[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 3]
[House]
[Pages 3723-3725]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           MAKE IT IN AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. LaMalfa). 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 for this opportunity 
to delve into what is a major piece of our work here in Washington, and 
that is the budget and the appropriation process.
  Today is one of those very, very important days in the process of 
government. Today the President delivered to Congress his proposed 
budget. It is required by the Constitution. George Washington did it, 
and every President since that time has done it every year, and today, 
we have President Obama's budget before us.
  I want to spend a few moments on that budget, together with my friend 
from New York, Mr. Paul Tonko and our East-West show. So we have got 
California and New York here.
  I would like to start off by kind of framing my own work and how I 
think we really need to approach what we do here.
  This is from Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the Great Depression, 
and he laid out this test. It is on the Roosevelt Memorial here. It is 
etched into the granite stone there. It says: ``The test of our 
progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have 
much. It is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.''
  It is how I like to frame the issues, and I think we can frame the 
President's budget that way, and also, this way:
  Those of you that have seen us here on the floor, Mr. Tonko and 
myself, we often and usually talk about this issue of Making It in 
America, rebuilding the great American middle class by rebuilding the 
manufacturing sector of America.
  Twenty years ago, actually 24 years ago, it was about 20 million, 19-
plus million Americans were in that manufacturing sector. They were 
making everything from wine to automobiles and jet planes and even 
computers. Then we lost it. Maybe 11 million right now.
  We are beginning to see the rebuilding of the manufacturing base, and 
along with that, we will see the American middle class rise up once 
again and be able to support their families, be able to take care of 
those things like food and shelter and education.
  These are the seven ways that we talk about this. The President's 
budget picks up many of these, and I want to just focus on some of them 
tonight. My friend, Mr. Tonko, will pick up the energy piece.
  In the President's budget, there are these key sectors, tax policy, 
education, research, infrastructure. Let's start at the bottom and work 
to the top.
  The President has proposed a $305 billion, 4-year transportation 
program for the United States. Now, anybody that has driven today here 
in the East Coast or in the West Coast knows that we have gridlock, we 
have transportation problems of all kinds.
  So the President comes forward with this major initiative, really, a 
significant increase in what we have done in the past. He wants to 
focus it, first, on repairing what we already have, the potholes, the 
bridges that have fallen down and others that might, saying let's get 
to that.
  He then goes about building the more modern transportation systems 
that we need, expanding our highway program, but also the rail systems, 
the inner city rail, the inter-city rails, and the street cars and 
other kinds of mass transportation systems; very, very important.
  He proposes how we pay for it. He says, we ought not give the oil 
companies, the Big Four, a $5 billion annual tax break, literally 
giving them our money at the gas pump, but also giving them our tax 
money in unnecessary subsidies.
  He has other proposals in this part of the budget so that this would 
be fully paid for. That is the infrastructure piece.
  One of our colleagues here on the floor just a few moments ago was 
talking about deepening the Savannah River port. Yes, we ought to do 
that, and the other ports. We know the Panama Canal is going to be 
widened, and when it is widened, we are going to have larger ships, 
deeper draft. We need to deepen our ports.
  That is an infrastructure project, and the President's budget 
directly focuses on that.
  Why is this important for individuals?
  Because these are jobs, these are American jobs in construction, and 
if we will couple it with one more thing that I have proposed, and that 
is that these taxpayer programs buy American-made equipment so that the 
steel for the bridges, the concrete, so that the trains, so that the 
other things that will be part of this infrastructure, the pumps and 
all that goes with rebuilding the levees and the sanitation systems and 
the water system, that they be American-made equipment and supplies.
  In doing that, we not only put people to work on the infrastructure 
projects, but we, once again, make it in America, and we rebuild the 
American manufacturing.
  I would like now to turn to my colleague, Mr. Tonko, who wants to 
pick up a special piece of this, the energy piece in the President's 
budget.
  Mr. TONKO. Thank you Representative Garamendi, and thank you for 
introducing on this House Floor some of the concepts that have been 
presented by the President in his budget presentation to Congress.
  Certainly, I have been waiting with great anticipation as to what the 
energy portion of this budget might look like. Why?
  Because I think it is a cornerstone. Energy policy, energy resources 
are those cornerstones of rebuilding our American economy, to grow the 
economy, and to strengthen the prospects out there for job creation in 
the private sector by creating that partnership, public-private 
partnership where the private sector will grow those jobs.

[[Page 3724]]

  Also, I am curious because of my past roles as energy chair, the 
energy committee chair in the New York State Assembly, a role that I 
held for some 15 years, and also my leadership in NYSERDA, the New York 
State Energy Research and Development Authority, prior to my coming to 
Congress.
  Now sitting on Energy and Commerce as a committee assignment, I have 
great, great interest in where the President wants to take us on the 
energy issues, and I am very favorably impressed by some of the down 
payments that he wants to make.
  Certainly, with the $2.3 billion that he is offering for the 
Department of Energy in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable 
Energy, that effort, I think, is going to launch us into a new series 
of innovation that allows for job creation and a reduced cost of 
electricity and, certainly, a drawing us down on this gluttonous 
dependency on fossil-based fuels as the cornerstone of our energy 
economy.

                              {time}  1930

  So I think that this effort will, within EERE, the Energy Efficiency 
and Renewable Energy Office, provide for that growing effort to promote 
efficiency. That ought to be our fuel of choice. This investment allows 
us to accept that notion and then, also, to work on efforts that will 
enable us to focus our efforts out there that are required for energy.
  Renewable energy, no fuel costs with the sun, the wind, the soil, the 
water, that is part of our environment. Utilizing that in a way that 
generates electricity and does it in a benign way is a very strong 
cornerstone advanced by the President in this effort.
  And also, the $4.2 billion that he brings forth in efforts to provide 
for innovation and to create new outcomes for energy purposes not only 
with efficiency and generation, but the transmission of that energy 
supply and looking at efforts to expand and make permanent the 
production tax credits that are so important for renewable energy in 
this country, so those are two good, very valuable investments.
  Let me then just highlight a few others that I believe will be a 
progressive outcome, if we are to accept this notion here in Congress. 
One would be to address a clean energy research program, and the 
President does that with a major down payment for clean energy 
research.
  He also addresses the Advanced Research Projects Agency in the energy 
capacity, acronymed out as ARPA-E. It mimics DARPA from the Defense 
Department, and what it does is commit a very laser-sharp focus on 
research as it relates to innovation in the energy sector.
  Will all those outcomes be successful? Perhaps not. In fact, the 
character--the quality of research is that failure can be the down 
payment to success. So where the failure will be realized, we will 
retest, we will recommit our energies to fine-tune and come forth with 
the success stories that are required.
  ARPA-E, in its short 5 years, has proven to be a very valuable 
investment in energy innovation. The President makes a major investment 
in his budget for ARPA-E. I was just with over 2,000 representatives 
from the ARPA-E network who came to town--came to Washington to discuss 
the future of the program.
  I am impressed with the leadership, coming both in EERE and ARPA-E in 
the Department of Energy, and the President acknowledges that--
recognizes it by making these commitments in his budget.
  And finally, if I might, Representative Garamendi, I will talk about 
the advanced fuels agenda, where $700 million will be invested in the 
transportation sector, so that we have advanced fuels. We need to be 
weaned off of this gluttonous dependency on fossil fuels.
  So these are very promising investments suggested by the President 
and the administration, those that will take us into a cutting-edge, 
new millennium sort of thinking that enables us to continue with that 
pioneer spirit in this country, which has always guided us and lifted 
us out of tough economic times.
  I am encouraged by these commitments and look forward to the budget 
work that we need to do here in the House of Representatives and 
working with our partners in the United States Senate, but I think the 
President has set a good tone.
  He has ushered in some good thinking, and he is looking at a new wave 
of energy concepts that will guide this Nation in job production, in 
sound energy policy, and will have benign impacts on our environmental 
resources. As stewards of the environment, I think that is important 
for all of us.
  So I thank you for leading this discussion this evening, and I am 
impressed with the energy portion, so I thank you, Representative 
Garamendi.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you very much, Mr. Tonko, and thank you for your 
years of service in the area of energy and for moving this entire 
program forward.
  I think there is another very, very important piece of this, and that 
is that the climate is changing. The climate is changing. We know that 
the greenhouse gases have passed the 400 mark, which was thought to be 
the point of no return.
  Hopefully, that is not the case, but we do know that, in the 
President's budget, he goes after this issue of climate change with the 
kind of programs that you talked about, about the programs supporting 
renewable energy, making permanent the energy tax credits for 
renewables, which is very, very important in my district.
  I have a major wind farm that starts and stops, depending upon 
whether the production tax credit is renewed here in Congress. Right 
now, it is stopping, and that is a major part of the potential energy 
that we need.
  The President talks about an all-of-the-above strategy, and yes, we 
ought to do that. One of those strategies is a natural gas strategy, 
which is now replacing coal in our power plants and, when properly 
managed--that is, methane doesn't leak--it is clear that we will reduce 
our greenhouse gas emissions by that strategy. There are many, many 
different pieces to this. You spoke so well to it.
  I want to just pick up a couple of others very, very quickly, and it 
is a part of this Make It In America, particularly the manufacturing. 
The President proposes that we create more advanced manufacturing hubs.
  These are innovation hubs. There are several in the United States. He 
wants to put more of these out there. They have coupled the research 
with the manufacturing, and that allows for the advancement here.
  He also does one thing that is very important in this, and that is 
the education and the reeducation of our workers and our students. I 
was at an extraordinary manufacturing facility in Yuba City over the 
weekend, and they make bearings.
  I am not talking about these little ball bearings that you find in 
small appliances and the like. We are talking about bearings that are 
huge. These weigh several tons. They are the bearings on a shaft in a 
hydroelectric plant, maybe 2 or 3 feet in diameter.
  I had no idea this existed there, and the one thing they wanted me to 
know was that they cannot find skilled machinists that are able and 
capable of doing that work.
  In the President's budget, he has a major program to train and 
retrain the workers of tomorrow, men and women that will do not only 
the computer work, but also men and women that are capable of becoming 
the machinists of tomorrow, so that we are able, in America, to produce 
these very extraordinarily important, unique pieces of equipment, like 
the shafts, the turbines, and in this case, the bearings that are so 
important to make those things work.
  So there is this whole complex in the President's budget--education, 
early childhood education, going after climate change with energy, 
going after infrastructure--as we talked about earlier.
  There are many more pieces of this puzzle, and as we come back in the 
future, I want us to pick up each individual piece, talk to the 
American public about what is in the President's budget, and hopefully 
persuade our Republican colleagues to go along with

[[Page 3725]]

this pro-growth deficit reduction budget that the President has 
proposed.
  I think, with that, I will turn it over to you, and if you don't have 
any more comments, we will call it a night.
  Mr. TONKO. Representative Garamendi, just in closing, I would state 
that three very important underpinnings to a modern economy--a 
transitioning economy, one that drives innovation--would be the 
investments in research, the investments in infrastructure, the 
investments in education; and we begin to see that in this budget.
  I think the efforts here are a good challenge and a charge to this 
Congress to respond accordingly. That will lift us into a cutting-edge 
thinking that enables us to compete effectively in what is a worldwide 
race, as it relates to clean energy innovation and high tech.
  We need these investments in order to be strong. We won the global 
race on space back in the sixties because we committed to winning that 
race, and that was just against another nation, Russia.
  Now, there are dozens of nations competing to be the kingpin of the 
international economy. The President rightfully sees that as the 
opportunity for this Nation to invest accordingly, so that we can move 
forward; and again, with his efforts in advanced manufacturing, with 
the NNMI, the manufacturing initiative, there is great promise there.
  That gives you a very sharp focus on specific needs of manufacturing, 
developing those sorts of intellects and human infrastructure, 
workforce development, that will give us that cutting-edge technology.
  I strongly support the NNMI initiative in the budget that the 
President had introduced last year. I think it shows us to be in an 
advanced sort of thinking and is giving manufacturing a shot in the 
arm. Our best days in manufacturing lie ahead. We need to invest so as 
to make that possible, and this budget does that.
  So I thank you very much, and I look forward to many more discussions 
on the budget as we go forward in the ensuing weeks.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you, Mr. Tonko, for being such a leader on these 
issues.
  As I was about to turn around to the Speaker and sign off, I realized 
I had left off a major piece of the infrastructure. We have a major 
drought in California, and we know that for California to be able to 
address this issue in the future, we are going to have to prepare by 
building reservoir capacity.
  Well, I am not supposed to speak directly to anybody on the floor, 
but we are going to be putting forth a series of bills to build 
reservoirs in California. That is another critical piece of the 
infrastructure.
  It may be the pipes. It may be the plumbing. It may be the sanitation 
system. But we desperately need to store water in California, not only 
in surface storage, but also to store that water in the underground 
aquifers.
  If we do that, when the droughts which come occasionally to 
California, as they have in the past, we will be prepared to deal with 
them because we will have set aside the water that we needed.
  Somebody asked me about this a few days ago, and they said: Well, why 
do we need to do that? Well, people will just consume it.
  I said: Not if they listen and read Exodus in the Bible. It is 
there--7 years of good, 7 years of bad. You had better put it aside 
during the 7 years of good.
  So that is what we intend to do. We will be introducing legislation 
later this week on building one of the major reservoirs in California.
  With that, Mr. Speaker, I will look to you and say that I look 
forward to working with you on these projects, and I yield back the 
balance of my time.

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