[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 3]
[House]
[Pages 3378-3385]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    MAKE IT IN AMERICA: THE ECONOMY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Pittenger). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 3, 2013, the gentleman from California (Mr. 
Garamendi) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority 
leader.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, thank you very much.
  I am John Garamendi from California, and I am joined by several of my 
colleagues here tonight. We want to go through a couple of things that 
are of the utmost importance to Americans. I had three townhalls on 
Saturday in California--it was about a 450-mile drive to get to all 
three of them--but at each and every one of them the concerns were 
very, very similar.
  The first overriding concern was the economy. In California, there is 
this desire to get the economy going. There is a pent-up energy in the 
people--in the businesses, in the small businesses, in the farmers. 
It's not just because it's spring and the almonds are blossoming--or 
maybe it's the ``a-munds'' depending on what part of my district you're 
from. It's that there is this desire to get moving forward.
  They keep asking me, What's going on in Congress? Why can't you guys 
get it together out there?
  And we explained what's happening here.

[[Page 3379]]

  We have been through five crises over the last 18 months--
manufactured crises, things that didn't have to happen. Each and every 
time, the entire system of America's economy and politics comes to a 
stop, and we lurch up to that fateful cliff, and then we move on but 
not with the kind of robust energy that this economy is capable of. We 
need to get this continuing resolution and all of these fiscal cliffs 
out of the way to get the economy moving, and there are some very, very 
good examples of why the economy is poised to take off.
  One of them is found here. If you take a look at this chart, these 
are the job creations or losses beginning way back in 2009, 2008. All 
of those red lines are the collapse of the economy. When the blue came 
in, that's when President Obama came in 4 years ago, and things were 
tough. We were in a free fall here in our economy; but with the 
stimulus bill, we began to climb out. After about 18 months, we began 
to see positive job growth--we were no longer seeing those job losses--
and we've seen that all the way through. This last month was a terrific 
month. There were 247,000 new jobs created, and that was in February.
  So what happens in March?
  In March, we come up against another cliff; and now we have 
sequestration, leaving us 750,000 unemployed Americans. It's not a gain 
in the economy. The unemployment rate went down to 7.7 percent in the 
previous month, and now we have sequestration. We passed a bill out of 
here last week that was supposed to solve it. It really didn't. In 
fact, it maintained sequestration. It took care of a few things, but 
we've got to get past this. We need to grow this economy, and we need 
to make the investments. There are really only five critical 
investments that need to be made year after year after year, and we 
need to do these things repeatedly--every month, every year, in every 
budget:
  Education--sequestration cuts education at all levels;
  Research--sequestration cuts research. In my district, at the 
University of California at Davis, $45 million of research projects 
will come to a screeching halt. Ph.D.s and others will be laid off;
  Infrastructure--sequestration cuts infrastructure. Manufacturing 
matters. You've got to make things;
  Those are the four. The fifth is you have to be willing to change, 
but you've got to change in a positive way.
  What we're going to talk about with my colleagues here is this issue 
of how to move the economy forward. As we look at the past and at the 
success--modest, not enough, but on the right track--we need to keep in 
mind that it is the role of the government, dating back to George 
Washington and Alexander Hamilton when Washington asked Hamilton to 
develop an industrial plan for the United States and Hamilton did. He 
laid out in that plan the critical role of government in moving the 
American economy forward, and that was in the very first year of these 
United States. We should carry that tradition forward. So as we go into 
this, let's keep in mind that we've made progress and that we have much 
more to do.
  Joining me tonight is a gentleman who has created many, many jobs, 
and now he has a new one. He is a Member of Congress from the great 
State of Maryland, and it's Mr. Delaney.
  Thank you very much for joining us. You have an exciting district. 
You have a considerable amount of high-tech in your district.
  Mr. DELANEY. I do.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. So share with us your thoughts about how we can grow 
the economy, and maybe share some of your own experiences, because 
you've employed many, many people during your tenure in business.
  Mr. DELANEY. That's right. I appreciate my friend from California for 
providing me with this opportunity to talk about what I think is 
important for our economy, to get our economy going to create jobs.
  We spend a lot of time, both in this Congress and in Washington 
generally, talking about the economic challenges that this country 
faces and about the employment challenges this country faces, and those 
conversations often evolve into conversations about our tax policy and 
about the size of our government--two very important things for us to 
be spending time on as we talk about the fiscal trajectory of the 
country.

                              {time}  1920

  They are two things that actually have very little to do with what is 
important for creating jobs in this country, because what has really 
caused the employment challenges that we face today, what has really 
caused the economic challenges that this country faces are two things: 
globalization and technology. They are two trends that are gripping our 
society and really started about 20 or 25 years ago, and these trends 
are accelerating.
  Many people have been benefited by these trends. Americans with great 
education have been blessed by these trends. Americans with access to 
capital have benefited because of these trends. And hundreds of 
millions of citizens around the world have benefited from these trends 
because they move from formerly not being in a modern economy to being 
in a modern economy.
  The problem is that the average American has been negatively affected 
by these trends. It happened too quickly. We weren't quite prepared for 
it. We didn't invest in our future the way we need to to prepare a 
broader number of Americans for a world that is fundamentally changed 
because of these trends.
  To me, this is the central issue we face as a country if we want to 
reverse the employment trends. By the employment trends, I don't just 
mean the headline unemployment number, which is tragic. I mean what 
happens if you look behind those numbers, if you look at the standard 
of living of the average American, which has consistently gone down now 
for two decades.
  In order to reverse these trends, in order to take these trends--
globalization and technology--and bend them to benefit a broader number 
of Americans, we fundamentally have to do things here in our country 
that involve investment.
  We have to improve our educational system and invest in education. 
There has never been a stronger correlation in the history of this 
country between having a good education and one's ability to get a job.
  We need a national energy policy that can lead us to the advanced 
energy economy which will be cleaner and more efficient and more 
economical. If you look back over the history of modern economies, the 
two most important numbers for an economy to be successful is the cost 
of money and the cost of energy. We have an opportunity if we lead in 
advanced energy to keep the cost of energy down.
  We need to reform our immigration system. Half of the Fortune 500 
companies in this country were founded by immigrants or children of 
immigrants. Immigrants fundamentally create jobs in this country.
  And we need to invest in our infrastructure. We need to build a 
modern infrastructure for the future: transportation, communication, 
energy, educational facilities, all of the things that we need to do to 
be competitive. This will create jobs in the short term, and it will 
lay the groundwork for a more competitive America across the long term.
  These are the things that we need to do to make our country more 
competitive so that we can create and attract and sustain jobs that 
have a high standard of living. That's the sacred trust we've been 
given as Members of Congress. And to do these things and to make the 
investments that are important in energy and education and 
infrastructure and in our immigration system, we need to be in a 
position fiscally to make investments, and that's a role of government 
that I strongly believe in.
  To do that, we do have to change our fiscal trajectory, but we have 
to be honest about the drivers of our fiscal condition. We have to 
acknowledge that we do need comprehensive entitlement reform in this 
country so that our important entitlement programs

[[Page 3380]]

don't crowd out all the other priorities we have in the Nation. And we 
also have to acknowledge that we need to reform our tax system, 
implement proposals like the Buffett rule that level the playing field 
and create more revenues. Our revenue as a percentage of our economy 
has never been lower.
  If we do these two things, we create an opportunity for us to invest 
in our future. We create an opportunity to do the things that we need 
to do to make this country more competitive.
  As someone who was the son of a union electrician, whose parents 
never went to college, who had the blessing of a good education and 
started two businesses from scratch that both became New York Stock 
Exchange companies and created thousands of jobs, I have an 
appreciation of what's important in terms of entrepreneurship in this 
country. These are the things that we need to do if we want to make a 
difference, and these are the things that I care about as we try to 
work against these important trends.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you very much, Mr. Delaney. Well, you hit it 
right on the head: education, the technology issues that we have before 
us, the issue of globalization and how we deal with it here, and our 
energy policy. We are really blessed in the United States with energy 
that has suddenly come back to blossom, and that's natural gas. What an 
enormous asset for this country, and we need to really push that 
further along. And the immigration issue, all of these things are 
before us right now.
  If we move forward aggressively with the kinds of things that you 
talked about, and we're spending time here on the floor, we can really 
move this country. And with the energy that businesses have and the 
experience that you know from your own experience in business, there is 
a pent-up demand. There's a lot of cash in the businesses of the 
Nation. We need the policies laid out there.
  Perhaps you can take up the energy piece and elaborate a little more 
on how you see the use of natural gas as a bridge as you get to those 
clean energy issues that you talked about.
  Mr. DELANEY. I think you made a very good point about the amount of 
cash in our private sector. There is more cash in U.S. corporations 
than there's ever been, and there's more cash in our banks than there's 
ever been.
  I believe the private sector creates the jobs, but there is a clear 
and distinct role for government to level the playing field and make 
the investments that are needed for the private sector to thrive. The 
energy industry is a terrific example of that. If we had a national 
energy policy that pointed us in a common direction where we could say 
this is where we want our energy production and utilization to be in 
the future, it would benefit Americans so much in the short term 
because of the quality of their life in terms of making us more 
competitive.
  If you look back over the history of this country, it takes us about 
50 years to change energy sources. It took about 50 years to go from 
wood to coal; it took about 50 years to go from coal to oil and natural 
gas; and it will take about 50 years to truly have this advanced, 
clean, efficient energy economy that we know we should have as a 
country. We should have policies in place that encourage that. And 
natural gas can be a fabulous bridge to that future.
  There has to be accountability. We need to ensure that it is done in 
an environmentally sensitive way. I believe there is a role for the 
Federal Government to do that, and we should be embracing it because it 
can clearly bridge us in a cleaner way and in a cost-effective and 
competitive way to the future we all imagine for clean and advanced 
energy.
  It will take time to get there. It is a massive investment to 
transform our energy infrastructure, and we can do that, which, by the 
way, will create a lot of jobs while we do it, but we can get there. 
And natural gas can be a terrific bridge.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. I really agree with all you said. And as we make that 
bridge to that clean energy future--you talked about those 50-year 
increments as we change from one source of energy to another. In that 
process, we, American taxpayers, seriously subsidized each and every 
one of those transitions. We now have to shift, it seems to me, shift 
some of those subsidies from the old energy sources, specifically oil, 
and shift that into long-term subsidies, encouragement to those clean 
energy issues. If we do that, I think we'll see that kind of growth 
that you're talking about.
  Mr. DELANEY. I absolutely agree with you.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Delaney, I know you have to leave, but thank you 
so very much for joining us.
  Mr. DELANEY. Thank you for giving me this opportunity.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Also joining us tonight is Representative Higgins from 
the great State of New York.
  We have talked here on the floor from time to time, Mr. Higgins, and 
you have a very serious issue about our infrastructure--or lack of good 
quality infrastructure in the United States. You have some plans for 
that. I don't know if that's what you want to talk about tonight, but 
I'm going to take you there either sooner or later. So please share 
with us your thoughts on growing jobs here in America.
  Mr. HIGGINS. I thank the gentleman from California.
  I think the infrastructure piece, as has been mentioned here 
previously, is a vehicle for growth. It is refreshing to see that this 
discussion tonight between three Members is about how to grow the 
economy. There is not an example in human history of an economy growing 
out of a recession from austerity measures. It didn't happen in Japan 
in the 1990s. It's not happening in Europe today, and it didn't happen 
in this country in 1937. So what we have to do is invest in education, 
as the gentleman has said, scientific research, and infrastructure.
  This weekend, former Republican candidate for President Rudy Giuliani 
talked about the importance of investments that have a return, that 
grow jobs and reduce debt and deficit. He talked about transportation 
infrastructure and rebuilding the roads and bridges of this country.
  The Republican budget that was released today, the Ryan budget, 
proposes to cut infrastructure spending over the next 10 years by $5.7 
trillion. I would submit to you that we are moving in the wrong 
direction. We need to make investments in this economy.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Higgins, if I may interrupt you for just a second, 
I can't believe the number you just gave us. You said the Ryan 
Republican budget that will come out this week does what to 
infrastructure?
  Mr. HIGGINS. It cuts infrastructure spending by $5.7 trillion over 10 
years.

                              {time}  1930

  It doesn't do anything to the defense spending. So while we, the 
advocates of increased infrastructure spending, want to nation-build 
here at home, in America, the Ryan budget wants to continue to nation-
build in Afghanistan and Iraq and other places.
  World War II ended in 1945. We still have 52,000 U.S. soldiers in 
Germany. We still have 49,000 U.S. soldiers in Japan. We still have 
10,000 U.S. soldiers in Italy. We need to bring them home and nation-
build here.
  And that's the Paul Ryan budget, not the Tim Ryan budget.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Higgins, you've really hit upon something that 
caught my attention. Also, we should be aware that this year, that is 
October 2012 until October 2013, we will spend $100 billion in 
Afghanistan.
  To what effect? To have our soldiers killed by Afghan policemen? To 
create an ongoing conflict in that area with the people that are living 
there?
  To what effect? $100 billion.
  You talk about bringing home the soldiers, we should bring the 
soldiers home from Afghanistan. There will be some small unit left 
there to deal with al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations, but it's 
simply not working.
  Think what $100 billion could do to solve the sequestration issue, 
which is only $85 billion.
  Mr. HIGGINS. Can I just make another point before you turn it over to

[[Page 3381]]

the distinguished gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan)?
  A lot of people here, in the majority, do a lot of complaining about 
spending. The irony is, they did all the spending.
  At the end of 2000 we had a budgetary surplus of $258 billion. They 
took that surplus and financed two wars that took $1.2 trillion out of 
the American economy. They financed a drug prescription program, unpaid 
for, that will cost us $1 trillion over 10 years.
  And they financed two tax cuts that didn't produce the kind of growth 
they were said to produce. In fact, after those tax cuts were enacted, 
disproportionately for the wealthy, we had the worst period of economic 
growth in the past 75 years.
  The Clinton administration produced 22 million private sector jobs. 
We had 4 percent annual economic growth, sustained over an 8-year 
period. That produces budgetary surpluses and reduces the debt.
  So that's the lesson that we should embrace, not the measures that 
the Republicans are proposing, because historically it hasn't produced 
the kind of growth that they promised that it would produce.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. If the gentleman would yield too, I'd just comment 
on the infrastructure piece.
  So here we are today, needs abound in the country, both rail, 
combined sewer, highways, bridges--I mean, each of our counties, you 
pull out how many bridges in our counties aren't up to specs; I think 
it's like 50 or 60 just in one of my bigger counties.
  These projects are only going to get more expensive. The energy costs 
going in are going to get more expensive, the labor costs are going to 
get more expensive. Everything associated, the materials, everything 
associated with what needs to get done is going to become more 
expensive. So I think the good business move, on behalf of the 
taxpayer, would be to get this done now, get people back to work.
  And I recognize that we're still running deficits. But the interest 
rate at which we're borrowing the money is minimal, 1, 2 percent.
  So we're going to wait. Here's what's going to happen. We're going to 
wait. Accidents are going to happen, bridges are going to collapse, 
things are going to just need to get done, and then these local 
governments, State governments, we're going to have to go out and 
borrow the money at 4 or 5 percent, as opposed to 1 or 2.
  So I think as we're thinking about this, it's not that we're sitting 
here saying, oh geez, we don't have anything better to do, let's just 
spend a bunch of government money. No, these are strategic investments. 
Like in Virginia, they're going to increase productivity so people 
aren't sitting in their cars. They're more productive, have a higher 
quality of life, more time with their families, all these things that 
we say are very important.
  So, to your point, we're going backwards, because at some point this 
stuff's got to get done.
  Mr. HIGGINS. According to Transportation for America, there are 
69,000 structurally deficient bridges in this Nation. In my State of 
New York there are over 2,000 bridges that are structurally deficient. 
In western New York there are 99 bridges that are structurally 
deficient. Every second of every day, seven cars drive on a bridge that 
is structurally deficient.
  And as the gentleman from Ohio had pointed out, public infrastructure 
is the public's responsibility. It's as old as Lincoln. He called them 
land improvements and railroads at the time.
  So it's not a question of whether or not the public is going to 
improve the infrastructure. The question is when does it make the most 
sense. And we believe that money is as cheap as it's ever going to be, 
labor is as cheap as it's ever going to be, and equipment is as cheap 
as it's ever going to be.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Higgins, you've raised, and Mr. Ryan, you've also 
raised the very same issue about the infrastructure. We can do this. We 
can really do it.
  I couldn't believe that Paul Ryan's going to introduce a budget in 
the next couple of days that's going to take $5.7 trillion out of the 
infrastructure.
  I often hear our Republican colleagues talk about the Founding 
Fathers, and we ought to hearken back to the founding fathers. And 
indeed we should.
  His first month in office, George Washington asked Alexander 
Hamilton, his Treasury Secretary, to develop an industrial plan for the 
United States. In that plan that Hamilton produced 3 months later was 
an infrastructure component. It said the United States Government 
should support the creation of ports, canals, and roads.
  So right back to the very first days of this government, we have seen 
the role of the Federal Government in the infrastructure sector, and 
that is an investment.
  And one thing I'll add before I turn it back to you gentlemen is that 
all of that's our tax money, all tax money from all 360 million 
Americans, coming in in one way or another, sometimes through the 
Federal excise tax on gasoline or income tax or other taxes. If we used 
that money to buy American-made steel--I think that's near your 
district, isn't it, Mr. Ryan?
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I think the gentleman from Buffalo knows a little 
bit about that too.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. So we're talking about American-made steel for those 
bridges, or concrete or other kinds of equipment. And so if we do that, 
we'd create jobs in the United States.
  The manufacturing sector lost 9 million jobs between 1990 and last 
year. This last year we've seen an additional about 600,000 new jobs 
coming back into manufacturing, but if we pass Buy American or Make It 
in America legislation, so that our tax money supports American-made 
products from American-made workers made in America, we can see a boom 
in manufacturing. It's certainly going to be important in my district, 
and I'm sure it is in yours.
  Gentlemen, you're right on target here. These are the investments 
that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton said we ought to make.
  Mr. Ryan, I know you have a few other things you'd like to toss into 
this.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Well, one of the things that you were talking 
about--and I just started to learn more and more about this new 
additive manufacturing. And there's a center in Youngstown, Ohio now 
that's a regional center for additive manufacturing.
  So the old school manufacturing is you would cut things out, and they 
called it subtractive manufacturing. The new stuff is a printer that 
you have that would be like the printer you have in your office, except 
you pump material into it, and instead of ink on a piece of paper, it's 
a material that would make a component part. And the cost is down now 
to about $700 or $800 for these things. So this is the next generation 
of manufacturing.
  And I bring it up because the President put together a proposal, 
Department of Energy, Department of Commerce, Department of Defense, to 
partner with the private sector to create one of these innovation 
institutes. And he wants to do 15 more for a billion dollars.
  If you would see the activity going on in Youngstown, Ohio now, the 
companies that are partnering with us, with the private sector, with 
Carnegie Mellon, it goes all the way to Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon, 
Case Western Reserve, Youngstown State, University of Akron, Lehigh, 
Penn State, West Virginia--we've got to get Buffalo in this somehow.
  But the point is, public/private partnership to expedite the 
development of new technologies. And the President and his team get 
this. And Democrats, we get this.
  We've got to get away from this narrative that anything the 
government spends money on is bad; it's a waste of your tax dollars. 
Whether it's infrastructure, whether it's public/private partnerships 
like this additive manufacturing institute or the other institutes that 
we need to create, that's the seed corn for the next generation of 
alternative energy, windmills, solar panels, whatever the case may be.

                              {time}  1940

  We don't know what it is. That's why the recipe has always been to 
invest in this basic research, put these public-

[[Page 3382]]

private partnerships together, and magic will happen. Because you have 
the basic scientific intellect and intelligence there, partnering with 
the private sector, who has a profit motive, and magic happens. And now 
we've gotten a scenario where government has no role here. No role at 
all. And it's not either/or. So I'd like to ask my friends who think 
it's either/or, what other relationship with another human being do you 
have that that's that black and white?
  This stuff is complicated. It's complex. It takes nuance. And that's 
what's happening in Youngstown, and I think it's a good example of what 
can happen around the country in older areas where we don't have the 
local tax base that we used to have, to have the Federal Government 
come in. And you should see the ripple effect already happening--and 
it's a beautiful thing--but it takes that kind of comprehensive plan.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Higgins.
  Mr. HIGGINS. I was just going to mention where Tim was talking about 
infrastructure, the New America Foundation has a study out called, 
``The Way Forward.'' And they propose spending $1.2 trillion on 
infrastructure, primarily because of the reasons that we stated here. 
Money is as cheap as it's ever going to be. Labor is cheap and 
equipment is cheap. But they further explain that it will create 25 
million jobs over the next 5 years--$5 million the first year, reducing 
the unemployment rate from its current rate to 6.4 percent; $5 million 
in the second year, reducing the unemployment rate further to 5.4 
percent. These are proven growth vehicles. And that's exactly what the 
economy does. And it will also put people back to work.
  All the construction trades, to their considerable credit, have a 
program called Helmets to Hardhats, where they take veterans returning 
from Iraq and Afghanistan and they expedite their apprenticeship 
training and put them to work making $60,000, $70,000 a year. Do you 
really want to say thank you for your service on behalf of a grateful 
Nation? Put them to work rebuilding this Nation.
  We will spend--the Federal Government--in transportation 
infrastructure this year $53 billion. It's a disgrace. We're a Nation 
of 300 million people. You just spent as a Nation, the United States, 
$89 billion rebuilding the roads and bridges of Afghanistan. You spent 
$69 billion rebuilding the roads and bridges of Iraq. Those are nations 
of 30 million and 26 million respectively. But for a Nation of 300 
million people you're going to spend $53 billion.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And you look at what our top competitors are 
spending as a percentage of their GDP. I think we're at 1 percent of 
our GDP that we spend on infrastructure. It maybe went up to 2 during 
this recovery package. But if you look at India and China, it's 7 or 8 
percent of their GDP. Now, granted, they're still developing in so many 
different ways. But for us to be at 1 and they're at 6, 7 or 8, how are 
we going to be able to keep up when our infrastructure is so much 
older?
  It's time to rebuild America. And I don't know anybody in my 
district, Democrat or Republican, who's really not for that. I've had 
Republican friends of mine have the light bulb go off and they say, 
Wait a minute. We're going to have to do this at some point. And we've 
got a high unemployment rate and we've got low interest rates. This 
doesn't make any sense to put it off.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. If not now, when?
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. When?
  Mr. GARAMENDI. When are we going to do it? We can do these things. We 
can do the wind turbines for the clean energy, as Mr. Delaney was 
talking about, solar panels, and, of course, the transportation 
systems, which we're discussing here.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. As you said, you've got to ship that stuff. That 
stuff needs to be shipped. It needs manufactured and then it needs to 
be shipped somewhere on a road and over bridges and ports and airports 
and logistics facilities and everything else. You've got to make that 
investment, and that'll grease the wheels of the commerce.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. George Washington and Alexander Hamilton at the very 
start of this Nation said, Build the infrastructure. Grow the economy.
  Mr. HIGGINS. We need them back here.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. We can use that again. The President has put it out 
there, too. In his State of the Union speech he spoke very clearly to 
the advanced manufacturing centers that you talked about, Mr. Ryan. He 
talked about infrastructure. He's made proposals that have just been 
pushed aside by our Republican colleagues here, but there are proposals 
that would grow this economy and give us the foundation upon which we 
can then have additional growth.
  I see that the Representative from the District of Columbia is here. 
Ms. Norton, thank you very much for joining us. Gentlemen, thank you 
very much for this evening. Eleanor Holmes Norton, thank you very much 
for joining us this evening.
  Ms. NORTON. I want to thank my good colleague from California for 
keeping before the Congress the notion of making jobs in America. You 
were just talking about infrastructure. Infrastructure is all made in 
America, if we make sure that we don't build bridges, for example, from 
materials from China. But when it comes to the roads, when it comes to 
the cement, we don't get those from abroad. We make those here. And 
that's why infrastructure has always been the foremost way to stimulate 
an economy. It's interesting that it stimulates not only the 
construction trades, but it's best because it stimulates other parts of 
the economy below it. It's the way to get everything going.
  I couldn't agree with you more in pointing out--and you and I are on 
the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee--the importance of 
infrastructure. That used to be the great bipartisan issue of the 
Congress of the United States. And I think there is some chance it will 
be again. We note that the bill that we just passed in the last 
Congress, the Surface Transportation bill, will have to be renewed next 
year; and I certainly hope that becomes an opportunity to do a Surface 
Transportation bill for more than 2 years. That's where we have to get 
to work right now.
  But I wanted to come to the floor today, in particular because the 
Ryan budget has come forward. And I note the very good news of the 
246,000 jobs that the private sector, on its own, with no help from the 
public sector and no help from the Congress, has produced, cheering all 
of us up.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to note that we are about to countermand all that 
the private sector is doing alone. The reason is that the Federal and 
the State sectors are doing just the opposite. They are reducing 
spending, the States and the cities are causing layoffs, and the result 
is that for every job that the private sector makes, we are moving in 
exactly the opposite direction because all oars are not in the water. 
Thank goodness we have a private sector that is beginning to say, we 
won't wait for the other oars--the Federal and the State oars. We're 
going in now. The rest of you should join us.
  The very least we should do, however, is to cease making it worse for 
the private sector to keep doing what it's doing. The sequester, of 
course, will do that. The markets have not reacted yet, but there is no 
way in which people in the private sector, particularly small business, 
is going to continue to add jobs if they see that the Federal and State 
governments are doing just the opposite. The reason the State 
governments are doing that is because when we make cuts, they pass 
through directly to them. So they're trying to protect themselves 
because they must produce annual balanced budgets. Since they must have 
a balanced budget, they are making cuts every single day, or at least 
reducing spending.
  The Ryan budget comes forward and in a real sense it looks a lot like 
it's always looked. But look what it does: it makes half of its so-
called savings from health care--Medicare, Medicaid, and, of all 
things, the Affordable Health Care Act. I guess we ought to say a 
budget is what, indeed, it always has been: it's a hope-for document. I 
hope

[[Page 3383]]

that we don't get the Ryan budget. But I cannot believe that Mr. Ryan 
believes that at this late date, with an election having already taken 
place, with the benefits of the Affordable Health Care Act, flowing 
every day, that we're about to repeal that. Half of his savings are 
from Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Health Care Act, and he caps 
food stamps.

                              {time}  1950

  I want to say to my good friend from California, I think we ought to 
stop slapping the private sector in the face every time it makes jobs, 
making sure that we do cuts that take away the effects of those jobs. 
That's what we're doing.
  I note that you have one of the posters that show how we hurt people. 
We ought to also understand we are hurting people and we are hurting 
the economy at the same time, and that's why CBO said 750,000 jobs are 
at risk because of the sequester alone, leave aside what the Ryan 
budget would do.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Well, thank you very much, Representative Norton, and 
for your years of service here.
  You were just moving to the Ryan budget, which I suspect he'll 
introduce maybe in the next day or two. This is the same old, same old, 
but this time it's worse than the old. He's talking about an austerity 
budget, a very stringent austerity budget on steroids that will clearly 
decimate the economy as those cuts are made.
  You just said if the Federal Government makes a reduction, it comes 
right down to cities and States laying people off. We've had this 
growth just last month, 247,000 jobs, and here we go.
  Let's understand what is being discussed by Mr. Ryan. Who are these 
people on Medicaid? He proposes to cut Medicaid by a third and block-
grant it to the States, which means just give the States some money. 
But who are those people on Medicaid? Now, we call it Medi-Cal in 
California, but you can see that two-thirds of the Medicaid money goes 
to seniors and disabled. So, Mr. Ryan, what are you doing? Who exactly 
are you pointing out for the reductions? You're going after seniors and 
the disabled.
  Ms. NORTON. I think that point you just made about Medicaid needs to 
be said again. People think of Medicaid as somehow poor people, we'll 
let them fend for themselves. It turns out that almost all of the 
funds--two-thirds--go to seniors and disabled people. We're targeting 
the wrong people.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. They think it's welfare. Well, these are seniors and 
disabled people that can't work, or people that are retired.
  So, what does it mean? It slashes that budget for seniors that 
provides them with nursing homes. Principally, these folks are in 
nursing homes. So you're going to take a third of the money out of 
nursing homes. Now, just what are those seniors going to do? What are 
they going to do? You're taking a third of the money out by 2022.
  You mentioned Medicare. Oh, yeah, Medicare. Mr. Ryan, proposes to end 
Medicare as we know it. He's going to give seniors a voucher. They can 
stay on Medicare, but they have a voucher to buy Medicare. The 
guarantee of affordable health care, quality health care for seniors 
terminates with the Ryan Republican budget.
  Who are those people on Medicare? Well, let's see. About 3 percent 
earn over $100,000 a year; 1 percent, somewhere around $90,000 to 
$100,000; but down here, here's where the Medicare beneficiaries are. 
They're earning somewhere, $10,000 to $20,000, or $30,000--right here, 
28, 20, 16. You're getting up to 50 percent right there of people below 
$40,000. These are not wealthy people.
  Medicare is there to provide people with the ability to have quality 
health care in their retirement years. But Mr. Ryan would end that and 
give them a voucher, and shift the cost to the individuals who would 
then have to go out and buy private health insurance.
  I was the insurance commissioner in California for 8 years and I 
understand what the private insurance companies are all about. The 
private health insurance companies are all about their bottom-line 
profit. It's not people, it's profit. If that's what Mr. Ryan wants to 
do, we're going to fight vigorously and successfully to say no, no; the 
promise of Medicare is here to stay.
  Ms. NORTON. Isn't that, by the way, exactly why we got Medicare--that 
seniors were left to the private market, and finally the Congress 
understood that the private market cannot accommodate people with 
$22,000 annual income.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Exactly right. When I was young, before Medicare, we 
lived in a rural community, there was a county hospital. My dad took me 
to the county hospital to visit a rancher. We were ranchers. On the 
other side of the hill was another rancher that was elderly and was at 
the county hospital. I will remember forever in my life going to that 
ward with maybe 15, 20 elderly people side by side in beds, the stench. 
The care was almost nonexistent. Poverty was everywhere. It was worse 
than horrible.
  But in 1964 this Nation did something very, very important. Together 
with Social Security, they brought seniors out of poverty because it 
was the medical expenses that forced them into poverty. So Medicare 
brought seniors out of poverty. It went from, I don't know, I think it 
was almost 80 percent of seniors were in poverty to a situation today 
where maybe 8 to 10 percent are in poverty. Social Security, Medicare; 
absolutely critical. But any attempt to change that goes right to the 
heart of our values as Americans.
  We will take care of our seniors. That's not to say changes are not 
possible. Of course changes ought to be public. For example, we ought 
to be negotiating with the drug companies over the price of 
prescription drugs. But, oh no. When the prescription drug benefit was 
passed, added into it and signed by George W. Bush was a paragraph that 
said the Federal Government is a price taker; it cannot negotiate the 
price of drugs. So we spend billions and billions where it's not 
necessary.
  Ms. NORTON. And of course there are some agencies that do negotiate 
the price of drugs.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Exactly.
  Ms. NORTON. I do want to point out, when you talk about the transfer 
of the expense, the cost of Medicare to seniors themselves--the costs 
we know they can't possibly bear--notice that hopes went up when Mitt 
Romney said, during the campaign, that we should reduce the loopholes. 
Well, note what Mr. Ryan does: he reduces the loopholes in order to 
give rich folks a further tax reduction.
  So, where does the money go? The top rate now is 39.6 percent. Well, 
he wants to bring that top rate down to 25 percent. So he wants to 
close the loopholes all right--I'm not sure which ones he has in mind--
but that savings would go back into the same 1 percent sector that 
already has gotten all the benefit from tax cuts until what we finally 
did in January, when others got some relief as well.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. I'm going to pick up another chart. The issue you 
raised is one that we really ought to chart. Let me go get another 
chart. Just keep going there.
  Ms. NORTON. I'm very glad my good friend from California does have a 
way to illustrate all of these points.
  Not only does Ryan reduce the top rate from 39.6--that's how much the 
very richest would pay--to 25 percent, but you may say, well, but he's 
got a 10 percent rate essentially for everybody else. Well, if 
everybody else paid 10 percent and the very richest paid 25 percent, 
there would be little revenue for the Federal Government. So what we're 
saying about Medicare and Medicaid is this would mean that there would 
not be the revenue to fund them. And that seems to be his point: get so 
little revenue coming into the Federal Government that in and of itself 
that will mean you do not have to worry about cuts. You'll get rid of 
these programs that we have been building for 50 years.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. I ran over and got this chart. I wasn't going to talk 
about this this evening, but you brought the issue up about where the 
money has gone and the issue of tax breaks.

                              {time}  2000

  This chart begins in 1979, and it shows the basic growth in income. 
So

[[Page 3384]]

it starts down here in 1979, and the bottom 20 percent have really seen 
very, very little growth in their income. The next 20 percent, a little 
better, and this is the next quartile. These are the 1-percenters. We 
talked about the 99 percent. This is the 99 percent down here. These 
are the 1-percenters. These are the people that have seen extraordinary 
income growth. And it just happens to coincide right here, this income 
growth has coincided with the Bush tax cuts in the early 2000's. So 
we've seen this enormous percentage income, almost a 300 percent 
growth, 277 percent growth in their income, so that you're beginning to 
see the skewing of wealth in America.
  This is the annual income. But if you take a look at wealth and you 
put another chart of wealth here, you'll see something the very same. 
So the rich get richer and the poor stay where they are, that old song.
  Here we are. This is a result of multiple effects, but one of the 
principal ones is tax policy. And if Mr. Ryan's budget passes, as you 
have suggested, and the top tax rate goes from 39 to 25 percent, then 
that means that those who already have a lot will get a whole lot more. 
And I'm reminded of a quote by Mr. Roosevelt, President Roosevelt, and 
he said--this is a paraphrase. I wish I had it with me to be exact. He 
said: We're not measured by how much those who have get more, but 
rather by what we do for those who have little.
  This is our great challenge. This is where the great buying power for 
America should be, in the bottom 99 percent, really in the bottom 50 or 
60 percent.
  I thank you for raising that point about the tax policy in the Ryan 
budget, but it will make this line just continue to go like that; and 
the rest, because of the elimination of the deductions, are going to 
see a stalling of their income.
  Ms. NORTON. So he does get balance within 10 years, and look at how 
he gets it. You still do not have anything like a contribution, a real 
contribution from those who have benefited the most from the tax cuts. 
You're saying it continues to come from the lowest part of the income 
stream, income groups in the United States. I don't know when people 
will let the Congress know they're not going to take it anymore, but it 
seems to me the time has come.
  Frankly, I was encouraged by the fact--I hope this works out--that 
the President reached out to at least some Senators to see whether or 
not there's somebody somewhere, and since Democrats controlled the 
House, perhaps we could get to a greater balance by bringing more 
people into the equation.
  The Republicans are fond of saying that you can't spend yourself into 
prosperity. Well, you can't cut yourself into prosperity, either. 
That's why the notion of balance makes the most sense. That's why the 
President was elected because that apparently made the most sense to 
the American people.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Exactly. The President has proposed a balanced 
approach to sequestration, as well as to the long-term deficit plan, a 
combination of additional revenues, many of them from closing 
loopholes, and also some very wise cuts. There are things that can be 
done in Medicare. I talked earlier about the prescription drug benefit. 
But there's also the way in which Medicare is organized. The fee-for-
service system encourages additional and often unnecessary procedures. 
There's a lot of fraud in the system. We need to deal with that. And 
the Affordable Care Act, interestingly enough, went right after every 
one of those, yet they want to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
  What are they thinking? We know the Affordable Care Act works. We 
know that the inflation rate in Medicare, since the Affordable Care Act 
went into effect, has dropped precipitously. It's still growing, but 
it's growing slower than the general health care inflation rate in the 
Nation.
  Ms. NORTON. That's the first time we've seen that in decades.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. In decades. But we're seeing the changes.
  The Affordable Care Act, a major part of that is an annual well 
person visit to the doctor, so critically important. Why? What's your 
blood pressure? How's your sugar? What's happening in your life? Can we 
prevent you from getting diabetes? Can we give you some really--some 
cheap pills to keep your blood pressure down, or are we going to have 
the blood pressure go up so you get a stroke and pay big-time for years 
and years with disabilities and medical care?
  So the Affordable Care Act has the right incentives in it to bend the 
cost curve. And it is. It is actually working.
  Ms. NORTON. It's working. And because it's working, we know good and 
well the last thing the American people would approve is snatching it 
back, particularly since, by 2014, it's going to reach everybody.
  I agree with you. There are ways to cut. And unlike my friends on the 
other side, this side has never said no cuts. Their view is only 
spending cuts, but we have never had that view, only this or that. We 
really are open to the kinds of negotiation, tough negotiation it's 
going to take to come out with something.
  Now, I'll say for the Ryan budget, he says he was questioned, ``Well, 
do you really think any of this is going to happen?'' and he said words 
to the effect, ``Well, you have to put down what you really want,'' I 
don't have any problem with that if they come to the table this time so 
that there can be a real negotiation and we can get to the kind of 
budget that I think really is doable.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. I notice that our time is nearly over. If you'd like a 
few closing comments, I'm going to end in just a few moments, too.
  Ms. NORTON. First, I want to thank my friend for keeping jobs before 
us. That's the bottom line. That's really what we've been talking about 
even as we talk about the Ryan budget.
  I simply wanted to come forward because, when I heard you on the 
floor, it seemed to me almost everything you were saying fed into the 
news today from the Ryan budget. I ask people to try to follow the 
explanation of what that budget does when you hear that he can close 
the budget in 10 years rather than 25 years, understand that that is 
impossible if you want to grow this economy.
  I thank you, once again, my good friend from California, for making 
all the important points this evening.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. From Washington, D.C., your leadership in this 
community has been known for some time. I thank you very much for 
joining us tonight.
  I want to do two things before I end. First of all, Medicare is back 
on the table. The Ryan budget takes up Medicare once again and provides 
a voucher which will basically destroy it.
  I used this last time around. I'm going to change this. It says, 
Medicare 1965--that was President Johnson--until 2013; created by LBJ, 
destroyed by the GOP. I don't think so. Seniors don't want it. 
Americans don't want it. In the last campaign for the Presidency, this 
was one of the major issues, and yet Mr. Ryan is coming back with it. 
Bad idea, bad timing.
  I want to end with this. This is a great country. There is no other 
place in the world like the United States. It is one terrific country. 
There's enormous energy in this country, the energy where people want 
to get a job, they want to go to work, businesses want to grow, and 
they want to hire people. All of that is waiting for Congress to get 
its act together, to get the sequestration out of the way, which is an 
austerity budget that has 750,000 jobs to be lost in it, get that out 
of the way. Look at the balanced proposal, as the President has 
suggested. End some tax loopholes. Make some cuts. Make wise, 
thoughtful cuts. And it's possible. It can be done, and it should be 
done.
  Along the way, we can grow the economy. We can, once again, ``Make it 
in America.'' Because when we make things in America, when we use our 
tax money to buy American-made equipment, supplies, and products, we're 
creating jobs here. We're putting people back to work.
  George Washington said we ought to do it. Alexander Hamilton as 
Treasury Secretary said we ought to do it. And we, the Democrats, say 
we ought to do this. We ought to have a buy American.
  Mr. Rahall, the ranking member of the Transportation and 
Infrastructure

[[Page 3385]]

Committee, has made it clear that, as a major part of the new 
transportation bill, there's going to be a major ``Make it in America'' 
component so that we're buying American-made goods once again. He's 
supported by every one of the ranking members of every subcommittee, 
and I add myself to that list.
  For the last 3 years, I've carried specific bills that say our tax 
money, transportation tax money, would be used to buy American trucks, 
buses, bridges, and steel made here in America. If you're going to put 
up a solar panel on your house or a wind turbine and you expect a 
subsidy--and you should have one--then it should be an American-made 
solar panel or wind turbine.
  We can make it in America when Americans, once again, make it. So, 
that's our message. Our message is to be wise about the cuts. Yes, 
we're going to make cuts. Balance it with appropriate revenue 
increases, which should be basically the elimination of many of the 
unnecessary subsidies that go out even to American corporations still 
receiving subsidies for offshoring jobs. No more. The President was 
right. Give a break to American companies that bring jobs back to the 
United States.
  All of this is possible. This is what we are here for, 435 of us in 
the House of Representatives, to set policy. Mr. Delaney talked about 
education, technology, energy policy, and we were joined this evening 
by our other friends, Mr. Higgins from New York, Mr. Ryan from Ohio, 
and Ms. Norton from Washington, D.C. It's been a good evening.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________