Make it in America

Floor Speech

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, thank you very much for this opportunity.

We have been engaged for this last hour in a discussion about what to do with one of the most important parts of America's public agenda, which is the transportation systems of this Nation.

We've heard a lot of back-and-forth. We actually heard that there was some agreement that we ought to get on with it. Indeed, we ought to get on with it. We ought to get a transportation bill before the American public, and we ought to get it to the President. Unfortunately, there is a gridlock and a deadlock. Behind all of the gentle rhetoric on the floor this evening, there are some profound differences in how we move forward with the transportation bill. We'll discuss some of those as we journey through this 1 hour or some portion of this 1 hour.

I think I would like to start maybe more than 200 years ago. There is a lot of discussion that we often hear here on the floor and in the rhetoric across the Nation that the Founding Fathers would do it this way or that way, and if we only listened to the Founding Fathers most of our problems would be resolved. Usually, those discussions really speak to not doing something. It turns out that the Founding Fathers really did have a great deal of wisdom.

I came across a book written by Mr. Thom Hartmann called ``Rebooting the American Dream.'' And in it, in his very first chapter, he goes back to the Founding Fathers, and he talks about what George Washington and George Washington's Secretary of Treasury actually did. On the day he was inaugurated, Mr. Washington said that he did not want to wear a suit made in England. He wanted to wear something made in America. Well, Make It in America is one of the principal things that my colleagues and I on the Democratic side have been talking about for some time.

So when I came across this book, I said, Wow, this is interesting. George Washington instructed his Secretary of Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, to develop a manufacturing program for the United States; and Alexander Hamilton did that. He didn't do it in 2,000 or 3,000 pages, as we might do it today. He did it in just a short, maybe 20 or 30 pages. And he developed an 11-point plan for America's manufacturers. It turns out that many of those 11 points are what we have been proposing on the Democratic side here for our Make It in America agenda.

But tonight I want to pick up one of those 11 points. And it happens to be the 11th of the 11 points that Alexander Hamilton presented to George Washington in 1790, and it was on American manufacturers. So point No. 11: ``Facilitating of the transportation of commodities.'' The language is rather ancient English, but it still speaks to the following:

Improvements favoring this object intimately concern all the domestic interests of a community; but they may without impropriety be mentioned as having an important relation to manufacturers. There is perhaps scarcely anything, which has been better calculated to assist the manufacturers of Great Britain, than the meliorations of the public roads of that kingdom, and the great progress which has been of late made in opening canals. Of the former, the United States stands much in need.

He goes on to talk about the necessity for transportation here and copying what had gone on in Great Britain, that is, the development of public roads.

Then he says:

The following remarks are sufficiently judicious and pertinent to deserve a literal quotation: Good roads, canals, and navigable rivers, by diminishing the expense of carriage, put the remote parts of a country more nearly upon a level with those in the neighborhood of a town. They are upon that account, the greatest of all improvements.

So here we are in Mr. Hartmann's book, ``Rebooting the American Dream,'' talking about what the Founding Fathers wanted to do in 1790. I would also point out that by 1792 nearly all of those 11 points had become law and laid the foundation for the great American industrial revolution.

So back to ``infrastructure,'' the word we use today. We use infrastructure when we talk about our highways, our canals, our roads, and our transportation systems. There were, in fact, some public transportation systems at that time.

Now, speaking specifically of roads and jobs, we often talk about jobs here. We need to understand that today, if we were to pass the Senate version of the public transportation bill, we would put 2 million unemployed construction workers back to work this year. This year, 2 million would go back to work if we were to take up the Senate bill. Unfortunately, we have been in a gridlock, and there has been no effort to compromise.

My colleagues on the Republican side are demanding fundamental changes in the transportation systems and the way in which we apportion that money. Those changes have not been acceptable to the Senate; and, indeed, those changes were not acceptable to even their own caucus. The Republican Caucus was unable to reach agreement--they have more than enough votes to pass a bill out of this House--but they could not reach agreement among themselves, let alone with the Senate. And yet they are demanding that the Senate take up what they could not agree to.

On our side, we have simply said, let's go with the Senate bill. After all, 74 Senators--both Democrats and Republicans--voted for it, leaving some 26 that chose not to support it.

So 2 million Americans are waiting for action by the House of Representatives and the Senate; 2 million Americans want to go to work. And yet we have this deadlock. We just found some support amongst ourselves to tell the conferees, Get it done by the end of this week or take up the Senate bill.

Listening carefully to what we heard on the floor not more than an hour ago, compromise is not going to be found. Keystone pipeline. No public transportation funding. Eliminate the environmental protections that have been in place for more than 40 years. Streamline, meaning ``eliminate'' programs. So compromise is not there.

What has happened over the last several months? Well, while our Republican colleagues have been trying to get their own act together, here is what's happened to employment in the construction industry: way back in January, some 5,570,000 Americans were working in the highway construction and public transportation and construction sector. In May, that number had fallen to 5,510,000. Some 60,000 Americans lost their jobs while the Republicans were trying to figure out how they could come to an agreement with themselves on a transportation bill. They couldn't. So 60,000 Americans, 60,000 families lost their ability to earn a living as the majority in this House failed to even agree amongst themselves on what to do.

The Senate moved forward with a bill. It's been there nearly 2 months, before this House, available. A conference committee was formed, and gridlock continues. So now there are 60,000 families without an income as a result of the gridlock and the inability of our colleagues to come to an agreement.

It's time for us to move on. It's time for us to put a 2-year bill in place, as the Senate has proposed, one that would put 2 million Americans back to work immediately. States could move forward. States would know that over the next 2 years, there would be funding from the Federal Government. Right now, the word from my friends on the other side of the aisle is, Well, we're going to go with the 60-day extension. States cannot work with that. They don't know what would be available at the end of the 60 days. They don't know what's available today because we're up against a deadline.

It's time for us to move with the Senate bill. It's time for us to end this continuing decline. This is May. If we were to take the June figures--which are now, unfortunately, coming forward--more and more construction workers have lost their jobs. They are in my district.

Contractors in my district are saying, There is no further contract available to us. We won't be able to put our people to work. We don't have a contract. The States can't offer new contracts. So it won't be just 60,000. At the end of June, it will probably be 70,000 or 75,000, or perhaps more, that have lost their jobs as this gridlock continues here in the House of Representatives. We can do better.

How important is this to the economy? It's very important to the economy and not just the construction workers, not just their families, the 2 million that could go to work if we accepted the Senate bill. And it's a good bill. It provides adequate funding for transportation, for repairing the bridges that we heard so much discussion of, for paving the roads that we heard so much discussion of just less than an hour ago, of providing the money for the public transportation sector so that the buses, the trains, the planes can continue to operate. It's a good bill, but not perfect, not as large as many would want. It doesn't have the Keystone pipeline in it. It doesn't eviscerate the environmental protections that are necessary as we build these projects.

So what would happen if we were to accept the Senate bill? End the gridlock, put 2 million American workers back to work, end the decline. For every dollar we invest in infrastructure--that's the highway bill and the transportation bill--$1.57 is pumped into the American economy. That comes from Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody Analytics. Spend a dollar on transportation and you increase the GDP; you increase the economic activity of this Nation by $1.57.

So there's more than just transportation at stake here. What is at stake here, as we see, is the continuing decline of the transportation and construction sector as a result of the gridlock that's been with us nearly this entire year. What is at stake is the growth of the American economy. It's the grocery store that will have a customer coming in and not spending an unemployment check but, rather, spending a check that's given to them by the contractor. And that money circulates in the economy so that the hair dresser, the barber, maybe even the gun shop owner will see their business increase 57 percent. For every dollar spent, $1.57 is generated in the economy, putting other people to work beyond the construction industry.

Now, there's more to it than that. One of the provisions that we would like to see in the bill, which actually is in the Senate bill, is a tightening of the waivers that have been so injurious to the American economy, the waivers that have been overused in the last two decades, waivers that push aside the Buy America provisions that we presently have in the law, push those aside and say, We don't care whether that money is spent on American-made equipment. We don't care whether that money is spent on jobs in America. Just pushing aside the Buy America provisions.

The Senate bill has a very important provision that will create even more jobs in America because it tightens up the waiver provisions and says to the Department of Transportation, no, you cannot just willy-nilly provide a waiver. You must adhere to the law that says Buy America: a 60 percent minimum American content in the steel in the bridge that's going to be repaired, in the asphalt and concrete that's going to be laid over the roads. Minimum of 60 percent content on the buses and the trains that are going to be paid for with your tax dollars.

What that means is: Make It in America. That provision that is in the Senate bill will enhance American manufacturing by limiting the waivers that have been so numerous over the last two decades as to hollow out the American manufacturing sector. Manufacturing matters. This is the American middle class. The construction industry and the manufacturing industry is the heart and the soul and the foundation of America's middle class. And so in the Senate bill it tightens up the waiver provisions and says that Americans will have the jobs, not some foreign employee of a company that has gained the contract.

I want to give you a specific example. In California, the largest public works project ever is the reconstruction and the rebuilding of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, a new bridge, billions of dollars. The steel in that bridge was made in China. Six thousand jobs in China, no jobs in America. It's said to be 10 percent cheaper. It turned out that at the outset, the Chinese steel manufacturers could not produce the steel. But they got the contract and what they did was to figure out how to produce the steel. They built a new steel mill. Six thousand jobs. In America, no. In China, yes.

It turned out that the steel was not 10 percent cheaper. It was shoddy. The welds were not adequate. They had to go back. Delays occurred. It turned out to be even more expensive. Had that occurred in America, that new steel mill would have been built in America, and it would be there for the next contract, the next bridge to be built in America, or around the world. But, oh, no, we're going to save 10 percent. We lost American jobs.

If the Senate bill were to come to this floor and become law, the waiver that was allowed and given to the State of California, a waiver that allowed the Chinese steel company to have the contract, would not have been allowed. Six thousand jobs would have been in America, and we would once again make it in America and Americans would make it. But, oh, no, it didn't happen. Manufacturing matters.

I would like to see another provision in the bill, but I won't demand this and my Democratic colleagues who support this are not going to demand it because we want to get on with providing those 2 million jobs for American workers in the construction industry. But let me take a moment to explain what it is.

This is a bill that I introduced at the beginning of last year. It's H.R. 613. And what it says is that our tax money, the money that is being spent by every American when they buy a gallon of gasoline or a gallon of diesel, that that money goes into the highway trust fund. And H.R. 613 says it must be spent on American-made equipment. Highways. This is the steel that's in the bridges. This is the rebar that's in the roads. This is the concrete, the asphalt--American made.

If you want to build a high-speed rail, as we do in California, then that high-speed rail is going to be financed with your tax dollars, and it will be an American-made high-speed rail train. You want a train? You want to improve your transit system? It will be American made. Is it possible? Does this work? Let me give you have an example.

In the American Recovery Act, sometimes known as the stimulus bill, there is a provision for Amtrak trains. Upgrade the Amtrak system. I think it was a little over $12 billion. Some wise staffer wrote next to that $12 billion a sentence that said: This money must be spent on American-made equipment.

One hundred percent American-made equipment. Oh, you can't do that. Well, it turns out that you can do that. A German company, one of the largest industrial companies in the world, looked at it and said, $12 billion? We can build it in America. And they did. They built a manufacturing plant in Sacramento, California; and they are producing 100 percent American-made locomotives because the law said that it must be done.

H.R. 613 says precisely that. If you want the tax money, then it must be American-made equipment. Use our tax dollars to create American-made jobs, not steel made in China, not trains made in Germany, not locomotives from Japan. It's our tax money. It will be spent on American-made equipment.

That's what this does. And we have the proof that it can be done. It's being done today in Sacramento, California, by Siemens, a German company that built a manufacturing plant to take advantage of money that was available if the product was made in America.

Another sad example, the Bay Area Rapid Transit system, BART, needs to replace its 40-year-old trains, $3.2 billion. The minimum in the law today is 60 percent. The bids went out. Two bidders were in the finals. One, a French company, Alsthom; another, a Canadian company, Bombardier. Bombardier's bid was 2 3 percent lower than Alsthom's. However, there was a significant difference. Bombardier said we will build 66 percent American content. Alsthom, the French company, said we can do better. A little bit higher price, but we can do better. We will build 95 percent American content. The difference: $1 billion in American jobs. Sixty-six percent/95 percent; a 2 percent, 3 percent difference in price.

The BART board of directors refused to go back to a second bidding process that would have taken 60 or 90 days. Alsthom said we'll cut our price. We want these jobs in America. It turns out most would be in New York, not California. We want these jobs in America. Go back to another round of bidding, and we'll get out a sharp pencil and we'll come down. The BART board of directors let that opportunity for a billion dollars in jobs go by.

Many of us believe that Alsthom would have matched or even outperformed the Bombardier bid. Or maybe Bombardier would come back and say, okay, we'll go to 95 percent. We don't know. We'll never know. But what we do know is that a billion dollars of American jobs were lost.

So now, as we continue to debate and dally and let time go by, as American jobs, as American workers in the construction industry see the continued decline month by month in the number of men and women that are employed, as layoffs continue--between January and May, more than 60,000 construction workers in the United States have lost their jobs while we continue to fight over issues here.

But the fundamental issue is the issue of jobs. You can talk about the Keystone pipeline, and there are jobs there. And maybe some day that pipeline will be built.

You can talk about the environmental processes that have protected the environment of this Nation for the last 40 years, and maybe there ought to be some adjustments there.

You can talk about giving States the power which basically means there is no money set aside for public transportation. We can talk about those things. But as we wrestle back and forth on what one or another of us think is so critically important, every day another construction worker has lost their job. Another family has lost their opportunity to make the payment on their home. Another community has seen the economy in their area diminish.

We have a reasonably good bill available to us and we could vote on it tomorrow. That's the Senate bill. It protects American jobs. It protects the public transportation system. It is fully funded, not with some hypothetical money that may come in some day, but rather real dollars. It says that our tax dollars must be spent on American-made equipment, on American jobs. It's a good bill.

We had a motion to instruct here on the floor just a few moments ago. And as you listened to the debate, you'd think there was agreement. And there is agreement--we've got to get this job done. We have to put Americans back to work. Two million Americans await our decision. Are we going to continue to fight for some perceived issue that is important to a small group of people? Or are we going to look at the larger picture here, the picture of American workers, of American jobs.

I suppose tomorrow we'll take up that motion to instruct and we'll see if by the end of this week we're willing to compromise. Are we willing to put Americans back to work, 2 million Americans? Or are we going to hold fast to perhaps a funding scheme that has been proposed and can't even be agreed to by the members of the Republican caucus, or an elimination of certain categories of funding like public transportation which couldn't even be agreed to by the Republican caucus, let alone the Democrats.

It's time to look at the bigger picture. It's time to look at that construction worker in our community, the ones we represent and say I want you to go back to work. We'll fight this out another day. But the most fundamental, the most important issue confronting this American economy and each and every individual in America is, where are the jobs? Where is my job? How can I support my family?

It's time to put the bickering aside. It's time to accept the fact that Americans want to go to work, and 2 million Americans are out there looking for their opportunity. And their opportunity rests with us. It rests with the House of Representatives. The Senate has done its work. It's put a 2 year, fully funded transportation bill that meets the needs of this Nation for the next 2 years. They passed it out. This House has not passed a transportation bill.

We put a stopgap thing out so we can go to conference, but it wasn't a transportation bill. It didn't do the job. Maybe Wednesday, Thursday, or maybe some time Friday there can be an agreement between the two houses. But if there is not an agreement, then as I heard not more than an hour ago from my Republican colleagues, in agreeing to the motion to instruct, that if there is no agreement, then take up the Senate bill. That was in fact the motion. Take up the Senate bill if there is no agreement. Put 2 million Americans back to work. Repair our highways. Repair our bridges. Buy American. Enhance the buy American provisions.

We've got work to do. Americans have work to do. Americans want to work, and it's time for this House to work. And with that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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