[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 35 (Wednesday, March 9, 2011)]
[House]
[Pages H1643-H1649]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            WHAT ABOUT JOBS?

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Huelskamp). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 5, 2011, the gentleman from California (Mr. 
Garamendi) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority 
leader.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, today we want to talk about jobs. The 
people in my district, the 10th Congressional District of California, 
in Concord, Antioch, Pittsburg, Fairfield, Livermore, they want jobs. 
They want to go to work. They want this government to create jobs.
  We are now in the 10th week of the new majority, the Republican 
majority, and thus far there has not been one significant, useful job 
bill brought to the floor. Instead, we had a CR brought to the floor 
that, in all probability, will cost America 700,000 jobs. That's what 
the CR, the first piece of legislation introduced by the Republicans, 
would do, 700,000 jobs. And it's all across the board: construction 
jobs, research, manufacturing jobs, education.
  We just heard one fellow stand up here on the floor and say he was 
worried about his children. He should be, because the bill that he 
voted for less than 10 days ago will destroy thousands and thousands of 
teaching jobs across this Nation, including 218,000 young children that 
will not be in the Head Start program. We can't afford that kind of a 
``jobs'' program.
  Joining me today is Betty Sutton from the great State of Ohio, in the 
heart of the once very strong manufacturing base of this Nation.
  Ms. Sutton, if you would tell us what's going on in Ohio and how you 
see these issues.
  Ms. SUTTON. Well, I thank the gentleman, and I thank you for your 
leadership.
  Boy, that poster says a lot: GOP continuing resolution destroys 
700,000-plus jobs, possibly yours. And where did we get that number? 
Before we get to Ohio, where did we get that number? We got that number 
from a number of places. Ben Bernanke said that the plan would cost 
hundreds of thousands of jobs. The GOP's CR, according to Goldman 
Sachs, would reduce economic growth by 2 percent and cause the 
unemployment rate to increase. And a study by the International 
Monetary Fund concluded that the idea that fiscal austerity stimulates 
economic activity in the short term finds little support in the data.
  We have a group of 300 economists, including two Nobel laureates, who 
wrote a letter warning that the shortsighted budget cuts to ``human 
capital, our infrastructure, and the next generation of scientific and 
technological advances'' would threaten future economic competitiveness 
as well as our current recovery.
  So that's where we begin. Despite all of this forewarning about what 
this path will lead us to, we still see a continuing resolution that 
indicates we're going to lose 700,000-plus jobs.
  In the State of Ohio, I'm sure that a number of people, most of the 
people out there, have seen at the statehouse where we're witnessing 
democracy in action, at least from the outside, because for a while 
there the statehouse doors were closed when all of the workers and 
fair-minded Ohioans descended upon our State's capitol to protest 
against what the Republican Governor there is trying to do to public 
sector workers.
  Under the guise of taking care of our deficit, an attack on workers' 
rights is being waged not only in Ohio but across this country, from 
Wisconsin to Ohio to the floor of Congress where we've seen attack 
after attack. And it's really a sad thing, because we all know we 
should be focused--and the other side should join us in focusing--on 
priority one, which is putting people back to work.
  In Ohio, the key to our budget problems is more people working than 
you have revenue to pay for the public services and the public sector 
employees who help to make our world turn. Can you imagine the idea?
  It was not the workers in Wisconsin or Ohio or across this country 
that drove our economy off the cliff. It was not those teachers or 
those firefighters who rush into those burning buildings when we run 
out of them. It was not the police officers who are out there on our 
streets protecting us and keeping our communities safe. It was not the 
workers.
  The workers are not the problem. They are part of the solution of 
where we need to go. But the bottom line is we need to be focused on 
creating jobs. And it's just amazing that not only are our friends 
across the aisle, the Republicans, not interested and focusing on 
that--10 weeks on the job, zero jobs--they're actually looking at 
cutting those people who do have jobs, their rights. It's just 
fundamentally unfair and it's counterproductive.
  We all know that we need to trim back our budget. We should always be 
willing to trim back the budget, but only by engaging in smart cuts, 
not just indiscriminate cuts.
  What happens when a person doesn't have a job? What happens when 
700,000 people don't have a job? Do we think they just disappear, that 
they are no cost to our government, to our country? Not to mention the 
loss of dignity and the loss of opportunity, everything that our 
country stands for, having a chance to make a way for your family, to 
feed your family and take care of your family.

                              {time}  1450

  It's a crazy idea to say that we can make cuts that cut hundreds of 
thousands of jobs and somehow that will lead us to prosperity.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. And reduce the budget deficit.
  Our President in his State of the Union said that we have to out-
educate, out-research, out-manufacture and out-build the rest of the 
world. Yet the first significant piece of legislation

[[Page H1644]]

that the Republicans moved through this House goes in exactly the 
opposite direction. It does in fact reduce the education. I guess 
20,000 or 30,000 teachers are going to lose their jobs. Kids will not 
be there.
  But the thing that really struck me--we were talking earlier with my 
colleague from Maryland about this--is the research. In the area of 
research, which are tomorrow's jobs, what does this CR do? What does 
the Republican Caucus want to do? They want to cut back on the 
research. You're looking at a significant number. I think it's over 
5,000 key researchers.
  Could our colleague from Maryland share with us her experience and 
her knowledge, because you are in one of the research centers.
  Ms. EDWARDS. I want to thank the gentleman from California for 
bringing this to our attention. I've been thinking a lot about the role 
of research and development to the 21st century and to 21st-century job 
creation. In fact, I've introduced along with you and a number of our 
colleagues, my colleague from Maryland, Republican Roscoe Bartlett, 
H.R. 689 which is the 21st Century Reinvestment Act. The goal is to 
invest in research and development, expand our tax credit for research 
and development, make it permanent, and then link it to manufacturing.
  Here has been my experience. In the Fourth Congressional District, we 
are home to some of the most fantastic research innovation that's 
happening anywhere in the country. That's true all across the country, 
but these sorts of robust and innovative firms, many of them are small 
firms. They can't afford to just front-load R&D to create manufacturing 
jobs, but they need the government to have a tax policy that actually 
encourages that. So I am all in favor, actually, of a tax policy that 
encourages the positive things that we want, research and development, 
job creation, manufacturing.
  Instead, what did we get out of Congress? We got a tax bill that 
rewards the top 2 percent with tax breaks that they're never going to 
put back into the economy. We've had 10 weeks of a Republican 
revolution here in the House of Representatives that has created zero 
jobs, and, in fact, a continuing resolution out of this House of 
Representatives, this Republican-led House of Representatives, that 
would destroy 700,000 jobs. It is as if we're saying, No, we don't 
really like the 21st century. We want to go back to the 19th and the 
20th century. That is not how you rebuild a manufacturing base in this 
country.
  I have actually been struck traveling throughout my congressional 
district at small firms like Wabtech up in Gaithersburg, Maryland, 
which is doing some really innovative R&D, research and development, to 
develop signaling systems that will help us with high-speed rail. Guess 
what: they've just had to lay off workers because we are not making the 
right kinds of investments into research and development and technology 
that's about jobs for the 21st century.
  The President got it right. He said we have to out-innovate, out-
educate and out-build. The way that we do that, of course, is to invest 
in our educators; invest in our young people. We're doing exactly the 
opposite. The Republican majority is doing the exact opposite here in 
this Congress. Again, 10 weeks of work and not a single job.
  In fact, Congressman Pete Sessions from Texas has just said: you know 
what, we're not going to create a jobs bill at all. We're not 
interested in jobs. All we're interested in is cutting government 
spending.
  Well, let's look at what they're cutting, some of the most innovative 
research that's going on in this country. NOAA, that looks at our 
weather service, that makes sure that our farmers understand what's 
happening with our climate and our weather so that they can engage in 
production of products throughout this country.
  What else are we doing? They say the National Institutes of Health 
doesn't need $2.5 billion to continue innovative research in cancer and 
other things, things that actually play out in terms of the 
marketplace, creating private sector jobs in a new economy.
  I am really struck by the language of small business, the language of 
innovation, the language of job creation but not a single job. Zero 
jobs. Ten weeks of a Republican revolution, zero jobs; 700,000 jobs 
lost.
  I would urge my colleagues that if they really want to be about the 
21st century, then they should join us in expanding the research and 
development tax credit so those innovative firms can invest in all the 
technologies of the future, so that we can produce the Ph.D.s who are 
needed to conquer the 21st century and then link that to manufacturing 
so that the small firms in my district and all across the country can 
take advantage of a research and development tax credit because they 
are making things, where, making it in America.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. If America is going to make it, we must once again 
make it in America. Manufacturing matters, and the first step in the 
manufacturing of this century is the research. It's the well-educated 
workforce that's capable of doing the new things and the research that 
goes with it. You are very fortunate in your district to have some 
major research facilities. NOAA and NASA are in this area. In my own 
district I have the Lawrence Livermore labs and, adjacent to it, the 
Lawrence Berkeley labs and the Berkeley campus as well as the 
University of California-Davis campus where research is what it's all 
about.
  In the continuing resolution, 700,000 jobs. That's a big number, and 
we just don't focus on that. But we're talking about real people. This 
is the job next to you that's going to be lost. Sandia Laboratories was 
in my office no more than an hour ago talking about research for 
nuclear power and how we're going to deal with that. I told them if the 
Republicans get their way, 5,500 researchers at the national labs are 
going to lose their jobs. So what of tomorrow's energy systems? $1.7 
billion would be taken out of the Department of Energy's future energy 
research. So solar, photovoltaic, advanced biofuels, the research for 
tomorrow so that we can actually wean ourselves from foreign oil, gone. 
Gone.
  You go, What is this, just a feeding frenzy? Is it wise? Is there any 
real thought put on this? I think the answer for me is no.
  I notice that our colleague, new to the House but not new to the 
issues from Rhode Island, has joined us. How does this affect Rhode 
Island? What does this mean to your State?
  Mr. CICILLINE. I thank the gentleman from California for organizing 
this Special Order. I'm new to this Chamber, I've been here 2 months, 
but I think the poll that was released today, the Bloomberg poll 
released this morning, again found that America's top priority is jobs 
and getting people back to work.
  We've been here 10 weeks and the Republican-controlled Congress has 
presented zero jobs. It hasn't presented a jobs bill. It has presented 
a spending plan that will cost 700,000 jobs. That's an analysis done by 
respected economists across the country.
  Rhode Island is a State that has a very rich manufacturing history. 
We are the place where the Industrial Revolution began, home to some of 
the greatest manufacturing. I think, like many States, we have suffered 
in this recent economy. Rhode Island has been particularly hard hit. 
But I think if we are going to remain a world economic power, we 
absolutely have to make things again in America. If you ask people who 
believe that we're losing that position as a world economic power, you 
ask them, who do they think is the world economic power, they say 
China. If you say, why China? They say, because China makes everything.
  I asked my constituents during my campaign, go into a store in Rhode 
Island, try to find something made in America. It's almost impossible. 
I really hope that the 112th Congress will be the Congress that 
revitalizes manufacturing in America. That means working hard to be 
sure we have a national manufacturing policy, to be sure that we 
provide manufacturers with the tools that they need to compete in the 
21st century, to be sure that we have trade policies and workforce 
investments that allow them to compete globally, and to be really 
making the kinds of investments in manufacturing that are necessary not 
only to create jobs in the short term but to ensure the long-term 
economic health and prosperity of our country.

                              {time}  1500

  What I am afraid the Republicans have proposed in their budget 
proposal,

[[Page H1645]]

in an effort to make cuts now, are seriously compromising our ability 
to lead the world as an economic power. Look, we have to cut spending. 
We have to be responsible about managing this deficit. But we have to 
do it in a smart and strategic way that protects our investments in 
education, in innovation, in science and research so that we can make 
the new discoveries, develop the new products, and then manufacture 
them and lead the world as an economic power.
  This is an opportunity to really understand the urgency of supporting 
manufacturing so that we can start making things again in this country, 
start selling goods. That's how the middle class was built in America, 
was through manufacturing. That's what built this country, a strong 
middle class. And the ongoing decisions that have been made by my 
friends on the other side of the aisle are undermining the middle 
class, are weakening the ability for manufacturing to grow. And I think 
they are the wrong decisions for our country.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you very much for the perspective from Rhode 
Island. I was, years ago, on the Blackstone River, which I think was 
the heart of the Industrial Revolution here in the United States; and 
they were using water power for the mills at that time. A fascinating, 
great history. And now the most advanced technology is also done in 
Rhode Island, a lot of it having to do with the construction of 
submarines and the like. Very, very advanced. But all of that comes 
from the research, the engineering, the STEM education: science, 
technology, engineering, mathematics.
  I would like to turn back to our colleague from Maryland. I see that 
she has a few more thoughts. She was kind of anxious to get back into 
this discussion.
  Ms. EDWARDS. I want to thank you, Mr. Garamendi, because I am excited 
about the prospect of manufacturing again in America. In my home State 
of Maryland, about 40 percent of our economic base was manufacturing. 
Today, that's under 10 percent. And I think that that's a sign of 
what's happened all across this country. But it doesn't have to remain 
that way.
  Today, we heard the Prime Minister of Australia express a belief in 
America that I want America to express in herself in terms of us 
leading the world in technology development and manufacturing for the 
21st century. We need to return to that. There is still a lot of 
innovation that's going on.
  But let me tell you what's happened over the last couple of decades. 
The United States used to have the number one research and development 
tax credit in the world. Today, we're number 17. From number one to 
number 17. And what that means, when you begin to lose ahold of your 
innovation and other people are doing that innovation, pretty soon the 
production lines move to where the innovation is taking place. So it's 
no accident that manufacturing is leaving to where some of that 
innovation is taking place in other countries. I want to make sure that 
we're doing it, that we are making it, that we are manufacturing it 
right here in the United States.
  Let's take solar panels as an example. All of the great solar 
technology that we have developed right here in the United States. 
Where do we make solar panels? Every place else, particularly in China. 
Well, we should be making those in the United States, production lines 
and manufacturing lines that are actually close to where the research 
and development is taking place. We can go industry by industry, sector 
by sector and make the argument for making it in America. We are great 
innovators.
  But we don't want to be at number 17 when it comes to incentivizing 
through our tax policy good things, incentivizing innovation and 
manufacturing here in the United States, creating local jobs. I mean, 
the couple of firms that I talked about, they have 200 employees. And, 
you know, some of those employees graduated high school and they're 
working on that production line, high-paid jobs working on that 
production line. They're working alongside engineers who have Ph.D.s, 
and there are researchers with their Ph.D.s all along that production 
line, a couple of hundred employees. Well, we should be doubling and 
tripling that all across communities across this country so that we're 
not at 10 percent of manufacturing capacity in my State, but we're at 
40 and 50 percent, because then people are working, they've got good 
job jobs, they've got great education, and we are making it in America.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Let me pick up a couple of the themes that you hit 
upon. One of them, continuing on with research in this area of this 
part of the country, and certainly in the San Francisco Bay area, where 
I represent, health care research is huge. It is an extraordinarily big 
part of the economy, both the research and then the spin-offs from it. 
We call this the biotech. And this is almost entirely health care-
related biotech. We also have the biofuels, again coming out of 
research.
  The Republican continuing resolution reduces funding for the National 
Institutes of Health by $1.6 billion. We are talking about 25,000 
health-related research projects that will either stop, be delayed, or 
pushed off the track--25,000. We're talking about things that are 
really serious to us: heart disease, diabetes, cancer, all of the 
things that affect every American and literally everybody in this 
world. The research would be slowed down, stopped, and in some cases 
terminated as a result of the feeding frenzy that went on here on this 
floor where more than 400 amendments were considered with very, very 
little thought.
  Our colleague Betty Sutton talked about, yes, cuts, but be smart with 
your cuts. Don't just take whatever is on your mind, whatever the 
latest sound bite is, because it may have a very detrimental effect. 
You are looking at in this case the National Institutes of Health. 
Human health. Our well-being as Americans; and that means 25,000 
research jobs would be terminated.
  Now, the press doesn't follow the details. The press follows the 
game. Is the Senate going to act, or will we have a government 
shutdown? That's an interesting game. But underlying those will-they 
won't-they issues are the issues of what actually is in the 
legislation; and this particular piece of legislation, 700,000 jobs, 
critical needs that we have as human beings for health, jobs that we 
need in the future, whether they are in the science field, in the 
manufacturing field, and jobs for today in the construction industry.

  Pulling money out of construction for infrastructure; programs to 
provide clean water for our communities--thousands of those programs 
will die as a result of the Republican continuing resolution which is 
now before the Senate. Hopefully, the Senate will be wiser than what 
happened here on the floor. We can go on and on.
  I developed a list, I call it the dirty dozen, and these are specific 
things, education, I know that's a big thing in your district, 
University of Maryland, I think it's adjacent to your district, but you 
claim it, don't you?
  Ms. EDWARDS. Well, let me just go, because I am having a conversation 
this afternoon with the president of the University of Maryland. I was 
out at the University of Maryland campus over the past weekend. Like 
campuses all across this country that are engaged in some of the top-
notch research that's going on in the country, I was with 300 young 
people from kindergarten to 12th grade over at the University of 
Maryland, all interested in the STEM fields, interested in science, 
technology, engineering, and math, interested in making a career in 
those fields that are about the 21st century.
  Sadly, here we are in the United States Congress completely 
disconnected to communities, completely disconnected to young people 
and their aspirations for the future, cutting, slashing, burning, 
cutting programs that are about educating our young people to take 
advantage of the 21st century.
  And so it just seems that there is a complete disconnect between what 
the majority is doing and how that will play out for our future. And so 
I had to say to these young people, you know, stay with it. Stick with 
those STEM fields, with the science and the technology and the 
engineering and math. Go on to that engineering school, go on into the 
biosciences that we see coming out of the University of Maryland, go on 
into the space program because we are investing in technologies not 
just that are going to open up our universe, but that actually have 
real application here on Earth.

[[Page H1646]]

  We have to continue to support our young people to do that. But it 
really does fly in the face of what's actually being done by this 
Republican majority to cut away at education for the future, to say we 
don't really want to manufacture things here in the United States and 
say that we don't really care whether we make that research and 
development tax credit permanent so that small firms can innovate and 
create and hire.
  But we know that America cares about those things. That's why it's 
important for us to have this conversation with the American people 
about what it's going to take, really, to jump-start the economy and 
the things that are happening in this Congress that are going to put a 
kibosh on that.

                              {time}  1510

  Cutting 700,000 jobs, zero jobs created in 10 weeks of this Congress, 
and not investing in our future, not investing in our manufacturing.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Precisely so.
  At the University of Maryland, I suspect it's similar to what I found 
in the California State University system, which is the largest 
university system, they would argue, in the world. We may want to find 
out what China's actually up to, but it's a huge system.
  The Pell Grant is a critical element in providing the opportunity for 
students to stay in school. Yet the continuing resolution supported by 
the Republicans here on this floor, and now over in the Senate for 
consideration, would drastically reduce the Pell Grant by some $870 per 
person at the same time that the tuition at all of the universities is 
going up, literally making it very difficult for tens or hundreds of 
thousands of students to stay in school, and these are the future 
workers in the high-value jobs that we need here in America.
  So, it's not just the higher education and the Pell Grants that are 
being cut, but at the beginning, the Head Start program, we're talking 
about young children who do not have an opportunity because of their 
family's poverty to get started in education, a proven program that 
actually works. Now, not every Head Start program--and last year, we 
put together a program to weed out those that are not successful and 
bring in new ones that would be able to replace them. But 218,000 young 
children from impoverished families are going to be thrown off of the 
Head Start program, not next year, but as soon as this continuing 
resolution becomes law. We can't let that happen.
  So we will fight. Firstly, and hopefully, the President, should this 
somehow pass the Senate and come back to this House and be passed, the 
President should veto it because I know that he wants to out-educate, 
out-build, and out-innovate every other country in the world; and you 
cannot do that unless you have a highly educated workforce soon and 
later, beginning with those children in the Head Start program.
  Now, this is a program in your year that I understand that is 
important to you.
  Ms. EDWARDS. Just yesterday, educators from my congressional district 
were here on Capitol Hill. They were educators from Bowie State 
University, an Historically Black College that is now poised to get 
research grants going to Historically Black Colleges and Universities, 
cut by the Republican majority in the continuing resolution.
  There were representatives here from the University of Maryland. I've 
spoken again about the wonderful work that they are doing in cyber 
security, in aerospace research over at that university campus, cut in 
this continuing resolution.
  There were educators from our community colleges that are training 
both young people and people who want new and real skills for this new 
economy, cut in this continuing resolution.
  And you spoke about the Pell Grants. What these universities and 
community colleges share in common in higher education is that they 
know that in order to bring up the most diverse workforce, a trained 
and skilled workforce, we also need students who come from vulnerable 
families, whose families can't afford to send them to school. And what 
have we done? We've cut out of that continuing resolution, the 
Republican majority has cut $845, $870 from Pell Grants. And you know 
what that means? That's books for a semester, not even two semesters 
but, you know, probably a semester.
  And so I have to wonder what the majority is thinking about the 
future. They may be thinking about today, maybe--and we can argue about 
that--but they surely are not thinking about the future by cutting 
education, by not investing in manufacturing, by not investing in 
research, by not investing in all of the things that will make us 
competitive for the 21st century.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. We kind of bracket the United States here. We've got 
the east coast with Maryland, and I'm out on the Pacific coast, but 
somewhere in between I believe is the State of Colorado, and I noticed 
our colleague from the State of Colorado was standing over there, and 
he had that ``I've got to get involved in this'' look. Please join us 
and share with us Colorado, which has some of these programs and is 
very, very important to all of us.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Well, your point, to my friend from California, is 
that manufacturing matters and having jobs in America matters, that, 
you know, if we make it in America, we will make it in America. Our 
focus should be on providing good jobs here with good infrastructure, 
whether that's education, highways, transit, energy, in this country so 
that, for ourselves, our kids, our grandkids, there's a prosperous 
future.
  But the Republicans completely missed that entire approach, and I 
liken it to this. Everybody says let's look at this as if it's family 
and a family has to tighten its belt sometime. No question about it, 
but let's really look at what's occurred here and talk about the 
country as a family, because we are all in this together. You know, 
sometimes we can do something by ourselves, but most of the time we're 
in this together.
  So what's happened here, let's look at it, is at the beginning of 
this century, back in 2001, 2002, the country took a voluntary pay cut. 
When the tax cuts under Bush came down, the country took a voluntary 
pay cut. So then the next thing that happens is, besides taking a 
voluntary pay cut, that family or that person goes out and he builds 
two houses. We went to war twice in the Middle East to the tune of who 
knows how much money, but at least $1 trillion. So now we've taken a 
pay cut. We are building two houses----
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Two wars.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Which are two wars, and all of a sudden the 
breadwinner has a heart attack. And that's what happened in the fall of 
2008 when we had the financial crash. So no income or lower income and 
lots of hospital bills. And those hospital bills came in the form of 
unemployment insurance, COBRA for health insurance, and all sorts of 
things designed to keep the country moving forward despite the 
financial crash.
  So now, just as the person begins to recover, the breadwinner 
recovers from the heart attack and is starting to earn a salary again. 
Hospital bills start dropping, but you still have hospital bills to 
pay. My friends on the Republican side of the aisle said, Wait a 
second. We should pay them all right now.
  No question that they have to be paid, but you've also got to get 
healthy. And just as we're starting to add jobs in this country, just 
as people are starting to get back to work, my friends on the 
Republican side of the aisle want to blame the debt of this country not 
on the voluntary pay cut, the tax cuts, not on the two wars, not on the 
financial crash. They want to blame it on Head Start. They want to 
blame it on energy efficiency. They want to blame it on education.
  Those are the kinds of things that make the patients stronger and 
healthier and this Nation stronger and healthier so that we can have 
jobs here, so that we can build things here, so that we can have a 
prosperous future for ourselves and our kids.
  And my friends on the Republican side of the aisle are so misdirected 
on this that it's scary, and Americans should really sit up and take 
notice that their future is really being put to the test by the 
approach that the Republicans want to take to balancing our budget and 
to building our future.
  With that, I would return the conversation to my friend from 
California.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Let's continue the conversation for a few moments 
here.

[[Page H1647]]

  Presumably, these cuts were made to deal with the deficit. We've got 
a deficit problem. Thank you so very much for going back to the history 
of how we wound up with this huge deficit problem. It did begin in 2000 
when the Clinton administration left office.
  The projection for the decade 2000 to 2010 was there would be a $5 
trillion surplus, $5 trillion surplus. Based upon the policies that 
were in place when Clinton left office, 2001, $5 trillion surplus, 
literally paying off all of America's debt--gone, history.
  What happened? How well you said it. Two tax cuts that were not paid 
for that cut the revenue of the Federal Government. Two wars, 
Afghanistan and Iraq, not paid for. First time in America's history 
that we went to war without having some way to pay for it, that is, 
some tax policy to pay for it. And then on top of that, a Medicare 
program, the drug benefit, again, a hundred billion dollar program, not 
paid for, and then the heart attack.

                              {time}  1520

  The crash of the world economy was caused by excess Wall Street 
exuberance. In many cases, that exuberance was fraud, misdirection, and 
the collapse of the financial industry taking down the world economy 
and our economy.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. And to that point, the financial heart attack that 
this country suffered and the world suffered, now the country starts to 
get back on its feet. Under Barack Obama, on March 9 of 2009, 2 years 
ago, the President had been in office for 1 month, we hit the bottom of 
the stock market. It had fallen some 6,000 points in the last months of 
George Bush. Since President Obama came into office, the stock market 
has gained 6,000 points. Almost 2 years ago to the day, the stock 
market reversed itself under his leadership.
  Now, part of that is we put some police back on Wall Street, not in 
an excessive way, but in a way to make sure that investors and people 
dealing with the financial industry were getting a fair shake. And 
confidence has been restored to some degree in the financial industry.
  Now my Republican friends, that's another place they want to cut. 
Let's take the cops back off the beat both on Wall Street as well as 
all across the country. Again, a very wrong-headed move to build the 
future of this Nation.
  I would like to do just one other family analogy if I could. So we've 
had this tremendous fall. The family has got to manage its expenses. It 
needs to get its income up, and it needs to manage the expense side. So 
what we have is, say, okay, we got Aunt Maude, she's in a nursing home. 
We've got Nephew Joey, he's in a preschool down the street, and we've 
got Uncle Rex who is an oil company executive. And we've been helping 
all of them. We've been helping Aunt Maude. We've been helping Nephew 
Joey. And we've been helping Uncle Rex.
  Well, under the Republican approach, they want to kick Aunt Maude out 
of the nursing home. They want to make sure there's no preschool for 
Nephew Joey, but they want to keep sending the check to Uncle Rex.
  We're all in this together. If we want to manage this deficit, if we 
want to pay down the debt, we are all in this together. And the 
approach that they've taken just doesn't make sense.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. If we were to look at the proposal that President 
Obama put forth in his budget that came out about a month ago, he put 
forth a program that would hold government expenditures at a 5-year 
freeze, that is, no increase, but they're being able to continue to pay 
for those necessary programs for Aunt Maude and for Nephew Rick--was it 
Nephew Rick?
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Nephew Joey.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Nephew Joey. It was that other uncle that was making 
off like a bandit.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Uncle Rex.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. So that was to freeze the level of expenditure and to 
put in place tax policies so that your oil company executive would 
begin paying a fair share, rather than getting a very significant tax 
break, beginning to pay their share back into this economy.
  Over time, and this was about in 7 years, the percentage of the GDP, 
the gross domestic product, that was to debt, or to the deficit, would 
fall from around 11 percent down to about 3 percent, so that it would 
be managed over time.
  Going back to your analogy, you've got all of those debts built up 
during the 2000 to 2010 period or 2008 period, and then, taking time, 
6, 7 years, to bring it back under control, not with the kind of 
chaotic cuts that are now being proposed by our Republican friends 
where we would actually slow down the economy, throw some 700,000 
people out of work, reducing tax revenues, increasing unemployment, 
unemployment expenses go up, hospital, emergency room expenses go up 
because people no longer have health care, and on the other end, people 
losing their homes. They don't have a job, you can't pay the mortgage, 
you're going to lose your home, so the housing market would also be hit 
as a result of the proposal that actually passed this floor with 
Republican support. I think there were only three or four Democrats who 
voted for it.
  We need to have a wise policy. We need to make cuts. To be sure, we 
need to make cuts. And I want to put one example on the table here 
before we go any further and people think that we're not supporting 
cuts. We asked last year the Congressional Research Office, a 
nonpartisan group, to take a look at governmental programs and to tell 
us where the duplication is, where the unnecessary programs are in 
governmental programs.
  That report just came out yesterday. And I was thumbing through it 
quickly. I don't have it in front of me, but I was going through it. 
And what struck me was that most of the duplication, most of the 
unnecessary programs and the waste turned out to be in one Department 
of this government. It happens to be the Department of Defense. No 
surprise. No surprise. Duplication, unnecessary expenditures and line 
after line after line came up that that's where we should be focusing. 
There are other programs, to be sure, but the big bucks, the big 
dollars were in the Department of Defense.
  Now, it is pretty well known, certainly in my district, and I'd like 
anybody else to know, that I think this war in Afghanistan ought to end 
right away. That's $120 billion. Let's just say we leave behind in 
Afghanistan for social and economic development, to deal like a laser 
on al Qaeda, the real terrorists that may be there and in Pakistan and 
in other places, let's just say we can take back $100 billion. That 
happens to be $40 billion more than the continuing resolution that was 
put forth here. I don't want to get too far off track, but that's a lot 
of money. And ultimately, we're going to leave, and they're going to go 
about doing what they need to do over there. But we need to focus on 
the terrorism and focus significantly like a laser on that.
  Maybe I got a little bit off track with it, but if you want to save 
$100 billion, there's $100 billion.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Would the gentleman yield?
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Please.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. So I just say to my friend from California, just 
going back to my analogy, or my metaphor, of voluntary pay cut and then 
all of a sudden you're building two houses after you just took a 
voluntary pay cut, being the two wars, but the good news, but there 
still is much work to go, is that the war in Iraq, we had 150,000 
people there. Under the Obama administration, that's been drawn down to 
about 50 and is shrinking, we're saving already $100 billion a year 
there alone. Obviously, you've got to look at Afghanistan and a 
continued drawdown because that's money that could go towards not 
increasing the debt, but ultimately reducing the debt.

  The other thing is that the best way to shrink the deficit, just in 
that same analogy I was giving, is to put people back to work. The more 
people that are working, the better off we are. We are in this 
together. That's the whole point of this. This country's motto is ``e 
pluribus unum,'' from many one. We're in this together. Big guys, those 
guys making a lot of money, God bless them. The little guys who are 
working their fannies off, God bless them. We are in this together. And 
the only way we deal with problems in this Nation is when we deal with 
them together.
  And this country is a great Nation. We will solve these problems. 
There will always be problems in the future, and we just take them one 
at a time as they come. We can do this. We will do

[[Page H1648]]

this. We will have a prosperous future for all of us. But we've got 
some work to do right now.
  And my plea to my friends on the Republican side of the aisle is 
don't cut off the Nation's nose to spite its face. We can take care of 
these responsibilities and pay these bills. That's what America does. 
It pays its bills. We need to do it in a sensible way and not cut out 
the future and the opportunity that so many Americans get from their 
education, from the infrastructure that needs to be rebuilt, and from 
making things here in this country.

                              {time}  1530

  Mr. GARAMENDI. I am delighted to hear the gentleman from Colorado's 
perspective.
  Two things immediately on my mind, and I see my senior colleague from 
the great State of New York has joined us. I will call on him in just a 
second.
  One of the things that we are focused on in the Democratic Caucus is 
making it in America, rebuilding the manufacturing in America so that 
America can make it. Manufacturing really matters because this is where 
the middle class is. This is where the middle class jobs are, when you 
couple that with the power of the unions to make sure that working men 
and women, the middle class, get a share of the wealth that is 
generated when we manufacture things.
  Some what is going on in the Midwest, in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and 
Ohio, and other States is really important in making sure that the 
wealth that is generated in this Nation is available to everyone in 
this Nation, particularly those people who are making things in America 
once more. Wouldn't we all love to go into a Target store and find on 
every shelf ``Made in America.'' Chinese, fine, you guys are doing 
okay. But I want those things made in America.
  Two pieces of legislation that I have introduced, along with many 
others that my colleagues have introduced, simply say if it is our tax 
money that is being used to support, for example, solar, photovoltaic 
systems, the wind turbines, the biofuel systems, if it is our tax money 
that is being used for the production tax credits or to subsidize the 
solar cells on your house, buy American-made cells. Buy American. That 
is American dollars. Use that money in America.
  Similarly, you and I, we are paying 18\1/2\ cents on every gallon of 
gas to support traffic, to support highway construction, buses, trains, 
and light rail systems. Our money should be used to purchase trains and 
buses and light rail systems that are made in America.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Would the gentleman yield one more time?
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Certainly, and then I will turn it over to Mr. Rangel.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. On that point, you raise a great point. Here we are 
finally making some real progress on energy efficiency and renewable 
energy, and we know that you have to have the whole menu of ways to 
power this country. It's oil and gas; it's going to be carbon-based 
fuels; it's going to be nuclear; it's going to be renewable energy and 
energy efficiency. But under my Republican colleagues' plans, we are 
going to go right back to where we were as we start to see gasoline 
starting to go through the roof. So we are always going to be at the 
whim of importing oil.
  I mean, I feel like sometimes my friends on the Republican side of 
the aisle, their mantra is: Let's export jobs and import oil. It's just 
wrong. It's wrong for this Nation. It's wrong for the future, for our 
future, and for our kids. We really have to be focusing on that. This 
Nation needs to come together because we can build that better future 
together and not just doing some of the I think knee-jerk things that 
the Republican Party has requested of the Congress. It is bad for 
America. It goes way too far, and I know we can do better.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Rangel, please join us here.
  Mr. RANGEL. Well, thank you so much. I was in my office doing a lot 
of work, and I couldn't figure who you people were talking about; it 
must be some foreign enemies of the United States that really were not 
supporting the things that, as far as I am concerned, it just makes 
common sense. It's just a patriotic agenda. It's just something that if 
America has given us the opportunity to get to where we are, and our 
parents are where they are, it just seems to me that we cannot afford 
to talk like Democrats and Republicans. We're talking about America, an 
America that can be and continues to be a beacon for countries all over 
the world.
  You mentioned manufactured, made in the United States. I remember I 
was on a trade mission in the Caribbean and there were some 
difficulties some Members had about whether or not we should give 
preferential trade to these small countries. My contribution was I just 
walked around everything that was in the places where we were. The corn 
flakes came from the United States. The cars came from the United 
States. The lamps came from the United States. The furniture came from 
the United States. Doing trade with them meant we were encouraging our 
base to do what we do best, and that is to make things. So it just 
seems to me that when we get a flicker of hope coming out of Detroit--
and, oh, my God, Detroit, when I was a kid after World War II, I really 
thought I was in heaven to see middle class people with cars and little 
boats and kids going to college, and their parents never dreamed it. 
But they were making things. They were making money. They were 
investing in our future.
  And now that they're coming back, I cannot see why any police cars, 
fire cars, commuter cars, anything, how we can say that--we ought to go 
to Detroit first before we go to Tokyo, before we go to Taiwan and all 
of these other countries. It is the sense in saying that you made an 
investment in a country that created an atmosphere that makes us all 
proud.
  To me, I like fighting Republicans. I mean, it's what the country 
should be all about. And I have been here for four decades. It has been 
exciting. And people said, well, didn't this happen in 1994? No; we 
fought then, but we were still friends. We didn't have people putting 
down our country. We had different ideas how to reach the same 
objectives. We were concerned about jobs always, but also education, 
also health care.
  It's inconceivable how anybody, Republican or Democrat, can cut 
programs when, if you go into an emergency ward in a hospital, they 
don't ask for your voting card. They don't ask whether you are a 
Democrat or a Republican. If you are laid off, and you go home and you 
have to tell your wife or pull your kids out of school, the loss of 
self-esteem, the loss of the security you have, the embarrassment that 
you are going to lose your house, nobody asks, are you a Democrat or 
Republican, are you liberal or conservative. And it gets contagious as 
to what happens in one block when a house is foreclosed. Then it 
happens in a community, and then is happens to America. And that is 
what is happening today. It is happening to our country.
  And so it seems to me that when people have campaigned and said that 
they want to stop spending, they want to stop borrowing and they want 
to raise revenue, they want to balance the budget, that's not 
Republican, that's American. But where do you ever get the concept that 
just stopping spending in certain areas, it means that you have 
savings? I mean, you can cut someone's foot off, but still you're going 
to have a problem with the rest of the economy. And if, indeed, the 
specialists, Republicans or Democrats, economists can tell you, that 
their H.R. 1 continuing resolution is going to lose 700,000 jobs, how 
in the world could we not debate that? How in the world can we not 
discuss that?
  How can not a group of Democrats and Republicans say, well look, we 
made these campaign promises. They were ridiculous. We really believe 
we ought to make sensible cutbacks. Let's see how we can cut back 
without causing more economic problems for our country. Let's see 
whether or not the environmental problems still are going to continue, 
whether or not health problems are still going to be there.
  And my God, education. Education, the United States of America. 
Education has been the key to opening the doors for imaginations to 
capture the entire world. And you don't have to have any bad feelings 
about other people in other countries; it's just that we're so used to 
being proud as Americans. We're so used to saying that if

[[Page H1649]]

it's made in America, it must be better. And what we're not used to is 
asking for handouts. And what we're not used to is having people say 
that they're not going to help us with unemployment insurance when we 
didn't want that, we wanted employment. And they say no, they can't 
even give us assistance while we're waiting for a break.
  Right here in America, there are so many people who have lost their 
jobs. And do you know, John, those jobs will never be there for them 
because productivity, technology, has closed the opportunity. My God, 
they have to be retrained; and they reach a certain age where 
retraining is not even an option.

                              {time}  1540

  For our young people to go to school or for them to continue to 
believe in their communities, in their families and in their country, 
you've got to have training and education to find out what the demand 
is going to be. It won't be the same demand that we had, perhaps, when 
I was a kid or when my parents were kids; but there should be great 
opportunities in the greatest country in the world.
  Make no mistake about it: We are not broke. We are not broke. We did 
not get into this thing in a Democrat way or in a Republican way. 
People made big, big, big mistakes, but it wasn't the guy working on 
the job or the guy in the union who made the mistake. It wasn't that we 
overcompensated public employees. They didn't cause this deficit.
  It just seems to me, John, that we shouldn't have to have this debate 
on this floor. People listening ought to recognize that cutting 
billions of dollars of resources and causing pain to our young people 
and to our senior citizens is a campaign promise that shouldn't have 
been made and that certainly shouldn't have been carried through.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. If the gentleman would yield, first, thank you so very 
much for joining us and for bringing a perspective of four decades of 
extraordinary work here on the floor and in the committees, for keeping 
us on track, and for keeping that vision that America is a great place. 
Americans are strong and resilient and really want to improve their 
positions and, even more so, want to improve their children's 
positions. Therefore, the key investments that we must make for today 
and on into the future are pretty straightforward.
  We need to have the best education in the world. We've got a long way 
to go. We're not going to get there by eliminating Head Start, by 
eliminating the Pell Grants, by forcing kids out of school, by shutting 
down classes or by taking classes from 20 to 35 kids. That's what my 
daughter faces. She's a second-grade teacher. She now has 33 kids in 
her class. She'll probably have 35 in a couple of months. She had 20 
last year. We can't improve the education system. Research. That's 
tomorrow. Research is tomorrow. If we don't do it today, we will lose 
this.
  Already I'm getting companies coming to me, saying we have to improve 
the research. We have to have that research tax credit because what's 
happening is the manufacturing isn't in America--it's overseas--and now 
the research is following the manufacturing. We've got to turn that 
around. Yet the continuing resolution cuts research: energy research, 
research in manufacturing, research in health care.
  So where is tomorrow?
  Tomorrow is going to be overseas unless we return it to America with 
smart investments in the future: infrastructure; transportation, moving 
people here and there; information infrastructure. The continuing 
resolution cuts infrastructure. Those are ``today'' jobs that give us 
the future. We can go on and on here, but we are nearly out of time.
  What I would ask my Republican colleagues is to put the feeding 
frenzy aside and to sit down and look at what really can be cut without 
harming the future. We can do this. We can make it once again in 
America if we use our tax policy wisely, if we use our tax money to 
support American-made products--buses, trains, solar cells, wind 
turbines. Our tax money should be used to buy those pieces of equipment 
that are made in America.
  Mr. RANGEL. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. GARAMENDI. I would love to yield to you anytime.
  Mr. RANGEL. Just on what you were talking about, the tax policy, and 
knowing that the top 1 percent of the wage earners, or the income 
people, in this country own 40 percent of the Nation's wealth. The 
President of the United States has to go to the United States Chamber 
of Commerce and remind them of the hundreds of billions of dollars that 
taxpayers have given to them so that they will be able to survive. Yet 
they won't take a gamble with their country in terms of helping us in 
partnerships to create the jobs that we need so badly. If we cleaned up 
the Tax Code, we could find so much that we could reduce the rates and 
make certain the incentives that we have would be to encourage people 
to invest in the good USA.
  So let me thank you so much for the contribution you're making. To 
me, anyone watching this ought to throw away Republican and Democrat 
ideas and try to find out what's good for our great country.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. This is a great country, and we're going to have a 
great future. We're in tough times right now, and we've been in tough 
times in the past. But if we have wise, thoughtful policies, we'll pull 
this country together, and we will deal with the deficit. We just can't 
do it in ways that are not wise and that do not give us the investments 
for the future.
  I think our time has expired. Thank you so very much for joining us. 
Thank you for your years of service to this Nation as a Member of 
Congress and as a war hero. We thank you.
  Mr. RANGEL. Thank you for your great contribution.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. I yield back the balance of my time.

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