American Jobs Act

Floor Speech

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I suspect that all of us, all 435 of us, went back to our districts during the August recess. Now, I would suspect that most every Member of this House heard what I heard. I suspect that all of us who were listening heard the same message: When can I go back to work? When will there be a job for me? I'm going to lose my house because I lost my job. I can't afford to put my kids through school. You guys have got to get the job engine working once again. You've got to get Americans back to work.

Well, we are back here at work, and we're probably at the 257th day of this Congress, and yet the Republican majority has yet to put one jobs-creating bill on the floor. Now, they put a lot of bills on the floor, all of which would actually reduce employment. You cut the budgets, you're cutting somebody's job.

Fortunately, last week, the President of the United States came before this Congress, stood there where the Speaker is now standing, and presented to the American people an answer to the question that all of us heard during the recess. And he said: We can and we will put Americans back to work when Congress acts on this jobs act.

The American Jobs Act is now before the United States Congress and the United States Senate, and it's time for us to act so that Americans can go back to work.

Some say we could delay until after the next election. It will be 17 months--just short of a year and a half--before the next Congress will be in session and we will be able to pass legislation. There is not an unemployed American in this Nation that can or wants to wait 17 months to get a job. We have the opportunity today to put Americans back to work with the American Jobs Act.

The American Jobs Act works. It works. Americans can immediately go back to work as soon as that legislation is passed by this House and the Senate and put on the President's desk.

This afternoon, we're going to take maybe an hour with my colleagues to talk about various parts of the American Jobs Act, and we're going to start right now with the Representative from Illinois.

Jan, if you would join us, you talked earlier about this very eloquently on the steps of the Capitol. Please share with us.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Let me add a personal twist to all of this about jobs.

When I grew up in Chicago--I was the daughter of a furniture salesman and a Chicago public schoolteacher--the American Dream was alive and well. On my dad's modest income, we could afford a little house in a quiet, middle class neighborhood.

Back then, a man could work in the steel mills on Chicago's South Side--one good union job with family health care benefits and a decent pension--and really live a middle class life. The family could own a home and buy a car and even send the kids to college. That was the 1950s, and anything seemed possible if you were willing to work hard. Incomes were going up for everyone. Income inequality was shrinking, and Americans were experiencing the greatest growth in living standards in history. For most working families, that American Dream was in reach, and that was the normal.

But today, after decades of attacks on organized labor, the passage of tax policies that favor wealthy individuals and corporations, the growing disparity of income, the squandering of a budget surplus, and the turning of a blind eye to Wall Street greed and recklessness, that dream is drowning in a sea of joblessness. I feel like the Republicans are pushing this as the new normal: that the rich get richer and the rest of the country gets poorer. Fortunately, our President, President Barack Obama, has made it perfectly clear that we are not helpless in the face of our daunting but man-made economic challenges, and he has proposed a jobs bill that will immediately improve people's lives and jump-start the economy.

The answer to this jobs crisis is surprisingly simple. If you want to create jobs, then create jobs, good jobs--jobs that can provide people with a middle class life, that can rebuild our middle class, jobs like the 35,000 schools that under the President's bill will be repaired.

There are children all over this country right now who are sitting in classrooms where the ceilings are crumbling, that have dangerous asbestos in them, that are leaking energy, that don't have the wiring for the new technologies that our children need to succeed in this world and to get those 21st century jobs. We don't have the kind of schools and classrooms in which our children are going to be able to compete in this 21st century world. At the same time, we have hundreds and thousands of construction workers and electricians and boilermakers and maintenance workers who are jobless right now, who are sitting home, unemployed, who are more than willing to roll up their sleeves and give our schoolchildren the kind of classrooms that they deserve.

So here we have a tremendous need, and we have the people who can answer that need. Not only will they be back to work, but it will jump-start our economy and be good for everyone. It is not rocket science. We can do this, and we need to do it now. As the President said, the election isn't until 14 months from now. The Republicans seem to want to adjudicate this issue at that time, but this isn't about politics. This is about all those families who simply want a job. They don't want to be receiving unemployment benefits. As a matter of fact, they want to pay taxes.

If we want to reduce the deficit, jobs are the answer once again. Jobs equal deficit reduction. That's why we can't wait to pass this American Jobs Act. We need to enlist the help of all Americans to call their Members of Congress, Republicans and Democrats--I'm talking about the people out there regardless of party--to say, ``We need to pass this right now.'' This is the way that we can get back to what the normal was when I was growing up, when there was opportunity. People lived a middle class life. Instead, we're watching that middle class disappear and that American Dream slip through our fingers. The economy needs to be revived. The President has the answer. We need to do it now.

Mr. GARAMENDI. I thank the gentlelady from Illinois who speaks so eloquently on this.

As you were talking about the schools, 44 percent of the principals across this Nation say clearly that their schools are not up to the standard that they want to have their own children in. In the classrooms, paint on the walls is falling off and bathrooms are inadequate, playgrounds and the like. There are 35,000 schools across this country that can be repaired, that can be rebuilt--new classrooms, science classrooms, upgrading the Internet systems in these schools, and the playgrounds. All of that is possible.

How correct you are when you say there are men and women out there who are ready to do that work. These are a lot of jobs. This isn't heavy equipment work. This is heavy ``person power'' work. Let's put these people to work.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. May I say one more thing about it?

Mr. GARAMENDI. Please.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. These are jobs that can be created right away. I'm from the Midwest, so we actually have a construction season; but for fixing schools, you can do that around the year, around the calendar. We can put these people to work within a few months. They can be on the job, earning money. This is such a sensible program.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Actually, in discussing this with the administration, the day the bill is signed, the schools can begin the work because the administrative process is very straightforward. This is a very, very important one. We're talking 35,000 schools, perhaps several hundred thousand or a couple hundred thousand men and women going to work immediately to repair our schools. Wouldn't that give us community pride? My school is getting repaired. It's getting a paint job. The toilets are getting fixed and the classroom, the science classroom.

This is community pride. This is American pride in our most basic of investments--the investment in our children.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. The sign you have there says that poor conditions of their schools interfere with students' learning. So we are also depriving our children of that sense of pride that will motivate them to be good students, to learn, to be ready to take over in this 21st century job market.

Mr. GARAMENDI. One of my favorite subjects is Making It In America. The way the legislation is written, when that gallon of paint, when that heating/air-conditioning system or the playground equipment is brought to the school, it's going to be made in America. It's going to be made in America because the legislation that the President brought to us says that the money will be used to buy equipment made in America.

I notice that our colleague from Maryland, Donna Edwards, has joined us.

I know we were talking earlier about some of your favorite subjects. I believe it was infrastructure. So please, if you will, Donna, join us in this conversation.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Representative Edwards, thank you so very much for your compassion and passion for these issues. Bringing FDR, the monument, and Martin Luther King together around this set of issues is really important.

This is the worst economy since the Great Depression, and I remember on one of those plaques at the FDR memorial--and I may get this wrong a little bit--but he said, we measure our progress not by those who have much could have more, but by those who have little have enough. He had the compassion.

Last week, the President brought to us an answer to the compelling question that we hear--what are you going to do about jobs?--the American Jobs Act.

You spoke so eloquently about the infrastructure--the streets, the bridges, the schools--and that 2 million construction workers are out of jobs. The President has proposed a $50 billion immediate infusion of money into America's infrastructure--into our roads, our bridges, our water systems, our airports. There is $50 billion available this year to put Americans back to work.

It's not just the construction workers that will have those jobs, because these people will be able to keep their homes. They will be able to buy their food; they will be able to bring that money back into their economy with what is called the multiplier effect. And so that $50 billion may run through the economy three times, two and a half times, so that instead of 2 million, maybe it will be 3 million that will get their jobs.

I know that you want to add to this, Ms. Edwards.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. There you have it. That's when we have the opportunity if we act now. If this Chamber, empty but for three of us and our staffs here and the desk crew, were to act tomorrow on the legislation that the President has brought before us--it's in proper form; it's before us--we could take it up, and these people, all that you talked about, could be at work in the next couple of weeks. That's the possibility.

Ms. Edwards, thank you so much for joining us and for your eloquence and for your determination to make this happen.

Our friend from Tennessee (Mr. Cohen) has joined us. Please share with us your thoughts from middle America.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Cohen, thank you so very much. Your experience from the great Midwest, along America's great river, is really important for us to understand.

We really have an opportunity here right now. This legislation is before Congress and the Senate, and we have an opportunity for a better deal for America. It's an investment in America. We talked about the infrastructure. That's an investment that will last for 50 to 100 years because it's in the ground. It's the roads, the sanitation system. It's also a critical investment in tomorrow's workers, in our children.

The American Jobs Act has money for 280,000 teachers; 280,000 teachers will be able to stay on the job. Right now in California, teachers are getting laid off as they are in most other States of this Nation. That means that classroom sizes are going up, and the educational opportunity for our children is diminishing. We have no more important investment. Roads are important and bridges are important, but the most important investment in any society, in any economy is the investment in education, in the children, in tomorrow's workforce. 280,000 teachers will be able to stay in the classroom. This money flows directly to the school districts, not a big administrative task at all but one that goes there directly.

Small businesses. Our Republican colleagues love to talk about small businesses, and they say, correctly, most jobs are created by small businesses. That's true. That's accurate. Sixty-four percent of the new jobs over the past 15 years were created by small businesses. But what are they doing for small businesses? Cutting the contracts that the small businesses depend upon as they push an austerity budget.

The American Jobs Act takes a different path. It tells small businesses: You get an immediate tax break; 3.1 percent of your payroll tax will be eliminated in the next year. That's a lot of money, and I'll explain how much it is. In addition to that, if you hire a long-term unemployed worker, your entire payroll tax will disappear.

Let me tell you what that means. Let's take a warehouse.

You've got warehouses in your district?

Mr. COHEN. We've got lots of warehouses. They're full of goods ready to go on Federal Express planes and service the rest of this Nation. It all starts in Memphis, Tennessee, and goes out from there.

Mr. GARAMENDI. I thought they might have some of that Tennessee whiskey in them. Some of that, too?

Mr. COHEN. Some of that, too.

Mr. GARAMENDI. So a warehouse with a payroll last year of $7 million that this year hires 40 new workers, it would add $2 million to its payroll. It would get a full refund of the 6.2 percent payroll taxes paid on the $2 million of payroll. How much is that? That's $124,000 that goes immediately to the bottom line of that warehouse. In addition to that, they have already seen a 3.1 percent reduction--actually, it's a 50 percent reduction in their payroll tax for workers who were already there, and that's another $155,000. So we are looking here at $279,000 of reduced expenses, taxes, to that company. That means that they can improve the warehouse. That means they can expand or hire more workers. This is in the President's American jobs program specifically for small businesses.

Listen up, America. Listen up businesses out there. There is an opportunity here for you to immediately expand your business, reduce your payroll taxes, hire new workers, bringing a new worker on that has been on long-term unemployment and paying no payroll taxes for the next year. This is very, very important and very big, and it is immediately available as soon as the leadership, the Republican leadership in this House, brings the American jobs bill to the floor.

Mr. Cohen, if you would like to carry on here, I know you have some more thoughts.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. I've been kind of shuffling the boards down here because you went through several subjects along the way, and each one is so terribly important and pertinent to the issue. But I think I can wrap it all up in this, and that is, America lost about 50 percent of its manufacturing jobs in the last 20, 25 years. We went from 20 million, 21 million manufacturing jobs to just over 10 million today, but we can once again rebuild the American manufacturing sector. That's where the middle class jobs are.

You had talked about tax policy, that the tax policy has shifted from one that was broad based and which the wealthy and everybody participated in in a progressive mechanism in which now the wealthy--and Warren Buffett has said it so very well--he actually pays a lower tax rate than does his secretary. He said, This is wrong.

This is upside down and wrong. And he's quite correct. But if we take a look at the manufacturing sector of America and we apply a couple of principles, that is, that we're going to buy American--and this has to do with our policies here.

Trade policies. We've been giving it away in these international trade deals. On the taxes, we just talked about that. The tax burden has shifted from the wealthy down to the middle class, further eroding the purchasing power and the status of the middle class, so much so that just yesterday the Bureau of Labor Statistics came out with a report that the poverty level in America has reached the highest level in 52 years. That's the pushing down of the American middle class so that those at the bottom have been pushed out of the middle class into poverty.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Exactly right. Twenty-two million children living in poverty, not knowing where their next meal is going to come from. At the same time, they're cutting the food programs.

This is our program. This is the President's program. Every one of the things that is in the American Jobs Act is here. Taxes. There are tax breaks for businesses. And this entire program is paid for by ending the giveaway of our tax money to the oil companies. That's $4 billion a year--$40 billion over the next decade--of our tax money going to support the oil industry, the wealthiest industry in this world.

Mr. COHEN. How about the hedge fund guys? There's another Steve Cohen. There's the one in New York that's got all the money, the hedge fund guy, billions and billions of dollars.

What does he pay on his income?

Mr. GARAMENDI. Well, he pays 15 percent. Somehow or another they got into the law. The hedge fund folks that are making hundreds of millions of dollars a year--in some cases, billions--are paying 15 percent on their income. Now they've got it classified as capital gains when, in fact, it's their labor. That is, it's their work. As you and I are working here and as people are working in the manufacturing plants, it's their work, but it's taxed at 15 percent, not at 35 or 38 percent. What's that all about? Where are we going to end that tax break? That's about $17 billion over 10 years.

Mr. COHEN. And that shouldn't exist. That's absurd. There's another Steve Cohen, the magician, and apparently he had something to do with the Tax Code when they took care of the other Steve Cohen.

Mr. GARAMENDI. So taxes are part of it. The energy policy, we haven't talk about that. We talked about labor--putting men and women back to work. And the education system, 280,000 new teachers or teachers in the classroom. Research and infrastructure, this is part of the Make it in America agenda which can be carried out with the American Jobs Act.

So, if we pass the American Jobs Act, we've got a really good opportunity to once again make things in America, because the legislation calls for about $50 billion in infrastructure and the establishment of an infrastructure bank for sanitation, water systems, Internet, high-speed cable, and all of those kinds of things in the infrastructure bank. So we may be looking at $60 billion, $70 billion a year of investment in these infrastructure projects. Coupled with that is Buy America, Make it in America. Buy American-made buses, American-made locomotives. The concrete and steel in the bridges, that's going to be American made.

I can tell you one of the greatest horror stories about infrastructure. It's right in San Francisco, just outside my district. The San Francisco Bay Bridge, a multibillion-dollar rebuilding of the Bay Bridge because it falls down in an earthquake. It did once. We don't want it to happen again. Multibillion dollars. To save 10 percent, the contract went to Chinese steel companies. All of the steel manufacturing in that bridge comes from China. Thousands of jobs in China. And to make things worse, the inspectors were over there, and they didn't do a good job. Beyond that, when the bridge parts came over here, Chinese workers came with the bridge. No more of that. We're going to make it in America.

I've got a bill in--others are working on this--and that is, if it's American taxpayer money, by God, it's going to be used to buy American taxpayer goods and services. We can do this, and the first step is the American Jobs Act.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. They're talking about laying off 40,000 people across America in the next year.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. The American public, through the TARP program, bailed out Wall Street, bailed out the banks, and the banks have done nothing. The big Wall Street banks have done nothing except enrich themselves at the expense of the American taxpayer. Those days should be over. We need to move in a different direction.

One of the groups we really need to help are those men and women that have been fighting the wars. Now, my personal view is that the war in Afghanistan ought to stop tomorrow. We ought to bring that $120 billion a year that we're spending in Afghanistan, bring it back here, invest it in America in education and bridges, infrastructure and debt relief; 120 billion a year in Afghanistan, and we're still spending a vast amount of money in Iraq. End those wars, bring that money home. Bring the soldiers home. And when we do, we're bringing home a lot of wounded Americans, wounded Americans who need our respect and who need jobs.

In the American Jobs Act there is a special place for veterans, special advantage. They deserve it. They're the ones that have sacrificed. They're the ones that took time out of their lives to fight those wars. Whatever we may think about those wars, we can only think good thoughts and honor the veterans, and here's a way to do it.

There are 877,000 unemployed veterans in America today--nearly 1 million; 877,000 looking for work. In the American Jobs Act, there is a very special tax credit available to any employer who hires a veteran. You can reduce your taxes by $5,600 right off the bottom, $5,600 tax credit--not a deduction, but a credit. And if you happen to hire one of those wounded vets--and we know them, we've seen their pictures, we know what post-traumatic stress syndrome is all about--hire a wounded vet, and it's a $9,600 tax credit to every employer, whomever it happens to be, across this Nation. Now that's what we need to do.

All the talk about balancing the budget, all the talk about a deficit hasn't put one person to work in America; in fact, it has laid off hundreds of thousands of people. We need to put America back to work. The American Jobs Act does that, and it does it in a very special way. For those Americans that have been out there sacrificing in Iraq, in Afghanistan it gives them an opportunity. It gives every employer an incentive to hire those workers. We owe it to these men and women. And when these men and women go back to work, they become taxpayers. And when men and women in America go back to work and become taxpayers, then the deficit will be resolved, then we will solve the deficit.

We need to make cuts, we need to do those things, but those are in the out years. Right now, it is about jobs. The President has given us the legislation. The question for our Republican leadership here is--they control this House; they're the ones that set the agenda; they're the only ones that can bring a bill to the floor--When will you bring the American Jobs Act to this floor so that we can put Americans back to work?

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Mr. GARAMENDI. We have a different view here. I'm confident that the President will be reelected because he understands very clearly that we need to put Americans back to work, And he has given us the American Jobs Act--complete legislation. All the sections are there. All the writing is done. All the legal work is done. It is now before the United States Congress and the Senate, and it's up to us, 435 of us in this House. Are we ready to act? Are we ready to do what Americans want us to do? And that is to put them back to work.

Mr. COHEN. Pass the bill.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Pass the bill. Pass the bill. Put Americans back to work.

I'm going to quickly go through some of the parts of this bill and the way in which they affect Americans.

It's about investment, investing in our infrastructure: $50 billion directly available for the transportation sector--rail, high-speed rail, intercity rail, bridges, roads, $50 billion available this year to put men and women back to work repairing our transportation infrastructure. Another $10 billion for an infrastructure bank in which the pension funds of America, the public pension funds, could invest. And perhaps another $20 billion or $30 billion in that infrastructure bank to once again augment the development of the infrastructure that we need--water systems, sanitation systems, all of those communications systems that we desperately need.

That's on the infrastructure side.

On the education side, repairing our schools:

Thirty-five thousand schools to be repaired, repainted, classrooms, science laboratories, as well as the playgrounds; 35,000 schools out there. Your neighborhood school, the opportunity for it to have a new paint job, a new bathroom, whatever is needed; 280,000 teachers. You could fill the entire stadium in Ann Arbor, Michigan, football, 100,000, and still have a third game with only 80,000 people. 280,000, think of it. The Ann Arbor, Michigan, stadium filled 2.8 times over. Teachers in the classroom. This is exciting.

Veterans, a very powerful incentive where a business can reduce its tax burden. That is the bottom-line tax reduced by $9,600 when you hire a disabled veteran. That man, that woman is going back to work, becoming a taxpayer. Once again, pride in our Nation. This is powerful.

For the unemployed, an extension of unemployment benefits, and we didn't even get to that today--and all of this in the context of rebuilding the American manufacturing sector.

More than 10 million American manufacturing jobs have been lost in the last two decades. We can put them back to work if we use our public policy, use our tax money that's going to build those bridges or those roads, buses and locomotives, use our tax money to buy American-made, American-made equipment. All it takes is a law, and it works.

Sacramento, California, near where I live, has built--or Siemens, a German company, has built a major manufacturing plant in Sacramento, California, to manufacture light railcars and Amtrak locomotives.

Why did they do that? They did that because the American Recovery Act, the stimulus bill that our Republican colleagues like to trash, said that the money for transportation systems--buses, light rail, and trains--must be spent on American-made equipment. So Siemens said, well, if that's the law, we want the business. They built the plant, and they're manufacturing light rail cars and locomotives today in America, using American equipment, using American workers. That's what we can do if we are willing to pass the laws to make it in America.

Photovoltaic systems, wind turbines, all of these things supported with our tax dollars. Why not use those tax dollars to buy American-made solar cells and wind turbines?

The President has given us the opportunity to do what we should do, as representatives of the American people. Put Americans back to work. Pass the American Jobs Act. Pass the American Jobs Act.

Mr. Cohen, wrap this up for us.

Mr. COHEN. I just thank you, Mr. Garamendi, for the leadership and for putting this hour together and allowing me to join you. And let's say it together. Pass the bill.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Pass the bill.

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

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