Jobs: House of Representatives

Floor Speech

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Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman from California.

Mr. Garamendi has been as faithful in bringing before the American people the concept of the Make It in America agenda. And, of course, the gentlelady from Illinois pointed out that it means two things: that we're going to succeed. We're going to grab opportunity. We're going to expand our quality of life. We're going to make it, in other words. And we're going to make it in America. We're going to manufacture it in America. We're going to grow it in America, and we're going to sell it here and across the world.

We can compete with anybody in the world, frankly, given the proper environment. And I have talked to numerous members of the corporate community. I have talked to labor. I have talked to the National Association of Manufacturers. And we are going to pursue this Make It in America agenda because Americans know that we need to be focused on jobs, on expanding opportunity and providing for good wages and good benefits for working American families so they can provide a good life for themselves and their families; and, as a consequence of doing so, will create communities and States and a Nation which will be and will continue to be the envy of the world.

Democrats believe, Mr. Garamendi, that when more products are made in America, more families will be able to make it in America, as I said. That's why we've worked hard since the last Congress to advance the Make It in America agenda--nobody has worked harder than you have to do that--a legislative agenda that helps create conditions for American companies to stay here, innovate here, and create jobs here. When more products are made in America, more families have access to well-paying middle class jobs. And when more products are made in America, we are able to turn expertise in manufacturing them into the new products and new industries of the future.

``Make It in America'' is about creating middle class opportunity and about keeping America's innovators here and keeping our innovative edge.

Mr. Grove, who founded Intel, made the observation that the problem that we have in America today is we are still the inventive center of the world. We're still the innovative and development center of the world. But too often what we're doing is taking the products that we've invented, innovated, and developed and taking them to scale overseas. His proposition is--and I think Andy Grove is absolutely right on this--if you continue to do that, the inventors, innovators, and developers will move to where the product is being taken to scale.

The president of Dow recently wrote a book--by the way, in January, the publishers named it--and the name of that book is ``Make It in America.'' As a matter of fact, I think I am going to get copies of that book for all our Members.

So far, President Obama has signed seven Make It in America pieces of legislation that we passed last year. They speed up the patent process for inventors; help small businesses with loans and tax cuts that enable them to innovate, grow, and create new jobs; and strengthen science, technology, engineering, and math education, much of which is on your poster there.

One thing I would add that I'd say to my friend is, and I'm not sure where you want to add it, but regulatory policy is going to be critical. And what I have said is that in the last administration the financial community got way out of hand. Why? We took the referee off the field.

We need to put the referee back on the field but make sure the referee doesn't get in the way of the game being played within the rules. And that's of a critical nature.

Some people want to take the referee off the field and forget about the environment. Some people want to take the referee off the field and forget about fair wages. Some people want to take the referee off the field and not worry about a safe working place.

All of those things are important, but it's important to make sure that, within the rules--and we can do so profitably in America. I've talked to Alan Mulally at Ford. Whirlpool has brought enterprises back from offshore. GE has brought enterprises up. They still have a lot offshore, but they brought some back.

And the proof of the pudding is foreign manufacturers have come to the United States and are exporting their cars to other places. They're selling them here but exporting, which shows, clearly, that you can make it in America and do so profitably.

In the weeks to come we will be proposing more ``Make It in America'' legislation. And we hope that it will win support of both sides of the aisle. This is not a partisan agenda. There's not a Republican who doesn't want to make sure Americans make it in America.

But we haven't, frankly, in the first 3 months of this session, and we're about to leave. But there's nothing on the schedule that's focused on jobs. So we will have taken up January, February, and March, and not focused on jobs.

As a matter of fact, as the gentleman knows, the only thing we have done is pass H.R. 1, which, Mr. Zandi, John McCain's advisor, says will cost us 700,000 jobs.

So I'm hopeful that we can pursue, in a bipartisan basis, the Make It in America agenda, expand our manufacturing capability, grow those jobs that pay well, and provide good benefits, and make America the kind of country it has been, is now, and we want to be in the future.

I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I thank him for focusing America's attention on this critical agenda.

Mr. GARAMENDI. I thank you very much, Mr. Hoyer. And we thank you for your leadership on this entire agenda because this is about middle class America. This is the middle class America that was rapidly disappearing over the last 15 to 20 years as we exported American manufacturing jobs. Your agenda, the Make It in America agenda, brings those jobs back to America.

I will note that there are a couple of pieces of legislation that you could add to that list.

Mr. HOYER. These are, of course, the ones that we have already passed and that have been signed into law. But you have a very important piece of legislation.

Mr. GARAMENDI. I'll come to the future, but I'd like to add one to the past, and that is, in the legislation that we passed last December, without any Republican votes, there was a provision that gave to every business in America the opportunity to immediately write off, against their taxes, 100 percent of a capital investment. So if they wanted to expand their business they could write off immediately, not depreciate over several years, but immediately. Not a Republican vote for that.

There was also in that piece of legislation, actually in a previous piece of legislation, a tax provision, one of the things we talk about here on our agenda, that would eliminate a tax break that American corporations had when they offshored a job. When they sent a job offshore, American corporations received about $12 billion in tax breaks every year. Well, what's that about? We eliminated it. Again, we had no help from our colleagues on the Republican side.

So our agenda started way before this year. We're going to carry it forward with your leadership. And we've got an agenda here of seven different elements in that, tax policy being one of them.

Thank you so much for your leadership on all of this.

Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman. I thank you for yielding again, but simply to say I thank you for your leadership. You have been one of the most faithful, effective, and articulate spokespersons for an agenda for middle and working class Americans.

Mr. GARAMENDI. You're kind, but Mr. Tonko's been there this entire time. Let me turn back to Mr. Tonko.

Thank you very much, Mr. Hoyer.

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