American Jobs Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. ELLISON. I want to thank you, Congressman, for making the issue of jobs the front and center issue.
We've been here all week long, and one of the things that I find just shocking is that we have not dealt with the issues that are really in front of the American people. And the number one issue is jobs.
We haven't dealt with future jobs that students could perhaps get if they got the education, which has to do with the doubling of interest rates on student loans, which is due in a few weeks unless the Republican majority acts. We certainty have not taken up a transportation bill that would extend extensive work to people. As many as 280,000 education jobs are on the chopping block in the upcoming school year due to pressure on State budgets.
So the bottom line is that this is an interesting week that we live in because there is no doubt--no one of the 435 Members of this body are under any doubt--student loan rates are doubling, unemployment is record high, and yet we didn't deal with any of these critical issues. I'm really shocked. I'm astounded. I'm under the impression that we're all here to work hard.
I'm one of those who doesn't like to sort of imply or even say that the Republicans are sabotaging jobs for political advantage because it's hard for me to imagine that any true public servant would ever do something like that, but there are a lot of folks out here who believe that is the case. I want our Republican colleagues to disprove that premise by getting some pro-job, pro-education legislation that we all can agree on.
Another thing that I'm glad to talk about is with regards to the Obama job plan. Under the American Jobs Act, Obama has laid out a plan. He has set forth a set of ideas, and one of the elements that I want to talk about a little bit is the job program for the long-term unemployed.
Obama has talked about dealing with the issues of the long-term unemployed, people who have been out of work, and you know, who have been chronically out of work for a long time--they call them the 99ers. It's modeled after an unemployment program in Georgia. Under that program, workers continue to collect unemployment benefits, plus a small stipend to cover transportation and other expenses at no expense to the employer. After 8 weeks of training, the company may hire the person or not, and it can amount to a free tryout.
So I think that the Obama administration, under the American Jobs Act, is being responsive to the needs of the American people. I think the same cannot be said for the House of Representatives under the Republican majority. Under the American Jobs Act, the Republicans could bring it up today. Some of these ideas are things that they have proposed, and they won't even take those up. So this is really disappointing.
I think people who have been chronically unemployed for weeks and weeks and maybe perhaps years--I talked to a woman who has been out of work for 2 1/2 years. This woman has a college degree, she is a highly trained professional from my district--Lauren, if you're watching, you know that I'm talking about you. I think the American Jobs Act has just what the doctor ordered if the Republican majority will take it up.
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Mr. ELLISON. Well, Congressman, if we had listened to the Founding Fathers, we'd be quite aways ahead. It's interesting, in the political rhetoric you hear, some people claim the Founding Fathers, but they don't claim the real Founding Fathers, the ones who actually had the foresight to make America a strong economic country by making sure that the government played an important role in making sure our economy was working, by promoting transportation, patents, currency protection and things like that.
But I would say that as we work here today, and as we think about all of the things that our Nation needs, none are more important than putting Americans back to work, I think. The American Jobs Act is a plan set forth by the President, and he's set this forth at a time when he's reaching his hand out. He's extending his hand. He's trying to get the Republican majority in the House to work with him.
But apparently they just won't do so because they have ideological and political considerations. One of those ideological things is that they just don't think the government is any good. They don't think the government can do any good. They don't think the government can help. And so we see proposals and amendments to simply eliminate the Federal role out of transportation. And of course we've seen them eliminate the Federal role out of environmental protection. We've seen a whole host of things like this.
You would think that the reason we have high unemployment is because of ``job-killing regulations.'' They love this refrain. I'm sure Frank Luntz is very proud. He's a pollster who comes up with clever phrasing that they use a lot. But it's not job-killing regulations.
Any small business person will tell you the key to their success is customers. The key to customers is people who have jobs, who have some money to spend. If you've got no customers and your customers are broke, then they're not going to buy your cakes, your pies, and those folks are not going to be able to pay the taxes they need to keep our valued public employees working, teachers, firefighters, police officers, public health nurses, people who make the water and the meat safe to eat and drink.
They like to throw around terms like ``socialism,'' but what we argue for is a mixed economy, a balance between the private sector and government, which enhances the performance of both, all in service to the American people.
So today I am in favor of us getting a strong, long-term, 6-year transportation bill. I am absolutely in favor of helping our students who are fearing that education is getting out of their economic reach. Absolutely, we have to be there to reform currency, to level the playing field with China.
We should buy American. What's wrong with buying American? I think buying American's good. I rather prefer buying American. In fact, whenever I get a product and it says ``Made in America,'' I get a warm fuzzy all over.
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Mr. Ellison, thank you very much. I know you've got a plane; you've got to get back to Minneapolis. Thank you so much for joining us.
This is part of the Democratic agenda. This is something we've been working on now for well over 2 years, and we call it ``Make It in America.'' This is rebuilding the American middle class. This is about the American middle class coming back.
Over the last 20 years, we've seen a decline in American manufacturing. In the early nineties, we were a little more than 19 million, almost 20 million, Americans in the manufacturing sector. Those were middle class jobs, where you can go to work, earn a living, live a middle class life, buy your bass boat, take the kids on a vacation.
Today, we're just over 11 million middle class manufacturing jobs in America. So looking at this dismal situation, a couple of years ago, shortly after I arrived here, we began looking at what do you do about this. Why did this happen? Why is it that the American manufacturing sector declined?
We did our studies. We did the economic analysis. But mostly, we looked at public policy. We looked at the laws of this land. We looked at what was going on in the public policy sector; and what we found was the policies of this Nation discouraged manufacturing and, in fact, rewarded American corporations that would offshore jobs, literally, actually, giving American corporations a reduction in their taxes for every job they offshored. Total about $16 billion a year.
I know; you don't believe that. How could there be such a policy? That was my question. What? You mean to tell me that the tax policy of the United States gives a tax break to American corporations when they ship a job offshore?
Can't be. In fact, it was. And so in the last year, the last months of the Democrats' control of this House in 2010, we undertook to change that. We put a bill on this floor that would eliminate $12 billion of that $16 billion tax break that American corporations had for offshoring jobs. It passed without one Republican vote. Not one Member of the Republican Party voted to end a tax break for American companies that offshored jobs.
The Senate took it up; it passed. President Obama signed that legislation.
Public policy matters. Public policy matters a great deal.
We've talked here today about the Buy American provisions, been in law for 30, 40 years, that basically say, if it's our taxpayer dollars, it ought to be used to buy American equipment.
Over the years, probably beginning in the eighties and carrying on, those provisions began to gain loopholes, one after another, so that at the end of 2010, the loophole was a 12-lane freeway that you could drive any project through and buy whatever you wanted to buy from wherever it came from. So much so that in San Francisco, when the Oakland Bay Bridge between Oakland and San Francisco had to be rebuilt because of earthquake safety issues--some of it fell down in the Loma Prieta earthquake--the largest construction project, public works project ever in California. The main central steel column for a uniquely designed bridge, $1 billion or more, Chinese steel, Chinese welders, 6,000 jobs in China to save 10 percent.
It turns out the steel was faulty, the welds were faulty, the jobs were still in China and the inspectors were Chinese.
If we'd have had a Buy American provision that meant anything at all, we
would have had 6,000 jobs in America; the inspectors would have been American; and there would be American jobs.
So my legislation, H.R. 613, says this:
If it is your tax money, it's going to be spent on American-made equipment, American-made steel, and the jobs will be in America.
Where is that bill? It hasn't even been taken up for a hearing in the Transportation Committee.
We're nibbling around the edges here. Of every bill that comes through this floor that's relevant to this issue, we try to shoehorn into it a Buy American provision. We try to increase the Buy American laws. We try to make certain that your tax money is going to be spent on American-made equipment. That's our agenda.
Have we been successful? No. No, we've not.
When the half-baked, worthless transportation bill was brought to the floor by our Republican colleagues, who could not even get agreement in their own caucus, we tried to put a provision on, an amendment on, and it was rejected. It was rejected.
Americans want to go to work. Public policy matters. Will your tax dollars be spent buying Chinese steel? I'll give you another example.
In Los Angeles, they went out to buy new light rail cars. Two bids were the final bids. One was by Siemens--yes, a German company that has a manufacturing plant for light rail cars in Sacramento, California. Siemens said that their light rail cars would have a minimum of 80 percent American-made content. A Japanese company came in and said, We'll do it for 60 percent. There was a slight difference. I think there was about a 2 percent difference in the bids.
So what did the MTA, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, do? It chose the Japanese company. American jobs were lost immediately in Sacramento as a result of that decision.
Now, whose money is going to be spent buying those cars, those light rail cars? Whose money is it? Your money. It's your tax money. Good for Japan. They're going to get some jobs. Bad for Sacramento. Layoffs have already occurred, and there are more to come.
Do you want another example? I'll just use California. That's where I'm from.
The Bay Area Rapid Transit System, BART: $3.2 billion for new trains over 10 years. $3.2 billion. Two bids. One, Bombardier, a fine Canadian company, said they would build them with 66 percent American-made content. Okay, that's good. It's not good enough because Alstom, a French company, said they would build them with 90 percent American-made content. Yes, it's a little more expensive, but we're talking $1 billion of American jobs here.
The Bay Area Rapid Transit System said, Well, the Federal Government says it's 60 percent, and we're going to have to go with 66. I said and thousands of Californians said and New Yorkers, which is where most of these jobs would be, that Alstom has a plant in New York to manufacture light rail and heavy rail cars. They said, Wait, let's take 2 months--2 months--and let's rebid this, and let's see what we can do. Alstom was prepared to lower their bid if they would have had an opportunity, and $1 billion of American jobs are not here. They're somewhere else around the world.
Public policy matters. Public policy matters.
I think it's about time to wrap up here, so I'm going to go back to where we started.
What if the House of Representatives under the control of our Republican colleagues--totally under their control and the Senate also under the control of the Republicans because it takes 60 votes there--what if the President's American Jobs Act had been taken up and passed? We'll modify it, and don't forget it was fully paid for, 100 percent paid for with no increase in the deficit. The economists said clearly that 1.3 million would immediately result from the President's American Jobs Act. What if?
What does it mean to you in your community? Would that road have been built? Would you have had the job paving that road? repairing and painting that bridge? down at the local school, painting the school? cleaning up the playgrounds? putting new toilets into the restrooms or, specifically, a new laboratory in the high school--not a lavatory but a laboratory? What if?
What if we had put aside partisan politics?
Keep this in mind that the Republican leader of the Senate, on the day or shortly after President Obama was inaugurated, said that his number one goal was to make sure that this was a one-term President. So how do you do that? Well, when the President proposes an American Jobs Act that would employ 1.3 million Americans immediately, you make certain that it doesn't become law. You slow it down. Everything has to be 60 votes in the Senate; and here in this House, you do not even take it up. You don't allow a vote on it.
You don't do a transportation bill. You don't take the $50 billion injected immediately into infrastructure--totally paid for. You don't do it even though that would employ tens of thousands of Americans. You make certain that the 288,000 teachers who have been laid off across America are not rehired so that my daughter's classroom is not 22 students but 35 students.
How do you destroy a President? You make certain that this economy doesn't move. You take his American Jobs Act, and you sit on it. That's what has happened. The great ``what if.''
What if we put Americans back to work? Yes, maybe Obama would get reelected--maybe I'd get reelected--but I'll tell you this: Americans would be working. Americans would be working. What if?
Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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