[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 6]
[House]
[Pages 8763-8767]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           AMERICAN JOBS ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Mulvaney). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 5, 2011, the gentleman from California (Mr. 
Garamendi) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority 
leader.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. We all like to think about ``what if''--what if I had 
actually gotten an A rather than an F in that high school class? What 
if I had hit that home run instead of struck out? The what-if game is 
part of our life. But I want to take that up today in a very, very 
serious way. This is about what if this Congress, led by our Republican 
colleagues, had taken up and passed President Barack Obama's American 
Jobs Act.
  Last September, the President made a very bold proposal to put 
Americans back to work, a comprehensive piece of legislation that 
covered many, many different parts of the American economy. It's called 
the American Jobs Act. Fully paid for, not increasing the deficit at 
all, but paid for with the elimination of unnecessary tax breaks for 
Big Oil, unnecessary tax cuts for the extraordinarily wealthy 1 percent 
of Americans, a fully paid-for American Jobs Act proposed by the 
President last September.
  What if? What if this House under our Republican leadership had taken 
up the elements of the American Jobs Act, modified them, as is our 
nature and our responsibility, but nonetheless passed those very 
significant proposals that would, according to economists, create 
somewhere between 1.3 and 1.9 million jobs immediately? Not some day in 
the future, but now. What if we had done that last September? What if 
our Republican leadership had allowed those measures to come before the 
committees and on this floor to be signed by the President? Then 1.3 
million Americans or maybe even 1.9 million Americans would have a job 
today.
  We're going to talk today about the most tragic what-if this Nation 
is pondering at this moment. What if the American Jobs Act had been 
implemented?
  Let's talk about what it is. What are the elements of the American 
Jobs Act? Bear with me, if you will, as we go through these. I'll go 
through them rather quickly, and then we'll come back and touch on them 
as we go on.
  If you've been watching here in the gallery or if you are watching C 
SPAN, you would have heard my Democratic colleagues talk about the 
transportation bill. The President said last fall, We need to have a 
transportation bill, and we need it now. We need to put men and women 
back to work in the construction industry repairing our bridges, 
building our highways, paving our airports, building the infrastructure 
that this Nation needs.
  The student aid bill. We know that if America is going to compete, we 
have

[[Page 8764]]

to have the best educated workforce in the world. And so the President 
proposed a student aid bill, legislation that would provide additional 
sources of funding so students can go to school in community colleges, 
in 4-year schools, and in the master and doctorate programs.
  The President took up one of the great conundrums and problems that 
this Nation faces from our competitors. Yes, China. China manipulates 
its currency, and the President said that has to stop. He asked for the 
House of Representatives and the Senate to pass a piece of legislation 
dealing with the manipulation of the Chinese currency, which gives them 
somewhere between a 20 and 25 percent price advantage on all the things 
that they manufacture and import into the United States. He said, Do 
something about that. Give me, the administration, the power to deal, 
to put a tariff on those Chinese goods if the Chinese Government 
continues to manipulate its currency.
  He said we ought to buy American-made products. We ought to use our 
money, our taxpayer money, to buy American-made goods.

                              {time}  1230

  I have a piece of legislation that would do just that, and I'll talk 
about that before this hour is done.
  Buy America. Enhance the Buy American provisions. Do away with the 
waivers that have created a 12-lane freeway for foreign products to 
find their way into America despite the laws.
  The President said that there are millions of homes in America that 
are inefficient, that leak energy and cost the homeowner or the renter 
vast amounts of money. He said we could put people to work putting in 
new windows, caulking, putting insulation in the attics. We could put 
people to work and, in the process, reduce our consumption of energy 
and create jobs.
  He said there ought to be a permanent research and development tax 
credit so that our industries would stay ahead of the competition 
around the world, so that they would know year after year after year 
that the research and development tax credit would be there and the 
more that they invested in research, the more that they took that 
research and developed products, the more jobs would be created, and 
they didn't have to worry that, well, maybe, it won't be there next 
year, so this 5-year research program, we won't do it. No, he wants 
certainty. His American Jobs Act would have given certainty. But the 
leadership in this House refused to take up all of those provisions.
  The President went on and said we need a payroll tax cut for 
businesses and for the worker. We did a little of this. Businesses 
didn't get a tax break on their payroll; however, the men and women 
that do work and do get a salary did get half of what the President 
proposed.
  He said we ought to put veterans to work. And fortunately, on 
Veterans Day last year, we did pass a bill to do that, and we should 
consider even more.
  285,000 teachers have lost their jobs this year across America. The 
President said that we cannot survive as a stable, growing country with 
a just society if we don't educate our kids, and so he said let's put 
those teachers back to work, 280,000 of them, and police and firemen 
along with them, so that we would have the public protection.
  He said that in addition to a transportation enhancement, an 
additional $50 billion over and above the transportation bill, we ought 
to put people to work and give a jump start. Just like you would with a 
dead battery on your car, he wanted to put those jumper cables on the 
American construction industry, $50 billion, get it up and going.
  And he said we need a permanent infrastructure bank.
  I'll finish this up quickly, because it gets to be a rather long 
what-if. But, oh, what if. What if we had done these things?
  How about rebuilding our schools and houses, again putting people to 
work. And how about allowing Americans to refinance their homes to stop 
the inevitable decline of the housing industry as more and more people 
were forced into bankruptcy and losing their homes.
  It's the American Jobs Act, proposed by the President of the United 
States last September, and to this day, two of those policies have been 
adopted. What if? What if?
  The economists say 1.3 million Americans would be working today if 
this legislation had been allowed to be brought to the floor of this 
House, had been allowed to be brought to the Senate and the President 
to sign it.
  And don't forget this: It was fully paid for. It was fully paid for. 
The deficit would not have been increased. However, the oil companies 
would not have $12 billion of your money in addition to what they've 
taken at the gasoline pump--the wealthiest industry in the world. We'd 
get our tax dollars back, and we'd put people to work.
  And for those with a million dollars of annual income after all of 
the deductions, after all of the credits, for those with a million 
dollars of annual income, their taxes would have gone up to pay for 
putting 1.3 million Americans back to work. What if?
  I'd like now to call upon my colleague from the State of Oregon who 
for years has fought for transportation, one of the senior members on 
the Transportation Committee.
  Mr. DeFazio, you were here late last night fighting one of the most 
foolish proposals I have heard of, to cut the transportation budget by 
$37 billion. Thank you for fighting that fight and informing us. 
Fortunately, this House rejected that foolish proposal.
  I yield to the gentleman from Oregon.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. I thank the gentleman.
  I would just key in on one of the aspects of the President's 
proposal, and that would be long-term legislation to invest $450 
billion in our crumbling infrastructure.
  Now, some people say to me, well, Congressman, I don't work in 
construction. I say, these aren't just construction jobs. We have the 
strongest Buy America requirements in the area of transportation 
investments. Underline two words: ``investments'' and ``jobs.''
  Now, those investments, if made under Buy America in, say, transit 
vehicles, involve engineering, manufacturing. They involve steel 
manufacturing. They involve sophisticated fabrication of vehicles, the 
tires for buses, all of those sorts of things. We could put millions of 
people back to work and begin to revive the devastated American 
manufacturing sector and for once keeping the Chinese from stealing our 
jobs because of the Buy America protections.
  But, no, the Republicans don't want to do that. They don't really 
like the Buy America provisions in the bill, and they don't want to 
make the investments.
  We were here till midnight last night. The gentleman from Georgia 
proposed that we end all new Federal investment in transportation 
infrastructure on October 1. There would not have been one penny more. 
All of the money that he would allow in next year's budget would only 
be enough to pay for ongoing projects.
  When the States finish a project, we reimburse them. We authorize the 
projects; the States build them; we reimburse them. The money that he 
would limit us to would only pay for projects already ongoing. That 
would bring it all to a halt, despite the fact the system is falling 
apart. We're living off the legacy of Dwight David Eisenhower, a mid-
20th century legacy. It's falling apart. It needs to be rebuilt. We 
also need to build out a 21st century infrastructure to more 
efficiently move goods and people and compete with our competitors.
  Now, I heard a lot of nonsense last night, and 82 Republicans voted 
for this today, so this is a problem. The Republican Conference is 
having an internal war among themselves. They have 82 Members who 
believe the Federal Government--the Federal Government, the people of 
the United States assembled, the 50 States and territories--should not 
invest in transportation and infrastructure, that it should be done by 
the 50 States. It should be devolved. That's crazy. That's crazy. In 
the 21st century, we're going to have a 50-State transportation policy?

[[Page 8765]]

  And how are the States going to pay for it? We tried that, until 
1956. We had a turnpike built in Kansas that ended at the Oklahoma 
border, because Oklahoma didn't have the money, until Eisenhower passed 
the legislation and the Federal Government could invest. They want to 
go back to those good old days.
  And then they prattle on about, well, these are just government jobs, 
government. They hate government. No, they're not government jobs. The 
government does not build bridges; the government does not build 
transit systems; the government does not build highways, gentlemen. 
They don't build any of those things. We go out and contract through 
the States for the lowest qualified bidders under Buy America 
requirements to build these projects with American workers and American 
products.
  So let's stop all this nonsense on the Republican side of the aisle 
about the government can't create jobs. The investments the government 
makes can create jobs in the private sector.
  We have an infrastructure that's falling apart. The President wants 
to rebuild it. The Senate even wants to rebuild it on a bipartisan 
basis. But, no, the Republicans in the House of Representatives have 
stopped forward progress on this legislation, forgoing potentially 
millions of jobs. It's a shame. I only hope that the Senate and the 
President can prevail on this issue.
  I thank the gentleman for bringing this to the attention of the 
House.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. DeFazio, for years you have been fighting for 
infrastructure. I didn't watch last night's debate as you fought 
fiercely to prevent one of the most foolish pieces of legislation--
well, there have been many foolish pieces of legislation proposed by 
our colleagues, but you couldn't be more correct.

                              {time}  1240

  Let me just put this up. I came across this yesterday. Basically what 
this is is it's a diagram of the employment in the construction 
industry. We had about, what is that, 5,570,000 men and women working 
in the construction industry in January, and here we are in May and 
we're just over 5,500,000--some 20,000, almost 30,000 have lost their 
jobs. And the proposals that our Republican colleagues are making would 
guarantee that once these projects are finished, it would be over, 
nothing more.
  But the President laid out not only a transportation bill, but he 
laid out a very robust jump-start to it--$50 billion of additional 
money invested. Now, let's understand, this is not government money; 
this is an investment by the American people. It is their gasoline tax, 
their diesel tax. It is their investment in the highways and bridges 
and transportation systems of this Nation. Well, I guess if you're 
anti-tax and you're anti-roads and you're pro-gridlock, you're 
guaranteeing that the economy will slow down and eventually, who knows, 
even collapse.
  Fortunately, there's a gentleman here from the great Mid-Northwest, 
Mr. Keith Ellison. You've been on this issue for a long time. I know in 
your area you've been very, very concerned about the issues that are in 
the American Jobs Act. Please join us.
  Mr. ELLISON. I want to thank you, Congressman, for making the issue 
of jobs the front and center issue.
  We've been here all week long, and one of the things that I find just 
shocking is that we have not dealt with the issues that are really in 
front of the American people. And the number one issue is jobs.
  We haven't dealt with future jobs that students could perhaps get if 
they got the education, which has to do with the doubling of interest 
rates on student loans, which is due in a few weeks unless the 
Republican majority acts. We certainty have not taken up a 
transportation bill that would extend extensive work to people. As many 
as 280,000 education jobs are on the chopping block in the upcoming 
school year due to pressure on State budgets.
  So the bottom line is that this is an interesting week that we live 
in because there is no doubt--no one of the 435 Members of this body 
are under any doubt--student loan rates are doubling, unemployment is 
record high, and yet we didn't deal with any of these critical issues. 
I'm really shocked. I'm astounded. I'm under the impression that we're 
all here to work hard.
  I'm one of those who doesn't like to sort of imply or even say that 
the Republicans are sabotaging jobs for political advantage because 
it's hard for me to imagine that any true public servant would ever do 
something like that, but there are a lot of folks out here who believe 
that is the case. I want our Republican colleagues to disprove that 
premise by getting some pro-job, pro-education legislation that we all 
can agree on.
  Another thing that I'm glad to talk about is with regards to the 
Obama job plan. Under the American Jobs Act, Obama has laid out a plan. 
He has set forth a set of ideas, and one of the elements that I want to 
talk about a little bit is the job program for the long-term 
unemployed.
  Obama has talked about dealing with the issues of the long-term 
unemployed, people who have been out of work, and you know, who have 
been chronically out of work for a long time--they call them the 99ers. 
It's modeled after an unemployment program in Georgia. Under that 
program, workers continue to collect unemployment benefits, plus a 
small stipend to cover transportation and other expenses at no expense 
to the employer. After 8 weeks of training, the company may hire the 
person or not, and it can amount to a free tryout.
  So I think that the Obama administration, under the American Jobs 
Act, is being responsive to the needs of the American people. I think 
the same cannot be said for the House of Representatives under the 
Republican majority. Under the American Jobs Act, the Republicans could 
bring it up today. Some of these ideas are things that they have 
proposed, and they won't even take those up. So this is really 
disappointing.
  I think people who have been chronically unemployed for weeks and 
weeks and maybe perhaps years--I talked to a woman who has been out of 
work for 2\1/2\ years. This woman has a college degree, she is a highly 
trained professional from my district--Lauren, if you're watching, you 
know that I'm talking about you. I think the American Jobs Act has just 
what the doctor ordered if the Republican majority will take it up.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Well, Mr. Ellison, in your community and my community, 
people want to go to work. They want a job. They want to be able to be 
part of the American machine that creates the wealth of this economy. 
They want to have the opportunity to provide the money for their 
family, take care of their needs. They take pride in their work. 
They're hardworking people, but they can't make it.
  We have a long, long tradition in America that dates back really to 
the very first day of the American modern government. The day George 
Washington was sworn into office he undertook an industrial policy. I 
know our Republican colleagues like to talk about the Founding Fathers. 
Well, they really ought to listen to the Founding Fathers. And if they 
had listened to the Founding Fathers, they would have paid attention to 
the President's proposal on the American Jobs Act, because here's what 
George Washington did: he turned to his Treasury Secretary, Alexander 
Hamilton, and said, Mr. Hamilton, we need to grow this economy. We need 
to put people to work. We need to be a strong Nation, a strong economy, 
and I want you, Mr. Hamilton, to develop a policy to do that.
  Hamilton came back a few months later with an industrial policy, 13 
different items on about five pages--now it would probably take 5,000 
pages, but nonetheless, he did it. Do you know what was in it? What was 
in that industrial policy that Hamilton presented to Washington and to 
Congress--and mostly implemented over the next decade or so--were 
policies that--let me put this back up. Let's see here. How many of 
these were in it? And here's the great ``what if?''
  There was a transportation part to those policies--in fact, two 
different ones. One, Hamilton said if we're going

[[Page 8766]]

to grow this economy, we need to have good roads, we need to have good 
canals, and we need to improve our ports. He proposed legislation that 
did become law--some of it by the States, some of it by the national 
government--that created the canal systems, put the roads in place, and 
improved the ports of America. Very beginnings of this Nation. Pay 
attention, my colleagues who like to talk about the Founding Fathers: 
the Founding Fathers said we need America to have a transportation 
program.
  Currency reform was on the agenda. Yes, it was. Hamilton, Treasury 
Secretary, said we need to pay attention to the currency issue. There 
was a huge fight going on at the time about the Federal bank, about the 
currency issues, but he said we needed a common currency, and we needed 
to be aware of the international exchange rates that were going on so 
that we were not put at a disadvantage.
  There was a Buy American program. Hamilton told George Washington and 
the Founding Fathers that we needed to put in place a Buy America 
provision. You just heard our colleague from Oregon talking about a 
robust Buy American provision--and sometime before I end I'll talk 
about my legislation that says if it's our tax dollars, it's going to 
be spent on American-made equipment and American jobs. We're not going 
to use our tax dollars to buy foreign equipment. That's precisely what 
Alexander Hamilton told George Washington in the very first Congress of 
this Nation, and they began to implement it.
  Energy efficiency wasn't there. He did, however, talk about this one, 
this was one of the 13. He said we needed to have a robust research and 
development program--they called them patents at that time. We need to 
be ahead of everybody else. He wanted to put in policies, and they did 
become law. And here we have it today, just on these issues alone, 
these six issues.
  The Founding Fathers said transportation. They said watch the 
currency. They said Buy American. And they said we need to be ahead 
with research and patents and be on the cutting edge of technology.

                              {time}  1250

  What if President Barack Obama's American Jobs Act had been taken up 
by the Republican leadership that control this House?
  What if they had listened to the Founding Fathers and actually 
implemented what the President wanted to put in place? 1.3 million, 1.3 
million jobs, perhaps as much as 1.9 million jobs Americans would be 
working today. The great ``what if'' question of our time.
  What if they had listened to the Founding Fathers?
  Mr. Ellison, I know you have more to say.
  Mr. ELLISON. Well, Congressman, if we had listened to the Founding 
Fathers, we'd be quite aways ahead. It's interesting, in the political 
rhetoric you hear, some people claim the Founding Fathers, but they 
don't claim the real Founding Fathers, the ones who actually had the 
foresight to make America a strong economic country by making sure that 
the government played an important role in making sure our economy was 
working, by promoting transportation, patents, currency protection and 
things like that.
  But I would say that as we work here today, and as we think about all 
of the things that our Nation needs, none are more important than 
putting Americans back to work, I think. The American Jobs Act is a 
plan set forth by the President, and he's set this forth at a time when 
he's reaching his hand out. He's extending his hand. He's trying to get 
the Republican majority in the House to work with him.
  But apparently they just won't do so because they have ideological 
and political considerations. One of those ideological things is that 
they just don't think the government is any good. They don't think the 
government can do any good. They don't think the government can help. 
And so we see proposals and amendments to simply eliminate the Federal 
role out of transportation. And of course we've seen them eliminate the 
Federal role out of environmental protection. We've seen a whole host 
of things like this.
  You would think that the reason we have high unemployment is because 
of ``job-killing regulations.'' They love this refrain. I'm sure Frank 
Luntz is very proud. He's a pollster who comes up with clever phrasing 
that they use a lot. But it's not job-killing regulations.
  Any small business person will tell you the key to their success is 
customers. The key to customers is people who have jobs, who have some 
money to spend. If you've got no customers and your customers are 
broke, then they're not going to buy your cakes, your pies, and those 
folks are not going to be able to pay the taxes they need to keep our 
valued public employees working, teachers, firefighters, police 
officers, public health nurses, people who make the water and the meat 
safe to eat and drink.
  They like to throw around terms like ``socialism,'' but what we argue 
for is a mixed economy, a balance between the private sector and 
government, which enhances the performance of both, all in service to 
the American people.
  So today I am in favor of us getting a strong, long-term, 6-year 
transportation bill. I am absolutely in favor of helping our students 
who are fearing that education is getting out of their economic reach. 
Absolutely, we have to be there to reform currency, to level the 
playing field with China.
  We should buy American. What's wrong with buying American? I think 
buying American's good. I rather prefer buying American. In fact, 
whenever I get a product and it says ``Made in America,'' I get a warm 
fuzzy all over.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Wouldn't you love to go into K-Mart or Target and see 
on the shelves ``Made in America''?
  Mr. ELLISON. Made in America.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Made in America. That's why the currency reform is so 
important.
  Mr. ELLISON. If it was made in America, maybe we could make it in 
America.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Americans would make it if we made it in America. We'd 
have those middle class jobs. That's where it is.
  Mr. Ellison, thank you very much. I know you've got a plane; you've 
got to get back to Minneapolis. Thank you so much for joining us.
  This is part of the Democratic agenda. This is something we've been 
working on now for well over 2 years, and we call it ``Make It in 
America.'' This is rebuilding the American middle class. This is about 
the American middle class coming back.
  Over the last 20 years, we've seen a decline in American 
manufacturing. In the early nineties, we were a little more than 19 
million, almost 20 million, Americans in the manufacturing sector. 
Those were middle class jobs, where you can go to work, earn a living, 
live a middle class life, buy your bass boat, take the kids on a 
vacation.
  Today, we're just over 11 million middle class manufacturing jobs in 
America. So looking at this dismal situation, a couple of years ago, 
shortly after I arrived here, we began looking at what do you do about 
this. Why did this happen? Why is it that the American manufacturing 
sector declined?
  We did our studies. We did the economic analysis. But mostly, we 
looked at public policy. We looked at the laws of this land. We looked 
at what was going on in the public policy sector; and what we found was 
the policies of this Nation discouraged manufacturing and, in fact, 
rewarded American corporations that would offshore jobs, literally, 
actually, giving American corporations a reduction in their taxes for 
every job they offshored. Total about $16 billion a year.
  I know; you don't believe that. How could there be such a policy? 
That was my question. What? You mean to tell me that the tax policy of 
the United States gives a tax break to American corporations when they 
ship a job offshore?
  Can't be. In fact, it was. And so in the last year, the last months 
of the Democrats' control of this House in 2010, we undertook to change 
that. We put a bill on this floor that would eliminate $12 billion of 
that $16 billion tax break that American corporations

[[Page 8767]]

had for offshoring jobs. It passed without one Republican vote. Not one 
Member of the Republican Party voted to end a tax break for American 
companies that offshored jobs.
  The Senate took it up; it passed. President Obama signed that 
legislation.
  Public policy matters. Public policy matters a great deal.
  We've talked here today about the Buy American provisions, been in 
law for 30, 40 years, that basically say, if it's our taxpayer dollars, 
it ought to be used to buy American equipment.
  Over the years, probably beginning in the eighties and carrying on, 
those provisions began to gain loopholes, one after another, so that at 
the end of 2010, the loophole was a 12-lane freeway that you could 
drive any project through and buy whatever you wanted to buy from 
wherever it came from. So much so that in San Francisco, when the 
Oakland Bay Bridge between Oakland and San Francisco had to be rebuilt 
because of earthquake safety issues--some of it fell down in the Loma 
Prieta earthquake--the largest construction project, public works 
project ever in California. The main central steel column for a 
uniquely designed bridge, $1 billion or more, Chinese steel, Chinese 
welders, 6,000 jobs in China to save 10 percent.
  It turns out the steel was faulty, the welds were faulty, the jobs 
were still in China and the inspectors were Chinese.

                              {time}  1300

  If we'd have had a Buy American provision that meant anything at all, 
we would have had 6,000 jobs in America; the inspectors would have been 
American; and there would be American jobs.
  So my legislation, H.R. 613, says this:
  If it is your tax money, it's going to be spent on American-made 
equipment, American-made steel, and the jobs will be in America.
  Where is that bill? It hasn't even been taken up for a hearing in the 
Transportation Committee.
  We're nibbling around the edges here. Of every bill that comes 
through this floor that's relevant to this issue, we try to shoehorn 
into it a Buy American provision. We try to increase the Buy American 
laws. We try to make certain that your tax money is going to be spent 
on American-made equipment. That's our agenda.
  Have we been successful? No. No, we've not.
  When the half-baked, worthless transportation bill was brought to the 
floor by our Republican colleagues, who could not even get agreement in 
their own caucus, we tried to put a provision on, an amendment on, and 
it was rejected. It was rejected.
  Americans want to go to work. Public policy matters. Will your tax 
dollars be spent buying Chinese steel? I'll give you another example.
  In Los Angeles, they went out to buy new light rail cars. Two bids 
were the final bids. One was by Siemens--yes, a German company that has 
a manufacturing plant for light rail cars in Sacramento, California. 
Siemens said that their light rail cars would have a minimum of 80 
percent American-made content. A Japanese company came in and said, 
We'll do it for 60 percent. There was a slight difference. I think 
there was about a 2 percent difference in the bids.
  So what did the MTA, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, do? 
It chose the Japanese company. American jobs were lost immediately in 
Sacramento as a result of that decision.
  Now, whose money is going to be spent buying those cars, those light 
rail cars? Whose money is it? Your money. It's your tax money. Good for 
Japan. They're going to get some jobs. Bad for Sacramento. Layoffs have 
already occurred, and there are more to come.
  Do you want another example? I'll just use California. That's where 
I'm from.
  The Bay Area Rapid Transit System, BART: $3.2 billion for new trains 
over 10 years. $3.2 billion. Two bids. One, Bombardier, a fine Canadian 
company, said they would build them with 66 percent American-made 
content. Okay, that's good. It's not good enough because Alstom, a 
French company, said they would build them with 90 percent American-
made content. Yes, it's a little more expensive, but we're talking $1 
billion of American jobs here.
  The Bay Area Rapid Transit System said, Well, the Federal Government 
says it's 60 percent, and we're going to have to go with 66. I said and 
thousands of Californians said and New Yorkers, which is where most of 
these jobs would be, that Alstom has a plant in New York to manufacture 
light rail and heavy rail cars. They said, Wait, let's take 2 months--2 
months--and let's rebid this, and let's see what we can do. Alstom was 
prepared to lower their bid if they would have had an opportunity, and 
$1 billion of American jobs are not here. They're somewhere else around 
the world.
  Public policy matters. Public policy matters.
  I think it's about time to wrap up here, so I'm going to go back to 
where we started.
  What if the House of Representatives under the control of our 
Republican colleagues--totally under their control and the Senate also 
under the control of the Republicans because it takes 60 votes there--
what if the President's American Jobs Act had been taken up and passed? 
We'll modify it, and don't forget it was fully paid for, 100 percent 
paid for with no increase in the deficit. The economists said clearly 
that 1.3 million would immediately result from the President's American 
Jobs Act. What if?
  What does it mean to you in your community? Would that road have been 
built? Would you have had the job paving that road? repairing and 
painting that bridge? down at the local school, painting the school? 
cleaning up the playgrounds? putting new toilets into the restrooms or, 
specifically, a new laboratory in the high school--not a lavatory but a 
laboratory? What if?
  What if we had put aside partisan politics?
  Keep this in mind that the Republican leader of the Senate, on the 
day or shortly after President Obama was inaugurated, said that his 
number one goal was to make sure that this was a one-term President. So 
how do you do that? Well, when the President proposes an American Jobs 
Act that would employ 1.3 million Americans immediately, you make 
certain that it doesn't become law. You slow it down. Everything has to 
be 60 votes in the Senate; and here in this House, you do not even take 
it up. You don't allow a vote on it.
  You don't do a transportation bill. You don't take the $50 billion 
injected immediately into infrastructure--totally paid for. You don't 
do it even though that would employ tens of thousands of Americans. You 
make certain that the 288,000 teachers who have been laid off across 
America are not rehired so that my daughter's classroom is not 22 
students but 35 students.
  How do you destroy a President? You make certain that this economy 
doesn't move. You take his American Jobs Act, and you sit on it. That's 
what has happened. The great ``what if.''
  What if we put Americans back to work? Yes, maybe Obama would get 
reelected--maybe I'd get reelected--but I'll tell you this: Americans 
would be working. Americans would be working. What if?
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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