Make it in America

Floor Speech

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, it's good to be back and wishing you and all of our colleagues the best of this new year and happy new year, and I hope yours and the other 433 Members of this august body had a great holiday season.

For many Americans that was not the case, however. Unemployment remains high and, unfortunately, just before we broke for the Christmas holidays, we did pass a piece of legislation that extended the unemployment insurance, and that's really important, and also extended for 2 months the reduction in the payroll tax, and that put money into the pockets of working men and women around this Nation.

We have much work to do this year. We just heard a presentation on the Keystone Pipeline, which will add a few jobs, some 6,000 jobs, temporary, building the pipeline, and that's good. The rush to judgment on it, however, should be very cautiously approached. Pipelines can be dangerous. You only need to look in California, where a gas pipeline exploded and the recent Yellowstone contamination that was caused by a broken oil pipeline.

Haste can make waste, and it can cause problems, so I would urge us to be circumspect. I suspect someday this pipeline will be built, but it ought to be built properly and in the right locations.

But the subject of tonight's discourse is really about jobs. I'll be joined a little later by my friend Paul Tonko from the great State of New York, and perhaps Marcy Kaptur from Ohio will be here. But what we want to talk about is jobs, not just temporary jobs building a pipeline, but rather solid, American jobs in the manufacturing sector. For more than a year, we've been talking about making it in America, rebuilding the great American engine of wealth, the great American engine that created the biggest middle class anywhere in the world, and the great American engine that over the last 20 years has seen an incredible decline, often caused by policy, governmental policy.

A couple of examples to give you: outsourcing. Outsourcing doesn't just happen. It happens because the economics of the situation have changed.

When I arrived here in November 2009, a debate was under way about how to rebuild the American economy. One of the things that we took up was the issue of taxes. It turns out that American corporations receive somewhere between $12 billion and $15 billion a year in tax reductions. That is you and I, all of us, get to pay corporations for doing, what, sending jobs offshore--offshoring American jobs.

Fortunately, in December of 2010, without any support at all from our Republican colleagues, we passed legislation that terminated $12 billion of those subsidies, providing a positive encouragement--or eliminating a positive encouragement--for corporations to offshore jobs. We can do more, and that's what the Make It in America agenda is all about.

There are many, many pieces in this. Economists who look at the American economy and where we are today will note that we have seen significant growth in jobs. The unemployment rate is down to 8.5 percent, and that's a good thing; but it is still far too high. We have seen some 330,000 manufacturing jobs created just this last year; and that's good, but it's not enough. On the other hand, we have also seen layoffs.

The government sector, despite what you might hear, has actually seen a very significant decline in employment. State governments and local governments all across this Nation have been laying off people. In California, 42,000 teachers have lost their jobs in the last 2 years. An incredible statistic. At a time when we need a more highly educated workforce, to layoff teachers seems to be a real serious no-brainer. Why would we do that? Well, we did it. And we have layoffs like that occurring across this Nation. We need to turn that around, and we can. We need to turnaround the decline that occurred over the last 20 years in the manufacturing sector, and we have made a start.

But there is much more to be done. We have lost perhaps 45 percent of all of our manufacturing jobs, from some 19 million down to just over 11 million in the last 20 years. Coming back, 330,000 this year. More to be done.

Fortunately, we have an ally in the White House. That ally is President Barack Obama who, as he said just last week, wakes up every day thinking about how can we, Americans, solve this crisis in our economy. What can we do to put men and women back to work? How can families know they have a secure future?

Way back in September, President Obama proposed the American Jobs Act. It wasn't the first thing that was done to get Americans back to work, but it's a very, very important step. The first thing that was done by President Obama and the Democratic majority in this House way back in January of 2009 when the new administration took office was to create the American Recovery Act. Some people call it the stimulus. No matter what else you hear, the stimulus works; and it's working today.

In my district out in California, you can't go very far down a highway, across a bridge, see a levee, see a new manufacturing facility in place without knowing or seeing a sign that says the American Recovery Act. Bridges are being built. Highways have been repaired. The Caldecott Tunnel on the East Bay in the Oakland Hills has now been drilled through the mountain. It'll be completed, almost totally financed by local government and a larger majority of the money from the American Recovery Act. We can rebuild jobs in America. That was step one.

Along the way, we've seen tax policy changes. We've seen a tax policy that the President proposed and enacted by the Democrats with some Republican help in 2010 that actually gave companies a 100 percent write-off for every capital investment that they made. The result of that, some of the greatest capital investment in the last 20 years has been made just in 2011. We're putting people back to work. We have a long way to go. We're not nearly where we need to be.

And for employers, an incentive in the American Jobs Act that the President proposed last September has now become law, with both Democrat and Republican support, bipartisanship really does exist; and that proposal, now law, gives employers a tax reduction, a credit, for every returned veteran from America's wars. They can go all of the way back to the Vietnam war. An employer that takes a long-term unemployed veteran can get a $2,500 reduction in their taxes for every veteran they keep on for a full year. For a disabled veteran, injured in the line of service, a $9,600 reduction in the employer's taxes. That's a very, very powerful incentive to hire those veterans who have sacrificed so much for this Nation, for the very safety and the freedom we enjoy. That's one part of the American Jobs Act.

A couple of other pieces of the American Jobs Act still have to be put in place, and the one that I like is called the infrastructure bank. We know that we are not flush with cash. We know the Federal Government has a serious deficit, and we know that we need to solve that. We also know that we're not going to solve it unless we actually put people back to work. And the infrastructure bank is a very good way to deal with two problems simultaneously, putting people back to work, building infrastructure, perhaps pipelines, certainly those kinds of projects that have a cash flow--sanitation systems, water systems, toll roads, toll bridges--all of those things where there is a cash flow where we pay a fee for using that particular piece of infrastructure.

The infrastructure bank would be started with a loan from the Federal Government. The President recommended $10 billion. I say go the whole route, let's put in $20 billion, $25 billion of Federal money, and then reach out to the pension funds around the Nation and give them an opportunity to invest in this. Right now a government bond, it's less than 2 percent return. An infrastructure bank could probably give you a 5, 6 percent return. So the pension funds would have a place to invest both public and private pension funds. Most who have looked at this believe we could generate anywhere from $70 billion to $100 billion of loan capability that could immediately be used to build projects.

I know in my district that we have sanitation projects that need to be built. We have water projects. We have levees. We have dams, and we have other infrastructure that needs to be built. Those that are cash-flow possible can use the infrastructure bank; and in so doing, we free up those other infrastructure projects for which there is not a cash flow; for example, the levees that I just mentioned. And there are many other projects, highway projects, universities, laboratories, research facilities that you can then use the general fund, as we have done for more than a century, to build these infrastructure projects.

So the American Jobs Act, as proposed by the President, has an infrastructure bank in it. It also has a major infrastructure project tandem to it. So those two things together would put men and women to work across this Nation.

And even more can be done if this particular piece of legislation were to pass. This is the real Make It in America piece of legislation. I happen to be the author of it. I wasn't the first to think of it. For some time we have had what we think as Buy America, but it has been routinely ignored over the years. So the Buy America provisions, while ignored, need to be strengthened; and that's what this piece of legislation does.

What it does, it says that our tax money, gasoline tax, 18 1/2 cents, diesel tax of 25 cents a gallon goes into the transportation fund. Is that money being used to buy American buses and railroad and high-speed rail, the transit facilities? Is it? Often, it is not. But if this bill passes--and it is now before the Transportation Committee here in the House--were it to pass, it would require that all of our tax money spread out over a 5-year phase-in process would be used to buy American-made equipment.

Do you want to travel up to San Francisco? You ought to. We could use your tax dollars out there. Come and visit. But as you travel from Oakland to San Francisco, you'll travel on the old Oakland-San Francisco Bay bridge. Just adjacent to it is a new, magnificent bridge being built. But it's not being built with American steel. And most of the welding was done not by Americans, but by Chinese. In an effort to save 10 percent, the State of California decided that they would buy Chinese products, Chinese steel. Thousands of jobs were created in China, virtually none in America. Chinese engineers came to see that the steel was properly erected. Where were the American engineers?

This piece of legislation has now been adopted by the State of California. It's the law there now. And I dare say that if this type of legislation were the law when the San Francisco-Oakland Bay bridge was put out to bid, that steel would have been made in America, American steelworkers would be employed, American welders would have done the welding, and there would not have been the quality problems that were found in the Chinese product and their Chinese workmanship. Let's make it in America. Lets use our tax money to buy American-made equipment.

We just had a long discussion about oil, and we're going to use oil for a long time. That discussion also talked about natural gas, which many people see as a transition away from the dependency on oil to a dependency on renewable and green energy systems of the future. So we're probably going to be in a transition period for several years. But in order to get to that place where we are totally independent of the oil dictators around the world, where we are no longer using oil for transport but rather using electricity or natural gas, we're going to need assistance to move to that.

For many years now, starting way back in the 1970s, the United States has had a policy of implementing what are known as green energy systems, principally solar. And I think all of us are familiar with solar and similarly the wind turbines that are now being found on hilltops across this Nation.

So where are those things made? Where do we make those? Where do those solar cells come from? Where are the wind turbines manufactured? Until very, very recently, not in America. But your tax money and my tax money is used to subsidize this new industry. And as that money is being spent, it must be spent on American-made equipment so that Americans can have those jobs. We're going to continue to import. If you want to go buy a solar system for your house, you can buy whatever you want. But if this bill passes, if you want that tax subsidy, then it's going to have to be an American-made solar system. No more outsourcing American dollars to China or Europe or wherever. Bring those dollars home. Put Americans back to work at home.

These are things that can be done. It is a policy direction. And this Congress and the Senate should be moving quickly to make sure that things are made once again in America, particularly those things that use our tax dollars, whether it's a bus, a rail line, a bridge, a solar cell, or a wind turbine. All of this is possible. All we need is a law that says that our tax money will be used to buy American-made equipment. That is just one part of what we call Make It in America.

This initiative has many other pieces. Some of it deals with education. We know--anybody that looks at any economy around the world knows that if you're going to have a strong economy, you have to have a very well-educated workforce.

So where are we in America? Are we the best educated workforce in the world? We used to be, but not today. Not today. Earlier, I mentioned 42,000 teachers were laid off in California. President Obama had a solution to that. In the American Jobs Act introduced last September, President Obama said, let's hire teachers. Some 280,000 teachers could have been hired across this Nation for the fall semester if our Republican colleagues had brought that bill to the floor and we had found the sufficient votes here and in the Senate. That's not a bad thing to put 280,000 teachers back to work.

And, by the way, what kind of a facility will they be working in? If you were to look across our Nation at the schools, you will see many that are rundown, old, the laboratories either in disuse or very ancient equipment, not up-to-date--even in Kansas City. So what are we going to do about this? The President said, let's invest in refurbishing our schools, putting men and women back to work, painting, fixing up the school grounds, repairing the toilets, building the new laboratories that are necessary for today's educational system.

It hasn't happened yet. I would ask our Republican colleagues if they care so mightily about the economy, they ought to care about the most fundamental investment that any society can make in its economy, and that is education.

The American Jobs Act has many pieces to it: infrastructure, transportation, infrastructure bank, tax credits for hiring the unemployed and a tax reduction for every American working through the payroll tax reduction. A good program. We're now in the middle of January. By the end of February, Congress will have to face the reality of terminating the payroll tax reduction and raising taxes on every American or continuing it. For me, we ought to continue it, and we also ought to continue the unemployment benefits because the jobs are not yet there. Had we passed the American Jobs Act, there would be far more jobs available. That has not yet happened.

And so we will face some very tough sledding ahead as we debate how shall we pay for this; how shall we pay for the February 29 extension of the payroll tax reduction and the unemployment insurance. Our Republican friends have basically said we ought to pay for it by taxing the middle class and by reducing those programs that the middle class depends upon, from health care to jobs to education. The Democrats have a different plan. We think President Obama is correct that we ought to ask those that have been so extraordinarily successful in the last two decades, the super-rich in America, the top 1 percent, to pay their fair share in keeping Americans in their jobs and providing them with enough food that they can eat and pay their rent through the unemployment insurance.

Let me just show you a chart here of why those superwealthy, those whose annual income is over $1 million a year, why they can pay just a little bit more. The bottom three lines here are the bottom three-quarters of the population. The low, those in poverty, low, middle and middle class. The top line are those in the very top, the top 10 percent. They've seen their wealth grow by extraordinary numbers, some 350 percent increase in theirs, while down here at the bottom, very, very little. In fact, most of this comes from two, from the husband and wife both working, two members of the family working.

There's plenty of opportunity here. The President has suggested a very small tax increase of 3 1/2 percent of that amount over $1 million. It's not going to bust anybody's bank. They're still going to have plenty of money to go to their golfing and buy whatever they need to buy. But what will happen is Americans will continue to have an unemployment check if that job is not available to them, and Americans will also be able to see a reduction in their payroll tax so that they, too, can participate in this American economy.

So with that, I think we'll wrap it up for the evening. And we want to keep in mind that America can make it when we make it in America. Federal policy is critical if we're going to succeed. There are many things we can do. We have reviewed some of them here tonight, and we'll be talking more about it as this week and next week goes on and we approach that February 29, once-every-3-year opportunity for this Nation to do what's right for those men and women and working families out there and for those who are unemployed.

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

Source