Make It In America

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I don't think we will take a full hour here, but there are a couple of things that we need to talk about.

I always like to start these hour sessions with why we are here; what are the values that we want to put forth.

Why do we spend these hours in the Chamber?

What is our job here?

I often find myself going back to FDR. He said back in the thirties something that has always been with me. He said: ``The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much. It is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.''

The test of our progress: Do we provide more to those who have much, or to those who have too little?

How can we meet this test?

What can we do?

Today is one of those days that I guess comes from ``A Tale of Two Cities''; the best of times and the worst of times.

I am going to put up this photo of a levee break in California. I represent 200 miles of the Sacramento River Valley and probably have over 1,100 miles of levees. Today, actually is the best of times. The levees are not breaking. Actually, we are in the middle of a drought.

But today, at the White House, the President signed the Water Resources and Reform Development Act, an extremely important piece of legislation for my district, and for America, because this legislation provides for the protection of our cities. It provides for the flood control programs that are absolutely essential in my part of California and all across America.

So, Mr. President, thank you very much for signing that legislation.

And for the Members of this House and for the Senate that decided that it was time to put aside all the partisanship and to do something right for the people of America, we actually made progress today and the Water Resources Reform and Development Act is now the law of the land.

For California, Hamilton City will see their levees, after 15 years of effort, they will see their levees under construction in the coming year. And God willing, there won't be a flood this winter. And also an end to the drought, thank you.

Natomas, the city of Sacramento, major levee improvements there, and along Yuba City, along the Feather River, 40 miles of levee improvements now underway, and also over in Marysville.

We are thankful that there was bipartisanship and that there was a major piece of legislation. We have to provide the funding, but the authorization is there.

So this photo of a levee break in California, we can put it aside and we can then talk about this. This takes us back to FDR.

The Water Resources Reform and Development Act not only deals with levees and floods, it also deals with the ports. It deals with the inland waterways. It deals with the locks and all that comes with the transportation in the sector of water transportation, whether it is on the east coast ports, the ports in California, Long Beach, Los Angeles and in my area, Stockton and Sacramento ports.

We are talking about 13 million jobs, and these are the good, middle class jobs that Americans need. They want to go to work. They want a job. They want to be able to support their families. They want to be able to have a home. They want to be able to have that vacation.

With the Water Resources Reform and Development Act, now law, signed today by the President, we will see 13 million jobs in the future. They are not going to happen tomorrow, but they will over the next 5 years, as this bill--over the next 2 years as this bill goes into effect.

So FDR's challenge to us: What have we done for those who do not have enough?

Today, the signing of the Water Resources Reform and Development Act provides for those who do not have jobs the opportunity. For those who are in harm's way in floods, it provides for them to have those levees built over the next several years.

For those who have abundance, well, maybe their home is behind the levee also, or maybe they also will benefit from the improvement of our ports and waterways. So that is the good news.

So what happened today on the bad news side?

Well, let's talk about that. This is a picture of an Amtrak train that has been built in Sacramento, California. This train was paid for by the stimulus bill, which some in this House think was a failure, but the 600 employees in Sacramento at the Siemens manufacturing plant there, they don't think it was a failure: $800 million in the stimulus bill 5 years ago to provide for 100 percent American-made locomotives.

This is the most modern locomotive in the United States. It will soon be running on the Northeast corridor between Washington, D.C., and Boston, made in America, made in Sacramento by Americans, 100 percent American-made.

So why am I talking about something that happened in this House 5 years ago with the stimulus bill, the American Recovery Act? Why am I bringing it up tonight?

Because today, the House of Representatives passed an appropriation bill for transportation and housing, a woefully inadequate piece of legislation that actually will reduce funding for public transportation.

Amtrak may not be able to use this train, may not be able to use the locomotive that was built specifically for the Northeast corridor because our Republican colleagues reduced the funding for Amtrak and actually passed legislation to further restrict public transportation, Amtrak and public transportation, in our cities all over this Nation.

Why would they do that when we know, when everybody knows that transportation is absolutely critical, that public transportation, whether it be Amtrak or a light-rail system or a rapid transit system in any of our cities, is absolutely essential for those people who have little ability to travel to their jobs?

Whether it is on a bus, light rail or a train, they need to have that public transportation.

So what did our colleagues do?

They reduced the money for public transportation all across this Nation, whether it is Amtrak or your local light rail or your local bus system. Why? Why, when we know that we also have to deal with climate change?

And how can you deal with climate change when you do not fund the public transportation systems of this Nation?

It makes no sense. In fact, it is nonsense. You want to put people to work?

You put people to work in building the infrastructure of this Nation, whether it is a train, an Amtrak locomotive, or a levee, or a port, you put people to work building the transportation systems.

We know that we also have a major funding bill that is necessary. We have to reauthorize the transportation programs. The MAP-21 expires this year. We know that this summer the highway trust fund runs out of money.

So where was that money in the transportation bill?

It wasn't there. Reductions.

So who is going to build?

Who is going to repair our bridges?

Are we going to be able to do that?

Probably not, not with the money that was not appropriated today for the transportation programs.

But the President has proposed a major reauthorization of the transportation programs. It is called GROW AMERICA. It expands our highway fund some $302 billion over the next 5 years, an expansion so that we can repair our bridges.

We know across America, some 25 to 30 percent of the bridges in every district that the 435 of us represent, every single one of us have a bridge that is subject to collapse. In my district, I probably have more than 200 bridges that are in desperate need of repair for the protection of the individuals and communities that use those bridges, as well as the commerce that is dependent upon them.

But, no. We don't have a transportation bill on our side. We need to take the President's bill, we need to embrace it because it is fully paid for. It has not only the money that is currently available from the various programs that currently fund it--these are the excise taxes on fuel, whether it is gasoline or diesel, but it adds to that another very large sum of money by corporate tax reform.

Those corporations that have been able to skip out of their responsibility here in the United States to pay for the programs that all of us depend upon, they would have to pay their fair share in a corporate tax reform.

That money would then flow into the transportation programs, providing the money that we need to build our transportation system, whether it is the light-rail systems, the heavy rail, Amtrak systems, or the roads and the bridges of this Nation.

It is a good bill. It deserves our full support. We can tweak it. We can make little changes here and there, but unless we take up the challenge of transportation funding in this Nation, unless we are willing to work with the President and his proposal--we have no other proposal before us in this House of Representatives.

Let us embrace the President's proposal, make the changes that we think are necessary, but let us move forward. Let us make America move forward with a transportation program for this millennium, not for the last one, but for this one, one that provides all the benefits that we need.

I want to bring up another part of the transportation program--and once again, it is about jobs. The economist in this case, Mark Zandi, has done an economic analysis of the transportation programs and the infrastructure investment. By the way, this guy worked for John McCain in the McCain Presidential campaign.

His analysis is, for every $1 we invest in infrastructure, $1.57 is pumped into the American economy, so you are getting that multiplier effect. You are putting men and women to work, not just the hardhats, not just with the pick and shovels working on the roads and bridges, but also in the offices, the engineers, the architects, the economists, and all those who are doing the work in the back office.

So for every $1 that we invest--and let's think about it. The President's proposal is $302 billion over the next 5 years. Multiply it out. An extra $1.57 for every dollar invested.

So let us take Mr. Zandi's analysis. Let us apply it. So we probably have somewhere over $450 billion of actual economic growth, if we were to follow what the President has proposed in his GROW AMERICA transportation program.

Has anybody got a better idea around here? I don't see much happening, but we know by midsummer, the transportation programs in America face a highway cliff. The Federal highway trust fund runs out of money--no new contracts.

Some 700,000 people are likely to be laid off in the ensuing year, unless the House of Representatives and the Senate takes up the challenge of funding the transportation programs of this Nation.

It is ports. It is highways. It is bridges. It is the bus systems. It is the Amtrak system. It is the rail systems of America. All of these are part of the President's proposal, and it is something we ought to take up and we ought to move forward with.

What we have been talking about here in these hour-long sessions over the last 3 years is another piece of this puzzle.

When we do infrastructure--whether it be the Water Resources Reform and Development Act, the levees and the ports, and the inland waterways, the locks, the channels, all of those critical parts of the Water Resources Reform and Development Act, as we do that and the transportation bill, we need to think about how to increase the multiplier that Mr. Zandi talked about.

He talked about, for every $1 we invest, you get $1.57 growth in the economy. However, he did not take into account another critical aspect of this.

This is our Make It In America agenda. If we take that $302 billion Presidential program and we take the piece of it that he has suggested--that we take the Buy America law that has been in effect in the United States since 1933--and we expand that from the current 60 percent content; that is, for every dollar spent in the transportation programs, we would go to 100 percent of that money being spent on American-made steel, concrete, iron, and American-made products of all kinds, so that when we build a bridge, it is American steel, and it is made in America.

The Make It In America agenda says: let us spend our tax money on American-made equipment, on American steel, by United States companies operating in the United States, that the men and women of America get to benefit from the tax money that they have contributed to our transportation programs.

This is the Make It In America agenda. It is using our tax money to employ Americans, American steelworkers, American bridgebuilders, American contractors.

I wanted to give you an example of what happens when you do not use the Make It In America agenda, when you ignore the 1933 law that says, at a minimum, 60 percent of the content in our transportation programs must be spent on American-made steel, American-made equipment.

Here is what happens. This is a picture of the new San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge. It opened less than 7 months ago. It is a marvelous piece of architecture. It is quite a bridge. It has beauty, and it is extraordinarily expensive. This is a single-suspension bridge, so it is suspended on both sides, an architectural marvel.

However, all of the steel here in this 500-foot tower and the steel on the roadway was not produced in the United States. It was made in China by a Chinese Government-owned steel mill that was actually expanded and built on the backs of the American taxpayer--$1 billion spent of American taxpayer money, directly sent to China, to the Chinese Government-owned steel mill.

By the way, there were significant delays, and there were cost overruns because the Chinese steel manufacturer did a shoddy, crumby job of producing the parts of this bridge.

All of the welding was done in China by Chinese welders that were, by all accounts and by audits done by Caltrans, ill-trained, ill-prepared, and had done thousands upon thousands of very inadequate welds, so that when this incredible bridge arrived by boat from China, the welds were inadequate. There were cracks.

In fact, much of the welding was done in the rain in Shanghai. When you do welding in the rain, you are going to get a very bad result.

So there were thousands of problems, all of which led to a delay, and all of which led to additional expense, a prime example of what happens when you do not follow the law. The law said 60 percent content in the United States.

However, the Schwarzenegger administration in California figured out a way to circumvent the law. They took this bridge, a multibillion-dollar bridge, and they broke it into 20 different pieces, so that they could avoid the Buy America law--the result: made in China, 3,000 jobs, shoddy work, additional expense, and additional delays.

The President's proposal, the GROW AMERICA proposal that he has given to this Congress to consider and which we ought to consider, would say that, in this case, if you are going to use American taxpayer money to build a bridge, then it will, over the next 5 years, ramp up from 60 percent American content to 100 percent American content.

Let's do it. Let's Make It In America. Let's employ Americans, and let's tell the Chinese: you build your own bridges in China, but by golly, in America, it is going to be built by American steel and American workers.

That is what the President is proposing for us. That is what we ought to be doing, and we ought to be embracing the notion that we cannot do it on the cheap, as this Congress did attempt to do less than an hour ago with the passage of the Transportation-Housing appropriation bill, totally inadequate money to deal with our fundamental transportation programs, to say nothing of the housing programs that are desperately needed for the low- and moderate-income people of America.

If you care about the American workers, if you care about the ability of this economy to prosper, then we must embrace an aggressive, fully-funded, robust transportation program.

We must fund the Water Resources Reform and Development Act that the President signed today, and we are grateful for his signature. I am personally grateful that communities in my district will be able to have protection from floods in the future, as a result of that law.

However, the question will come to us: Are we willing to put up the money to build those projects? Today, we have a prime example of the unwillingness of my colleagues on the Republican side to fund the transportation program that this Nation desperately needs.

The infrastructure of this Nation is the foundation upon which the economy will grow. These are the issues of the Make It In America. Tax policy, the President addresses that in the GROW AMERICA. He says that American corporations cannot duck their responsibility to this Nation.

He has proposed tax reforms for corporations to pay their fair share--no more running away, no more getting a tax break for sending jobs overseas, but, rather, pay your fair share, and build America.

We will come to energy policy another day.

His proposal also calls for the job force preparation, so that we are training those men and women who are going to be our future engineers to build the bridges of the future, so that we will have the men and women that know how to do the welding--apparently, the Chinese could use that kind of training also--so that we would have the job training programs that at every level--the back office accountants, the engineers, the architects, the men and women that are operating the heavy equipment, and those that are doing the welding on these projects, that is part of the proposal that the President has put forward, and that is part of the GROW AMERICA proposal.

So the labor and the education come together. Down here, infrastructure. This is the Make It In America agenda. Tomorrow, my Democratic colleagues and I will be talking with our leader, Steny Hoyer, about how we can take an additional package of bills and advance the Make It In America, the GROW AMERICA proposals.

We would hope our colleagues here on the floor of the House of Representatives would embrace a bipartisan effort to really build our infrastructure, to take what success we had in the water resources and reform and take that success to the transportation issues that confront this Nation. There is much more that we must do.

As we do these things, we will also address a fundamental problem that faces this Nation, which is climate change. This is real. I studied this in the 1990s, when I was Deputy Secretary of the Department of Interior, as we prepared the American agenda for the Kyoto climate conference. Unfortunately, the treaty that came back from that conference was never adopted by the Senate in the 1990s.

So to this day, we have yet to address this issue, and we must. This is an issue that will cause flooding across this Nation. It will cause sea levels to rise, which we are already seeing, and it will lead to more severe storms, which we are already seeing.

How can we do that? Again, back to the transportation bill, back to the water resources bill. Put together the levees that we need to protect ourselves, and put together the transportation systems that allow for increased public transportation, whether it is on a locomotive built by that German company in America, in Sacramento, which is the most modern locomotive in the United States, made in America 100 percent.

Maybe it is a streetcar or a fast rail system or a bus, again, financed by Americans, built by Americans with a Buy America proposal, our taxpayer money used to employ Americans as we build high-speed trains, as we build new locomotives, hybrid buses, or whatever.

That public transportation will lead to a reduction in greenhouse gases, and if we eliminate the congestion that is caused by our inadequate highway system, we also will reduce greenhouse gases, all of which is good for climate change.

There is much more to be said. But now for more than 3 years, I have stood on this floor and brought to this floor and to the attention of this Nation the Make It In America agenda, which is part of the transportation system as well as part of our highways and ports system. So we are going to continue with this.

The plea I have to my colleagues--435 of them, Democrats and Republicans--is that we learn from our success. The Water Resources and Reform Development Act was a success--a bipartisan success. It lays the foundation for the protection that we need from floods, as well as growing our economy on the rivers, locks, and the ports of America. It was a good one. We thank the President for his signature today. Step one.

Step two comes to us over the next 3 months as we face the highway cliff where we know that if we fail to enact a new highway bill, we will see 700,000 Americans unemployed, losing their jobs over the next year. We have to get this job done. The President has laid out a good proposal. We can tweak it, we can make changes to it, but we must take it up, and we must move forward with the transportation program. And when we do, no more--no more bridges made in China, only bridges made in America, American taxpayer money spent in America for American steel and American workers.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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