[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 13]
[House]
[Page 19099]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          NEWBOLD-BUY AMERICAN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Murphy) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, the more I learn about the 
Department of Defense's procurement policies and the procurement 
policies of other agencies, the more angry I get, the more angry this 
Congress should get, and the more angry the American citizenry should 
get.
  In my home State of Connecticut, we pioneered America's shipbuilding 
and aerospace industries. However, today, as more and more of U.S. 
taxpayer dollars go overseas to buy equipment and parts and machinery 
for the U.S. military, those shops, once bustling with workers, are now 
silent.
  We have example after example of how our procurement policy has gone 
wrong. You have the big-ticket, high-profile examples, like the Air 
Force KC-x Tanker which went to Airbus rather than to an American-based 
bid. You have the 21 helicopters that we are supplying to the Afghan 
military today that we are buying--not from an American manufacturer 
but from a Russian manufacturer. And then you have the thousands and 
thousands of smaller examples on seemingly a daily basis in which 
American companies come up short. When we buy Chinese-made doorknobs 
for the renovations at Camp Pendleton when there is an American company 
that can do the same work, when we buy our copper and nickel tubing for 
our subs from a German manufacturer, when there is an American firm 
that can do the same work, we are wasting billions and billions of 
American dollars sending our jobs overseas.
  I am here today, Mr. Speaker, to talk about the latest affront on 
this issue. The Army, last month, offered a solicitation for 96 
machines that will make dog tags for our service men and women. These 
iconic placards are not only a symbol of the life and death faced by 
our American soldiers, but they serve a crucial function in the field. 
Frankly, there is little else that embodies the American military 
tradition than those little plates that hang off of a soldier's neck.
  An American company, NewBold, which manufactures its dog tag machines 
in Virginia, lost its bid to a company that manufactures those machines 
in Italy. Now while the NewBold machine was marginally--only about 4 
percent--more expensive, they offered around-the-clock technical 
support for our soldiers in the field. Even after they filed a protest, 
the Army still awarded the bid to workers in Italy.
  Unfortunately, due to the loss of this contract, NewBold is going to 
have to lay off some people, and the 4.7 percent that we saved is going 
to be completely offset by all of the lost income taxes to the Federal 
Government due to the layoffs, the lost payroll taxes, and all of the 
increased social costs like unemployment compensation. This is 
insanity. Not only are we now relying on an Italian-made machine to 
make one of the most iconic pieces of our military uniform--all to save 
just a few thousand dollars on the contract--but it is now going to 
cost the U.S. economy jobs, and it is going to cost the U.S. taxpayers 
additional expense. We can't allow this to continue, Mr. Speaker and my 
colleagues.
  For the last year, I have been working with a bipartisan group of 
Members, including the previous speaker, Congressman Jones from North 
Carolina, so that we can shore up the loopholes in our ``Buy American'' 
policies, so that we can make sure that more of our U.S. taxpayer 
dollars stay here at home. I have introduced legislation that will do 
just that, that will begin to reorient our money here to American-made 
products for our U.S. military.
  I've had enough. This country has had enough. As we bleed 
manufacturing jobs out of this country, the U.S. Government cannot 
continue to exacerbate that problem by sending U.S. taxpayer dollars 
overseas. It's time for this Congress to deem this practice 
unacceptable, to strengthen the ``Buy American'' provisions, and to 
bring our taxpayer dollars back home.

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