[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 9 (Tuesday, January 16, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H399-H401]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       A BETTER DEAL FOR AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2017, the gentleman from California (Mr. Garamendi) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, with all the things that are happening in 
Washington, it is pretty easy to feel concerned and to lose faith in 
what it is that we are doing here. It is language, questions of racism, 
questions of tax policy, winners, losers.
  Mr. Speaker, I decided today to be optimistic, to be upbeat, and to 
say: Hey, there really are things that we can do if we just put our 
minds to it and begin to work together.
  Before I start these sessions on the floor, I always like to ground 
myself in what is it that I would like, and that I would like my 
colleagues, to accomplish. I always turn to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 
who brought us through the Great Depression and the Great War. Etched 
in the marble at his memorial here in Washington, D.C., are these 
words: ``The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the 
abundance of those who have much . . . .''
  I probably ought to repeat 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.''
  I always want to start with that because it grounds me as I look at 
the multiple opportunities we have here to do just this: add more to 
those who have much.
  For example, the tax bill that passed just before Christmas and was 
signed into law clearly does more for those who have much. Well over 80 
percent of the $1.5 trillion--actually, far more than that--that were 
involved in the tax giveaway went to the superwealthy and America's 
major corporations.
  But I said I was going to be positive and I didn't want to drag all 
of us down further in that tax scam, but what I really want to talk 
about is what we can do to add for those who have too little. So let me 
start with that.
  My Democratic colleagues and I have been talking for the better part 
of 6 months now about a better deal for America, things that we can do 
to improve the lot of everyday Americans so we can provide enough for 
those who have too little. We all know that middle class America has 
stalled out over the last 20 years. So we set up a series of policies, 
programs, and legislation to improve the situation for working men and 
women of America, for those who clearly have too little and those who 
are struggling every day to meet their mortgage, keep their kids in 
school. So it is really about investing in America and making it in 
America, a series of programs and policies.
  I am not going to talk about all of those tonight, but I want to 
focus on this one: making it in America and investing in America.
  Before I go on to explain more about it, the rest of the program, 
really, is this: better jobs, better wages, and a better future.
  So when we talk as Democrats about a better deal, a better deal for 
America, we are really talking about these three fundamental things: 
better jobs, better wages, and, therefore, a better future for 
Americans.

                              {time}  1930

  There are many different ways that this can be done. One of the 
principal ones is this: those of you who follow this--and I suspect 
there are very few of you--but if you have been following these floor 
sessions that I and others have been doing for the last, in this case, 
6 years, we developed this little placard: ``Make It In America. 
Manufacturing Matters.'' It is pretty fundamental.
  Over the years, we have looked at the hollowing out of the great 
manufacturing centers of America. Some people like to say it is the 
Rust Belt. Well, the Rust Belt is coming back, and it can come back, 
roaring back, if we pay attention to the policies that create 
manufacturing opportunities.
  The President has talked about this, but, unfortunately, the policies 
that actually have emanated from the administration, in many cases, 
harm the manufacturing sectors--I am the ranking member of the Coast 
Guard and Maritime Transportation Subcommittee--maritime, ocean, inland 
waterways, the great Mississippi, the Ohio River system, the Great 
Lakes of America; and, of course, the coasts; the harbors, New York 
Harbor; Charleston; the harbors in Florida and across the Gulf Coast; 
in California, the great harbors of San Diego, Los Angeles, Long Beach, 
and the San Francisco Bay Area; and further North, Oregon and up into 
Washington.
  These maritime opportunities are enormous. And, unfortunately, we, 
far too often, ignore those opportunities. And so on the Coast Guard 
and Maritime Transportation Subcommittee of the Transportation and 
Infrastructure Committee, we are trying to focus on ways in which we 
can actually rebuild the great American maritime industry.
  If you go back in the history of this Nation, back to its very 
earliest days, in the early policies of George Washington and Alexander 
Hamilton, they set out policies to encourage the maritime industry. By 
the way, for those of you who really want to know where the first 
inheritance tax came into being, it was John Adams. He actually put the 
inheritance tax in place to build a frigate for the U.S. Navy. So it 
goes way, way back.
  That takes me back to tax policy, and I said I wouldn't deal with 
that too much, but it is hard to ignore the fact that it was a very bad 
tax bill for the working men and women. One of the reasons it was a bad 
tax bill is that we need to build our infrastructure. There is going to 
be a lot of talk here in the next several weeks about the President's 
infrastructure plan--$1 trillion infrastructure plan. Good idea. Let's 
do it.
  What was that movie? That famous line? ``Show me the money.'' It 
disappeared. It disappeared in that tax bill. Where did it go? It went 
to the superwealthy. Maybe they will build the infrastructure. I am 
sure the top 1 percent, the top 10 percent, would be

[[Page H400]]

happy to build a road if, of course, they could charge a fee to get the 
people who use the road to pay that fee. But that doesn't make much 
sense.
  I will take you back to Alexander Hamilton and George Washington. 
They put into America's public policy, in the very first Presidency, a 
road-building policy, and it has, more or less, been with us over the 
years where the public pays for this in fees and services. But the 
money disappeared. It is gone. It is gone in the tax cut. It is not 
there. $200 billion will be discussed over the next several weeks.
  Where are you going to get $200 billion in this year's budget? More 
than $150 billion disappeared now in the tax scam. So maybe they can 
find it somewhere. The military wants another $50 billion, and, of 
course, there are healthcare services, and there is a need for 
education and so forth.
  So here is what we can do without going into the budget bill, without 
trying to find new money, but, rather, to use a public policy that was 
first enunciated and written into law when the Arctic opened. Do you 
remember the North Slope of Alaska back in the 1960s, when the U.S. 
Government decided to allow oil drilling on the North Slope of Alaska? 
It was written into that law that allowed for the pipeline to be built 
from the North Slope down to Valdez in southern Alaska, that all of the 
oil that would come through that pipeline would have to be on American-
built ships with American sailors.
  And guess what? Ships were built, mariners were hired, and oil was 
put on those tankers and shipped into the American ports. Later, that 
oil was shipped offshore to Japan. And over the years, the petroleum 
industry was able to whittle away at that requirement of American ships 
built in America with American mariners. And so today, there is no 
requirement that any oil developed in the United States, any natural 
gas developed in the United States and exported, be on American-built 
ships.
  So what does it mean? It means that ships are coming into our ports 
to take a strategic national asset, our oil and our natural gas. It is 
being put on a foreign-built ship with foreign sailors, foreign 
mariners who come and go, who don't pay taxes in the United States; 
ships that are not built in the United States with American steel, 
American-made engines, and all of the electronics and pumps, and all of 
the other equipment, not made in America.
  So here is the deal. What if we decided to go back to the future? 
What if we decided the future ought to be like the past, and this 
strategic national asset be used to rebuild our shipyards, to employ 
our mariners, to give us in the United States the ability to build 
commercial ships of all sizes, and, at the same time, enhance the 
productivity of our shipyards as they build our U.S. Naval vessels and 
our Coast Guard vessels?
  What if we were to do that? Well, we would employ thousands of people 
in the shipyards; our steel companies operating, taking ore from the 
North, bringing it to the steel mills, manufacturing that steel for the 
shipyards, the engines that go into those ships--which, by the way, are 
maybe about a quarter of the size of this room. I mean, huge diesel 
engines--and all of the other pumps and all of the other equipment, 
what if we were to do that? Why not? What would that mean? Well, let's 
see. We could make it in America, or they could continue to be built in 
China, Korea, India, but not in America.

  Here is the deal: all we need to do is to write a law. All we need to 
do is to go back and copy the law that was written in the 1960s that 
required that the oil from the North Slope of Alaska, coming down the 
pipeline to Valdez, be on American ships. That is all we have to do. 
And if we were to do that, wow, we would employ thousands of people in 
our shipyards. We would have thousands of men and women on those ships 
across the oceans delivering a strategic national asset to far places 
in the world, to Japan, to China, and to beyond.
  It is possible. Our work here is to have a better deal for America, a 
better deal for Americans, policies that lead to the employment of 
Americans, policies that help to rebuild our steel industry, that bring 
strength back into our shipyards so that we can provide the jobs.
  We are not talking about minimum-wage jobs here. We are talking about 
jobs that are at the higher echelon of the middle wages, of middle 
America. We are talking about skill sets, welders, pipefitters, 
steamfitters. We are talking about engineers who design these ships. We 
are talking about marine architects. We are talking about the financing 
of these.
  We are talking about thousands upon thousands of jobs spread out 
across America, and all we need to do is to go back, visit the past, 
bring it forward into law, and make sure that a strategic national 
asset is used to bring jobs to America.
  It would be nice if 100 percent of that oil and gas were on American-
built ships, but, frankly, the American shipyards don't have the 
capacity to do it. Now and probably never would they have the capacity 
to build all of the ships that are necessary. Right now, at a facility 
in Texas, the Sabine Pass, a company called Cheniere Energy is shipping 
natural gas taken from the ground in the United States, brought to 
Texas, put on ships that are taking that natural gas all around the 
world--most of it going to Asia.
  That natural gas could also go to Europe, and if we were to work out 
a deal with the European Union and the countries in Europe, we would 
use that natural gas as a strategic asset to put in place in those 
countries of Europe that now have to depend upon gas from Russia. And 
let's understand this. Russia is using their natural gas as a lever 
against the European Union and against the Europeans as we try to build 
our relationship with Europe.
  So how many ships are being used? Probably when that one export 
facility in Texas is up and operating at its full capacity, it will 
take over 100 LNG tankers to meet the demands of that one export 
facility. Now, it happens that there are five--maybe six, but certainly 
five--new export facilities that are being licensed around the United 
States: one in Maryland, not too far from Washington; another in 
Oregon; and others in other parts of the coastal areas of the United 
States.
  So how many ships? We don't know for sure. But I do know this: if, 
over the next 10 years, we were to require that just 15 percent--well, 
let's make this over the next 20 years--that just 15 percent of the 
expected export of LNG were to be on American-built ships, we would, in 
American shipyards, build at least 25 ships. And these are not small, 
little tugboats. We are talking about major oceangoing LNG tankers.
  Now, for the crude oil, if just 10 percent of the crude oil were on 
American-built ships, by 2032, we would have 31 ships built here in 
America. So we are talking well over 50 ships built in the United 
States. To put this in context, major, deep-draft ships built in 
America's shipyards over the last 3 years, the average number of ships, 
deep draft--these are big ships--built in American shipyards has been 
in the range of 10 to 12 ships.
  Eight of those are for the U.S. Navy; maybe three have been for the 
commercial fleet. So we are talking about the potential for a very 
significant expansion of work in American shipyards if we were to write 
just a couple of lines of law to require that, beginning in 2022, just 
1 percent of the natural gas be on American-built ships. That would 
bring three ships in. And then they would ramp it up over time, 
increasing the percentage: 3 percent by 2026, 10 percent by 2034--that 
would be 16 ships--and 15 percent by 2040. So that would be 25 ships 
built in America carrying LNG, liquified natural gas.
  For crude oil, let's start at 1 percent. That would be three ships; 4 
percent by 2026, 12 ships; 8 percent by 2029, 24 ships; and 10 percent 
by 2032, and that would be 31 ships. This is the art of the possible. 
What does it mean for America? It means good middle class jobs.
  I will give you another example. This is a locomotive, an electric 
locomotive built in Sacramento. Some 70 of these locomotives were built 
for the railroads for Amtrak here in the East on the Eastern corridor. 
It took probably more than 1,000 jobs in Sacramento, California, to 
build these locomotives. One hundred percent American made.

                              {time}  1945

  How did that happen? Do you remember back in the Great Recession in 
2009, Congress--Democrats, without Republican support--put in place the 
stimulus bill, the American Recovery and

[[Page H401]]

Reinvestment Act? Some $800 million were set aside to provide 
locomotives for the East Coast, for the Eastern corridor.
  Most companies said: We don't build locomotives anymore.
  So General Electric and GM just waved off the possibility. But in 
Sacramento, there was this German company called Siemens that was 
building light railcars, transit cars and the like, at a newly 
established plant in Sacramento, California.
  They looked at it and said: $800 million, 100 percent American made. 
We are a German company, but we are operating in America. Do you want 
100 percent American-made locomotives, the wheels, the electrical 
engines, the electrical motors, all of the electronics? That German 
company said: Bring it on.
  $800 million, they signed the contract, and they produced 70, 100 
percent American-made locomotives.
  So what is the point? The point is, maybe 1,000, maybe a little less, 
middle class jobs in Sacramento, California, and you can bet that steel 
wasn't made in California. It came from the Midwest. You can bet that 
those wheels were made outside of California. The electric motors came 
in from the East and the Midwest.
  So this opportunity was spread out all across America. It is exactly 
the same if we were to require that our liquified natural gas, a 
strategic American asset, were exported on American-built ships, and 
the same for the oil that comes from the Bakken up in the North and the 
Middle American States.
  All of that is the art of the possible. So we are all about doing 
this. We are all about making it in America.
  I will take a couple of seconds, and I am going to give you one more 
example. For those of us in northern California and anybody who wants 
to tour San Francisco and the San Francisco Bay Area, you will see a 
fabulous new bridge spanning the bay from Oakland to San Francisco. It 
is a beautiful bridge.
  However, it was a bridge that was built with Chinese steel. It was 
supposed to be 10 percent cheaper, so they went for the cheap, but they 
wound up with the crud. They wound up with steel that had weld problems 
and that had quality problems. It ultimately wound up to be way, way 
over the budget, and 3,000 jobs and a brand new, high-tech, most 
advanced steel manufacturing plant perhaps in the world was built in 
China. No jobs in America, no new steel mill in America, but there was 
in China. That is what happens when you buy foreign.
  I guess New Yorkers were a little smarter than my California 
colleagues. So in New York, they wanted to build a new bridge called 
the Tappan Zee Bridge. They said: We are going to make it with American 
steel. It costs $3.9 billion, under budget, and there were 7,728 
American jobs.
  It makes a difference. Public policy makes a difference. If you want 
jobs in America, then you set about to give Americans a better deal. 
Public policy and laws, that is our work. We are your Representatives.
  We ought to be representing you, not the Chinese steel mills. We 
ought to be representing you, not the shipbuilders in Japan or Korea. 
We should be representing you, the American people, the people who are 
working in the shipyards of America.
  The children of today's shipbuilders need an opportunity to continue 
the work of their fathers and their grandfathers in America's great 
shipyards.
  I will tell you this: our public safety, the security of America, 
depends upon the U.S. Navy. The U.S. Navy depends upon shipyards for 
their ships. The more commercial ships we build in the shipyards, the 
more competition there will be to build naval ships.
  So here it is, a better deal. This is what we Democrats are offering. 
We are offering a better deal. We are going to focus directly on better 
jobs.
  Tonight, we have talked about American manufacturing. We talked about 
making it in America. We talked about making ships in America once 
again. We are talking about high-paid, middle class jobs in American 
manufacturing, whether it is the shipyard or whether it is where these 
great engines are manufactured, wherever it may be in the United 
States.
  So better jobs, better wages from these high-quality jobs, and, 
therefore, a better future for America.
  So here, while we spend all of our time wondering what the next tweet 
will be from our President, I want us also to think about the art of 
the possible, about legislation that provides Americans with a better 
deal.
  We will talk more about this in future days, but, right now, I want 
us all to think about what we can do for America so that we will have a 
better deal for the working men and women of America.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________