Building Infrastructure Create Jobs

Floor Speech

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, thank you very much for this opportunity. At least once a week we come before the House to talk about jobs, that little four-letter word that is so important on everybody's mind--can I get a job, will I have a job, what does it take to get a job in America. We still have far too high unemployment, and we still have a great need to ensure that our jobs produce the kinds of wages and opportunities that Americans really want. They want to be able to buy a home, have a car, raise their families, provide the necessities, and see their kids get a great education and opportunity.

We have a long way to go. We have come a long way, but we still have a long way to go. One of the critical ways that America can and must build jobs is build the infrastructure, to make sure that those foundations of the economy will grow, upon which cities will be built, those things that allow us to prosper, the critical investments. In this case, the physical investments are the issue that we are going to talk about today.

We have an opportunity. Beginning tomorrow, a conference committee will be formed here in the Capitol made up of Senators, Republican and Democrat, and Members of the House of Representatives, both Republican and Democrat, sitting down together. Oh, yeah, together, actually at the same table, tomorrow morning, 9:30, to beginning a conference committee on the Water Resources Reform and Development Act, otherwise known as WRRDA. If you are around here long enough, you know what that means, but I guess the rest of the world really needs to know it is the Water Resources Reform and Development Act.

And so 13 million jobs, 13 million jobs in America depend upon how well that conference committee does its work. The House of Representatives a few weeks back put out its version of the bill. The Senate did several months ago. Senator Barbara Boxer from the State of California, my colleague, will be chairing that committee. We have work to do. We have the task of making sure that 13 million American jobs that depend upon the Water Resources Reform and Development Act will be secure. It is a big one.

So what is involved in the Water Resources Reform and Development Act? Well, how about this: 99 percent of America's international trade travels through our ports and waterways. That is a big number. I suppose there is some 1 percent that travels on airplanes, and those are probably very high-ticket, high-priced items. But if you are talking about the great, almost the entire, majority of America's work, that goes through our ports and waterways. This is what the Water Resources Reform and Development Act is all about. It is about our ports, the great ports of America. It is about the waterways of America. It is about the locks and the dams on the rivers.

Let me put this up for just a second. This is an interesting map. I don't know if many Americans have really considered the map of the United States and the waters of the United States. Obviously, the coastline, we don't have Alaska on this map, but it should be there also. The great coasts, the east coast, the gulf coast, the Pacific coast, and of course on and around Alaska. That is not all. Each of these rivers also is a waterway upon which commerce flows; and tomorrow, with the conference committee for the WRRDA bill, we will be discussing how to make these rivers more attuned to the environment and to commerce.

On the great Mississippi River, the Missouri, the Ohio, and the Illinois Rivers and all the way up into Wisconsin, an enormous amount of America's commerce flows along those rivers. And joining me in just a moment will be Representative Bill Enyart from the State of Illinois, and he will be talking about some of these issues as they relate to that part of the world. But this great river system in the central part of America is a major highway. There are interstate roads, to be sure, and there are local and county roads, but most of them feed into this great system that moves up and down the Mississippi River. The Water Resources Reform and Development Act is all about that. It is all about that commerce on that great river and about whether the locks and the levees that are on that river are adequate to meet the needs of commerce and the needs of public protection.

For those of us on the west coast and the east coast and even into the gulf, it is about the ports. It is about the ports of America and whether those ports are adequate for the commerce that we need to have. So when you happen to go by a port and you see one of these tied up at the dock, you can think about the American economy and about 99 percent of the international trade that goes in and out of our ports. It is a big deal. It is a

very, very big deal, and most of America's ports are antiquated. The shoals, that is the mud and sand at the bottom of the ports, have been accreted, that is, built up over the last several years; and it needs constant dredging. And so part of what we will be dealing with at the WRRDA conference committee is the dredging of the ports and quite possibly the shore side, what is going on there.

These are subjects that we will come to in the next few minutes as we talk more about how we can build jobs in America and simultaneously build the American economy by building the great infrastructure.

One more issue I want to put up here before I call on Mr. Enyart is this one. You see all of these rivers here; they are critically important. They are critically important for commerce and trade and obviously water and agriculture and all the rest. But sometimes--virtually every year--they are also a major problem for America.

This happens to be a picture of a levee break on the Sacramento River system. I happen to represent 200 miles of the Sacramento River. This break is all too common across America; and so the Water Resources Reform and Development Act, which will be up tomorrow in the conference committee--it is not going to be finished but at least it will make some progress toward completion--will deal with the levees.

The Army Corps of Engineers is the responsible Federal agency for the maintenance of the rivers, for the waters of America, whether they are in the rivers or along the shore. They are responsible for the ports, that is, for the maintenance of the ports, not the ports themselves. And in my district, the Army Corps of Engineers plays a major role in public safety because it is their responsibility to make sure that these levees are adequate to the challenge of a flood. When those levees are not adequate, great damage is done across America. It is approximately $22.3 billion of annual unspent American treasure that is still in the pockets of America and the governments of America when these levees work. When they fail, it is a huge expense--floods, flood damage, and the like.

I would like now to call on the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Enyart) to share with us his view of the necessity for the Water Resources Reform and Development Act and the way it protects and helps his district.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you very much. Sometimes I want to call you Congressman, and sometimes I want to call you General. Always we are going to say that you really know the Mississippi. You served there in the National Guard, providing the protection to the people, and to have a very good sense of what is necessary in that part of Illinois and beyond.

As you were talking about the issues of moving goods and services up and down the great Mississippi River system--Ohio, Missouri, and the other rivers--there is about $1.4 trillion of goods that move down that river into the other ports across America and is shipped out across the entire world. That is 30 million jobs. You were talking about that.

You also raised a point that is very important, and that is that it is not just the ongoing jobs of the tugboats and the barges, the granaries and all of that, but it is also the job of building the infrastructure itself. The men and women that are going to get out there and put together the new docks, the new levee systems--all of those things require manpower. And we know that there is an enormous benefit. Every dollar that is invested in infrastructure returns well over $3 back into the economy immediately, to say nothing of the long-term benefit that comes of having that new lock system in place, more efficient, longer locks so, as you said, more of those barges than just one towline can work their way through the lock and not have to be broken up into smaller towlines.

So there are a lot of issues in this piece of legislation. It is going to be an extremely important moment in moving the economy forward. This is the first time in 6 years. It has been 6 years since the Congress and the Senate got together to do a water resource reform and development program. Why? I guess we just couldn't quite figure it out, but we have to do it this time.

There is a need for very serious reform in this system. We know that many of the projects that are undertaken, that the Corps of Engineers is working on, are forever trying to get in line and get in place.

We know that many projects simply are derelict; they never should be built. So the bill removes $12 billion of derelict projects that should never be built and replaces them with new projects that are critically important. Some of those are the locks along the Mississippi and the Ohio system and some of the other dams that are out there.

For me in California, we know that these projects

are critically important. The city of Sacramento, Mr. Enyart, is one of the most flood-risk cities--in fact, it is No. 2 in flood risk; probably No. 1, now that New Orleans has had an opportunity to have its flood walls rebuilt following the devastation of Katrina. Now it is Sacramento. It is a huge population in a very risky area, a population that I represent part of and share with Congresswoman Matsui, the city of Sacramento.

It is a little different than New Orleans. When Katrina came through, it was flooded, to be sure, and terribly damaged. Many lives were lost. But the water was warm. In Sacramento, if the levees were to break on the American River or the Sacramento River system and flood that system, we are talking about very cold water, water that people would not survive in for more than a few minutes because of the temperature and hypothermia. So we really need to build those levees.

As I go into this task of being on the conference committee where I will serve as one of the representatives of the House of Representatives, I will be looking at those kinds of projects that are really about human life, the safety of my constituents and the safety of constituents all around this Nation where these levees need to be built to a high standard. Many of them need to be repaired in my district, the delta of California. Many of the levees are over 100 years old and were never built to standards that would be applicable today.

So we have work to do. We have levees to build. We have ports to build. We have channels to dredge. We have jobs that will be created when we pass this bill and adequately fund it.

One other thing that is possible here is not only will we create jobs directly in building the ports, dredging the rivers and channels, building the levees and repairing them--those are direct jobs. Not only will we do that. We will also have the long-term foundation, the investment necessary for future economic growth. We will also, if we do one more thing--and I hope to get this into the legislation. That is to make sure that there is a strong buy America provision.

This is going to be American taxpayer money that is going to be used for the steel in the locks, for the cement, for the pilings in the piers and probably the dredges that will be used for the channel. This is all American taxpayer money that will be used to buy and maintain that equipment. If it is American taxpayer money, then, by golly, you ought to be buying American goods. So buy American. Use our taxpayer money to build the rest of the manufacturing sector of America. Build our steel industry by buying American steel for the locks and for the piers and for the cement and for the other work that needs to be done. Make it in America. It is very simple. Use American taxpayer money to make it in America and to buy American goods.

So I am going to be working very diligently on that conference committee to make sure that this buy America provision is strongly embedded in the legislation. I know that if we are able to do that, we will not only improve our levees, dredge the channels, build the ports, but we will also have the opportunity to make American jobs in the manufacturing sector.

Mr. Enyart, you may have some additional thoughts that you would like to bring to our attention. If so, please have at it.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Well, we also, Mr. Enyart, in California we have those same issues. Let me swap places with you. I want to put up one of the maps here of California.

Mr. Enyart, you were talking about the central part of America. You certainly can see it here, as you were discussing the Mississippi River system and your area, up here in the Illinois area.

In California, we think we are a real big State and we have got a lot of people, and this legislation is extremely important for California. I am going to just point out some of the--San Francisco Bay, one of the great maritime bays in the world. We would argue there is none more beautiful nor more important than the San Francisco Bay.

In and out of this Bay flows a vast amount of commerce to the Port of Oakland, and also up to the rivers, into the central part of California, through the delta on the Sacramento and the San Joaquin River, where trade now goes, international trade, to the Port of Sacramento and the Port of Stockton.

Very, very important because, like Illinois and the great Midwest, we have a vast agricultural economy here in the central valley of California, and a lot of that, particularly rice from my district, goes out of the Port of Stockton and Sacramento.

Both of those ports now have channels that are of insufficient depth to bring in the large ships, and so it becomes much more expensive. The issue you raised, Mr. Enyart, about the cost of shipping, if you have small ships that can't carry a full cargo because of the depth of channel, it gets more expensive.

So in this area, channel maintenance at the Port of Oakland, channel maintenance for the Ports of Sacramento and the like and, of course, up along the Contra Costa County area, where the refineries and the oil tankers come and go.

As you move further south, we have got the ports, mostly fishing down here along the coast and, of course, Monterey, which is famous, Pebble Beach and the Monterey Bay area.

Then you get down to Los Angeles, and the two great, great harbors of America, side by side, together form the largest harbor system in this Nation, and you can argue whether it is the largest in the world, but it is surely big, the Port of Los Angeles, represented by Congresswoman Hahn, and the Port of Long Beach, side by side there in the Los Angeles area, Long Beach represented by Mr. Lowenthal.

Those ports are really one of the major engines of international trade and economic growth, and of course, from those ports, those great cargos move in and out, all across America on the railways and highways. So we have that.

Then of course you can get down here to San Diego, some other harbors along the way in Orange County, and then the harbor of San Diego, which is extremely important for the military. Any time you happen to get to San Diego, you will see the aircraft carriers there from the U.S. Navy and other critical equipment and ships of the U.S. Navy. All of that is important.

Here in my district--I am going to put up another map, and this is where I really get involved. This is a map of, obviously, San Francisco Bay here, with the harbor of San Francisco, the Port of San Francisco, the Port of Oakland, Alameda in here and up along the Contra Costa coast.

As you get into the delta, this is the largest inland delta, or the largest delta on the west coast of the Western Hemisphere, and one of the great inland deltas of the world. There are more than 1,000 miles of waterways here in this delta area.

I represent about half of that area, the Sacramento River going up here and the San Joaquin River coming here, and then down into the great San Joaquin Valley. These areas are all protected by levees, and so the rivers are confined within those levees, and many of those levees, as I said a while ago, are more than 100 years old, and they need protection.

The water system of California, water flowing from the north, across these, through these waterways that are channeled by the levees to the great pumps down here, delivering water to southern California and the San Joaquin Valley, depends upon these levees.

This is part of the WRRDA bill, and so these levees and protecting the water system of California and the great agricultural enterprises of the delta are critically important, and the Water Resource Reform and Development Act provides money for the maintenance and the continuing studies of these levees, as well as for many of the critical environmental habitats in the area.

As you move up the Sacramento River, you will come to the great metropolis of Sacramento, which I talked about, and here, the American River coming in with the Sacramento River. Right in this area is, arguably, the highest flood danger area in America, and there is a project right here in the Natomas area that is absolutely crucial, crucial to life and limb.

Then as you move on up in the rest of my district, going up 200 miles from here to here, you have Yuba City and Marysville, again, communities that have flooded in the past, with the loss of life, and those too are dependent upon the success of the WRRDA bill.

Now, what we are going to do tomorrow, and in the days ahead as we move through this conference committee--and my task, is to get the policy set. But the other side of it is the money. Where's the money coming from?

Well, the austerity budgets that have been such the prize of our Republican colleagues really have stripped money away from the projects that we have been talking about, stripped money away from the maintenance of the ports, the dredging of the channels, and the protection and enhancement of the levees. That money has been stripped away.

So, with the first sequestration that took place about 8 months ago, $250 million of money that the Corps of Engineers would have for the ports, for the channels, and for the levees, disappeared. That was Sequestration 1.

On January 15, Sequestration 2 hits, with another $90 billion hit, and we are not sure exactly how much the Corps of Engineers will lose, but they are going to lose a vast amount of money.

So all of the talk, all of the energy that we are putting into writing the appropriate policies to reform, to improve, to put programs in place for the American economy, aren't going to happen. Well, many of them are not going to happen because of the austerity budgets and the two sequestrations.

This is a critical problem, a critical problem, and I would reach out to my colleagues, both Democrat and Republican, and say, but there is money. There is money available, but we are not spending it in the right place.

In the budget bill that passed the House of Representatives a few months ago, there was an increase in the authorization well above what the President wanted to build and rebuild nuclear bombs, over $12 billion over

the next decade, for just one life-extension program on a nuclear weapon, the B-61--$12 billion.

Now, it can be argued, and I would argue this, that that was an extraordinarily inappropriate place to spend money. We don't need that bomb for deterrence, I don't believe. The military may argue that we do, but then they can never get enough of these things.

My argument is, we need to spend the money where real danger exists, and that real danger exists on America's rivers when these levees are not up to standard. When the levees protecting New Orleans were not up to standard, people died, billions upon billions were lost.

When the levees in Sacramento are not up to standard, billions will be lost and people will die, and that is an immediate threat.

We have got plenty of other nuclear weapons for deterrence, but to spend $12 billion in a way that I believe would be better spent on things that protect real people in real-life situations--so we are making judgments here. First of all, we are making a judgment--well, I wouldn't say either you or I, Mr. Enyart, are making this judgment, but our colleagues, particularly on the Republican side, are making a judgment that they believe you can build the American economy with austerity; that is, to cut the Federal expenditures. I disagree.

There are critical investments that the Federal Government should and must make. This is not new. Often we hear the talk around here, the Founding Fathers.

Mr. Enyart, have you heard people talk about, well, the Founding Fathers would do thus and so? We hear it all the time.

The Founding Fathers, let's take Washington and Hamilton, shortly after he was inaugurated--

Oh, by the way, Washington refused to be inaugurated in a suit made in England. He was inaugurated in a suit made in America. There was only one tailor at the time that would do that, but he did it.

Then he told Hamilton, I want a policy to build the American manufacturing sector. Hamilton came back some days later, probably 2 or 3 months, with a program, not 2,000 pages, but probably a couple of hundred pages at the most, and he said: We need, in America, to do the following things: to build the American economy and the American manufacturing base.

He said, one, we need to build ports. We need to build canals, and we need to protect American industry by using American taxpayer dollars to buy American-made goods. He said, beware of trade policies.

Hamilton and Washington wanted trade policies that protected the American manufacturing sector and American agriculture.

Interestingly, in the next few days, or in the next few weeks, we are going to have the question of trade policy before us here in the House of Representatives, and it is likely to be the Trans-Pacific Trade Program.

What is it?

Well, they want to fast-track it, where not one person on this floor will be able to say, wait a minute; we ought to change this, or we ought to change that. So we ought to be paying attention to the Founding Fathers who said, watch trade policy. Protect American jobs.

So as we go through all of this, in my district, we are going to have to have the money, American taxpayer money, plus a lot of local taxpayer money to protect the citizens in my district and the ports.

About $1.8 billion is collected at the ports to rebuild, to dredge, and to maintain the ports. About half that money is siphoned off for other projects.

Beware of austerity budgets. No more sequestration. This Nation cannot afford that terrible policy of sequestration because it will rip the heart out of the critical investments that America has to make.

I have rambled on here for a little while and went off to some other things. Mr. Enyart, would you like to pick it up for a while?

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Mr. GARAMENDI. But ``compromise'' is not a dirty word in my lexicon. Compromise is absolutely necessary. There are things in the bill that I would have written differently. In the conference committee, there are going to be differences between the House and the Senate in how we do.

You have mentioned some of the issues. The environmental issues, some of them are controversial. But there is a major part of this bill to speed these projects forward and to hold the Corps of Engineers responsible for getting things done. Part of it is they have got 3 years to do the initial study, and they have got $3 million to get that study done, and their feet are going to be held to that commitment to get these projects moving forward. So there is a lot of reform in here, in the bureaucracy of the way this system has worked. There is also a lot of reform in this on allowing the local partnerships.

All of these programs are partnerships. They are partners with the local governments, ports, as you described earlier, local levee districts, and the like. Those partnerships, under present law, have a very difficult time to start a program early, to get it going without the Corps' permission. So what we have, we call it ``crediting.'' And that allows these local governments, local ports to begin a project. Eventually, there is a whole new process in here for selecting which projects will be done.

By the way, we are not going to do earmarks. There are no earmarks in this legislation. No earmarks are allowed in the future. But there is a process to prioritize projects across the Nation, and ultimately, Congress is taking back some of its power to set the priorities for the Nation.

But that crediting that allows the local governments to get started, we are going to want to move that a little bit forward because in my district, because of the austerity budgets and the sequestration, many necessary projects are not allowed to move forward. But with a little tweaking of this language, which I will be working to get done, it will allow some of these projects to go forward. And the local share would then be counted if and when--if and when the Federal Government, the Corps of Engineers, actually decides to make that a national project.

So this is going to be very important. It is probably important in your area, for some of the levees in your area that are maintained now by the local levee districts and flood protection districts.

We spent a lot of time in the House and also in the Senate. We are going to have to work out some of the differences, some of the compromises. Not so much Democratic and Republican, but some regional differences and some differences about how the system should work, so we will work on that.

We have got about another 5, 7 minutes, so if you would like to wrap, and then I will wrap. And then I am going to do something that is not too common here. I am going to take this ball of some of this international trade and I am going to toss it to my Republican colleague, and we will let him bat it around for a while.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Well, this is part of what we ought to be doing, and that is looking at these issues and maximizing the potential and the benefit that comes from a project. Let me give you another example of the same thing, and it is along the environmental line.

Right now the Corps of Engineers, while dredging in the San Francisco Bay area--let's just say the Port of Oakland over here. When they dredge there, they have to use the cheapest way of disposing of the dredging materials, called spoils, mostly sand and clay. They take it out here to Alcatraz, and they dump it in Alcatraz, and the tide takes it out past the San Francisco Golden Gate.

Well, we are saying, wait a minute. That is extremely valuable material to build habitat in areas that have been despoiled over the years. For example, down here in the southern part of the bay, these were great salt flats where the salt industry used the bay and evaporated the bay water to get salt. Well, those need to be restored. And it is quite possible that the material from the dredging could be used in that way or another habitat program, even up here into the delta. But it is not the cheapest.

So we are looking at a little tweak here that would allow the Port of Oakland or the other ports in the San Francisco Bay area and, really, around the Nation to do an environmental project along with the dredging project very similar to what you are talking about on the Mississippi River.

So I see common cause here. I see common cause where we can maximize the total benefit for the Nation. It could be an additional cost that the port will have to pick up. Okay. But we get a twofer. We get environmental benefits as well as the economic benefits to the port.

Have you got any other things on your list?

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Mr. GARAMENDI. General Enyart, Congressman Enyart, or Bill, thank you so very, very much. I really appreciate working with you tonight on this critical issue, the fundamental investment.

Let's remember, this is not new. The Army Corps of Engineers has been around since the very earliest days of our democracy. The Army Corps has been responsible for the waterways of America, and the Water Resources Reform and Development Act is going to be an opportunity for America to really move its infrastructure, particularly the trade.

Remember, just to review, we are talking 13 million jobs immediately depend upon the Water Resources Reform and Development Act. We are talking about 99 percent of our trade travels through our ports and waterways, whether it is on the Mississippi, the Sacramento, the San Joaquin Rivers, or the great ports and the coastal part of America. It is critically important.

And as we do these things, we have the opportunity to reach back into the history of America and remember what the Founding Fathers talked about way back in George Washington's very early days: that these fundamental investments in what they called canals and ports and roads were critical to the growth of the United States at the very, very outset. George Washington and Alexander Hamilton also recognized the importance of international trade and that we get those trade policies correct.

So as we get ready to do the Water Resources Reform and Development Act, which is critical--and the conference committee starts tomorrow, and I have the honor of being on that conference committee--we also think about the way in which the trade of America is dependent upon our work in getting sound policies in place.

And it is also critically important in dealing with the issue of international trade agreements, whether it is the transpacific trade program or the new one that is being worked on with Europe, we have to protect our own jobs. We have to protect the American economy. And in doing so, we must carry out our constitutional responsibility given to us by the United States House of Representatives and the Senators. The Constitution says that it is the legislature, Congress and the Senate, that shall set trade policy, and that requires that we have the opportunity to look at the details of every trade policy and not fast-track trash through the House.

Joining me and taking up, as I wrap up my hour, is my colleague on the Republican side. Why don't you take my last couple of minutes, and then you can have your own half hour.

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