[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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