[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 24 (Tuesday, February 14, 2012)]
[House]
[Pages H715-H722]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
MAKE IT IN AMERICA: MANUFACTURING MATTERS
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Palazzo). 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, thank you very much.
I'm joined tonight by two of my colleagues, Mr. Tonko from New York
and Mr. Altmire from Pennsylvania. We're going to be talking about the
President's budget and about one of the issues that we think really
will propel America back to the leading edge of the world's economies.
We've had some tough times, but we've seen some progress. If we can
once again make it in America, we're going to see this economy grow,
we're going to see the middle class come back to life. We're going to
see an expansion of wealth and the opportunity for families to make it
in America when we make things in America.
Let me just start off this discussion with the progress that's been
made. Some of our colleagues here would like to say that nothing good
has happened over the last 3 years when, in fact, this chart, which is
from the Department of Labor Statistics office, points out very, very
clearly where we have come from since the Great Recession began.
If you take a look at this, the gold columns over on the far left--or
far right, depending on your perspective--you can see the great decline
that took place from 2007 until January and February of 2009, when
President Obama came into office. Since that time, we've seen a steady
improvement in the number of jobs in America. So even though we were
seeing here in this particular 2009 period a continued decline, each
week that went by we saw improvements, less of a falloff, and we began
to emerge from the depths of the Great Recession.
So beginning here in about 2010, we began to turn around and we began
to see positive job growth. Every month since that time we have seen
positive job growth in America--not enough, not enough to satisfy any
of us on the Democratic side and not enough, I'm sure, on the
Republican side, and certainly, as President Obama said when he
appeared here at the State of the Union, not enough to satisfy the
President.
So we're now looking at the President's budget going forward,
proposed, came to the Congress yesterday. That budget lays out how he
would like America to move forward, and how we in the House of
Representatives and the Senate can put into place the laws, the
programs, and the money to pay for the advancement of the American
economy.
{time} 2020
So we're going to spend tonight building off the President's budget
and the things that are in there.
[[Page H716]]
Over the last year, my colleagues and I have been talking about the
key ladders to success, those things that create opportunity in
America. And certainly, they're education, it's the research, it's the
manufacturing, the infrastructure, and the opportunities that come with
them.
Tonight we'd like to start by focusing on one part of the President's
budget, which was the R&D, the research and development portion of the
President's budget. Now, in any economy, if you're going to grow that
economy, you have to stay in the forefront of technologies. America has
been the best in the world at this. And in doing so, we have created
extraordinary growth in the economy and opportunities for new
businesses.
Unfortunately, in the last 20 years, we've seen those businesses go
offshore. But the genesis of that growth is often in the research and
development, usually funded by the Federal Government. And that
research and development comes in several different parts of the
Federal budgets. Certainly, we see it in health care, the National
Institutes of Health. We see it in the national science, in the Energy
Department, and in the military. Each of those organizations has a
research budget, and from that budget comes new innovation, new
products.
For example, the defense research agency, known around here as DARPA,
really did the grunt work, the initial development and research to
create the Internet. And we've certainly seen what that has meant to
America.
Now, with that introduction, $148 billion in the President's budget
for all the research and development that the Federal Government
supports gives us the opportunity to create the new solutions to
today's health problems, today's economic problems, energy issues and
defense issues.
Fortunately, my two colleagues today are well-steeped and very, very
knowledgeable about the research budget. My colleague from New York ran
a research program in New York. Share with us, and then if you'll
reflect on the President's budget.
Mr. TONKO. Sure. Absolutely.
Representative Garamendi, thank you for bringing us together for an
hour of thoughtful discussion, dialogue that needs to be exchanged here
on the House floor so as to promote what I believe is a very
progressive agenda.
And in my heart, I believe that the President has promoted a budget
here that allows us to move forward in a progressive style to be able
to talk about sustainable outcomes, to be able to talk about meaningful
employment, cutting-edge ideas that will now take us, as a
sophisticated society, embracing our intellectual capacity, to move
forward with the soundness of job creation in the realm of high tech.
Now, we have been talking on the floor, a number of us for several
weeks now, months perhaps, about the vision of reigniting the American
Dream, reigniting that American Dream through the underpinnings of
small business as the pulse of American enterprise and, certainly,
entrepreneurs who are those dreamers and movers and shakers and
builders that provide the soulfulness of the vision of how we can move
ideas forward that translates into jobs and translates into product
development.
Then finally, a thriving middle class, making certain that in any
democracy the measurement of a resounding future comes through the
measurement of how well that democracy's middle class is performing.
And so we know that, through reforms out there, we can go forward with
this budget and address small business, entrepreneur development, and
thriving middle class dynamics in a way that will build the sustainable
outcome.
We cannot, in my opinion, I totally believe that we cannot cut our
way to prosperity, cut our way to opportunity, cut our way to an
economic recovery. We do it through investment, investment of the
soundest order.
Now, to your point, I had served, before entering Congress, as
president and CEO of NYSERDA, the New York State Energy and Research
Development Authority. And it was there that I got to see programs that
we've devised and funded through the State legislature, where I served
for nearly 25 years, my last 15 of which were as energy chair. It was
quite an eye-opener to see the program development that was providing
job opportunities of a new variety, of a cutting-edge opportunity.
And there, not all the research scenarios were, perhaps, a success
story; but without that investment, without government joining forces
with academia and the private sector, we do not strike that sort of
visionary outcome, and what you saw were tremendous investments made
that enabled us to pave the way for investments in the Internet, or
GPS, or working through the DARPA vision of how we strengthened our
military, and then sharing a lot of that information and that
intellectual property with the growth of jobs here in this country.
That is the sort of opportunity that is envisioned here by the
President in his budget presentation to Congress. And it's that sort of
investment that believes in the American worker, believes in a thriving
middle class, believes in the strengthening that small business brings
to any community, and believes in entrepreneurs, that ``rags to
riches'' scenario that has been, you know, very much a part of our
American story. The American history is replete with success stories,
``rags to riches'' scenarios where America was seen as the promised
land.
Well, we have not abandoned manufacturing. We have endorsed this idea
of investing in manufacturing, investing in research; and I am really
pleased to see that we're moving forward with soundness, with this
budget presentation in a way that translates into jobs, no other higher
priority, and we do it by reigniting the American Dream.
So, Representative Garamendi, seeing those success stories through
the lens of NYSERDA, the New York State Energy Research and Development
Authority, where we were able to speak to water efficiencies, where
you're saving mountains of electrons, we got to see it in electric
vehicles that were being developed, we got to see it in energy
retrofits for business.
These are the sorts of ideas that a sophisticated society embraces.
We don't abandon these goals. We get into it full steam and go forward.
And by the way, it's because we are competing with other nations in
what is a global race on clean energy and innovation. If we don't take
that in, if we don't acknowledge that we're in the midst of that race,
we will watch nations pass us by, and we will let down generations of
American workers, and that would be unforgivable.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Tonko, thank you so very much, and thank you for
your extraordinary experience in dealing with research and then
translating that research into real things that Americans could make.
Now, the great manufacturing center of America is represented here by
my colleague from Pennsylvania (Mr. Altmire). Thank you for joining us,
and share with us your thoughts as we look at the President's budget
and on making it in America.
Mr. ALTMIRE. I thank the gentleman from California and my friend from
New York (Mr. Tonko). We have a discussion going now about
manufacturing in America. And our colleagues understand the
relationship that exists between manufacturing and R&D, research and
development. And it's critical that we look at those together, because
of the discussion that we're having in this country about why, over the
past several decades, we've lost so much in manufacturing, we've lost
our core manufacturing businesses.
I come from western Pennsylvania. We have seen the steel industry
over the past several years. Although there is a resurgence today, it's
been many, many years since we lost a lot of that steel industry that
we had in western Pennsylvania, and it was the core base of employment
for generations in the Pittsburgh area.
Across the country, we've seen our manufacturing industry decimated
by foreign competition; and the reason R&D relates to this, as the
gentleman certainly knows, is it's a continuum. And at first, when
America lost its manufacturing lead to other countries, we still kept
the innovation; we still kept the R&D. But the continuum that exists
between someone in America coming up with an idea, an invention,
turning that, through R&D, into a real product, a real innovation, we
have always been the leaders in that in America. Americans have led the
way with innovation, with creation, with technology, and then turning
that into the
[[Page H717]]
manufacturing sector, turning that towards product development,
manufacturing, exportation to other countries, creating a base of
people who are going to use that product.
The whole continuum is something that we have seen over the last
several years through foreign competition. We've lost our lead in a lot
of those things. And because of our failure to invest in research and
development, because of our failure to keep up with the foreign
competition, we've lost even more than just the manufacturing sector.
We've lost our competitive edge on the innovation side as well.
That's why it's so critical, even in the times that we face now,
severe fiscal restraint, a recession that we are finally recovering
from. We have to continue to make that investment in R&D because, as
the gentleman from New York said, if we don't do it, other countries
will--and they are. And if we expect to compete in a global economy, if
we expect to get back our lead in manufacturing, which we are starting
to do, it has to begin at that first stage of innovation, of research
and development, creating new products, leading to new ways of
manufacturing, more cost-efficient ways of manufacturing.
We're going to be able to do it, and we're starting to see the
resurgence in America specifically because we understand that continuum
that exists. It would be a tragedy for workers in this country to begin
moving in the other direction.
I thank the gentleman for his leadership.
{time} 2030
Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you, Mr. Altmire, and thank you for the work
that you've done for us in western Pennsylvania. Indeed, at one time, I
know, when I was growing up, it was the center of the American steel
industry and manufacturing there, and to the immediate west in Ohio and
Indiana and on.
I want to put up this chart because it really demonstrates the
challenge that we face and the opportunity that we have.
This chart speaks of the 12 years with 6 million American
manufacturing jobs lost. Let's go back about 20, 25 years ago. There
were just under 20 million manufacturing jobs in America. Over the
years, it was up and down, with a slight decrease. Then beginning
around the year 2000, we began to see a precipitous decline, basically
the outsourcing of American jobs. The great manufacturing heart and
heartbeat of America just began to slow down to a rhythm where now we
are down to just over 11 million manufacturing jobs. This is our work.
This right here. This decline is the challenge that this House faces.
When you start with what the President has suggested, you start with
R&D, because that's the genesis. That's where the new ideas and the new
products are developed. Then you have to couple that with
manufacturing.
I want to give just two examples from my own district, one that I
learned last weekend when I was back home in the Sacramento Valley just
west of Sacramento.
A university town, the University of California, Davis, about 10
years ago, some graduate students at the engineering campus or the
engineering school there at the University of California, Davis figured
out a new program, a new way to do advanced manufacturing. They were
into machine tools, and they figured out a way to take machine tools
and make them far more productive and innovative and capable of doing
some really different things. They took that idea--these were the
entrepreneurs that you talked about, Mr. Tonko. They took that idea and
they started a small business. In the intervening years, they began to
grow. They now employ 75 people in the Sacramento region for the
development of these advanced machine tools.
A company in Japan took a look at this and said, Oh, we want to do
that. They were in this business. So they bought the company, and they
thought about taking the company back to Japan. No. Didn't happen.
Instead, they decided to build that manufacturing facility in Davis,
California. That factory is now being constructed, and it will soon
employ a hundred people.
So here we have an example of where research out of the University of
California, Davis engineering school led to the creation of a new
business in the machine tool industry and the continuation of research
and development and advancement and, now, manufacturing taking place in
California.
There are a couple of other pieces of public policy that fit into
this continuum of development of economic growth, and they were
policies that were put forth by the House of Representatives when the
Democrats controlled the House. It was this: For any company that
wanted to make a capital investment, they could immediately write off
that total investment in the first year. Rather than depreciating that
investment over 7, 10, 15 years, they were able to take advantage of
it. A very, very powerful incentive to make it in America, to build
your manufacturing facility in America.
So this company, DTL, is now growing in California as a result of the
research at the university, coming out, entrepreneurs taking the ideas,
building a business, and now investments, in this case by a foreign
company, into the United States. We call that insourcing.
I'll come up to the other example a little later.
Mr. Tonko, take it from there.
Mr. TONKO. Representative Garamendi, thank you for that lead-in.
Certainly Representative Altmire talked about the need for us to invest
in manufacturing, when you look at that precipitous drop, losing the
many millions of manufacturing jobs, perhaps the largest loss of
manufacturing jobs in world history. It's up there. It ranks very high.
Why? Well, policy, tax policy that encouraged taking jobs offshore and
investing in other nations. We were rewarding that behavior.
What we're talking about now is turning that around, doing this U-
turn, putting the brakes on a process, on an incentive that really was
destroying hope for American workers. So now what we see is a new
vision of providing incentives for those who will build opportunity in
this Nation.
Also, I think when we look at some of the focus that existed or
didn't exist over the past decade and a half, you look at where we were
going as a Nation, and the focus wasn't on agriculture, it was not on
manufacturing, but it was on the service sector, and primarily on the
financial service sector.
Now, we know that scenario. We won't go down that road. Suffice it to
say, we turned our back and said, Here's the keys; play as you wish. No
watchdog in the equation, and people created vehicles by which to
circumvent regulation. So we put at risk the Nation's economy. Every
family that invested into their future was put at risk.
So we ignored manufacturing.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Tonko, may I interrupt you for a moment?
Mr. TONKO. Absolutely.
Mr. GARAMENDI. You mentioned something that we actually talked about
last week. I want to hand you this chart. If you would hold that one up
there and let me go back to the microphone.
You mentioned the effort that we made in the 2002 change from a
manufacturing economy to what this chart calls a FIRE economy--finance,
insurance, and real estate--a FIRE economy, one that collapsed because
it was about manipulating money instead of creating mechanical
engineers and chemical engineers and nuclear engineers. We created
financial engineers. The result? Not good. The Great Recession.
Please excuse me for interrupting.
Mr. TONKO. It's a valid point. Where was that linear, where was that
outreach, that extension into all of America with the good products we
developed that would serve this Nation well? So what we're talking
about now is bringing back some programs.
What was ignored was the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, MEP.
MEP is a program I hear about all the time from my manufacturers who
are still clinging on, who are working trying to be productive,
offering hope to the worker. They're saying, Where is the MEP program?
Well, it was brought back last year, and it's reinstated into the
budget this year. The request to Congress is to support the
Manufacturing Extension Partnership.
What does that do? It's an MEP program. Okay. It's alphabet soup. But
[[Page H718]]
what does it do? It allows for manufacturers, small and medium-size
businesses, small and medium-size manufacturing firms, to develop
additional markets.
The President has said let's get into exporting; let's build it in
America and export to the world. That's a vibrant economy. Also, it
enables us to define, to explore new opportunities and to adopt those
technologies and retrofit our manufacturing base with that know-how,
with that productivity margin growing. That means greater opportunity
for us to compete in the global market, to create jobs, and to provide
hope again for the worker.
So it is good to see that MEP, the Manufacturing Extension
Partnership, is back in this budget. It's a statement that we care
about manufacturing, we care about small and medium-sized businesses,
and that we are going to see that as the springboard, the economic
springboard to the economic recovery that we so much deserve.
It's about priorities. That's what a budget is. It's like, Where are
you putting your investment? How are you developing that formula? What
is the hope that you anticipate that is translating to America's
working families?
This is the moment for us to move forward by reigniting the American
Dream, doing it through small and medium-sized business, the pulse of
the American enterprise, investing in those dreamers, those movers,
those builders, those entrepreneurs, and then resulting in a thriving
middle class. Again, where there's a thriving middle class, you have a
strong democracy.
So reignite the American Dream, and, gentlemen, we have work to do.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Indeed we do. We have much work to do.
Mr. Altmire, you've been working long and hard here in the U.S.
Congress on these issues. Carry on this discussion.
Mr. ALTMIRE. I wanted to transition into talking about the trade
deficit that we're facing in this country. But before I did that, I
wanted to close the loop with what Mr. Tonko and Mr. Garamendi have
been talking about for my colleagues.
{time} 2040
I hear a lot back home. You'll have town hall meetings, and you'll
have discussions with people about federally funded research. It seems
as though there's always an example somewhere of a research project
that seems on the surface to be unjustifiable, and in some cases,
people will argue it's ridiculous that we're funding certain things. I
just wanted, for my colleagues, to give a couple of examples of
federally funded research that has paid huge dividends for everyday
life.
There was in the late 1970s and early 1980s a big national story
about federally funded research that studied the eyesight of eagles. At
the time, it was considered to be a mockery--it was of no use to
society, and it was a waste of money. Well, lo and behold, what did we
get out of that research? We got night vision goggles for our troops
who were serving overseas on the military battlefield. We got soft
contact lenses. We got so many innovations from that type of research.
The touch screen on our everyday iPad was federally funded research out
of the University of Delaware, of course many years after what I'm
speaking of. The GPS system, which so many of us rely on, was from
federally funded research. The Internet was created, as we all know,
through the Pentagon and federally funded research.
So I would say to my colleagues, for those who may be skeptical that
certain projects--and you know, I'm sure there are some that you can
point to that haven't paid dividends, but there are some that maybe on
the surface didn't sound like good ideas in the beginning that have
paid huge dividends. I would go back to that example of studying the
eyesight of eagles. LASIK eye surgery was the byproduct of that type of
research. So investment is what we're talking about. Research and
development just pays back so much more than what we're paying into it.
The R&D tax credit has to be made permanent. That is a key part of
this. The manufacturing extension partnership that the gentleman was
talking about is a key part of our future in this country, bringing
back a resurgent manufacturing base. What happens if you don't do that?
What happens if you aren't competitive in the global economy?
It's what this chart shows.
Now, this will come as no surprise to our colleagues. This is the
U.S. trade deficit from 1976 through 2008. You don't even need to look
at the numbers, and you can see it's heading in the wrong direction and
that it has been heading in the wrong direction for a very, very long
time, and there are a lot of reasons why this is.
Some of it has to do with our foreign competitors and their getting
their act together and joining the world competition in a way that they
hadn't before. But a lot of it has to do with our own policies and the
fact that we have not invested, that we have not had a strategic
manufacturing strategy in this country and that we were a little bit
slow to react to what was happening overseas.
The role that we have in this House is to change that, and we have a
decision to make in this country: Are we going to continue to allow
this to happen and just sit back and wait while other countries
continue to improve, to modernize, to become more cost-efficient, to
become more competitive, and to continue to make this trend worse for
the American worker? Or are we going to take action? Are we going to
invest in our future? Are we going to change the way that we do our
manufacturing strategy in order to incentivize making products in
America?
We talked a couple of weeks ago, the gentleman from California and I,
on this very floor about a provision of our Tax Code which may very
well be, in my opinion, the most egregious and unjustifiable provision
in the entire Federal Tax Code, which is, if you have physical assets,
if you have a plant in this country, a manufacturing plant, and if you
want to move that plant overseas, if you're going to close your
operations, if you're going to get rid of your American workers, if
you're going to move your physical assets, literally move those assets
overseas, in some cases, you can get a tax deduction for the cost of
your moving expenses. The American taxpayer, believe it or not, will
cover the cost to move that plant overseas.
That's ludicrous. There is no reason that provision should exist, and
that's one of the reasons you see the chart going in the wrong
direction--because we have been slow to react. Yet we're at a turning
point in this country. We have a tremendous opportunity in front of us
to do the right thing, to change the policies that have led to our
trade deficit and to begin turning the corner and heading in the right
direction.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you very much for pointing out the eye of the
eagle. We have to keep our eye on this particular prize, and that's
rebuilding the American manufacturing sector.
I handed this chart to Mr. Tonko a while ago. It really needs a
further explanation.
What we did beginning in 2000, actually before that, was to develop a
FIRE economy--finance, insurance, real estate--not manufacturing. So
manufacturing was allowed to decline, and of course real estate,
finance, and insurance grew and became the essential economy in the
year 2000 to 2010. And, of course, the great collapse in 2007 and 2008
as a result of, as Mr. Tonko said, regulatory oversight disappearing
and anything goes. We're reversing that.
Mr. Altmire, you talked about the egregious tax policy of giving the
tax breaks when companies offshore jobs. It was actually in 2009, just
before the new Congress came into effect, that we enacted legislation
that eliminated much of those tax breaks.
Now, there is more to be done. In the President's budget, he calls
for the full elimination of tax breaks to companies that offshore jobs
and, as he said here in the State of the Union address, turns that
around and gives a tax break to companies that bring jobs back to
America. In his budget and in his proposals are specific actions on tax
law that we must take to carry out that commitment to American and
foreign countries that want to bring jobs back to America.
We can do this. Public policy plays into this--the budget and the
research and development piece of it. That's the genesis. That's the
start of the idea of a new business or of a new technology and then the
manufacturing support
[[Page H719]]
that goes with it. There is the tax policy, and we've talked about the
vast manufacturing systems. All of those are the feedstock to get these
companies up and going so that the entrepreneur, in using the research
and creating a small business, will ultimately create a bigger middle
class, reigniting the American Dream in doing that.
Mr. Tonko, I'm not sure where we want to go with this. I think we
ought to spend a few moments talking about transportation if that's
okay with you gentlemen.
Mr. TONKO. I think before we leave this talk of manufacturing growth,
both of you gentlemen held up tremendous charts that tell the story.
What I think is interesting is, when you overlay those two charts
with the deficit--the trade deficit and the loss of manufacturing
jobs--they mimic each other. They absolutely trace the same curve. And
so as you drop those manufacturing jobs, as the commitment was the tax
policy and the investment in manufacturing declined, the trade deficit
impact from Representative Altmire's chart--they're mimicking each
other. You can see the precipitous drop here is almost at the same rate
as the impact of the trade deficit.
So we can step back and deal with facts or we can be in denial. We
can be bitter about success and come on to the floor and try to hold
back success. But instead of a tug of war on this House floor, let's
tug together. Let's tug forward to make certain that we're investing
where we ought to. Let's cut where we can but invest where we must. One
of those investments has got to be in the human infrastructure. We're
talking about capital investment, and we're talking about physical
infrastructure, but we need to talk about the human infrastructure with
this manufacturing comeback.
When I see advanced manufacturing embraced in my district, where we
as a hub in the 21st Congressional District of New York, in the Capital
Region of New York, have seen tremendous growth in clean energy and
innovation, those jobs are coming about because of an investment in
nanotechnology, semiconductor research so as to transmit more electrons
over an exact same-sized cable. From what we do today, we talk about
the investment in chips and in growing those chips to a smaller,
smaller dimension so that they can have an impact--a partnership with
agriculture, communications, energy generation, health care--you name
it. Any industry can be impacted by that nanotechnology investment. So
there is all this investment, but you're going to need the workers who
are now being part of an advanced manufacturing stage in our society,
where we're having more and more investment and keen intellect. You
need to train those workers.
The President has said, Look, we've got a vehicle that is very sound
out there. They're called community colleges. In my district, we not
only have Hudson Valley Community College, Fulton-Montgomery Community
College, Schenectady County Community College, but we also have an ag
and tech campus in the SUNY system, the State University of New York
system, in Cobleskill.
{time} 2050
All of these are having cutting-edge involvement in research that
spills over to the worker. Cleanroom science, retrofitting homes to
solar, making certain that you have a trained workforce for
nanotechnology, all of this is happening in our community colleges. And
the President said, Let's go forward and invest. There is, I believe,
an $8 billion investment in our community colleges to train the worker.
So let's not pull back on success. We see what's working. We know what
has to happen. We have the formula based on history that ought to speak
to us. And let's get it done. The worker can't wait until the next
election.
The decisionmaking on this floor should be about hope and
opportunity, not about the next election, but about the next jobs we
can bring into the congressional districts of this great country that,
in a cumulative format, will spark a reigniting of the American Dream.
My district is the donor area to the Erie Canal; and we saw a
necklace of communities emerge from that investment which, by the way,
came at a tough time for this Nation. Governor DeWitt Clinton said,
Look, here's a solution: We have a tough economy. Let's provide
opportunities for shipping our cargo, building. And what happened? A
number of immigrant patterns traveled to these shores in hope of that
rags-to-riches scenario, and they invested. They were the brains behind
the industrial revolution, immigrants who came here and developed--
along with the industrial giants--an agenda for jobs.
We can do that again. This is the American pioneer spirit. The DNA
within my district is a pioneer spirit where these mill towns became
the epicenters of invention and innovation. And the same story can be
lived today if we're willing to reignite the American Dream through
investments in small business, entrepreneurs, and a thriving middle
class.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Tonko, thank you. And you really hit one of those
issues directly, particularly the education issue. And we ought not
jump to transportation before we deal with the investment in the human
capital, that is, in the American worker.
And the President did, in his budget, lay out $8 billion for
community colleges to work directly with companies to educate their
workforce. I can give a specific example. Again, in Davis, California,
there is a biopesticide firm that actually goes out and finds microbes,
or various kinds of naturally occurring materials, and uses that and
makes that into a biopesticide, not a chemical but a biopesticide. They
need technicians in their laboratories and in their manufacturing. They
go to the community college to bring up the necessary skills and bring
those workers in.
So there are jobs out there, but they have to have the education
behind them. So much of what the President is proposing--not only with
community colleges, but with the Pell Grants and proposing $30 billion
going into our K-12 schools so that those schools can be upgraded, and
an additional $30 billion to bring the teachers back into the
classroom.
Mr. TONKO. Representative Garamendi, if you will just yield on one
point, what I believe is also important with the community college
investment is the stated purpose of creating partnerships with the
private sector.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Exactly.
Mr. TONKO. So it's not like one person or one institutional network
working in a vacuum but, rather, a partnership that is fostered by this
budget process, by the thinking here of the administration working with
Congress. Let's develop those partnerships with academia, community
colleges training people and retraining.
Many people are starting second careers. They lost a job through no
fault of their own. This was a brutal time on America's manufacturing
base. Let's bring that base back, and let's give them the tools they
need to be successful so that it grows more and more opportunity so
that we can have as sharp a competitive edge as possible as we enter
into the global sweepstakes on jobs.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you, Mr. Tonko.
Mr. Altmire, I see you are kind of ready to go here.
Mr. ALTMIRE. The gentleman has given me so much to work with here on
community colleges, and then I will transition into transportation, as
the gentleman would like to do.
I visited, just yesterday, the Community College of Allegheny County,
outside of Pittsburgh; and they have an amazing fundraising campaign
going on, because western Pennsylvanians, private industry, and the
foundation community believe in the future of our country, and they
believe in the future of community colleges. They have a $40 million
fundraising campaign. They've already exceeded $30 million. And the
discussion was about all of the wonderful things that are happening as
a result of the innovations that are taking place at the community
colleges, not just in western Pennsylvania but across the country.
We have energy resources in western Pennsylvania that are unique. And
all the time we hear about employers saying that they have jobs
available, but they can't find people who are trained to fill those
spots. So being right on the cutting edge, the Community College of
Allegheny County has almost two dozen new programs, new curricula
[[Page H720]]
that they have established to train workers and retrain, in some cases,
to fill the new spots--geologists, managers, people out there on the
worksites, all types of ways, through the natural gas industry, the
nuclear industry, energy, research and development, what we were
talking about earlier.
Our community colleges really do play a unique role in this because
of their ability to partner with local businesses, to identify the
needs, to retrain workers who have lost their jobs through downsizing
or changes in the workforce. It's an amazing resource for this country,
and the President is right to put a focus on community colleges as part
of our resurgence in this country.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Altmire, if you could wait just a moment. Now
you've got me engaged in this, and you talked about your community
college. We are going to be going to our community college in
Fairfield, the Solano Community College, and we're going to take the
work that was done by this Congress in 2010 when it brought the Pell
Grants down into the community colleges.
Previously, the Pell Grants were only available at the 4-year college
level, but now the community college students can also vie for the Pell
Grants and the loan programs that had been significantly improved back
in 2010, before we lost the majority here. We took back from the big
Wall Street banks the student loan programs, reducing the interest
rates, reducing the hassle for students, and making loans far cheaper
and more available.
Just this year, the President took one additional step under his
authority and stretched out the payment mechanisms so that no graduated
student who had taken out a loan needs to pay more than 10 percent of
their annual income to repay that loan. All of this is part of
investing in the human capital, investing in the workers.
I suspect the three of us could go on for a long time about
education.
Mr. TONKO. Let me just mention this. Last night, I spoke before the
ERC, the research center at RPI, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. They
are well regarded for their development of scientists and technology
experts and the engineers of the future. Their funding is primarily
from the NSF, the National Science Foundation.
There is a 5 percent increase in NSF in this budget, and rightfully
so. What they're doing in this think tank is stretching the creative
genius and the imagination of folks with regard to lighting designs,
lighting designs that will be used in ways that are unbelievably
creative and constructive. It's about creating the incubators of the
future, the entrepreneurs of the future. It's about developing the
professors that will train students into the future. It is an
infrastructure unbelievably sound, and it is NSF-funded.
You know, for people to say, Well, our best days are behind us--what
I'm hearing tonight is that there's optimism. There's great optimism.
There's a reason to be hopeful. There is a charge for us to be
optimistic by investing in opportunity. There are the tools that
America's base needs. They need these tools. And how dare we not
provide them. Earlier statements on the floor were denouncing workers
instead of providing hope, training, and retraining people in areas
that will be geared toward their specific strengths.
We all have certain skill sets or have that potential for those skill
sets. There's a passion that everyone has for certain types of work.
Let's not denounce the worker. Let's insert hope in the equation and,
again, provide for the infrastructure, human infrastructure required
for this manufacturing base.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Altmire, I was about to respond that, while the
lighting at Rensselaer is obviously good, it's California where the
light-emitting diode--the LED--is actually being manufactured by a new
startup company called Bridgelux, which has taken that technology and,
with a little bit of assistance, is going to being able to manufacture
in America.
However, controlling this for the next 20 minutes, we're going to
move to transportation. Mr. Altmire, why don't you get us going on
transportation.
Mr. ALTMIRE. Earlier, our colleague, Mr. Tonko, was talking about the
Erie Canal and the foresight and the commitment that went in and just
the unbelievable feat that it was to accomplish that. And I was
thinking, as the gentleman was speaking, about the debate that we're
having in this country about transportation and infrastructure.
{time} 2100
We are going to debate tomorrow and vote probably Thursday in this
House on a very underfunded transportation bill that does not contain
the same foresight that the gentleman was discussing occurred in New
York. And I think about the debate that must have occurred in New York
when the Erie Canal was proposed, and the cost and the expense and the
manpower and just the time commitment that was necessary, a seemingly
impossible task.
You think about the intercontinental railroad in the 1800s and what
the country's debate, the political debate had been at that time. What
must have been the debate in the 1940s and 1950s when President
Eisenhower finally got off the ground the interstate highway system and
began connecting our roads in a way that we'd never done before.
That's what we're facing right now. We have a system of
transportation in this country to move goods from point A to point B,
manufacturing and make it in America, what we were talking about. Well,
if you make it in America, you have to have a way to move goods across
the country. We can do that in all kinds of ways. We can do that on our
waterways, through shipping, cargo ships; and we also have barges in my
neck of the woods. In Pittsburgh, I have a system of locks and dams in
the district that I represent, six different locks and dams that
average 85 years old. They were built to last 50. Two of them have been
rated by the Army Corps of Engineers as in imminent threat of failure.
That is a crisis of infrastructure, and that's happening in similar
ways all across the country.
You look at our aviation system. If you want to move goods by air, we
have an air traffic control system in this country that is still based
in technology from the 1950s. And this NextGen technology that is
possible through satellite technology, it is expensive but it's long
overdue, and it's a commitment that we need to make in this country, as
they've made in other countries. Our competitors don't have the same
bottlenecks that we do at their airports because they have more modern
air traffic technology.
And then you get to our rail system. We all understand the
bottlenecks outside of Chicago and other places in this country and our
lack of modern investment in our rail system. But what we're going to
be talking about this week in the House is our roads and bridges and a
highway system. I spoke earlier about President Eisenhower's vision
with the interstate highway system and the way that this bill lacks
that same vision because it underfunds that investment and it doesn't
require or doesn't even incentivize products to be made in America.
There are literally trillions of dollars of need in our
transportation infrastructure. Certainly we don't have the ability to
afford it all; but I can't think of a better way to put American
workers back to work, to put American jobs back in play in the
manufacturing sector, to have a resurgence, a regeneration of our
manufacturing sector than through our transportation infrastructure.
I'm very disappointed at the lost opportunity that the bill we're
debating presents because there are so many ways American workers can
win, American manufacturers can win, and, most importantly, America can
win. And we're missing that opportunity. But through the discussion
that we are having today, maybe we can move this country in a different
direction.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you, Mr. Altmire, for getting us started. And
I've got to compliment you on the really neat segue that you used, the
Erie Canal to move to modern transportation. That was very nicely done.
We do have a real challenge. This week, we're going to be taking up a
transportation bill that the Secretary of Transportation, who has now
been in office nearly 3\1/2\ years and who was a Member of the House of
Representatives for I think over 20 years and a Republican, says that
this is the worst transportation bill he has ever seen. Ever seen.
This transportation bill that we are going to be taking up is
underfunded.
[[Page H721]]
It totally eliminates from the funding stream the public transportation
sector. So we're talking about Amtrak, buses, light rail, the metro
systems here in Washington, New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Atlanta
and other places that are going to be cut out of the funding stream.
There's a whole lot of other things that are within this piece of
legislation that are nonsense and nonstarters and ultimately detract
from the goal that you so well stated, Mr. Altmire, of building that
infrastructure that we need for a modern, thriving, growing economy
that's based upon manufacturing.
Now, if all you're doing is sending buy-and-sell signals over the
Internet, I guess you don't need a highway. But if you're sending cars
and rail systems and you're sending equipment back and forth across
America, you better have all of that transportation infrastructure in
place. So as we rebuild the American manufacturing sector, we will need
this in place.
Now, Mr. Tonko, you took the train from New York today.
Mr. TONKO. I did.
Mr. GARAMENDI. What happened that you were talking about earlier?
Mr. TONKO. Yes. Well, there was concern expressed on that train that
the transportation bill advanced in this House falls grossly short of
what's needed.
And, you know, when you look at the many sectors of the
infrastructure community, it's not just our traditional roads and
bridges which require assistance. It's mass transit. It's rail. It's
also telecommunications and it's energy. And it's water. So all of this
infrastructure requires an investment. And how do we make up ground
where we have underinvested in this area?
Well, the President proposes a $10 billion infrastructure bank bill
that will leverage government moneys and private sector moneys that
will enable us to provide for the sorts of investments that are
required. Now, investing in our transportation infrastructure has great
merit. Many of us can cite those weaknesses out there.
My district, in Montgomery County, lost 10 people when a bridge
collapsed along the New York State Thruway. There are bridges around
the country that need immediate attention. There are those situations
where many believe we're going into a water economy in the next 10-20
years. If that's so, how are we treating that resource of water? Are we
being the most efficient?
And energy, if we're going to move into a creative, innovative arena
for energy supplies and diversify our mix, we need to retrofit the grid
system in order to make it all work, in order to incorporate these
ideas. Or we can stay beholden to a fossil-based infrastructure for
energy supplies, which means that we'll be beholden to nations that are
oftentimes unfriendly to the United States and use those energy
consumer dollars, American consumer dollars, to pour into their
treasury and develop their troops to fight against the American forces.
So it's an issue of national security.
So there are many dynamics here that need to be addressed in a full-
picture view, not just dealing in some sort of snapshot of denial. That
does not produce an infrastructure bill that is worthy of the needs of
Americans out there from coast to coast.
You know, sometimes, Representative Garamendi, you're looking for
that Sputnik moment. That's what inspired our win in the global race on
space--U.S. versus USSR. We gave it our all because we had that Sputnik
moment. We got knocked on the seat of our pants, stood up, dusted off
the backside and said: never again. And we won that global race on
space.
What is our Sputnik moment today?
Is it bridges collapsing with people dying? Is it paying God-awful
prices for energy supplies and not creating our new energy supplies? Is
it ignoring a water economy that is to come and will be a strength for
this Nation and a wisdom to invest in our water resources?
All of these moments could be referred to as Sputnik moments, and we
need to take those experiences and that recent history and have it
influence our thinking and have us go forward with a sound investment
in infrastructure.
So I see great potential here in this budget. I see great
opportunity. And I see investing our way to opportunity and investing
our way to an economic recovery, investing our way to the reigniting of
the American Dream, which is our principal foundation by the Democratic
Caucus in this House. Let's reignite that American Dream. Let's do it
through small business and through investment in entrepreneurs and a
thriving middle class. Infrastructure is prime amongst those areas of
investment.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Tonko, you are so very correct about reigniting
the American Dream. One of the dreams I have is to drive down
Interstate 5 in California and not have my car knocked to pieces on the
unimproved and the falling-apart highways. In America today, we have
150,000 miles of roads that are in desperate need of repair--150,000
miles. That's about 50 times back and forth across America.
{time} 2110
Now, if we did that and repaired those highways, what could happen?
What could happen if we actually built a real robust transportation
network in America? Well, back to the jobs issue, back to making it in
America: What if our tax dollars were to be used to buy American-made
equipment? This piece of legislation, H.R. 613, is now working its way
into the transportation bill. The bill that our Republican colleagues
put out has a very, very weak Buy America.
This particular bill, H.R. 613--I happen to be the author, and I'm
kind of proud of the piece of legislation--would require that our tax
dollars, which will be used to fund the transportation program, the
airports, the NextGen system and the roads and bridges that both Mr.
Tonko and Mr. Altmire talked about, that those be made in America, that
we make it in America. We would use our tax dollars to actually make
these things in America. So if we're going to build a high-speed rail,
let's make it in America.
In fact, that's happened. In the stimulus bill, the American Recovery
Act, there was a provision for some $12 billion for high-speed rail in
various parts of the United States, and an additional sentence was
added to that law that said all of this money must be spent on trains
and equipment made in America. Guess what happened? Foreign companies
that built high-speed systems decided, oh, $12 billion, we want a piece
of that. And so they came to America, and they built manufacturing
facilities. One was built in Sacramento. Secretary LaHood was just
there a couple of days ago visiting that factory. The German company,
Siemens, built a large manufacturing plant in Sacramento, California,
to make light rail and to make locomotives for Amtrak, to make and to
be prepared to build the high-speed rail systems that are coming.
Why did they do it? Because it was the law of the land that said your
tax money, American taxpayer money, must be spent on American-made
equipment. But what this bill does is it extends that idea as we go
forward so that when we build bridges, the steel is American steel, and
it's put together by American welders and by American ironworkers, and
that the cement is American cement and that the computer systems that
are being used to develop these things are American made. We can
rebuild the American manufacturing sector when we decide it is the
public policy that we use American taxpayer dollars to make it in
America once again.
There's another piece of legislation that does the same thing for
energy products. You've heard of solar systems, the photovoltaic
systems, the big wind turbines that we're beginning to see across
America. All of those energy products are essential elements in the
future. Once again, our taxpayer money is used to support that. And my
legislation says if you're going to get American taxpayer money to
support your solar system or your wind farm, then you're going to buy
American-made solar panels, solar equipment and wind turbines. We can
make it in America.
So all of these things fit together--a transportation program that is
going to give America what it needs to travel and an education program
so that our workers are prepared and an R&D, research and development,
program that allows us to innovate for tomorrow's economy.
[[Page H722]]
Mr. Tonko, I think we have about 2 minutes left. Could you wrap it up
for us?
Mr. TONKO. Sure. Absolutely. I think beyond the innovation and the
ideas that translate into jobs, research equaling jobs, there are these
benefits of connecting us as a Nation. We are a large Nation
geographically, and the interconnecting that can be done through the
investment in infrastructure is important.
Now, we know beyond the roads and bridges and the rail and the grid
system for our energy supplies there's a telecommunications network;
and that effort to create a national wireless initiative is very
important. It will range from first responders with interoperable
communications devices for first responders to a high-speed Internet
system so that we're wiring in to remote areas and enabling this
country to truly prosper.
So, tonight, we have heard such great comments about what we can do
and what we must do about cutting where we can, by addressing
inefficiency, waste, fraud and outmoded programs, but maintaining the
vigilance about investing where we must. If we do not invest, we deny
the American Dream. If we invest, we reignite that American Dream. We
reignite the dream through the investment in a historic display of what
America is at her greatest: when she invests in ideas, she invests in
her workers, invests in infrastructure, in small business,
entrepreneurs--those dreamers, shakers, movers and builders--and
invests in a thriving middle class. It can be done, and it will be done
if we put our minds to it. Mr. Garamendi, we have work to do.
Mr. GARAMENDI. We have work to do indeed.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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