[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 82 (Tuesday, June 11, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H3274-H3279]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           THE AMERICAN DREAM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2013, the gentleman from California (Mr. Garamendi) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Madam Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to spend 
a few moments this evening talking about things that are on my mind, 
and I suspect on the mind of the American public. There's certainly a 
lot of news recently about collecting data on American citizens. Having 
attended a conference this afternoon, I can tell you that I think the 
great majority of the 435 Members of this House share the deep concern 
of the American public about our civil liberties perhaps being taken 
away from us in the process of data collection. I would expect that 
this House of Representatives and a couple of our committees, the 
Judiciary and the Intelligence Committees, will be spending time over 
the next few weeks going into this in great detail trying to assess 
whether we all made a mistake when we voted for the various laws that 
have allowed the National Security Agency and the other agencies to 
collect data on all of our phone calls and more. I would hope that's 
the case.
  We need to know exactly what's happening, how it has happened and 
what impact it may have on our civil liberties. One of the most 
precious things given to us in the Bill of Rights is that freedom, 
freedom from an oppressive government. So we'll see what happens here. 
For my own part, I want those hearings to take place right away. I have 
great concerns about all of this, and we'll see how it all plays out.
  As to people stealing secrets, yes, that's against the law and there 
ought to be a punishment, and I suspect they will very quickly find 
that punishment available for those have who have stolen these pieces 
of information.
  Now, moving on, I wanted to talk this evening about the American 
Dream. I think it was probably best put forth by President Clinton, 
although down through the ages and for generations and generations, the 
dream has been pretty much the same. But since he has the most recent 
quote that I could find on this, I think I'll just use it. He said:

       If you work hard and play by the rules, you'll have the 
     freedom and opportunity to pursue your own dreams and leave 
     your kids a country where they can chase theirs.

  I like that. In fact, I like President Clinton and the way in which 
he was able to articulate some of our most fundamental values. In this 
case, he so very well laid out the essence of the American Dream: if 
you work hard and you play by the rules, then you ought to be able to 
have a good life in America. You ought to be able to see progress for 
yourself and for your families.
  This issue was brought to my attention at a recent town hall that I 
had in my district. A gentleman in the town hall, not a Tea Party, not 
a liberal or whatever, he just said:

       I've got a question for you, Congressman. I've got two 
     kids. My wife and I both work, and we've worked all our 
     lives. I'm in my mid- to late forties now, and I have to tell 
     you, we're not getting ahead. We still have those student 
     debts from our children. We still have our home, but it's a 
     modest home, we don't own a big boat, or any boat for that 
     matter. We just can't seem to get ahead. What's happened? 
     What's happened to the American Dream?

  I went on to cite a few things that I thought were the essential 
elements of that. I want to cover some of those tonight. This is not 
going to be an exhaustive description of the issue. I want to save that 
or come to that in subsequent Special Order hours that my colleagues 
and I will take up in the coming weeks. But just a couple of things 
that came across over the last weekend that I think really exemplify 
some of this. The ideal: education is open to everyone. In America, 
everyone can get a great public education. The reality is different. In 
2007, one-half of the children from the wealthiest households completed 
their college education. Only 9 percent of the children from low-income 
families completed their college education. That's a gap that has never 
been wider since 1989. So with regard to that ladder of success, 
education, if you happen to be poor or in the lower income, chances of 
your completing your college education is one out of ten.
  How about being able to have freedom from want, one of the four 
freedoms that Franklin Delano Roosevelt so beautifully articulated 
during the Great Depression? But as a result of the Great Recession in 
2010, a total of 46.2 million Americans were below the poverty line. 
That was the highest number in 52 years. And as best I could find more 
recently--the last 2 years--that number has not really changed very 
much. So we're looking at 46 million Americans that are living below 
the poverty line. So freedom from want may not be readily available to 
a very, very large percentage of Americans.
  How about the land of opportunity? We all believe America is the land 
of opportunity. Well, not really. On average, it takes five to six 
generations, five to six generations, that's 125 to 150 years, for a 
child from a poor background to rise to the middle class--not to the 
upper class; to the middle class. I looked at that, and I said, 
clearly, that has to be an inaccurate analysis. But it's not. So for a 
child from a poor background--that's those 46 million Americans in 
poverty--they could wait five to six generations on average--that's not 
everybody, obviously some will do it faster, and others won't do it at 
all--to get to the middle class.
  That is interesting, sad and challenging for us.
  Income inequality, this is what some people like to call--well, I 
won't use that right now. But income inequality, you work hard and you 
do okay. I think that's what President Clinton said, if you work hard 
and play by the rules. Hmm. Really? The United States ranks 93rd in the 
world on income equality, behind Great Britain, Australia--and here's 
one that caught my attention, Nigeria, Argentina, and Japan.

                              {time}  1940

  What income inequality means is the distribution of wealth within the 
economy. When you have income inequality, the share of the pie that is 
available to the wealthy is significantly greater than the share of the 
pie to the great mass of the population. That's income inequality.
  Fascinating statistics. Statistics are kind of the basis for many of 
our arguments. There are many more statistics along this line that we 
ought to be paying attention to. Over the next couple of weeks, we are 
going to be speaking

[[Page H3275]]

to these as we pursue the reality of the American Dream and what we can 
do to rebuild the American Dream.
  A couple of notions that I have right at the outset that I'd like to 
share as we go through this shortened 1 hour: first of all, the 
American Dream very much depends upon a job. If you don't have a job--
and we've got maybe some 12 million Americans that don't. They would 
like to work, but in some cases they've given up and in other cases 
they simply haven't been able to find a job. So you've got to have a 
job.
  There are ways that we can create jobs in this Nation. Certainly, we 
depend upon the private sector; but down through the decades of this 
democracy, beginning with our very first President, there has been a 
common bond, if you will, a partnership between the government and the 
private sector in creating jobs.
  In his very first days in office, George Washington asked Alexander 
Hamilton, his Treasury Secretary, to develop a program, policy on 
manufacturers, which is another word for manufacturing. Alexander 
Hamilton came back, I guess, a couple of months later with a report on 
manufacturers--very, very interesting and instructive to us today in 
that our very first President and very first Treasury Secretary said 
that the Federal Government has a significant role in developing the 
economy, manufacturing. We did then, and we do today.
  Alexander Hamilton said: George Washington, here's what we need to 
do. We need to use the purchasing power of the government, that is, the 
tax money that's spent by the government, to buy American-made goods 
and services. Now, there's a good idea. We've had the Buy in America 
policy in the United States for many, many years all often ignored by 
the various agencies that are supposed to oversee the purchasing. Right 
now we have a problem with the military that is supposed to go green to 
develop alternative power sources that they can depend upon if the grid 
goes down.
  However, they're routinely ignoring the Buy America requirements that 
the law has because they're purchasing these massive solar arrays as 
though they are available in Home Depot. I don't think so. But, 
nonetheless, it's an example of how the various arms of the U.S. 
Government in one way or another ignore the purchasing requirement of 
Buy America--literally using our tax money to buy American-made goods 
and services to employ Americans.
  It turns out that this is part of what I like to call the Make It in 
America agenda, a series of proposals that my Democratic colleagues and 
I are putting forth to build the American manufacturing sector. For 
example, the Department of Defense obeying the law and buying American-
made solar panels for those large arrays that they are putting up on 
various military bases or the private sector is putting up for the 
military. Buy America, Make It in America, use our tax money to buy 
American-made equipment. By the way, I've got a bill that I have 
introduced on this for the last to 2 years now that simply increases 
that purchasing content to 85 percent.
  I didn't have time to bring up another photo, but I'll tell you about 
it. In the American Recovery Act--otherwise known as the stimulus 
bill--there was a provision for Amtrak to have $480 billion to purchase 
new, advanced, efficient locomotives for the Northeast Corridor. These 
would be electric-power locomotives--I think 7,000 horsepower machines. 
Somebody--and I'm not sure who it was--wrote into that requirement that 
these had to be 100 percent American-made. Now, nobody in America was 
making 100 percent American locomotives; in fact, very few locomotives 
were made in America anyway.
  But, nonetheless, contractors, manufacturers of locomotives said, 
half a billion dollars, hmm, have to be made in America. So a German 
company--one of the largest manufacturing companies in the world--said, 
oh, we could do that. So in Sacramento, California, just outside the 
edge of my district, Siemens--who already had a factory manufacturing 
light rail cars and streetcars--said, hmm, let's expand this factory, 
and we're going to build one hundred percent American-made locomotives.
  Three weeks ago, the first of those 70 locomotives rolled onto 
America's rail tracks--now being tested in Colorado, shake-down crews. 
We can look forward to thousands of jobs in America as a result of 
that--200 specifically at that new manufacturing plant in Sacramento; 
and then the supply chain, all the people that are supplying those 
American-made parts to that locomotive are going to have jobs. Now, 
that's a good thing. That's part of our Make It in America agenda. And 
here's back to the first point: those jobs are middle class jobs.

  One of the fellows I met at that ceremony when this locomotive was 
rolled onto the tracks was telling me about himself. He was about, I 
don't know, maybe 35, 37 years old. I asked him, How long have you been 
here? He said, I've been here 5, 6 years. I said, Really? What are you 
doing? He said, Well, that's my train; I built that train, along with 
my coworkers. I was responsible for building that train. I said, Wow, 
you must have a lot of experience. He said, No, 5 or 6 years. I said, 5 
or 6 years and you know how to build that? He said, Yeah, I was trained 
by the Germans, who came over here and helped us understand how to 
build it, but now I'm responsible.
  I said, What did you do before this? He said, Well, I finished high 
school and messed around for a while and wasn't going anywhere, so I 
hired on here at the lowest-paying job.
  He is now firmly in the middle class, taking pride in his work, 
taking pride in building it in America. That's a lesson for us here in 
Congress. We really ought to take that lesson and put it into law, into 
a law that says we're going to use our taxpayers' money to purchase 
American-made goods and equipment.
  Think about the infrastructure in America, and let me give you an 
example. It's kind of interesting when you have a long airport flight 
like I did today from Sacramento to Washington to read the newspaper. 
Occasionally, you can find some interesting things in the newspapers. 
Oh, here it is, yes. California could use $44.5 billion to fix an aging 
water system over the next two decades, according to a Federal survey 
by the Environmental Protection Agency. Oh, that's California. We have 
the greatest need, $44.5 billion. And Texas, who likes to think it's 
going to be bigger than California--maybe in size, but certainly not 
better, with apologies to my Texas colleagues--$34 billion; New York, 
$22 billion. And that doesn't include repairing from Sandy.
  It turns out that these are repairs to investments that were made by 
our fathers and mothers and grandfathers and their fathers and mothers. 
So these are water systems that have been built over the last--in 
California, over the last maybe 120, 130 years; in New York, it 
probably goes back a couple hundred years. These are water systems that 
were investments by previous generations that we have been living on, 
literally consuming these investments, and not repairing and replacing 
and upgrading. Shame on us. It's as though you go to the supermarket 
once a year and you fill your pantry and freezer and refrigerator with 
all the food and you simply sit there and you consume and you consume. 
Eventually, the refrigerator is empty, the pantry is empty, and you go 
really hungry. That's what we've been doing here in America. We have 
been consuming the investments of previous generations. Here we are 
with this new report that's out for my State, California, $44.5 
billion; for Texas, $34 billion; and for New York, $22 billion, just 
for the water systems.

                              {time}  1950

  That doesn't include sanitation systems. That doesn't include the 
road systems, bridges, highways.
  We're living off the investments that were made by previous 
generations, and we can see the result of that. We've had bridge 
collapses recently. Hello? I-5, Washington State, we had bridge 
collapses. Anybody been on the interstates and notice the disrepair? I 
have, and I suspect most Americans have.
  So we're going to have to once again invest in our basic 
infrastructure. And when we do, do you know what happens? Americans go 
back to work in middle class jobs. So that perhaps that average 
American that will never in five generations get out of the bottom 
poverty level can jump up into the

[[Page H3276]]

middle class by getting one of those solid construction jobs, which 
across America are middle class jobs.
  We have enormous needs. And, by the way, we're going to have to pay 
for it. I remember when I was in college buying gasoline at about 19 
cents a gallon, 20 cents a gallon. That was a long time ago in the 
1960s. And one day I was out buying gas--I don't know, I had some time 
because my car was empty and it was slow to fill--and I looked at the 
sticker on the pump and it said, 12 cents of that 18 cents was tax, an 
excise tax, State and Federal. So two-thirds of the total cost of that 
gasoline at that time, and that was in 1964, was for taxes. Oh, my 
goodness. Oh, my goodness.
  Is the American public aware that it's been since 1990 since the 
excise tax on gasoline has been raised? It's about 18\1/2\ cents on 
gasoline, a little higher for diesel. What is the cost of gasoline in 
the United States today? $3.50, average? Do you want to do that 
mathematics? It's not two-thirds, not at all. So you wonder, where's 
the money for investments?
  We have decided to consume the investments that were made in the '60s 
when the general public--at least in California--was willing to pay 
two-thirds of the cost of a gallon of gasoline in taxes. So today we 
consume, and we pay the price: we pay the price in congestion; we pay 
the price in safety; and we pay the price in jobs.
  This is something we're going to have to consider here in Congress. 
We're going to have to look at ourselves and we're going to have to 
take up our courage and say: What are we doing here? Are we going to be 
consumers or are we going to be investors? Are we going to consume the 
investment of our fathers and mothers or are we going to invest in that 
infrastructure so that our children can have the kind of modern, 
necessary infrastructure that they need upon which their economy will 
grow?
  We're going to have to deal with this because the Surface 
Transportation Act has to be renewed this session of Congress. Not 
likely to occur this year, but before we end our work in January of 
2015, we must deal with this issue. And so the American Dream, if you 
work hard and you play by the rules, you will have the freedom and 
opportunity to pursue your own dreams and leave your kids--and leave 
your kids--a country where they can chase theirs.
  Let's just say this is the opening of what I hope will be many 
sessions in the evening--or following our session in the afternoon or 
evening--in which we engage in a discussion on the American Dream, a 
discussion about really the future of America, a discussion that--I see 
one of my colleagues has decided to join us this evening.
  Welcome. Share with us your thoughts. We're pursuing infrastructure 
and the American Dream, jobs, how we can deal with creating 
opportunities in America.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I want to thank the gentleman from California for 
being consistent in coming down to the House floor and always making 
sure that the issues of the day are brought to the American people, but 
also trying to persuade the House of Representatives to move in a 
direction that, quite frankly, the case continues to be made for these 
investments that you talk about with regard to infrastructure.
  Now, this to me seems like a very simple proposition. There was a 
great article today--I think it was today or yesterday--by Ezra Klein 
talking about we've got to get away from the deficit hock issue into 
the infrastructure hock issue. And I want to join the infrastructure 
hock caucus, if there is one here. But this simply articulates a 
position that I've held from before the American Recovery Act--and 
still hold here today--that we have projects in the United States that 
need to get done, that need to get built. Bridges, roads, airports, 
ports, all across the country, rail, all across the country, 
investments that need to be made, combined sewer systems, all over the 
United States of America, that need to get done at some point.
  And what I like about what Mr. Klein said is that we're talking about 
what we're leaving to the next generation. Now, at some point, they're 
going to be left some deficit. We have an obligation here in Congress 
to make policies that are going to make investments to reduce that 
deficit. In some instances, that means balancing the budget. Over the 
long term, we're all in agreement that that is a moral issue for us not 
to leave that huge deficit for our children and our grandchildren.

  But there are also deficits in other ways that we could leave our 
children, and that's if we have infrastructure all over the United 
States that needs fixed and we don't fix it, that is a deficit that we 
are leaving to our children and our grandchildren. That road needs 
fixed, that bridge needs fixed, that sewer system needs upgraded, the 
rail system needs upgraded. So if we don't make the investment now, 
someone is going to have to make it down the line. And the argument 
we're making is that maybe some money will have to be borrowed today in 
order to do that project or do all of these projects.
  The value of doing it today is twofold: One, the money we're 
borrowing today is almost 1 percent in interest, if not less. So we're 
borrowing money with a very, very, very, very small interest payment to 
get the job done for a project that's going to have to get done anyway. 
Now, 5 years from now, 10 years from now, the project is probably going 
to need more work, health care costs are going to be higher, energy 
costs are going to be higher, labor costs are going to be higher, so 
the project is going to cost more money because we're going to have to 
do it at some point.
  The other factor is that we have high unemployment now, double-digit 
unemployment, with the men and women in the building trades, the men 
and women in the construction area, construction field. So by doing the 
project today, we not only get the project done, but we're also putting 
people back to work that need to go back to work that will then have 
money in their pocket to go out and spend and pay taxes and to help get 
the economy going again.
  This is a very, very simple economic principle that we are trying and 
fighting to implement here, and we keep running into roadblocks--no pun 
intended--roadblocks that are preventing us from getting the economy 
moving. Now, we have an obligation in this country to make sure we give 
the next generation a country that is moving in the right direction. 
And I think when you couple a strong emphasis on investments and roads 
and bridges and rail and combined sewer overflow and waterlines and 
dams all across the country, we're going to put people back to work, 
not to mention high-speed Internet, which could help light up the next 
generation of American workers.

                              {time}  2000

  So I wanted to come and join my friend here, who is carrying the flag 
week in and week out here on the floor, to say that we have a lot of 
work to do here; and to the American people, to say there are Members 
in this Chamber who are saying: make these investments.
  The President had a plan. It wasn't quite as big as I wanted it to be 
or as big, I'm sure, as my friend from California wanted, but he did 
what he thought could, maybe, at least get through in a jobs plan. It 
got shot down and hasn't gotten anywhere in this Chamber, so we've got 
a lot of work to do.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. The President wanted to do two things in this area: 
one, the normal programs--the surface transportation program, the water 
resources bill, which we're going to be working on--but he also wanted 
to add on top of that $50 billion of infrastructure investment and 
create an infrastructure bank, which you so well described in your 
discussion here. None of that has been done, which is to the detriment 
of the American worker.
  For example, of the water programs that I was talking about early 
on--the $44 billion that's needed in California--for every $1 billion 
that you spend on a water project, you put 28,000 people to work with 
good middle class jobs, and I think the numbers would probably be 
similar for highways and bridges and the like. This is the great 
tragedy--that we're not moving in a direction of creating the 
fundamental investments. Rather, we are disinvesting--we are 
consuming--and that doesn't last very long, as you so well said.
  So what are we going to do about it?
  Hopefully, this House will undertake the same process, find the same 
wisdom of the House of Representatives

[[Page H3277]]

and the Senate when Dwight D. Eisenhower, President Eisenhower, brought 
to the Congress a proposal for a national defense highway system, which 
we now call the interstate system.
  I'm sure you've got some examples that you'd like to share with us. 
Let's go back and forth, and we'll kind of toss the ball here.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Yes. I mean, one of the things I'd mentioned a 
couple times toward the end is the combined sewer systems in all major 
cities in the United States. So if you take a city like Akron or 
Youngstown--mid-sized cities in the industrial Midwest--you're talking 
about between $500 million and $1 billion in investments that are 
needed.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. A combined sewer system. That's the stormwater that 
flows into the sewer, and it's not disconnected from the sanitation--
toilets and the like; is that correct?
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. You want to make sure that a lot of this stuff is 
not getting mixed together, and you want to make sure that it's 
separated, and you want to make sure that it's up to date. So these 
investments that a city or a municipality would traditionally have to 
make go well above and beyond a city like Akron or a city like 
Youngstown or Cleveland or Detroit or Toledo or Milwaukee--all across 
the United States.
  Let's make this investment. You're talking about cities that have 
very high unemployment rates. Let's get people trained up. We've got 
many good, solid union training programs out there that would put these 
people to work, that would get this economy moving, that have state-of-
the-art transportation and infrastructure systems in the United States, 
and that would inject some money into the economy on the demand side. 
We've been playing the supply side game since 1980: cut taxes for the 
wealthiest, deregulate Wall Street and every other sector you can 
deregulate and hope the economy takes off; but that ultimately led to 
the boom, bust and to the ultimate collapse in 2008.
  What you're talking about and what I'm talking about is consumer 
investment, the demand side: get people back to work; get some money in 
their pockets. They go out and spend it, and the economy hums right 
along because there are consumers out there. That construction worker 
pays local taxes for the local school district, for the mental health 
levy, for the libraries, and you throw some money in the basket at 
church on Sunday. It just keeps going around and around and around.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. That's how we deal with the deficit. You put Americans 
back to work, and automatically the tax revenues increase; and we then 
have a very solid, good way to deal with the deficit. On the other 
hand, as you suggested, cuts alone don't do it. What cuts do is to 
create unemployment, and we've seen that.
  We've talked about this extraordinary investment that we need to make 
in rebuilding our existing systems. Yet in looking at the budget that 
passed this House, which was the Ryan Republican budget, they have an 
unallocated $886 billion cut in these kinds of programs over the next 
10 years. More than $80 billion a year would be taken out of these 
kinds of investment programs that we're talking about here so that what 
we do instead of investing for our own generation and the next 
generation is we actually increase the consumption of yesterday's 
investment, leading us nowhere but to more bridges falling, more sewers 
backing up, more levees breaking, and more highway congestion.

  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. As you have talked about--and I know on other 
occasions--what are the investments we need to make today, not just in 
physical infrastructure, but in other things that will lead to the next 
generation of employment?
  The United States' comparative advantage in the world has always been 
that we make these investments into the next generation of research 
whether it's through the National Institutes of Health, the National 
Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, the Department of 
Energy. Do you know what? Sometimes it doesn't always work out, but 
sometimes it does. When it does, we create new areas of the economy 
that can expand and grow just like the human genome that has led to 
billions and billions and billions of dollars in private investment.
  Here, I think, is the important point for a lot of Americans who 
probably already know we collectively as a society make investments in 
the research that no one company can make on its own, this basic 
research that costs tens of millions, if not billions, of dollars over 
many, many, many years that no company could come in and reap the 
profits of immediately. We collectively say that we're going to make 
that together and then let the companies come in, pull out what they 
want, and take it to the private market, get investors, and off we go.
  That has been a pretty good recipe for the United States for a long 
time, and we're saying physical infrastructure but also these 
investments in research that have led to an explosive economy, a 
dynamic economy here in the United States. Now in these budgets that 
we're talking about we're paring back our investments in the National 
Science Foundation and in the National Institutes of Health. Not only 
does it affect Alzheimer's research and autism and these kinds of 
things; it's also taking away from the next generation of ``what could 
be'' in the United States.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. I am so pleased that you have brought that subject up, 
because it is critical. It is absolutely critical for the future 
economy of this Nation and, really, for solving problems of the world. 
Those investments are critical.
  You did leave out agriculture. I happen to represent the University 
of California at Davis, which is, by my argument, the largest, best 
agricultural research program in the world. We know the population of 
the world is going to grow, so we're going to have to continue the 
agricultural research. Yet in the budget proposals that have passed 
this House and in sequestration--let me just put it this way: in 
sequestration alone, there is a reduction of $45 million of research in 
agriculture at the University of California at Davis.
  Now, with health research, I was talking to the former dean of the 
medical school at the University of California at Davis last week, and 
she was talking about the significant reduction in health research, 
which is affecting projects that are already under way. As for research 
programs that were going along, suddenly the money is gone, and that's 
sequestration, which is also part of this.
  We can solve America's problems by getting government out of it, by 
reducing the role of government. As I said at the outset, George 
Washington didn't believe that. He believed in inserting government 
into the economy as a partner in growing it, in growing the economy.

                              {time}  2010

  We talk about Thomas Jefferson and education and how he believed that 
education--education and research--go together. These are fundamental 
investments along with infrastructure. Yet, in this House, there's an 
unwillingness by the majority party to address this fundamental axiom 
of economic growth: education, research, infrastructure, manufacturing 
the things that come from that, building the middle class, building the 
economy.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I know you and I are not going to defend wasteful 
government programs. They should go.
  We are now in a new economy that is information-based and very 
dynamic in so many ways, faster than anything that we've ever 
experienced in the country. And I think there are some programs that we 
historically have had that probably we don't need to have any more, and 
there are also programs that need to be tweaked and changed, as far as 
how we are training our workforce and how we are investing, and our new 
understandings of our brain, for example.
  All of this research should begin to change the way we approach some 
of these investments that we've made before we had that knowledge. So 
we probably do need to shift resources into areas, but clearly we 
aren't making enough investments. We clearly still have 25 percent or 
30 percent, in many high schools, of kids not graduating. We need to 
figure out how to make, for example, school a lot more exciting. We 
have programs in robotics. We have programs in Legos. We have kids that 
need to do a lot more hands-on stuff to get them excited about 
learning. That's going to take some investment to make.

[[Page H3278]]

  Mr. GARAMENDI. Let me give you an example.
  Today, in the Daily Republic newspaper in Fairfield, they ran a story 
that's exactly on your point. I'm just going to take a second and read 
some of this.
  This is a program that EDF Renewable Energy, which operates wind 
turbines between Rio Vista and Fairfield and Suisun City in my 
district--we have a big wind farm there--they are funding a program at 
Rio Vista High School for this year as a way to promote job training in 
green industries.
  Jim Bard is the instructor in the renewable energy class, which 
emphasizes wind energy. So it's exactly what you said. This private 
company that has these numerous wind turbines--I think several hundred 
wind turbines on this big wind farm--needs workers. So they've gone to 
the local high school, and they're creating what I suppose at one time 
was called a vocational education class. It's getting the kids educated 
and prepared to take jobs in their own neighborhood.
  So here you see the green technology--wind energy--coupling up with 
education to provide middle class jobs. It's a great example. My 
congratulations to EDF and their renewable energy program, to Jim Bard 
and to the folks in Rio Vista at the Rio Vista High School, which I 
proudly represent.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. You make a good point.
  I remember having a conversation with a friend of mine who is a lot 
more conservative than me. We were talking about the government's role 
in these different things. He said, Well, what about the phone company 
and the original government investments into telephones? As the 
conversation proceeded he said they weren't doing it well enough and 
the private sector could do it a lot better.
  My point was, Yeah, we all have fights with our cell phone companies 
now on our cell phone bills, but no company was going to be able to do 
at that point what the government came in and said they were going to 
do. I'm not defending every government program. What I'm saying is 
there is a role that has been successful in the history of our country.

  Whether it was the phone company back then or green technology today, 
how do we begin to incentivize these investments that are good for the 
environment, that could create a whole new sector of manufacturing? How 
many tons of steel go into a windmill? How many thousands of component 
parts go into a windmill that may be made one day by three-dimensional 
printers and additive manufacturing? This is all starting to tie 
together. But while the Chinese and the Indians and other countries are 
making these investments, we're sitting on our hands saying, Ah, the 
private sector will do it.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you so much for bringing that out.
  Back to George Washington. I like to talk about the Founding Fathers 
because it's often used on the floor to disparage one or another 
programs. But I'd like to talk in a positive way.
  He also said the Federal Government has a fundamental role in 
infrastructure development, and he cited three different things: ports, 
roads and canals.
  The very first President of this Nation was doing what we continue to 
do to this day, although at a much lower level than our Nation needs 
today. So this is a long tradition of America, and it's one that really 
works.
  Education, research, infrastructure and manufacturing, you tie those 
together and then you build the foundation for economic growth and a 
just and equitable society so people have a chance to climb the 
economic ladder, to go as high as they want to. You're giving them the 
tools that they need to succeed.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I want to thank the gentleman for making that a 
point.
  If you look at the United States as we compete against other Nordic 
countries, Australia and some other countries in Europe, we do not have 
the upward mobility. Meaning if you're born poor--and we talk a lot 
about the American Dream and moving up the ladder. If you are born poor 
in America, we rank about ninth or tenth in our citizens' ability to 
climb up through that ladder and get themselves into the middle class. 
That, to me, is a benchmark of how we've moved away from that 
philosophy that we had for many years, up until the 1980s, where we 
were going to make key investments that were going to help people climb 
up that economic ladder.
  That citizen has to bring initiative, has to bring ingenuity, has to 
bring determination. I am not one of these people who thinks every kid 
needs to get a trophy in Little League. I don't adhere to that 
philosophy. Kids are going to fail, but we need to help pick them up. 
At the same time, you can have policies that allow and cultivate the 
ability for people to go up the economic ladder, to not have such a 
disadvantage in life and an economic system that doesn't facilitate 
that to ultimately where we're getting bypassed by some of these other 
countries who have a different philosophy than we do.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you for raising that, my colleague from the 
great manufacturing sector of, I guess, the eastern part of the middle 
west. Is that fair enough?
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Fair enough.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. This is an interesting chart that I came across a 
while ago. It talks about income growth, the issue you were just 
talking about: How does an individual rise and climb the economic 
ladder and what kind of success do they have?
  This is the income growth from 1996 to 2011. I kind of displayed this 
on a football field. Years ago I played football with some modest 
success.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Leather helmets?
  Mr. GARAMENDI. I did wear a helmet, and I don't recall any 
concussions.
  The bottom 90 percent of our population has seen an income growth--
this is adjusted for inflation--of $59 over this period, 1966 to 2011. 
That's some 55 years.
  Basically, 90 percent of the population has stalled out and is not 
able to climb the ladder. That's about 1 inch. I guess that's even a 
referee's error if they pull the chains out.
  The top 10 percent of the population has gone half the football 
field, and they've seen their income growth expand by $116,071 over 
this same period of time. So 90 percent of the population has seen $59 
in growth, and the top 10 percent have seen a little over $110,000.
  The 1 percent of the population, the very tip-top--these are not the 
3 percenters. This is the 1 percent. They have gone 2\1/2\ football 
fields in comparison, and they've seen their income grow at over a 
half-million dollars a year, $628,817.

                              {time}  2020

  Now, even a smaller group, one-tenth of 1 percent of the American 
population, have seen their income grow by 72 football fields compared 
to the bottom 90 percent. They have seen their annual income grow by 
$18 million a year.
  So what's happening here in the United States--and I talked about it 
earlier before you arrived--and maybe this is a reasonable place to 
leave it because we are going to run out of time. This is not class 
warfare. This is economic reality. This is where the middle class and 
the lower income poverty class have been static. And the very tippy 
top, the top 10 percent and above, have seen significant income growth 
over that period of time.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I would just like to say, we all say let the free 
market work and all of this. But when there's a savings and loan issue 
or there's a Wall Street collapse and a lot of very wealthy people in 
the country are going to lose a lot of money, here comes Secretary 
Paulson with his hair on fire walking around Capitol Hill saying we 
need $700 billion of the taxpayers' money. You know, over and over and 
over again, we've seen this in the last 30 years with this system of 
heavy deregulation and heavy cuts for the top 1 percent.
  So it looks like they're making a lot of money, and that's high risk 
and high reward in a deregulated market; but when things collapse, here 
comes the government to save the day. It's a pretty good deal. I've got 
1,700 families going bankrupt in my district just on health care alone. 
Nobody's rushing in to say: Oop, that shouldn't matter. It's a health 
care issue, so you're not going to go bankrupt. That is, in essence, 
what happened to a lot of these folks. Someone came to the rescue, and 
that someone was the taxpayer.

[[Page H3279]]

  Mr. GARAMENDI. Wall Street was taken care of, but not Main Street. 
That's what happened.
  This is not just the result of just a free market system operating. 
This is a result of specific government policy over the last 50 years 
that has resulted in a skewing of the wealth of America, a skewing of 
that wealth from the great majority of Americans, as many as 90 
percent, to the very tippy top of the income class.
  And so over the next, I don't know, 3, 4 weeks, maybe 2 months, I 
want to take this issue up of: What happened to the American Dream? 
What happened to it?
  When you see these kinds of statistics that children live in poverty 
and it takes four or five, five to six generations before a child that 
is in poverty today, their successor generations will be able to rise 
to the top of the middle class, almost 150 years, five, six generations 
before a person in poverty can climb the economic ladder, that's 
incredible, and that speaks to something terribly wrong here in 
America.
  When education, when half of the children from the wealthier families 
graduate from college and only 9 percent of the children from the low-
income classes are able to graduate from college, these are problems 
that exist.
  If you want to take one more shot at a closing statement, then I'm 
going to end by quoting Bill Clinton.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I have one point to make. Why are we talking about 
inequality and poor folks and upward mobility? The reason is we only 
have 313 million people in the United States. We're competing against 
1.3 or 1.4 billion in China, and 1.3 or 1.4 billion in India. We have 
to have everybody on that football field playing for us economically, 
wearing the jersey that says ``U.S.A.'' on it, so we can compete 
economically. So we need to get innovative and we need to make these 
kinds of investments if we're going to get everybody on the field, 
graduated from high school, on a track to go into manufacturing or some 
of these other trades so we can really have a renaissance in the United 
States economy.
  I thank the gentleman.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. I thank you, Mr. Ryan, for that analogy. I really like 
that one.
  I'm going to end with this by President Bill Clinton:

       If you work hard and you play by the rules, you'll have the 
     freedom and opportunity to pursue your own dreams and leave 
     your kids a country where they can chase theirs.

  That's our goal. We're going to talk about these things, about the 
American Dream, what happened to it and what we need to restore it, and 
how we can make things in America and how we can rebuild the American 
economy.
  I yield back the balance of my time.

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