[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 5 (Tuesday, January 17, 2012)]
[House]
[Pages H18-H20]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
MAKE IT IN AMERICA
The SPEAKER pro tempore. 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, 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.
{time} 2010
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,
[[Page H19]]
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.
{time} 2020
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.
[[Page H20]]
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.
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