[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 163 (Tuesday, November 15, 2016)]
[House]
[Pages H6216-H6217]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
MAKE IT IN AMERICA
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Buck). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 6, 2015, the gentleman from California (Mr.
Garamendi) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority
leader.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, thank you for the opportunity here to
discuss something that we have talked about now for almost 7 years. It
is called infrastructure. It is called Make It In America. It is all
about American bridges falling down.
This is the bridge in Washington State as one approaches the British
Columbia boundary, Interstate 5, the interstate that runs from the
Canadian border to the Mexican border. And on this particular day, you
couldn't get there because the bridge collapsed. Not unusual. All
across America, there are tens of thousands of bridges that are in a
state of imminent collapse, downright dangerous. But, hey, we don't
have any other way to get across the river, so take your chances. After
all, it is American infrastructure.
There was a lot of discussion in the last presidential campaign about
infrastructure, a lot of hooting and shouting, and maybe in the months
ahead some progress. Last year this Congress, together with the Senate
and with President Obama's signature, passed a 5-year surface
transportation bill. Good. Very good. However, there's not even enough
money in it to maintain our bridges so that they don't fall down. So we
need to get on with rebuilding America.
I could probably quote the words of the President-elect or the
Democratic nominee who didn't successfully win that election, but they
would all come down to the same thing: we need to build our
infrastructure. And indeed we do. In doing so, we are going to put
people to work, lots of people to work if we do it right.
Here is how you multiply the effect of infrastructure construction on
the employment. There is no doubt, for every dollar we spend on
infrastructure, we will grow the economy by a little more than $2, and
we will put several tens of thousands of people to work if we spend a
billion dollars or more. We know those statistics; they are out there,
and they are true. But if you really, really want to grow this economy,
and you want to bring manufacturing back to the United States, then you
ought to pay attention to what we have been working on here for the
last 7 years, and this is what we call the Make It In America agenda.
Yes, that infrastructure is essential. But what if your tax dollars
were spent on jobs in the United States, on American-made steel,
American-made concrete, American-made rebars, structural elements of
all kinds? What if your tax dollars were actually spent here in America
rather than in that very sad, sad situation in California, in my
California?
Oh, yes, let me put this up. This is an embarrassment. Oh, not this
one. That one. You see, that is the San Francisco Bay bridge. It was
completed about 4 years ago, 3 years ago now, and the original cost was
somewhere around $1 billion or so. It actually turned out to be some $6
billion or more. But the thing that really, really was embarrassing is
that the steel in that bridge was not American steel. It was Chinese
steel. The toll dollars of those who cross this bridge for the next 50
years wind up in China, not in the United States, not in American steel
mills, not in the pockets of American workers who are working those
mills, and not in the pockets of the welders who put together the steel
structures but, rather, in China's pocket.
Terrible embarrassment. Why did it happen? Well, they thought it
would be about 10 percent cheaper. It didn't happen. It turned out that
it was much, much more expensive. Why? Because the steel was of less
quality, the welds weren't good, and the inspectors were Chinese and
overlooked some of the problems.
Let me give you another example here. This is really embarrassing.
For my California colleagues, please forgive me, but these are facts;
and for all of us, pay attention. What happens when you build into a
project, a buy America provision? What happens is American jobs and
things are done well and things are done on time. The New York Tappan
Zee bridge made with United States-produced steel, about a $3.9 billion
total cost, and 7,728 direct American jobs as a result of that steel
being American steel. On time, on budget, and made in America.
So here is the deal, folks. If, Mr. President-elect, you want an
infrastructure program, if you want to bring manufacturing back to
America, then you better pay attention to this, which is Make It In
America. Use our tax dollars, your tax dollars, the American tax
dollars on American-made goods and services, not on something from some
other place. This doesn't violate trade agreements; and if it does,
those trade agreements ought to be changed. This is about rebuilding
the American manufacturing sector.
Let me give you another example. Yes, one of my favorites. Another
example, beyond the bridge, the Tappan Zee bridge, which is a very good
example, and a very bad example, the Bay bridge, San Francisco Oakland
Bay bridge. For those of you who don't know what a locomotive looks
like, that is an Amtrak locomotive, 100 percent made in America. But
America doesn't build locomotives anymore. Well, that used to be true.
Maybe a decade ago we didn't build locomotives. However, in the wisdom
of this Congress and President Obama and the Senate, the American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed, otherwise known as the stimulus
bill.
In the stimulus bill, there was written a few tens of billions of
dollars to build locomotives--let me put it this way, to buy
locomotives for the Amtrak system. This one is an electric locomotive
for the Northeast corridor here on the East Coast. Somebody somewhere
in that piece of legislation--maybe it was a Democrat, maybe it was a
Republican, maybe it was a staffer, an independent, I don't know, but
somebody wrote into that provision for the purchase of Amtrak
locomotives, about 70 of them, actually a little more than 70 of them,
that they must be not 10 percent American made, not 20, not 30, not 90,
but 100 percent American made so that every single thing on that
locomotive had to be American made.
Well, the great manufacturers in the United States--General Electric
and General Motors--and some foreign manufacturers looked at that and
said: 100 percent American made? It doesn't work. They don't build
locomotives in the United States anymore. How could you build 100
percent American made?
Well, this little German company called Siemens, one of the biggest
industrial companies in the entire world, said: How many billions
involved here? Lots of zeros, lots of billions. Seventy locomotives,
100 percent American made. We are a German company, 100 percent. How
many billions was that? I will tell you what. We will do it. And
Siemens did it.
{time} 1845
In the United States, they built that locomotive and about 60 some
others in Sacramento, California, where there was no locomotive
manufacturing plant until the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
became law and billions of dollars became available. That German
company went to Sacramento, California, just outside my district where
I spent more than 40 years representing the area, and said: We can do
it. And they did it. And now they have contracts across this Nation to
build in America not just locomotives like this but also railcars,
light railcars, transit systems, and the like.
We can make it in America, and your tax dollars can actually be used
to employ people in America and to build manufacturing systems in the
United States if--and here is the key--in the months ahead, this
Congress, working with the next President, actually decides that they
are going to put into public policy that your tax dollars are going to
be spent on American-made equipment.
Now, in that bill I talked about a little while ago, the FAST Act,
which is
[[Page H6217]]
a 5-year transportation bill, I and a few of my colleagues were
successful in increasing by a little, teeny, tiny bit the American
content on buses and light rail systems--not to 100 percent which is
what I wanted, but from 60 to 70 percent. And that will be several
thousand jobs over time across the United States. But we should be
bold.
If, as the President-elect says, he wants to rebuild American
manufacturing, make America great again--which of us doesn't want that
to happen--we all do--then I would suggest, Mr. President-elect and my
Republican colleagues and my Democratic colleagues, that we build into
any infrastructure bill two very, very important things. The first is
that American taxpayer dollars will be 100 percent spent on American-
made equipment, whether that is the steel for the wheels of the Amtrak
trains, the structures for the bridges, or the concrete, whatever.
American-made. Your tax dollars spent on America.
So what are we going to do here? The second thing. I shouldn't forget
this. There are those that would use this infrastructure legislation to
further diminish the power of the American worker to stand together
united and participate in achieving a fair wage.
We must not allow this effort to rebuild the American infrastructure
to be an excuse for eliminating the unions in the United States. We
have seen enough of that. We have seen the effect of that. The
diminution of the wages for the working men and women is directly
parallel to the diminution of the labor movement in California and the
United States.
So, let's pay attention here. Men and women joining together, arguing
and debating and standing for their rights and their wages and their
working conditions is a time-honored and essential condition of the
United States middle class and the working men and women, wherever they
happen to be across this Nation.
As we go about this process of building America, of reinvigorating
the manufacturing sector of the United States and making it in America
once again, let us remember that there are key points that must be paid
attention to.
There is a term that was used in the California fields by our friends
from Mexico, and the term was, Si se puede; or, Yes, we can. We can
make it in America. We can rebuild the American manufacturing sector.
We can strengthen American families financially and otherwise by doing
these things, but only if we use your taxpayer dollars here in America
and strengthen the buy-America provisions and no further diminution in
the American labor movement. Yes, we can.
Now, let's keep this in mind. It ought to be our motto. It ought to
be the words by which we set our compass: to make it in America, use
your tax dollars, buy American products, and strengthen the American
family.
Mr. Speaker, I have talked about this issue for the last 7 years, and
I have talked about this issue for about the last 17 minutes. I yield
to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee), an incredible
spokesperson for what is right in America and what is wrong.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. I thank my good friend from California, and I want
to offer a consistent appreciation for an effective articulate
presentation on a message that not only the American people are eager
to hear, but I would imagine as we have the waning hours--I don't like
to call anything lame duck--that we can rush to craft the kind of fair
and just response, overdue response to the infrastructure rebuild that
takes into consideration American-made products, takes into
consideration and includes no diminishing of hourly wages for our
hardworking union members, and, of course, begins to move across
America and fix the ailing bridges, dams, highway, freeways, bridges,
tunnels, and airports.
Being on the Homeland Security Committee, I definitely want to
include that, particularly as I travel around the Nation and I see the
hardworking people at airports, but also the infrastructure challenges.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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