[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 148 (Tuesday, October 22, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H6664-H6668]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  2000
                         FINDING MIDDLE GROUND

  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. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate this presentation. We had 
one of those very important moments to recognize the long service of 
one of our colleagues.
  As we listen to those eulogies, I think all of us should be reminded 
of the awesome responsibilities that we share here in the House of 
Representatives. Bill Young, obviously, felt those responsibilities 
deeply. He carried them out for an extraordinary length of time--43 
years. We are thankful for his service, for his memory, and also for 
what he has taught us about perseverance and steadfastness and also, as 
you can tell from the various eulogies, about working across the aisle.
  Working across the aisle and finding the middle ground is what I want 
to spend some time on tonight.
  Like my 434 colleagues, when we finished voting last Thursday, we all 
left this Chamber, I think, in a rather somber mood, realizing that 16 
days had passed and our government was shut down and there was the 
likelihood of damage to America and Americans.
  When we got home, I suspect all of us--and I know this certainly was 
my case--were confronted by our constituents. They were not happy. In 
fact, they were angry. They were angry that their government--the 
government of the strongest, most powerful Nation in the world--wasn't 
operating because

[[Page H6665]]

its legislative body had failed. And we had failed to find the common 
ground; we had failed to protect this Nation and Americans.
  It was a grand debate over the Affordable Health Care Act, then it 
morphed into some other kind of concerns, and ultimately wound up 
somewhere about the deficit and about the default. At the end of that 
process, I don't think Americans really much cared what the debate was 
about. What they cared about was the very nature of our government and 
whether it would be able to operate.
  It was a heavy toll. It was a heavy toll on our Nation. It is 
estimated it was well over a $24 billion hit to the economy; and I know 
in my own district, there was a tremendous hit. As I got off the plane 
here in Washington, D.C., as I was returning today from California, at 
the airport, ready to fly back to California, was the chancellor of the 
University of California-Davis. She caught me as I got off the plane, 
and she expressed her deep concern for the university and its 
operations.
  Research projects that were under way simply stopped.
  Sitting next to me on the airplane coming out was a woman who was 
running a health and nutrition program for the U.S. Department of 
Agriculture that was associated with the University of California-
Davis. It was shut down for 16 days, and just the enormous challenge of 
shutting down and starting back up, the loss of efficiency and the lost 
research that took place.
  Those kinds of problems are repeated throughout my district. At 
Travis and Beale Air Force bases, over a thousand civilian employees 
were furloughed. In Lake County, the county family service center which 
provides support for victims of child abuse, domestic abuse, and rape 
had to reduce its services.
  As I mentioned, the University of California and the U.S. Department 
of Agriculture weren't able to operate. Farmers who needed to get loans 
at the service center couldn't get them--right in the middle of the 
harvest season. Companies that needed licenses from the Department of 
Commerce to export advanced technology had all of their orders on hold; 
and, undoubtedly, some of them were lost.
  In the far north of California, the wildlife refuges were closed 
during the opening of the duck season and also the antelope and deer 
season. In my own district in Dixon, an annual ``stand down'' for 
struggling veterans had to scramble for money to cover the Department 
of Labor loan that was not made available. The Small Business 
Administration was unable to approve business loans.
  The entire economy of the United States lost over $24 billion. The 
economic growth of the Nation probably lost as much as half a 
percentage point. And for what?
  It is hard to even begin to describe what the argument was all about 
over the Affordable Care Act--an act that is now providing health care 
services to over 4 million young men and women who are able to stay on 
their families' health insurance, for seniors who are getting 
preventive health care services. It goes on and on.
  But here we are, once again. We got past all of that. Where do we go 
tomorrow?
  Well, tomorrow we begin once again the struggle to define this 
government's future and, really, to define the future of America. I am 
going to spend a few moments talking about that struggle because on 
January 15 there will be yet one more crisis point--a focal point upon 
which the issues of government will be leveraged one way or the other.
  We have seen five such crisis points in the last 3 years, and each 
one a crisis building up to a point where the American economy doesn't 
know what to expect and therefore does not make the critical 
investments, does not attempt to grow, because they don't know what the 
economic and political future will be.
  We are going to endure that not just once in the next 3 months, but 
twice. January 15 will be the first opportunity for the next crisis--a 
crisis that will be about opening government or not. Because, once 
again, it will be a funding crisis. Will we be able to appropriate the 
money to operate the Federal Government? Less than a month later, on 
February 7, there will be one additional debt crisis. Once again, a 
default cliff will be reached.
  And so the American economy, like a racehorse at a gate, hearing the 
trumpet, looking for the gate to open, ready to get out there and 
charge down the track, the American economy will face once again that 
gate slamming shut on it. Even as it wants to grow, even as that 
great American racehorse economy wants to head down the track, that 
gate has the potential of slamming shut. The uncertainty will be there 
once again.

  We have got to end these fiscal crises. It is in the interest of 
Democrats and Republicans to end these manufactured crises and to put 
in place a long-term, stable policy that allows this government to make 
the critical investments to grow the economy, to put in place a tax 
policy that is sensible and long range and helps to balance the budget, 
that makes the necessary cuts to those programs that are not essential, 
and maintains and even enhances those that are essential.
  Let me put up on the board just for a moment some of the numbers that 
we are dealing with over the next couple of months. I don't say this is 
the best chart. It is actually a bit confusing, but I think we need to 
try to understand the numbers.
  This number, $1.203 trillion, was what President Obama suggested be 
the Federal budget for the year 2014. Back in 2010, the actual amount 
was $1.188 trillion. That is what we actually budgeted and spent that 
year. That was 2010. So there was some growth that the President 
recommended for the Federal budget.
  What actually happened was quite different. What actually happened is 
down here in these lower numbers.
  This year, the House Republican budget, otherwise known as the Ryan 
budget, called for $1.095 trillion, which is significantly under the 
President's budget. In 2011, the debt crisis came up once again and the 
August 2011 compromise said that we would spend $1.066 trillion in the 
2014 budget. The Senate actually said we would spend $1.058 billion.
  What did we actually do? What we actually did last week was to 
authorize an expenditure of $986 billion--a huge difference of some 
$217 billion less than recommended by the President.
  What does this number mean? This number means that across this Nation 
vital programs in the military, vital programs in education, in health 
care, in agriculture, and in every activity of the government, except 
those of Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid, were substantially 
reduced. That put an enormous drag on the economy. So not only was the 
economy faced with a 16-day shutdown, but it was also faced with a 
shallow and less robust Federal Government, laying off people all 
across this Nation. For the University of California at Davis, it meant 
that $40 million of research programs were not funded. Simply stopped.
  This kind of effect on the Nation's budget or the Nation's economic 
activity is going to continue. And in the year ahead, economists 
predict that it will continue to cause a slowdown in the growth of the 
economy, lowering tax revenues, actually increasing the deficit, and 
creating higher unemployment--or at least not reducing the unemployment 
rate in this Nation.
  We need to change that. We need to set in place a different policy. 
And here is where I want to go with this discussion. What is it that we 
really need to do to grow the American economy, to make sure all of the 
rungs on the economic ladder are in place and providing the opportunity 
for every American to have a decent job?
  Hardworking Americans want to go to work. They want to have a job 
where they can support their family, where they can meet their own 
personal and family needs and participate in their communities in a 
meaningful way with a good, middle class job. There are ways that we 
can do that. One of them is what we call the Make It In America agenda.
  The Make It In America agenda involves seven different policies, such 
as international trade policies. Instead of giving away our jobs to 
some foreign country, making sure that our trade programs actually 
encourage economic growth at home, not encourage economic growth in 
China. Also, that there be a tax policy that ends unnecessary tax 
loopholes and rebates for those companies that are profitable.

[[Page H6666]]

For example, of the top 20 American corporations, about half of them 
pay little or no corporate income tax. The tax system is set up in such 
a way that they are able to avoid their fair share of the cost of 
government.

                              {time}  2015

  So we need to make sure that the tax policies of the United States 
are wise, that they support economic growth, that they don't provide 
unnecessary tax breaks and loopholes to those individuals and 
corporations that don't need them. I will give you one example of such 
a huge tax loophole:
  The five biggest oil companies in America together receive somewhere 
between $4 billion and $5 billion in reduced taxes every year. This is 
the most profitable industry in the world. Why are they getting 
subsidies? Why are we subsidizing them? Why is the American taxpayer 
subsidizing the most profitable industry in the world, the oil 
industry? This is just one example of tax subsidies, tax breaks, that 
ought to be removed and seriously looked at. We could significantly 
increase the revenue to the Federal Government by eliminating these 
unnecessary, unwise, and quite foolish tax breaks and subsidies that 
many corporations and some individuals receive.
  Energy policy is extremely important. We need a wise energy policy. 
Right now, the United States is in the midst of an energy boom. It is 
reducing the cost of energy. All across this Nation, we are seeing the 
effect of this in the coal industry as natural gas is replacing coal-
fired power plants, reducing greenhouse gas emissions. All of that is a 
very, very good thing. Also, we need to continue to move towards 
sustainable energy, the green energy systems--wind, solar, 
hydroelectric, geothermal--and other kinds of sustainable energy 
policies.
  I am going to skip down here to research because this is where we 
have a real opportunity to tie together the research agenda with the 
energy agenda. An example:
  We know that most of the oil that is produced in the United States 
and is imported is used for the transportation industry.
  Recently, the Transportation Department provided a grant to the 
University of California at Davis to do some research on sustainable 
transportation. The world's top scientists have concluded that there 
really is such a thing as climate change and that it poses a very 
serious threat to humanity. The most recent report came out less than a 
month ago and concluded that we are in for some very serious troubles 
ahead unless we are able to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, 
particularly carbon dioxide, a good deal of which comes from the 
transportation industry.
  The good news is that we as the American public, through this 
government, can rise to the challenge, and communities, like the one I 
represent in Davis, California, are leading the way. The University of 
California at Davis has received a cutting-edge research grant for the 
research into transportation systems that are sustainable and that are 
not relying as much or at all on the carbon fuels, gasoline and diesel. 
So what are they--plug-in hybrids? Alternative fuels such as advanced 
biofuels, hydrogen fueling infrastructure and many other kinds of 
transportation--batteries and the like--are going to be part of this 
research.
  The Department of Transportation asked the University of California 
at Davis to lead the National Center for Sustainable Transportation. 
This new consortium will consult policymakers as they implement real-
world strategies to address climate change and other threats. In other 
words, by combining research and energy, we can move away from the 
dependence upon oil, particularly foreign oil, reducing our greenhouse 
gas emissions. So, as you go through this Make It In America agenda, 
certainly energy policy will be coupled with the research agenda.
  Another part of this is labor. Is labor ready to accept the kinds of 
challenges that we are going to find in the new, modern manufacturing 
sector?
  We need to invest in labor so that we have a well-educated labor 
force, and we need to invest in the reeducation of those men and women 
who have lost their jobs. Just two decades ago, we had nearly 20 
million Americans in the manufacturing sector. Today, it is probably 
closer to 11 million. That means some 9 million Americans who once had 
jobs in the manufacturing sector are no longer employed in that sector. 
They need to be reeducated either in advanced manufacturing 
technologies or in other sectors.
  The labor force is constantly evolving, and one of the roles of the 
Federal Government through the Department of Education and the 
Department of Labor and Commerce is to provide that reeducation 
necessary as one of the old manufacturing technologies moves, dies out 
and as new ones come along so that the labor force is able to move into 
those new jobs. So you see the combination of education and labor. 
These things work together.
  On the educational side, it has been shown many, many times that an 
education really needs to start prekindergarten; yet one of the effects 
of sequestration, together with the government shutdown, was a 
significant reduction in prekindergarten education. In my district, 
some 6,000 young people were unable to participate in the Head Start 
program, not just for 16 days but for the many days out ahead, so they 
will enter kindergarten substantially behind their peers, providing an 
anchor to the economy as they move through their educational process, 
quite possibly becoming one of the high majority or the high percentage 
of students who drops out of high school.
  As you move down this Make It In America agenda, we come down to one 
that is a fundamental investment, and that is the infrastructure 
system. We have a very high unemployment rate. There is no doubt about 
it. One of the ways to immediately employ Americans is to build the 
foundation for economic growth. These are all part of the foundation 
for economic growth. This is the concrete and steel when we talk about 
infrastructure. These are the roads, the airports, the railroads, the 
mass transportation systems, the sanitation systems, the water systems. 
So infrastructure becomes a critical part of any of the efforts that we 
need to make to rebuild America, to provide the foundation and to put 
Americans back to work.
  There is some very interesting research that has come out of this, 
and here is a piece of it: for every dollar invested in infrastructure, 
$1.57 is pumped back into the economy.

  So if, for example, the Federal Government were to undertake the 
robust infrastructure program that the President put forth a year ago 
and reiterated in his State of the Union speech this last February and 
if we passed legislation, as he wanted, to put $50 billion additional 
into the infrastructure program, the economy would not only be spending 
the dollar; it would be getting back $1.57 for every one of those $50 
billion that the President wanted to put into America's infrastructure. 
Men and women would be working; the economy would begin to move forward 
more rapidly; and we would begin to see the kind of economic growth 
that this Nation needs to have, that the men and women who are 
unemployed or those who are seeking better jobs would want to have, and 
we would be laying the foundation for future economic growth.
  We must keep this in mind. There are several things that could be 
done in this regard. One of them you just heard about during the brief 
interruption when the Rules Committee came here to put before this 
House tomorrow and in the days ahead the Water Resources Development 
Act. This used to be biennial legislation that Congress would pass 
every 2 years to put in place the water, resources, the development of 
levees, transportation systems, such as the locks and the rivers and 
the channels, the ports, other kinds of water transportation systems. 
You had water; you had sanitation systems; you had levees. All of these 
critically important infrastructure projects are in the Water Resources 
Development Act.
  It has been 5 years since there has been a Water Resources 
Development Act, but we have a chance now to push forward in this House 
of Representatives in the next few days an extremely important 
infrastructure piece of legislation. The good news is there is a good 
chance we will do it. The bad news is it is inadequately funded. There 
is not sufficient money in that program to actually build the kinds of 
things that we must have.
  So what are we going to do?

[[Page H6667]]

  One of the solutions was again proposed by the President in his 
infrastructure program that he presented to Congress, which has really 
not been acted on yet--an infrastructure bank, a bank that has been in 
existence in Europe for almost 30 years now. It is a public-private 
partnership in which the government invests money and in which private 
investors can also invest. That money would then be available for those 
kinds of infrastructure projects that are cash flow projects--for 
example, a sanitation system, a toll road, a toll bridge, an airport, a 
water system. All of these kinds of infrastructures have fees 
associated with them, so there is a cash flow that is generated 
sufficient to pay off the loan that is made available through the 
infrastructure bank.
  Such a program has been introduced here in the House of 
Representatives since at least the early 1990s. It doesn't exist--it 
has never been passed--although, every year, one or another Member of 
the House of Representatives has tried. I know Congresswoman Rosa 
DeLauro has introduced this for at least the last 15 years, but it has 
never been acted upon. You have to wonder why.
  This seems to me to be eminently wise that we would create an 
infrastructure bank. The Federal Government can borrow money today. A 
10-year note is just over, I think, 2.6 percent. That is really cheap 
money. Borrow that money. Put it in this bank. Loan it out at 2.8 
percent to various cities, counties, water systems, and build the 
infrastructure. That is cheap money. It gives us a chance to get the 
economy growing, to employ people, to build the foundation for economic 
growth, and to raise taxes, not by increasing the tax rate but by 
people paying taxes because they are now working. What a novel idea--
people who work pay taxes just as we ought to be doing. So these are a 
couple of ideas about how we can move the economy forward.
  There is another piece of this Make It In America agenda, and it is 
this: H.R. 1524. I like this piece of legislation. It is one I have 
introduced. What it basically says is: if we are going to build those 
clean energy projects--the wind, the solar, the advanced fuel, the 
hydrogen systems--all of which are subsidized by your tax money, then 
your tax money must be spent on American made: American-made wind 
turbines, American-made solar panels. Let's Make It In America.
  Why should we spend your tax money to buy steel from China to build 
the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge?
  I am sure your answer would be we shouldn't, but we did--6,000 new 
jobs in China, zero in America. It was supposed to be 10 percent 
cheaper. It turned out to be 10 percent more expensive because there 
were flaws in the steel; the welds were not satisfactory. No, no. That 
is American taxpayer money. That American taxpayer money should have 
been used to buy American-made steel and to create a new, high-tech 
steel mill not in China, which is what happened, but, rather, in 
America. We ought to be buying American. We ought to be using our tax 
money to buy American-made goods and services, and that is exactly what 
this bill does. This is part of the Make It In America agenda.
  I am going to show you one other little picture here. Normally, our 
trains don't run upside down, so let me make it right-side up:
  This is an electric locomotive--brand new, made in Sacramento, 
California, by Siemens, the German manufacturing company, which is one 
of the world's biggest manufacturing companies. Why in the world are 
they making electric locomotives for Amtrak in Sacramento? Why are they 
doing that?

                              {time}  2030

  For years, Siemens has had a light-rail trolley manufacturing plant 
in Sacramento. In the American Recovery Act--the stimulus bill--there 
was some $600 million for the purchase of 80 locomotives to replace the 
aging locomotives on the east coast Amtrak lines. Added to that $600 
million was a sentence that said, this money had to be spent only on 
American-made locomotives.
  Siemens looked at that and goes: Hmmm, we can make locomotives in 
America--and they did, in Sacramento, California. Probably a couple of 
thousand jobs, suppliers from all over the Nation providing the parts--
the electrical systems and the rest--for this locomotive, made in 
America, with American taxpayer money, because someone in the stimulus 
bill added a sentence to an appropriation and said, this money must be 
spent on American-made locomotives.
  We can do that with every one of our expenditures--or at least many 
of our expenditures--using your taxpayer money on American-made goods 
and services, a very, very wise thing to do, which, incidentally, was 
first suggested by George Washington and Alexander Hamilton. So if you 
want to go back to the Founding Fathers, use some of their ideas where 
they said--Alexander Hamilton in a report to George Washington said 
that the Federal Government should use its purchasing power to support 
American industry--buy American, Make It In America, use American 
taxpayer money on American-made goods and services. Not a bad idea. We 
need to pass that kind of legislation here.
  I am going to take just a few more moments and talk about one of the 
great challenges that we have. I am going to start with this man who 
seemed to understand what it took to rebuild and to move the American 
economy and society forward. This is actually on one of the monuments 
at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial here in Washington, D.C. When 
I took my grandchildren down there not too long ago, I read this to 
them and explained to them why this was important during the Great 
Depression, and why it is important today.
  Roosevelt said during the height of the depression that ``The test of 
our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who 
have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have too 
little.'' The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the 
abundance of those who have much, but rather it is we provide enough 
for those who have too little.
  Most of us have an image of the Great Depression--the food lines, the 
hungry, the unemployed. America has gone through something not as 
desperate, but nearly so--the Great Recession, beginning in 2008. 
Millions of Americans lost their jobs--well over 8, maybe as many as 10 
million. Even more lost their homes, and there was a lot of hurt upon 
our land.
  We have been working now since 2008 to restore the American economy. 
The stimulus bill was one such way--the proposals of the President--to 
rebuild the American infrastructure, to educate our kids, and a host of 
other things, what he called the American Jobs Program--incidentally, 
not taken up by our colleagues here in the House of Representatives on 
the majority side. Nonetheless, he recommended different ways to 
address this fundamental issue.
  How do we provide enough for those who have too little? How are we 
doing? How is America doing on meeting the challenge that Franklin 
Roosevelt laid out? The answer is seen in this chart and the answer is: 
not well at all. We are miserably failing to meet the challenge that 
Franklin Delano Roosevelt laid out during the Great Depression.
  Here is what it is: of the economic growth from 2009 to 2012, the 
fraction of the growth that went to the top 1 percent--this is the new 
wealth that was generated by the American economy, the growth in the 
economy, the wealth, the growth in the economy--the top 1 percent got 
95 percent of all of that wealth that was generated. The 99 
percenters--99 percent of the American people--got to share 5 percent 
of the wealth that was generated by the economy.
  This is a great tragedy. This is an unparalleled tragedy in the 
American economy. This is not just a 3-year period; this has actually 
been happening--not at the same horrible distribution that you see 
here--but it has actually been a phenomenon that has been going on in 
the American economy where the rich get richer and the great majority 
of Americans are standing still.
  When I am not in my district and I hear people talk about their 
lives, they are talking about the fact that they are literally standing 
still economically. Poll after poll indicates that the American public 
knows and understands this. When asked how they are doing, they 
basically say they are just

[[Page H6668]]

treading water, they are not moving forward, they are just doing the 
very best they can to hang on, to keep their nose above the water, to 
not go under.
  We have to address this phenomenon. This doesn't happen because of 
the weather, it doesn't happen because of God or some other mysterious 
force. This happens because of policy, policy that this Congress, 
together with the Senate and even the Supreme Court and the President, 
put in place, a policy that is skewing the nature of the American 
economy in such a way as to add great wealth to those who already have 
great wealth and little to those who have very little.
  We need to adopt policies to change this. On the floor of the House 
of Representatives, there should be a piece of legislation to raise the 
minimum wage. $10 is a bare minimum. California--my home State--did 
that, raised the minimum wage to $10 and then a couple of steps will go 
on in the future, a couple of higher steps. That is good, that is good 
for everyone, even those businesses small and large that are going to 
pay that higher wage. What it does is to share the wealth that is 
generated by this economy, providing those at the bottom, those 
hardworking men and women that are at the bottom, the opportunity to 
sustain their families, to sustain their livelihood. That is but one.
  If we make those critical investments that create economic growth, 
particularly education and job training, and put in place the programs 
that enhance manufacturing, we will see this begin to change, and we 
will see the 99 percenters begin to take their fair share of the wealth 
that they are generating. It is the men and women that toil, wherever 
they may be--in the Federal Government, in the State governments, in 
the manufacturing, in the fields of America--wherever they may be, 
those are the men and women that are creating wealth. I understand 
capital. It has a role in this, but capital and labor together. What we 
are seeing here is the men and women that toil are not getting the 
wealth that they helped to create.

  This is a challenge. Tax policy is part of it. Policy such as minimum 
wage, the role of the labor unions putting pressure on the system so 
that the men and women that are working in those businesses are able to 
share more of that wealth. They are all part of this system, and we 
need to pay attention to it here on the floor.
  So let's keep in mind the 99 percenters, who in the years 2009 to 
2012 received 5 percent of the total wealth generated by the largest 
economy in the world--the American economy. Public policy means a lot.
  Over the next several days, this Congress is going to deal with some 
profoundly important questions. The question of the role of the Federal 
Government--will we have another sequestration debacle on January 15? 
We could. The current sequestration, which the military is saying is a 
disaster for them, the education community, the research community, the 
transportation community, the health, the social welfare community, all 
say the sequestration is an unmitigated disaster.
  They know, and the American public will soon know, that on January 15 
the second shoe will fall and another $105 billion will be taken out of 
the economy beginning on January 15 unless this House of 
Representatives and the Senate, together with the President, come up 
with a viable alternative, one in which the growth of the economy can 
be assured, in which the continued austerity programs which are holding 
back an incredibly powerful resource called the American economy are 
put aside, and we put in place those policies that create economic 
growth. We have an enormous challenge.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________