So, Representative Garamendi, seeing those success stories through the lens of NYSERDA, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, where we were able to speak to water efficiencies, where you're saving

mountains of electrons, we got to see it in electric vehicles that were being developed, we got to see it in energy retrofits for business.

These are the sorts of ideas that a sophisticated society embraces. We don't abandon these goals. We get into it full steam and go forward.

And by the way, it's because we are competing with other nations in what is a global race on clean energy and innovation. If we don't take that in, if we don't acknowledge that we're in the midst of that race, we will watch nations pass us by, and we will let down generations of American workers, and that would be unforgivable.

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