[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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