[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 5]
[House]
[Pages 6952-6955]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                 JOBS AND THE MAKE IT IN AMERICA AGENDA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Adams). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. 
Cicilline) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority 
leader.
  Mr. CICILLINE. Madam Speaker, I thank you for the opportunity to 
speak this evening about jobs and particularly about the Make It in 
America Agenda, but before I begin, I would like to yield to the 
gentleman from Michigan to begin this conversation.
  Mr. CLARKE of Michigan. Thank you, Representative Cicilline.
  I represent the city of Detroit. In fact, the congressional district 
that I represent includes metropolitan Detroit. Over the last 10 years, 
metropolitan Detroit has lost more jobs than any other metropolitan 
area in this country, but it wasn't just Detroit and its metropolitan 
area that's lost jobs. Other areas, other cities, other metropolitan 
regions in the country have lost millions of jobs over the last 10 
years.
  Now, during this same timeframe, this country has been investing our 
tax dollars to build bridges, to repair roads, to build hospitals, 
sewer systems, schools, to build industrial parks that will promote 
more business, to actually develop businesses and free enterprise 
models that are successful. Now, many of the American people may not 
have seen the benefits of this type of investment because all of the 
work that I am talking about that was funded by tax dollars was done in 
Afghanistan, and the people who directly benefited from these projects 
were the people of Afghanistan.
  My position is this: we need to create jobs in America. We need to 
keep the jobs that we have here so they don't go overseas like they 
have in the past. In order to do that, I'm proposing let's take a share 
of the money that's intended to go to Afghanistan, redirect it to the 
United States to create jobs right here, jobs for the American people, 
because we're the ones that actually need it, and it makes sense. The 
money that we are investing in Afghanistan comes from U.S. taxpayers. 
Let's spend it in a way that benefits the taxpayers and creates jobs 
right here in the United States.
  Now, I do understand that we've got to stop terrorism from breeding 
in

[[Page 6953]]

other countries, and we certainly don't want other safe havens for 
terrorism to develop overseas. But in light of the fact that bin Laden 
is now gone, I'm asking this Congress, this administration to reassess 
our mission in Afghanistan. Let's take a part of the over half a 
trillion dollars--and that's trillion with a ``t''--in military 
assistance that we've spent in Afghanistan over the last 10 years, 
let's take a share of that and return it home to protect our people 
right here in the United States.
  Yes, we are at risk of a terrorist attack, but more than likely that 
risk is increasingly coming from within the U.S. So let's fully equip 
and fund the first line of defense against terrorism in this country, 
which is our first responders. It is our local police, our local 
firefighters, our local emergency medical providers that we call on to 
help protect the American people. So I'm proposing let's take a share 
of that military assistance that's going to Afghanistan, and let's 
invest it in our local police, fire, and emergency medical providers to 
protect our citizens right here at home.
  Then, finally, over the past 10 years, taxpayers have invested nearly 
$30 billion--and that's billion with a ``b'', so we get these figures 
clear and the magnitude of our investment--we invested nearly $30 
billion in Afghanistan for non-defense spending, much of it going 
toward economic development and civilian assistance. Let's take a 
portion of that funding and redirect it to the United States to create 
jobs right here.
  My point is this: it takes money to create jobs, and more accurately, 
it takes public funds that can be leveraged effectively to create the 
investment that yields jobs. We've been spending that money for over a 
decade in another country. Bin Laden is now gone. Let's reevaluate our 
role in Afghanistan, and while we're doing that, let's take a share of 
our precious tax dollars--people, this is your money and we need it 
right now--to create jobs, to fight foreclosures, to invest in 
manufacturing. It is our manufacturing capacity that made our country 
strong, that created the best products that were sold around the world. 
It's our manufacturing strategy and capacity that transformed the city 
that I represent, the city of Detroit, from the motor capital of the 
world to the arsenal of democracy back in World War II.
  Metro Detroit and this country's ability to innovate and create and 
manufacture saved this country and saved this world from fascism. If we 
invest a portion of the money right now that we're spending overseas in 
Afghanistan and winding down in Iraq, and we invest it right here in 
cities like Detroit and Elkhart, Indiana, and Louisville, Tennessee--
these are other cities that also have lost a lot of jobs--we can make 
America stronger.
  We want to fight terrorism. We need to be a strong country, but the 
strength of our country comes from within. It comes from protecting the 
American people, and the most effective way to do that: invest in 
homeland security, support our local police and fire, and invest in 
jobs in America so that U.S. citizens can be financially stable and 
hopefully prosperous. This is how we built this country in just a 
little over 200 years into one of the greatest countries human 
civilization has ever known. We've done it by investing the people's 
money into the innovation and capacity to create jobs. It's through 
investing in the U.S.
  I know I've been going on a little bit longer, but my point is this: 
I'm asking the American people who are watching tonight, call your 
Member of Congress, ask--demand, if you wish--that a share of your 
money that's going overseas right now be returned back to you to create 
jobs here, to protect our homeland, and also, to reduce our overall 
debt and deficit.

                              {time}  2000

  We've been spending the money, over $500 billion alone in the last 10 
years in Afghanistan. This administration is slated to wind down that 
expenditure. Let's take a portion of that back to help our people, to 
make America strong again.
  And you know why it's so important for America to be strong and not 
some other country? Because we believe in democracy. We, the people, 
actually have a voice, through folks like me, who you hired. I have the 
constitutional duty to be your voice here, not just for metro 
Detroiters, but for all of you who understand the value in 
manufacturing. That's the reason why my dad risked everything 80 years 
ago in the midst of the Great Depression to leave his homeland in 
India, to come here as a dream so that he could live his life as fully 
as he chose it and to raise a family. I am his only son, and he was so 
honored to see, many decades ago, the first Indian American elected to 
Congress. And I am here too as a legacy of an immigrant's courage to 
make a difference for himself, his family, and his country.
  My point is this, people: It's our money. And you work hard for that 
money. And yes, we invested it overseas because we were trying to stop 
the people that were determined to wipe us out. And we got the 
ringleader. We took him out. Let's take a share of our money back and 
return it to our people. Let's create jobs here. Call your Member of 
Congress. Do it tonight. Leave them a voicemail message. Tell them, We 
need you, as a Member of this body that's constitutionally committed to 
represent the people, we need you to use a share of our money to help 
American families become financially stable again and to help this 
country's economy really endure in a prosperous way to help bring 
democracy and freedom throughout the world. I really am just so 
committed that we take a share of our funds right now to create jobs 
here.
  I was born and raised in the city of Detroit, and it's heartbreaking 
to see what's happened to Detroit. But also too, there is so much 
promise there in Detroit because we still have the greatest talent in 
manufacturing. We have great research universities there in Michigan, 
including Wayne State University that I'm proud to represent. And we 
have the plants and the land to actually build new manufacturing 
operations. This country has the superb ability to innovate and outwork 
and outhustle and outsmart any of the competition around the world. All 
we have to do is this: return some of our money, our tax dollars, back 
to the U.S. so that we can prosper again.
  Some of us are doing well, but I know overall--and I will close--that 
many American families are not feeling that financially secure, and I 
understand that. Look, I have been through hard times myself as a young 
man. That's why I am stressing the fact, turn a share of our tax 
dollars back to our people so we can do what's best, innovate, invest, 
and create jobs.
  Thank you so much. God bless America.
  Mr. CICILLINE. One of the things I know that we all share as new 
Members of the Congress, as freshmen, is that we've been here for about 
4 months, Madam Speaker; and we've had conversations and debates about 
cutting Pell Grants and cutting Head Start. We've endured attacks on 
women's health and NPR, attacks on the environment, and most recently, 
efforts to end Medicare as we know it. We really haven't had before 
this Congress a jobs agenda, at a time when Americans are suffering 
from some of the highest unemployment in a generation.
  We all recognize that we need to cut spending, we need to be 
responsible in our management of the national debt. One of the key ways 
that we can do that is to grow our economy and get Americans back to 
work. And I believe, Madam Speaker, that one of the key ways that we 
can do that is to rebuild the manufacturing base in our country. There 
is no way we can maintain our position as a great economic power 
without making things in America. Making things in America is really a 
key part to rebuilding the economy of this country.
  My home State of Rhode Island is one of the States that have been 
hardest hit in this economic downturn. Rhode Island was the first New 
England State to enter the recession, and it's currently facing the 
fifth-highest unemployment in America. But Rhode Island has a strong 
tradition of manufacturing. It's the birthplace of the American 
industrial revolution. This

[[Page 6954]]

helped build the middle class and provided good-paying jobs for working 
families. In fact, Rhode Island used to produce one-third of the 
costume jewelry in the entire United States, yet our manufacturing 
sector has been really hard hit, especially in these particularly 
difficult economic times. According to the Alliance for American 
Manufacturing, there were 71,100 manufacturing jobs in Rhode Island in 
2000; and by the year 2008, that number had dropped to 47,900. Rhode 
Island lost 15 percent of its manufacturing jobs during the period of 
2008 to 2009 alone. And from 2001 to 2008, Rhode Island lost 10,500 
jobs due to trade with China.
  When was the last time, Madam Speaker, that you went into a store and 
found something made in America? Manufacturing jobs all across this 
country have seen a steep decline, from 20 million jobs in 1979 to 
about 12 million today, and the middle class has been left behind. And 
that's why this past week, when we launched the Make It in America 
agenda, I became so hopeful about this Congress' attention on 
manufacturing. This agenda is really about reversing manufacturing job 
loss. It's about investing in good-paying jobs, world-class education, 
top-notch research, and sound infrastructure. We need to create an 
environment that encourages American manufacturers to innovate, grow, 
keep, and create good jobs here in the United States. When we Make It 
in America, our middle class will succeed. This agenda is based on the 
conviction that when more products are made in America, more families 
will be able to ``make it'' in America. The agenda is really intended 
to create the conditions to help American businesses produce goods 
here, to innovate, and create jobs.
  It also includes being smart about the investments we make, to out-
educate, to out-innovate, and out-build our international competitors. 
The President has already signed six Make It in America bills into law, 
many of them which enjoyed bipartisan support because business and 
labor leaders alike recognize that the Democratic agenda of making it 
in America is good for our country and is central to the future of our 
competitiveness, our jobs, and our leadership in the world.
  This past week, we outlined a series of bills that represent really a 
cross-section of the legislative package, a dynamic agenda that will 
continue to evolve during the 112th Congress but is really focused on 
how we support the manufacturing sector again. Some of these bills have 
already been introduced. Others will be introduced in the coming weeks. 
The agenda includes the development of a national manufacturing 
strategy, directs the President to work with industry leaders, labor 
leaders, other stakeholders to develop a national manufacturing 
strategy for our country, to set appropriate benchmarks and 
measurements. Every other nation we're competing with that is serious 
about manufacturing has a national manufacturing strategy. The agenda 
also includes the Build America Bonds, expanding the Build America 
Bonds, the creation of a national infrastructure development bank.
  If we're going to compete in the 21st century, we need to have an 
infrastructure which supports that competition. We need to have roads 
and bridges and transit systems and the ability to move information to 
compete in the 21st century. It includes making the research and 
development tax credit permanent and more generous to encourage job 
creation. It includes the creation of small business startup savings 
accounts, a reform of the Chinese currency system to give our American 
manufacturers a fighting chance to compete in the global marketplace. 
And it includes the Make It in America Block Grant, which I have 
drafted. This is a block grant which will help American manufacturers 
retrofit their factories, retrain their workers, buy new equipment, 
increase their exports, and make their facilities more energy efficient 
so that they can compete more successfully in the 21st century.

                              {time}  2010

  It's an ambitious agenda, but it's really about recognizing that we 
have got to start making things again in this country; that 
manufacturing was an important part of the history of America, an 
important way we built up the middle class in this country and became a 
world economic power.
  We can no longer act as if manufacturing is not important. We need to 
make things here again so people can go into stores and buy things made 
in America. We need to start exporting goods made in America all over 
the world because we make the best products, we have the best workers, 
and stop exporting jobs.
  This is an agenda which I hope will earn bipartisan support, that 
will be a key to helping rebuild the economy of our country and 
rebuilding our strong manufacturing base.
  Madam Speaker, I think the most urgent priority we face is getting 
Americans back to work. Americans have been very hard hit in this 
recession. Members hear it all the time from constituents back at home. 
What are you doing to get people back to work, to get this economy back 
on the right track?
  This Make It in America agenda, I believe, provides a real 
opportunity to again rebuild the manufacturing base of this country so 
that we can make things here again, and so that American families can 
make it as well.
  At the same time, in addition to investing in this agenda, we also 
need to invest, as the President said, in education so that we can out-
educate, so that our kids can compete, not just with the kids in the 
neighboring town or the next State, but kids in China and India and 
Germany and all over the world. That's who they're competing with in 
the 21st century. And we need to make sure they have the tools and 
skills necessary to compete successfully in the global economy.
  In addition, we have to invest in science and research and innovation 
so we can continue to make the new discoveries, make the new 
inventions, create the new products that will allow us to lead the 
world and to again maintain our position as a world economic power. And 
that's why we think about the balance that we have to strike in 
managing the serious responsibility of reducing spending, eliminating 
programs that don't work, cutting waste, and at the same time, 
investing in the things that are necessary to keep our country strong--
education, innovation and infrastructure.
  And so, Madam Speaker, I hope that this Congress, the 112th Congress, 
will be known as the Congress that restarted and reinvested in making 
things again in America.
  I know that my colleague the distinguished gentleman from 
Massachusetts (Mr. Keating) has focused as well on creating jobs, 
bringing some balance to our Federal budget, and understands the 
urgency, particularly in coming from one of our great New England 
States, of rebuilding and manufacturing.
  I'd like to yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KEATING. Thank you for yielding.
  I just came here to advance statements by our fellow freshmen and my 
neighbor from Rhode Island because here we are in a virtually empty 
Chamber, sitting here talking about jobs.
  Before I became a Member of Congress, just a few months ago, my job, 
and I was fortunate to have one, was the job of a district attorney. 
Now, the intricacies of that job are not well known, but one of the 
responsibilities we have in our State is, when there is an unattended 
death, a death that, for instance, did not occur in a hospital, it's 
important that that be investigated for any indications of foul play 
from a criminal standpoint. So, as a result, the troopers attached to 
my unit and my prosecutors reviewed the deaths of people.
  I must say, just to put this in context in a very personal sense to 
me, one of the most tragic and heart-wrenching parts of that job was 
coming upon the scenes of suicides. And in the course of that, over the 
last couple of years, we actually saw situations where people, 
depressed, hopeless, took their own lives. And they left indications 
that I won't get into as to the reason they did that.
  So many of those people were out of work, chronically out of work. 
Their

[[Page 6955]]

homes were falling apart. Their families were falling apart, and hope 
had been extinguished. There were notes. There were indications. There 
was the way you go back and talk to a family and say what brought the 
person to this to make sure you knew just what happened.
  That is the most powerful way, I think, that you can understand why 
we are here in this Congress trying to put people back to work. We have 
to do everything we can do in our power to do this. To be out of work 
is human misery, and it's a misery that extends to spouses, sons and 
daughters; conversations where one of these instances where the person 
that took their life was told that they would never be able to afford 
to go to the college they were accepted to.
  So when we have this discussion here in this Congress, I hope we 
don't continue to have this discussion about jobs in empty Chambers. I 
hope it becomes the focal point of our open sessions because, frankly, 
there hasn't been enough of that discussion.
  I came here imbued with a sense of challenge and responsibility, that 
I would do everything that I could to try and stop this human misery 
from occurring in families and individuals. So I hope as we go forward 
and we look at Make It in America, we look at other platforms and 
policies to try and put people back to work, we don't forget these 
aren't people just called our constituents. These are real people, 
people suffering more than they ever should.
  In my own district, as people are ready to go through the tourist 
system and the wealthier people come to celebrate their vacations, 
they're doing it in a region where the unemployment is 16 percent, and 
too many people are out of work.
  I hope, as we go forward, that as freshmen, we come forward and 
remember what we said in the campaign just a few months ago, focus on 
what we said we would do. And I hope that kind of freshman enthusiasm 
is contagious, and I hope we're having robust discussions about putting 
people back to work, not here in an empty Chamber but in a full Chamber 
with ideas teeming so that we can accomplish that very important 
mission.
  Mr. CICILLINE. I thank the distinguished gentleman and my good friend 
from Massachusetts, and I think it is a really important point that he 
makes tonight.
  We talk about the urgency of job creation and about the enormity of 
the challenges facing our country. But behind all of these numbers and 
the unemployment rate, these statistics, are real families and real 
people who we see every single day in our districts all across this 
country, who are anguished and worried.
  People often describe the American people are angry. I don't see 
anger. What I see in the American people is anxiety. People are worried 
about the future. They're worried about whether or not this economy is 
ever going to get on the right track, whether or not we are going to 
really be successful in growing jobs and getting people back to work. 
And they look at the proceedings of this Congress and they say, Where's 
the conversation about creating jobs? Where's the emphasis on putting 
Americans back to work? And they grow more anxious.
  I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts for reminding all of us that 
we're here fighting for real people who are counting on us to do the 
right things to get them back to work, to get this economy back on 
track and to put our country's fiscal house in order. These are big 
challenges, but they're challenges we have to meet.
  I will end by, again, reminding everyone that this agenda--and I want 
to really acknowledge the leadership of our minority whip, Steny Hoyer, 
who really has led the charge on Make It in America and the legislation 
that's contained in that agenda, specific bills which I hope will earn 
bipartisan support, that really get at this issue of how we grow the 
manufacturing base in this country, which provided such strong support 
to the middle class and a real opportunity to fulfill the American 
Dream and to ensure that America can compete internationally and sell 
our goods all over the world.
  I hope we can come together in this Congress and work quickly to pass 
the legislation that is part of the Make It in America agenda so that 
we can be sure American families can make it.
  With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________