[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 170 (Tuesday, November 29, 2016)]
[House]
[Pages H6360-H6361]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   MAKE IT IN AMERICA: MANUFACTURING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Grothman). 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, our previous speaker spoke about the need 
to revitalize the American economy, and he talked about the regulatory 
environment as being one of the impediments. Certainly, there are many, 
many regulations that could impede economic development, but there are 
also regulations that might enhance economic development. Today I want 
to continue with what is now a 6-year effort--oh, yes, let's get this 
right side up. There we go--to Make It In America. Specifically, today, 
it is about manufacturing because manufacturing matters.
  When I first came to Congress in 2009, we were in the midst of the 
Great Recession, and millions of Americans had lost their jobs. We saw 
the Rust Belt literally collapse; we saw factories close; we saw our 
shipyards opened with nothing happening except in the U.S. naval yards. 
So here we are some 6 years later: the economy is recovering, and we 
can talk about regulations; but what I would like to talk about tonight 
are positive regulations--regulations and laws that grow the American 
economy, not regulations that would hinder. Specifically, as part of 
this Make It in America agenda, we have these fundamental policies. If 
we are going to rebuild the American economy, a big part of it has to 
be manufacturing. It does matter.
  So what are those issues that are involved in rebuilding the American 
economy?
  There are trade issues, and we have heard a lot about that in the 
recent Presidential campaign. Undoubtedly, the Congress will deal with 
that;
  Taxes. The debate about taxes really was not very clear in the 
Presidential election, but we are certainly going to be dealing with 
tax policy here, and we should. There is no doubt that the American tax 
policy hinders economic growth in many, many ways for small companies 
and encourages large companies to leave town--to leave America--and 
leave American workers and communities behind. We have seen too much of 
that; so tax policy becomes a very, very important part of this;
  With regard to energy and labor, I am going to go specifically to 
those; but just quickly are the educational policies. There is a lot of 
jabbering around here, on the floor of Congress, and out around the 
world about educational policies: Are our schools good enough? They 
don't measure up. We need to have charter schools. We are going to go 
into that in a big way with our new President; but one of the most 
important parts of education, when we talk about rebuilding the 
American economy, is that we have properly trained workers whether they 
are in the computer field--in computer science--or whether they are in 
the shipyards welding the parts of a ship. A well-trained, well-
prepared workforce is absolutely essential for the growth of the 
American economy; but education is not the subject today, nor is 
research;
  Infrastructure. It is part of what we are going to talk about today, 
and I am going to try to do this in, maybe, 10 minutes, but not much 
longer than that.
  What I want to focus on is energy policy and labor. Did you know--
does America know--that the United States has become a net exporter of 
natural gas?
  Yes. We do have a boom in the energy industry. It has slowed down a 
little bit with the drop in the value of crude oil and natural gas; 
but, nonetheless, as of today, the United States is a net exporter of 
natural gas. That gas is exported to Canada and Mexico and other parts 
of the world. When it is exported to other parts of the world, it is 
exported in ships in liquefied form, called liquefied natural gas, LNG. 
On ships, liquefied natural gas is part of that export that has turned 
America from an importing country to an exporting country, which is 
good for all of us; but let us realize that that natural gas and, for 
that matter, crude oil, which is also now being exported, is a 
strategic national asset, a strategic national resource. It is 
absolutely crucial to the American economy.
  I will give you one example--Dow. The big chemical company is 
bringing back to the United States much of the manufacturing that it 
once did overseas of plastic and other products because of the 
strategic national asset called natural gas. The price of natural gas 
was low enough that that big, international, domestic, American 
company--Dow--is returning to the United States to manufacture. It is 
the same thing with oil. These are strategic national assets that we 
are now exporting.
  The question for us in public policy is: Can we, in some way, use 
this strategic national resource to expand the American economy?
  The answer is: absolutely, yes.
  It is not just to the benefit of the energy companies. Maybe we could 
wish them well as they export our strategic national asset to places 
around the world and gain a healthy profit--okay--but shouldn't that be 
shared with the rest of America?
  I believe it should, and I know it could. Here is how, and it deals 
with this issue of labor and manufacturing: Make It In America. 
Manufacturing matters.
  Here is the deal. Those export facilities for LNG are big 
operations--lots of pipe, lots of plumbing, lots of containers, all of 
which are or could be made in America, creating American jobs. Now, 
once that natural gas is liquefied--that is, compressed into a liquid--
and goes on a ship, the questions are: Where did that ship come from, 
and who are the sailors on the ship?
  It used to be, back when the North Slope of Alaska opened up, that 
the steel in the Trans-Alaska Pipeline and the ships that would then 
take that oil to the West Coast ports would be American ships with 
American sailors. It was the law. It was the regulation. Here you had a 
situation in which the law and regulations created American jobs for 
mariners and for the American shipyards.

                              {time}  2000

  If we were to apply that same principle to the export of LNG, that 
strategic national resource, think of what would happen. This year, 
2016, the first export facility in Louisiana, Cheniere, began exporting 
LNG on ships. They were not American ships. There were no American 
sailors on those ships. The policy of the North Slope oil was not 
extended to the export of LNG, to the detriment of American jobs.
  So here is what we ought to do. There is an energy bill floating 
around somewhere in the Senate and the House. Nobody knows exactly 
where it is. But in that energy bill, there is a section that enhances 
and speeds up the licensing of six other LNG export facilities around 
the United States on various coasts--on the East Coast, the Gulf Coast, 
as well as the West Coast.
  Why not take what we did with the North Slope oil, requiring that it 
be on American-built ships with American sailors, and apply that same 
principle, same law, to the export of LNG as these new facilities come 
online?
  It is said that the facility on the Gulf Coast, the Cheniere facility 
in its first part--there are three different pieces of that that will 
come in over time--the first part of that facility will take 100 ships 
to export the liquefied natural gas from that one facility. We are 
probably talking about a few hundred LNG ships to export the liquefied 
natural gas not only from the existing facility in the Gulf Coast, but 
to the other facilities that will be built in the future. Perhaps as 
much as 12 percent of the total natural gas, that strategic national 
asset, will be exported, requiring hundreds of ships.

[[Page H6361]]

  What if we passed a law called Energizing America? I like that title. 
In fact, we are going to introduce it tomorrow, Energizing America. It 
is a piece of legislation that would require that we provide 15 percent 
of the total export on American-built ships. Think about it.
  Perhaps over the next decade, our shipyards would be building maybe 
as many as a hundred ships. But let's just say it is 10, 20, 30 ships. 
Perhaps more than 100,000 people could be employed in the construction 
of those ships. This would be a good regulation, wouldn't it? It would 
be a regulation that would put Americans back to work.
  It would be a law that would say a strategic national asset of this 
Nation will also benefit another strategic national asset: the American 
shipyards.
  Our U.S. Navy depends on those shipyards. Every U.S. naval ship is 
built in America in American shipyards. And if we were to expand those 
shipyards, we would find more competition for the naval ships, perhaps 
a lower price. Perhaps we would also be able to employ marine 
engineers, welders, plumbers, steamfitters, steelworkers, not only at 
the shipyards, but in the manufacturing of the engines here in the 
United States.
  Make it in America. Build it in America. All it takes are a couple of 
paragraphs of law. That is all it would take, a couple of paragraphs of 
law that say between now and 2024, in the next 8 years, 15 percent of 
that liquefied natural gas must be on American-built ships with 
American sailors.
  Now, it turns out that these American ships and the sailors are a 
strategic necessity for our U.S. military. Because it turns out that if 
you are going to project American power around the world, you have to 
be able to get there with the men, the women, and the materials--and 
that means ships.
  So we would build the U.S. merchant marine. We would build American 
shipyards so that they would be competitive around the world, and we 
would employ tens of thousands--and perhaps even hundreds or more 
thousand--of American workers in our shipyards. It is possible. All it 
takes is a law.
  So when this energy bill starts moving around--and maybe here in the 
lameduck session--I would propose a simple amendment: between now and 
2024, 15 percent of that export of LNG would be on American-built ships 
with American sailors.
  Oh, by the way, there are some older American LNG ships that could be 
reflagged for the purposes of meeting at least part of that 15 percent 
in the initial years. And then after 2025, let's ramp it up to 30 
percent. Let's keep our shipyards busy. Let's keep our steelworkers, 
our welders, our plumbers, our marine engineers, our factories busy in 
the future with a very simple law that would be a really good 
regulation.
  Oh, I can hear the whining of the oil industry and of the natural gas 
industry, ``Oh, it is going to be too expensive.'' It is not nearly as 
expensive as not having American jobs and not be being able to project 
American power because we do not have a robust merchant marine and a 
robust number of American ships.
  Consider this fact: after World War II, we had 1,200 American ships, 
American sailors on them, all American flagged. In the 1980s, we had 
500. Today, we have less than 80.
  We are seeing the disappearance of the American merchant marine. 
American sailors, American-flagged ships, American shipyards are all 
diminishing and very rapidly disappearing. It is up to us, your elected 
officials--myself, my colleagues, 434 other Members of Congress and the 
100 Senators. And, I guess, the new President is interested in making 
America great again. Hey, here is how you can do it, President-elect 
Trump. Do it in policies that once again call for making it in America.
  So what are my colleagues going to do? Let this opportunity slip? Let 
this opportunity disappear? Forget about the strategic nature of energy 
in the United States, the strategic necessity of being able to project 
American power with American sailors and American ships to go wherever 
we want?
  Oh, yes, I heard somebody say, well, we could contract to have ships 
sent to move our military: Oh, yeah, hello, Mr. Xi. Oh, yeah, I am 
phoning. Yeah, I'm phoning from Washington, D.C., and, yeah, can you 
folks in Beijing send over ships so that we can send men and material 
to the South China Sea?
  It is not likely to happen, right?
  We can't depend on other countries. We have to depend on our own 
abilities, our own shipyards, our own mariners. We can do it.
  There are many bad regulations to be sure. There are some that hinder 
the economy. But I would propose to you that a very good law could be 
used to build the American economy by simply requiring that the export 
of liquefied natural gas be done on American ships, 15 percent between 
now and 2024, and thereafter, 30 percent, echoing what we did back in 
the 1960s when the North Slope of Alaska opened up and that oil came 
south.
  American steel pipe and American-made ships with American sailors, we 
can do it once again for the benefit of our country, for our national 
security, and for American workers and American businesses.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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