[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 9814-9817]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           MAKE IT IN AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. 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, I don't think we will take a full hour 
here, but there are a couple of things that we need to talk about.
  I always like to start these hour sessions with why we are here; what 
are the values that we want to put forth.
  Why do we spend these hours in the Chamber?
  What is our job here?
  I often find myself going back to FDR. He said back in the thirties 
something that has always been with me. He said: ``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.''
  The test of our progress: Do we provide more to those who have much, 
or to those who have too little?
  How can we meet this test?
  What can we do?
  Today is one of those days that I guess comes from ``A Tale of Two 
Cities''; the best of times and the worst of times.
  I am going to put up this photo of a levee break in California. I 
represent 200 miles of the Sacramento River Valley and probably have 
over 1,100 miles of levees. Today, actually is the best of times. The 
levees are not breaking. Actually, we are in the middle of a drought.
  But today, at the White House, the President signed the Water 
Resources and Reform Development Act, an extremely important piece of 
legislation for my district, and for America, because this legislation 
provides for the protection of our cities. It provides for the flood 
control programs that are absolutely essential in my part of California 
and all across America.
  So, Mr. President, thank you very much for signing that legislation.
  And for the Members of this House and for the Senate that decided 
that it was time to put aside all the partisanship and to do something 
right for the people of America, we actually made progress today and 
the Water Resources Reform and Development Act is now the law of the 
land.
  For California, Hamilton City will see their levees, after 15 years 
of effort, they will see their levees under construction in the coming 
year. And God willing, there won't be a flood this winter. And also an 
end to the drought, thank you.
  Natomas, the city of Sacramento, major levee improvements there, and 
along Yuba City, along the Feather River, 40 miles of levee 
improvements now underway, and also over in Marysville.
  We are thankful that there was bipartisanship and that there was a 
major piece of legislation. We have to provide the funding, but the 
authorization is there.
  So this photo of a levee break in California, we can put it aside and 
we can then talk about this. This takes us back to FDR.
  The Water Resources Reform and Development Act not only deals with 
levees and floods, it also deals with the ports. It deals with the 
inland waterways. It deals with the locks and all that comes with the 
transportation in the sector of water transportation, whether it is on 
the east coast ports, the ports in California, Long Beach, Los Angeles 
and in my area, Stockton and Sacramento ports.
  We are talking about 13 million jobs, and these are the good, middle 
class jobs that Americans need. They want to go to work. They want a 
job. They want to be able to support their families. They want to be 
able to have a home. They want to be able to have that vacation.
  With the Water Resources Reform and Development Act, now law, signed 
today by the President, we will see 13 million jobs in the future. They 
are not going to happen tomorrow, but they will over the next 5 years, 
as this bill--over the next 2 years as this bill goes into effect.
  So FDR's challenge to us: What have we done for those who do not have 
enough?
  Today, the signing of the Water Resources Reform and Development Act 
provides for those who do not have jobs the opportunity. For those who 
are in harm's way in floods, it provides for them to have those levees 
built over the next several years.
  For those who have abundance, well, maybe their home is behind the 
levee also, or maybe they also will benefit from the improvement of our 
ports and waterways. So that is the good news.

[[Page 9815]]

  So what happened today on the bad news side?
  Well, let's talk about that. This is a picture of an Amtrak train 
that has been built in Sacramento, California. This train was paid for 
by the stimulus bill, which some in this House think was a failure, but 
the 600 employees in Sacramento at the Siemens manufacturing plant 
there, they don't think it was a failure: $800 million in the stimulus 
bill 5 years ago to provide for 100 percent American-made locomotives.
  This is the most modern locomotive in the United States. It will soon 
be running on the Northeast corridor between Washington, D.C., and 
Boston, made in America, made in Sacramento by Americans, 100 percent 
American-made.
  So why am I talking about something that happened in this House 5 
years ago with the stimulus bill, the American Recovery Act? Why am I 
bringing it up tonight?
  Because today, the House of Representatives passed an appropriation 
bill for transportation and housing, a woefully inadequate piece of 
legislation that actually will reduce funding for public 
transportation.
  Amtrak may not be able to use this train, may not be able to use the 
locomotive that was built specifically for the Northeast corridor 
because our Republican colleagues reduced the funding for Amtrak and 
actually passed legislation to further restrict public transportation, 
Amtrak and public transportation, in our cities all over this Nation.
  Why would they do that when we know, when everybody knows that 
transportation is absolutely critical, that public transportation, 
whether it be Amtrak or a light-rail system or a rapid transit system 
in any of our cities, is absolutely essential for those people who have 
little ability to travel to their jobs?
  Whether it is on a bus, light rail or a train, they need to have that 
public transportation.
  So what did our colleagues do?
  They reduced the money for public transportation all across this 
Nation, whether it is Amtrak or your local light rail or your local bus 
system. Why? Why, when we know that we also have to deal with climate 
change?
  And how can you deal with climate change when you do not fund the 
public transportation systems of this Nation?
  It makes no sense. In fact, it is nonsense. You want to put people to 
work?
  You put people to work in building the infrastructure of this Nation, 
whether it is a train, an Amtrak locomotive, or a levee, or a port, you 
put people to work building the transportation systems.
  We know that we also have a major funding bill that is necessary. We 
have to reauthorize the transportation programs. The MAP-21 expires 
this year. We know that this summer the highway trust fund runs out of 
money.
  So where was that money in the transportation bill?
  It wasn't there. Reductions.
  So who is going to build?
  Who is going to repair our bridges?
  Are we going to be able to do that?
  Probably not, not with the money that was not appropriated today for 
the transportation programs.
  But the President has proposed a major reauthorization of the 
transportation programs. It is called GROW AMERICA. It expands our 
highway fund some $302 billion over the next 5 years, an expansion so 
that we can repair our bridges.
  We know across America, some 25 to 30 percent of the bridges in every 
district that the 435 of us represent, every single one of us have a 
bridge that is subject to collapse. In my district, I probably have 
more than 200 bridges that are in desperate need of repair for the 
protection of the individuals and communities that use those bridges, 
as well as the commerce that is dependent upon them.
  But, no. We don't have a transportation bill on our side. We need to 
take the President's bill, we need to embrace it because it is fully 
paid for. It has not only the money that is currently available from 
the various programs that currently fund it--these are the excise taxes 
on fuel, whether it is gasoline or diesel, but it adds to that another 
very large sum of money by corporate tax reform.
  Those corporations that have been able to skip out of their 
responsibility here in the United States to pay for the programs that 
all of us depend upon, they would have to pay their fair share in a 
corporate tax reform.
  That money would then flow into the transportation programs, 
providing the money that we need to build our transportation system, 
whether it is the light-rail systems, the heavy rail, Amtrak systems, 
or the roads and the bridges of this Nation.

                              {time}  1945

  It is a good bill. It deserves our full support. We can tweak it. We 
can make little changes here and there, but unless we take up the 
challenge of transportation funding in this Nation, unless we are 
willing to work with the President and his proposal--we have no other 
proposal before us in this House of Representatives.
  Let us embrace the President's proposal, make the changes that we 
think are necessary, but let us move forward. Let us make America move 
forward with a transportation program for this millennium, not for the 
last one, but for this one, one that provides all the benefits that we 
need.
  I want to bring up another part of the transportation program--and 
once again, it is about jobs. The economist in this case, Mark Zandi, 
has done an economic analysis of the transportation programs and the 
infrastructure investment. By the way, this guy worked for John McCain 
in the McCain Presidential campaign.
  His analysis is, for every $1 we invest in infrastructure, $1.57 is 
pumped into the American economy, so you are getting that multiplier 
effect. You are putting men and women to work, not just the hardhats, 
not just with the pick and shovels working on the roads and bridges, 
but also in the offices, the engineers, the architects, the economists, 
and all those who are doing the work in the back office.
  So for every $1 that we invest--and let's think about it. The 
President's proposal is $302 billion over the next 5 years. Multiply it 
out. An extra $1.57 for every dollar invested.
  So let us take Mr. Zandi's analysis. Let us apply it. So we probably 
have somewhere over $450 billion of actual economic growth, if we were 
to follow what the President has proposed in his GROW AMERICA 
transportation program.
  Has anybody got a better idea around here? I don't see much 
happening, but we know by midsummer, the transportation programs in 
America face a highway cliff. The Federal highway trust fund runs out 
of money--no new contracts.
  Some 700,000 people are likely to be laid off in the ensuing year, 
unless the House of Representatives and the Senate takes up the 
challenge of funding the transportation programs of this Nation.
  It is ports. It is highways. It is bridges. It is the bus systems. It 
is the Amtrak system. It is the rail systems of America. All of these 
are part of the President's proposal, and it is something we ought to 
take up and we ought to move forward with.
  What we have been talking about here in these hour-long sessions over 
the last 3 years is another piece of this puzzle.
  When we do infrastructure--whether it be the Water Resources Reform 
and Development Act, the levees and the ports, and the inland 
waterways, the locks, the channels, all of those critical parts of the 
Water Resources Reform and Development Act, as we do that and the 
transportation bill, we need to think about how to increase the 
multiplier that Mr. Zandi talked about.
  He talked about, for every $1 we invest, you get $1.57 growth in the 
economy. However, he did not take into account another critical aspect 
of this.
  This is our Make It In America agenda. If we take that $302 billion 
Presidential program and we take the piece of it that he has 
suggested--that we take the Buy America law that has been in effect in 
the United States

[[Page 9816]]

since 1933--and we expand that from the current 60 percent content; 
that is, for every dollar spent in the transportation programs, we 
would go to 100 percent of that money being spent on American-made 
steel, concrete, iron, and American-made products of all kinds, so that 
when we build a bridge, it is American steel, and it is made in 
America.
  The Make It In America agenda says: let us spend our tax money on 
American-made equipment, on American steel, by United States companies 
operating in the United States, that the men and women of America get 
to benefit from the tax money that they have contributed to our 
transportation programs.
  This is the Make It In America agenda. It is using our tax money to 
employ Americans, American steelworkers, American bridgebuilders, 
American contractors.
  I wanted to give you an example of what happens when you do not use 
the Make It In America agenda, when you ignore the 1933 law that says, 
at a minimum, 60 percent of the content in our transportation programs 
must be spent on American-made steel, American-made equipment.
  Here is what happens. This is a picture of the new San Francisco 
Oakland Bay Bridge. It opened less than 7 months ago. It is a marvelous 
piece of architecture. It is quite a bridge. It has beauty, and it is 
extraordinarily expensive. This is a single-suspension bridge, so it is 
suspended on both sides, an architectural marvel.
  However, all of the steel here in this 500-foot tower and the steel 
on the roadway was not produced in the United States. It was made in 
China by a Chinese Government-owned steel mill that was actually 
expanded and built on the backs of the American taxpayer--$1 billion 
spent of American taxpayer money, directly sent to China, to the 
Chinese Government-owned steel mill.
  By the way, there were significant delays, and there were cost 
overruns because the Chinese steel manufacturer did a shoddy, crumby 
job of producing the parts of this bridge.
  All of the welding was done in China by Chinese welders that were, by 
all accounts and by audits done by Caltrans, ill-trained, ill-prepared, 
and had done thousands upon thousands of very inadequate welds, so that 
when this incredible bridge arrived by boat from China, the welds were 
inadequate. There were cracks.
  In fact, much of the welding was done in the rain in Shanghai. When 
you do welding in the rain, you are going to get a very bad result.
  So there were thousands of problems, all of which led to a delay, and 
all of which led to additional expense, a prime example of what happens 
when you do not follow the law. The law said 60 percent content in the 
United States.
  However, the Schwarzenegger administration in California figured out 
a way to circumvent the law. They took this bridge, a multibillion-
dollar bridge, and they broke it into 20 different pieces, so that they 
could avoid the Buy America law--the result: made in China, 3,000 jobs, 
shoddy work, additional expense, and additional delays.
  The President's proposal, the GROW AMERICA proposal that he has given 
to this Congress to consider and which we ought to consider, would say 
that, in this case, if you are going to use American taxpayer money to 
build a bridge, then it will, over the next 5 years, ramp up from 60 
percent American content to 100 percent American content.
  Let's do it. Let's Make It In America. Let's employ Americans, and 
let's tell the Chinese: you build your own bridges in China, but by 
golly, in America, it is going to be built by American steel and 
American workers.
  That is what the President is proposing for us. That is what we ought 
to be doing, and we ought to be embracing the notion that we cannot do 
it on the cheap, as this Congress did attempt to do less than an hour 
ago with the passage of the Transportation-Housing appropriation bill, 
totally inadequate money to deal with our fundamental transportation 
programs, to say nothing of the housing programs that are desperately 
needed for the low- and moderate-income people of America.
  If you care about the American workers, if you care about the ability 
of this economy to prosper, then we must embrace an aggressive, fully-
funded, robust transportation program.
  We must fund the Water Resources Reform and Development Act that the 
President signed today, and we are grateful for his signature. I am 
personally grateful that communities in my district will be able to 
have protection from floods in the future, as a result of that law.
  However, the question will come to us: Are we willing to put up the 
money to build those projects? Today, we have a prime example of the 
unwillingness of my colleagues on the Republican side to fund the 
transportation program that this Nation desperately needs.
  The infrastructure of this Nation is the foundation upon which the 
economy will grow. These are the issues of the Make It In America. Tax 
policy, the President addresses that in the GROW AMERICA. He says that 
American corporations cannot duck their responsibility to this Nation.
  He has proposed tax reforms for corporations to pay their fair 
share--no more running away, no more getting a tax break for sending 
jobs overseas, but, rather, pay your fair share, and build America.
  We will come to energy policy another day.
  His proposal also calls for the job force preparation, so that we are 
training those men and women who are going to be our future engineers 
to build the bridges of the future, so that we will have the men and 
women that know how to do the welding--apparently, the Chinese could 
use that kind of training also--so that we would have the job training 
programs that at every level--the back office accountants, the 
engineers, the architects, the men and women that are operating the 
heavy equipment, and those that are doing the welding on these 
projects, that is part of the proposal that the President has put 
forward, and that is part of the GROW AMERICA proposal.
  So the labor and the education come together. Down here, 
infrastructure. This is the Make It In America agenda. Tomorrow, my 
Democratic colleagues and I will be talking with our leader, Steny 
Hoyer, about how we can take an additional package of bills and advance 
the Make It In America, the GROW AMERICA proposals.
  We would hope our colleagues here on the floor of the House of 
Representatives would embrace a bipartisan effort to really build our 
infrastructure, to take what success we had in the water resources and 
reform and take that success to the transportation issues that confront 
this Nation. There is much more that we must do.
  As we do these things, we will also address a fundamental problem 
that faces this Nation, which is climate change. This is real. I 
studied this in the 1990s, when I was Deputy Secretary of the 
Department of Interior, as we prepared the American agenda for the 
Kyoto climate conference. Unfortunately, the treaty that came back from 
that conference was never adopted by the Senate in the 1990s.
  So to this day, we have yet to address this issue, and we must. This 
is an issue that will cause flooding across this Nation. It will cause 
sea levels to rise, which we are already seeing, and it will lead to 
more severe storms, which we are already seeing.
  How can we do that? Again, back to the transportation bill, back to 
the water resources bill. Put together the levees that we need to 
protect ourselves, and put together the transportation systems that 
allow for increased public transportation, whether it is on a 
locomotive built by that German company in America, in Sacramento, 
which is the most modern locomotive in the United States, made in 
America 100 percent.
  Maybe it is a streetcar or a fast rail system or a bus, again, 
financed by Americans, built by Americans with a Buy America proposal, 
our taxpayer money used to employ Americans as we build high-speed 
trains, as we build new locomotives, hybrid buses, or whatever.

[[Page 9817]]

  That public transportation will lead to a reduction in greenhouse 
gases, and if we eliminate the congestion that is caused by our 
inadequate highway system, we also will reduce greenhouse gases, all of 
which is good for climate change.

                              {time}  2000

  There is much more to be said. But now for more than 3 years, I have 
stood on this floor and brought to this floor and to the attention of 
this Nation the Make It In America agenda, which is part of the 
transportation system as well as part of our highways and ports system. 
So we are going to continue with this.
  The plea I have to my colleagues--435 of them, Democrats and 
Republicans--is that we learn from our success. The Water Resources and 
Reform Development Act was a success--a bipartisan success. It lays the 
foundation for the protection that we need from floods, as well as 
growing our economy on the rivers, locks, and the ports of America. It 
was a good one. We thank the President for his signature today. Step 
one.
  Step two comes to us over the next 3 months as we face the highway 
cliff where we know that if we fail to enact a new highway bill, we 
will see 700,000 Americans unemployed, losing their jobs over the next 
year. We have to get this job done. The President has laid out a good 
proposal. We can tweak it, we can make changes to it, but we must take 
it up, and we must move forward with the transportation program. And 
when we do, no more--no more bridges made in China, only bridges made 
in America, American taxpayer money spent in America for American steel 
and American workers.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________