Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2013

Floor Speech

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Chairman, day after day, or at least week after week, my colleagues and I are here on the floor talking about jobs. It is about jobs and jobs and jobs again. Our agenda, which we call ``Make It in America,'' is an agenda that would rebuild the American manufacturing sector, a sector that has lost about 40 percent of its jobs in the last 20, 25 years from just under 20 million to just over 11 million Americans who are working in manufacturing today.

One of the innovative ways of improving manufacturing has been developed. It's called the Manufacturing Extension Partnership. It's actually modeled after another Federal-State program that's been in existence for more than 100 years. Anyone that's in agriculture would recognize the Agricultural Extension Program. This is the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, a program that has actually added another feature to the old and still very successful Agricultural Extension Program, and that is a public-private partnership. In this program, the Federal Government, through the National Institute of Standards and Technology, runs a program in which funding is provided for local, private, or nonprofit organizations to become extension program managers.

In California, this has been a very, very successful program. Some $447 million in new retained sales have occurred, $128.8 million in new investments, and some 3,769 jobs have been created.

Some examples exist throughout California. In southern California, a manufacturer, a small company that makes high-tech parts for the aircraft industry, has been able to improve their manufacturing techniques and have been able to stay in business, and they now have been very successful in bringing down contracts with the aircraft industry.

In the Bay Area, another program--actually run out of San Ramon, near my district--has been very successful. This program, called MANEX, has been very successful working with companies in the area. Morgan Hill Precision, to be precise, is a company that, again, is a machine shop. That company has used the MEP program, the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, to good success.

Now how do we pay for this? Some $437,000. We take a little bit from some 20 different parts of the Department of Commerce. The result is it's working. We would like to keep it working at its full level, at last year's level. The bill before us actually reduces it by 50 percent. So we're adding $437,000 back by taking small amounts from some 20 different programs.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. For more than 20 years, there's the question of what to do with the San Joaquin River, a river that was essentially dried out and a river in which the indigenous species--salmon and other fish--were simply nonexistent. That fight went on and on and on. And after 20 years of fighting and litigation, a settlement was reached--a settlement that called for the restoration of stream flows in the San Joaquin River so that the salmon and other species in that river could be returned. This amendment simply overturns that. It was a Federal court order that approved the settlement--a settlement between the water users of the CVPIA and also the environmental groups.

To do this amendment is simply going to once again reignite a major water war that is totally unnecessary. Certainly, it is going to be difficult to restore the river, but it can be done and it is going to take time and it is going to take money--and we should do it. This is one of the two largest rivers in the State of California. It's a river that had in the past, before the reservoirs were built and before the river was dried up, an extraordinary run of salmon. It will never be able to return to what it once was, but it can return to a viable river.

To take action at this hour of the night on an amendment that is going to only be heard between half a dozen of us here on the floor seems to me to be quite wrong. We ought to oppose this amendment. We ought not allow it to be in the bill, and we ought to allow things to go forward.

I would remind those who are supporting this that this is going to be a major blowup in the U.S. Senate. I know we don't much care about that, but, nonetheless, Senator Feinstein has authored legislation to implement this particular settlement. This unravels all of that. We ought not be moving forward, and I therefore oppose the amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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