Make it in America

Floor Speech

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Madam Speaker, when talking on the floor, presenting legislation, it is always good to have a compass, so you can have some sense of where you are going and what it is all about.

This is one I often bring to the floor when we talk about the issues of the day. This is from FDR--Franklin Delano Roosevelt--and 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.''

It is a compass, and it is a way of judging progress or a lack of progress, and we seem to have more of the latter than the former. We have much to do if we are going to add to those who have little.

In America, the American middle class, the working men and women, the families who raise their children try to buy a home, a car, maybe take a vacation--they have been struggling for the last 20 years. It has been tough. They have not seen income growth.

The statistics are stark and clear. The middle class of America has stagnated, and, in fact, it has shrunk, as more and more Americans have fallen into the lower income class.

There is something we can do about it, and we, Democrats, intend to do just that. We want to jump-start the middle class. We want to put in place
policies that will grow the opportunities for the working families of America, for those men and women that get up in the morning, feed their children, get them off to school while they are getting off to a job.

There are things we can do. I want to talk about that tonight. Some of my colleagues will join us a little later.

Let me put up the agenda for jump-starting the middle class, the Make It In America agenda, rebuilding the American manufacturing sector, which was the heart and--in many ways--the soul of the working middle class of America, where they could get a decent wage, where they know that a husband or a wife, by themselves, could provide sufficient income for the family to have a home, a car, and enjoy the benefits of this great Nation.

So we will talk about the Make It In America agenda, and we will go at that in some length tonight because that is our basic subject matter.

The other one is very simple. It is a reflection on the demographics, and it is a reflection on the working people of America, and it is women. It is women. What we say is that when women succeed, America succeeds.

There is a set of policies that we need to put in place all across this country that will guarantee that the women of America that are out there working day in and day out have an equal opportunity. Right now, they don't.

They make about 70 cents on every dollar that a man makes. There is an inequality that exists in America's workplace, and our agenda is to end that inequality, to make sure that whether you are a man or a woman, you are going to be paid an equal amount for the same amount of work, the same experience, the same productivity. So when women succeed, America succeeds.

There are several other policies here that are family-friendly policies, and we will talk about that another day.

If the middle class is to succeed, if we are going to jump-start the opportunities for the middle class, a key element is education. So that is the third plank--the third leg upon which we rest our policies.

How can we jump-start the middle class? Education--there are very many things that we can do in education. One just passed the House of Representatives on a bipartisan vote after almost two decades of struggle.

We are revamping the job training programs in America, so that the preparation that people need to get a decent job are streamlined, effective, and efficient, and that is part of it, the job training programs, but it is more than that.

American students now have to--in almost every case--borrow an extraordinary amount of money in order to get a higher education, whether it is community college or the 4-year colleges and beyond.

That extraordinary debt burden is enhanced by extraordinarily high interest rates, so what we want to do is to bring down those interest rates, and there are three or four different pieces of legislation that our Democratic team has put forth, all of them to accomplish the same goal, bringing down the interest rates.

We would like to see it go down to the same interest rates that banks pay for the money that they borrow from the Federal Government and the Federal Reserve--wouldn't that be nice--because it is almost zero, but we don't think we can get that far.

We know it can bring that interest rate down from 6, 7, 8 percent down to the 3 percent, maybe the 4 percent range--literally cutting in half the cost of that money. So there are a series of policies on education.

Let me turn to the one that we want to focus on tonight, which is the Make It In America agenda. There are many pieces to this. One of them was put forward by our team, and there are about seven different elements to this program. This is our logo, Make It In America, so that Americans can make it.

Trade policy, taxes, energy policy, labor, education--which we just talked about--research, and infrastructure, these are the elements of a solid program to have the middle class have an opportunity, to jump-start the working men and women so that they can, once again, make it in America--by rebuilding the manufacturing sector, by having decent trade policies, where we don't give it away and see the American corporations simply run off to China or Bangladesh or wherever to get the lowest possible wage, trade policies that are fair to America.

Our tax policy is critically important. If anybody was reading the newspapers, The Wall Street Journal or other business newspapers last week, the word now is ``inversion.''

Well, what is inversion? It is simply a runaway American corporation, running away to the lowest possible tax haven in the world and making themselves domiciled in that country, leaving America behind, where they got their start, where they built their enterprise and simply running away, leaving those who cannot run to pay the burden of operating this great country's security, our defense, and all of the other things we need to do. So tax policy fits into it.

Energy policy, labor--we will go through some of these tonight. We won't get to all of them.

I want to deal very quickly with this last one, which is the infrastructure. We passed a bill last week, and it was a stopgap. It was a kick the can down the road bill to keep our national highway system funded. It was really a pretty lousy bill.

It would extend for some 10 months an inadequate amount of funding for the transportation systems of this Nation, and it was funded by a cockamamie scheme of somehow smoothing pensions, which basically meant that American corporations didn't have to pay as much into their pension system, so that they could pay more in taxes. It is not going to happen.

If you wonder why Detroit, why San Jose, why other cities and companies across this Nation have troubles with their pension systems, it is because of this kind of foolish legislation.

What are you to do? Let the highway program stop? No. We passed the bill, and we will see where it winds up.

What we really need is what the President has proposed--a robust, comprehensive make it and build it in America program. It is called the GROW AMERICA Act, to grow America, to build the infrastructure, and there are several pieces to this piece of legislation--all of them deserve the immediate attention of the 435 of us in the House of Representatives and the 100 Senators--proposed by the President and, therefore, dead on arrival here.

If it had been proposed by--I don't know--any other leader in the world, it probably would have passed by now, but the Republicans will not allow President Obama's proposals to move forward.

Here it is, the highway system. Now, this is just in 2015. The highway system would get even more money than it has today, some $60 billion total, $7.6 billion to fix the current highway system, and this is in addition to the money that the States and locals are putting in--public transit, an increase in public transit, the buses, the light rail trains, and the like, inner city rail, Amtrak, boosting that--I am going to come back to Amtrak in a few moments.

International trade--back to what I talked about a few moments ago in the Make It In America agenda--international trade, the ports, revamping the ports, a freight policy--really, for the very first time, we would have an opportunity to have, in the United States, a freight policy.

How do you get the containers off the ship in Long Beach, put them on a railcar, travel across the United States to some terminal, and then, once again, put them on a truck to go to wherever they are going? A policy, a comprehensive policy about how we move freight is critically important to the United States. International commerce and fair trade is important because it does allow for the boosting and the growth of the American economy. Now, free trade is something different, and that basically means give it away to some other country, which we should not do.

This GROW AMERICA Act is one of the principal elements in jump-starting the middle class. Why? Because these are middle class jobs. These are construction jobs on the highways, on the transit system, in the railroads, and certainly in the ports and the freight system--middle class jobs. How do we grow the economy? Build the infrastructure, increase the jobs for the working men and women and the families of America, and we grow the economy.

By the way, we also grow the tax revenues because people are working. They are not tax takers, they are taxpayers.

So this is a proposal that the President has put forward. There has not been one hearing in the House of Representatives on this proposal that is now over 4 months old. Why? Why? Why is it that we have not given the President of the United States at least the consideration and the courtesy of having a hearing on his proposal? We should do so because it happens to be a very, very good proposal.

Let's take a couple of these elements for a moment. This bridge collapsed. Now, this isn't a bridge from Donetsk in Ukraine that was bombed during that war there. This is a bridge in Washington, a bridge north of Seattle on Interstate 5, the highway system between Canada, the United States, and Mexico, right down the coast, the west coast of California. This bridge collapsed just a couple of years ago. And this is not unusual. We have had bridges collapsing all across the United States.

This is part of the GROW AMERICA agenda. It is part of the agenda that we have in mind for the middle class, jump-starting the middle class, because when this bridge is built of American-produced steel in the Buy America laws that are presently on the books--which, by the way, the President says we ought to make even more robust so that your tax dollars are spent on American-made steel, American-made concrete, and the other elements that go into building these infrastructure projects, in other words, spreading the opportunity that comes from the transportation system and the growing and the building of the transportation system into all the other elements in the economy. It can be done.

The GROW AMERICA Act is specifically designed to deal with the deficiency in America's roads, and particularly in the bridges. Oh, the economic loss as a result of this highway system being shut down? Unfathomable. Didn't have to happen. And if we pass the GROW AMERICA Act, it is not likely to happen.

I want to pick up that little piece about what happens when you spend your tax money on American-made systems. Now, we talk a lot about green energy, as we should. We talk about energy conservation, as we should. We talk about wind turbines, and we talk about alternate energy systems such as solar, as we should. But where are those manufacturers? Where are the wind turbines manufactured? Where are the solar systems manufactured? Oh, China. By the way, we have a trade suit against China for dumping solar panels in the United States and decimating the American manufacturing system.

This piece of legislation, 1524, I like it. I am the author of it. H.R. 1524, Make It In America, create clean energy manufacturing jobs--simple. Your tax dollars must be spent on American-made solar, wind, and green energy systems. Now, if some developer out there wants to build a solar energy plant and use your tax dollars as a subsidy to pay for that plant, then if this becomes law, he must buy American-made solar panels. Now, if he wants to use his own money, he can buy whatever he wants. But I believe your tax dollars ought to be spent on American-made equipment, which is part of the Make It In America agenda.

There are many other pieces to this puzzle, and in the Democratic Caucus, we have introduced well over 50 pieces of legislation to advance the program of Make It In America so that the American middle class has a chance to grow and a chance to prosper. We can do that. Any number of those bills--or, in fact, all of them--would advance the middle class, literally jump-starting the middle class and giving American families an opportunity to enjoy the benefits of this incredible society and this incredible country we call America.

Joining me tonight is a woman from Ohio who has spent many years dealing with manufacturing and talking about the things we need to do to build and to grow the manufacturing sector of America.

I think you come from the heart of that. Marcy Kaptur, welcome. Please share with us your thoughts.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. I thank you, Ms. Kaptur, for bringing to our attention ways in which we can actually do something. It may seem small, but we get thousands and thousands of people coming through the gift shop here at the Visitor Center, can they find something made in America. They ought to be able to.

I like your bill, and it will send a message, a message to us, because we will set the policy. If we set that policy right, we can grow the American middle class, jump-start the American middle class, and give the working men and women a real opportunity to enjoy the benefits of this society.

I noticed while you were chatting a colleague of mine who often shares this hour, Mr. Tonko from New York. Thank you for joining us once again. We were here last week, weren't we?

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Representative Tonko, thank you.

I was just thinking through that Export-Import, and the buzz inside the Beltway here in Washington that it only helps the big companies--General Electric and Boeing. The fact of the matter is, yes, it certainly helps those companies export airplanes and jet engines and whatever else, but it is the small companies that really take advantage of it. It is the start-ups and the growing companies that need that support.

I asked my staff, actually an intern, to do some research on the kinds of financing mechanisms that China, Japan, and Korea use to export their ships that they make.

The great shipbuilding industry is no longer in the United States, it is in those countries. There are one or two European countries that are also involved, but each of those countries support those shipbuilding companies with programs that are exactly the same as the Export-Import Bank, which is a loan guarantee. And it works.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. I actually think, if I might say so, it is a small group in the Republican Party that is really taking the lead in this issue. Somehow they believe that government ought not be involved in commercial enterprise, when in fact since the very beginning of our Nation government has been involved, and together with the private sector is responsible for the growth of this incredible economy. This is but one example. There are numerous other ones.

I was just thinking about some of the words that the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) spoke regarding energy policy.

We are now generating and extracting a large amount of natural gas, and so much so that now there is a desire to export that natural gas in liquid form called liquefied natural gas, LNG. We have to be careful because that natural gas has given us the opportunity to pull down our energy costs, manufacturing costs, so we are now seeing companies returning to the United States. Dow Chemical is but one example. I used to represent their major plant out in Pittsburg, California. They are coming home because of energy policy, so we have to be careful about the export of LNG because it can drive up the price and harm the growth of our manufacturing sector.

However--and here is an opportunity--the LNG is a strategic national asset. It is bringing down our cost of energy. Shipbuilding is also a strategic national industry. Our United States Navy, the most powerful and most effective and awesome in the world, depends upon American shipyards. However, private shipbuilding in the United States has basically gone downhill, together with the mariners, the maritime crews that are on those American-built ships. We have an opportunity here. If we are going to export LNG, then we ought to export that LNG on American-built ships with American crews.

It is an issue of public policy. We can do this, and in so doing, we can revitalize an important sector of the American economy, the shipbuilding economy, which is found on all of the coasts of America, from Maine, Philadelphia, around in the gulf to San Diego, and all of the way up to Seattle. There are shipyards that are desperate for business, and the LNG export is an opportunity to capture and bring home the shipbuilding, and when it is coupled with the Export-Import Bank issue, we can really restart and rebuild a critical element in the economy of America.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. You are so correct.

Let me give you an example. Yesterday I called together my manufacturing advisory committee. We had about 50 manufacturers, some very, very large--Boeing was there--and some very small companies. The discussion centered around precisely what you talked about. We had representatives from Lawrence Livermore National Lab, Sandia National Lab, Lawrence Berkeley Lab, and the University of California Davis, researchers, the most advanced research going on in the world.

Their discussion was not about nuclear weapons, which you might expect from Lawrence Livermore and Sandia National Labs, because that is their principal job, how to deal with the nuclear weapons issue, but they were talking about technologies that they have come into and have advanced through their research, like laser research.

One of the companies that was there was a spinoff from research that was done at Lawrence Livermore National Lab on laser technology, and it is called laser peening. Now you have heard of a ball-peen hammer that is used to strike metal, and in striking the metal, it actually strengthens it. Well, now they are using lasers to strike that metal, and the result of it is that you significantly strengthen the metal. And this is now used by General Electric and others in the manufacturing of some of the internal parts in the jet engines. It substantially strengthens them.

That is just one example of the way that research can flow into the manufacturing sector, enhancing the job opportunities for the middle class, and once again, it is made in America and is giving the middle class a jump start.

These things all come together, so this manufacturing group yesterday dealt on everything you talked about. They were talking about export. They talked about tax policy. They talked about research into the private sector.

Another example, the University of California, which I have the honor of representing, has a very large engineering school. It is one of the largest in the Nation, and they are producing--I think they have 8,000 students in their engineering program.

A couple of the graduates, a few years back, developed a new way of programming machine tools--computer-assisted machine tools. They were so advanced that a Japanese machine tool company, one of the largest in the world, began to look at this and said: we need that technology.

They incorporated it into their program, and then they decided they needed to be near the researchers. So they have now located in Davis, California, a major manufacturing program to make these very advanced machine tools, using the research that comes from the university, a marvelous example of what we need to do in our public policies.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. One of the small businesses--of several of them, actually, after listening to the heads of these extraordinary laboratories said: yeah, but I am just a small company, I don't have any money to go and work with you guys on products that we want to develop.

The fellow from the SBA, the Small Business Administration, raised his hand--you know, I kind of see him wanting to jump into the conversation--so I called on him and he said: we can help.

I am going: You are from the government, and you can help? He said: we can help, we can help, we have a voucher program.

I didn't know this existed in the Small Business Administration, but they have a voucher program that a small business that wants to connect to one of the national laboratories or one of the universities can get a voucher that is worth a certain amount of money, take it down to the laboratory, and begin to work with the laboratory on transferring technology to that business.

Wow, I mean, do businesses know that such a thing exists? Are we promoting that? Are we supporting the Small Business Administration, so that they can help these small businesses in really what I think is a unique and wonderful way?

I interrupted you. My apologizes, Mr. Tonko.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. There are so many pieces to this puzzle. At the top of our Make It In America is trade policy. Thank you for bringing that issue back onto the floor. It is something we constantly need to deal with.

We have not talked this last year--actually, since Republicans took control of Congress, we have not talked about the manipulation of currency by China. I know when the Democrats controlled the House, we were putting forth legislation multiple times to address the currency manipulation issue, but there are many, many pieces to this trade policy that are relevant to us.

As you were talking about the manufacturing, I put up one of my favorite photos, a Make It In America photo. You have seen my photo here, I am sure, of a locomotive. The American Recovery Act, a stimulus bill which really did work--trash it politically, but it actually worked--there was money for Amtrak to buy locomotives.

In that particular section of the Recovery Act, Congress wrote--and you voted for it--I wasn't here at the time, I wish I was because I would love to take credit for this--wrote a little paragraph that said this money must be spent on locomotives that are 100 percent made in America--100 percent made in America--a couple hundred million dollars to build these locomotives.

Companies looked at it. A German company said: that is a lot of money, we can build locomotives. Siemens, a large international industrial manufacturing company--located in Sacramento, building light rail

cars--said: we can build American-made locomotives.

They started a new manufacturing plant. They have over 600 workers there today. They are producing 100 percent American-made locomotives because of public policy. Your tax dollars are spent on American-made locomotives.

That supply chain is all across this Nation--not made in Germany, made in America--the wheels, the trains, the tracks, the electronics, all of that, American-made. It is a matter of public policy. The Export-Import Bank, tax policy, how you are going to spend American taxpayer dollars--these are the things we wanted to do to jump-start the middle class--Make It In America.

Mr. Tonko, we have got about 7 or 8 minutes left, so let's roll on.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Tonko, it is always a great pleasure to be on the floor with you. You are so clear. Your vision and your purpose is so very, very clear.

The Make It In America agenda has many pieces: trade policy, tax policy, energy, labor, education, research, and infrastructure. All of it is designed for one purpose, and that is to give American working families an opportunity.

It has become part of our jump-start for the middle class. This is our policy. These are the things that we want to do as Democrats. We want to see the working families of America make it. We want it made in America, and we want American families to be making it, so the Make It In America is one part of this agenda.

When women succeed, America succeeds. This is the fact that a majority of the workforce in America is now women. The reality is they make 70 cents on the dollar for every man that makes a dollar, so we need to address that. We need to make sure that they have the opportunities.

Right now, there is an increasing concern about on-demand labor, which is mostly women. You can imagine the destruction to family life when a woman that is working at a retail store gets a phone call and has to immediately report to work for 3, 4, or 5 hours.

This is craziness, but there is a whole series of family-friendly policies for women that are involved in this issue, including the minimum wage.

Finally, the issue of education, which we have talked about. These are the jump-start the middle class policies that we are pushing forward.

Make It In America is the agenda that you and I have talked about so many times here on the floor--little progress is being made--but I am telling you, if we had the majority in this House, these pieces of legislation that we have talked about today would be sitting over in the Senate and they would be on the President's desk very, very quickly--critical policies for the future of this Nation, critical policies for the working men and women and the families of America.

We intend to do it. We intend to see this agenda, the agenda for the working men and women advance.

Mr. Tonko, do you want to have another 30 seconds before we are told to wrap?

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