[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 10828-10829]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   MAKE IT IN AMERICA: INFRASTRUCTURE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Franks of Arizona). 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 have to catch my breath after listening 
the last hour to an unbelievable stream of consciousness.
  I want to be very specific about some things that we really need to 
do here in Congress.
  Often, we come to the floor in the evening and we talk about the 
subject of making it in America, rebuilding the American economy brick 
by brick, road by road, job by job, and putting the manufacturing 
sector back on its feet.
  Today, my colleagues and I want to talk about one part of that Make 
It in America agenda, and that is not the trade, taxes, energy, labor, 
education, or research, but rather the infrastructure part of that 
equation.
  Infrastructure is the foundation upon which any economy grows. And 
the American infrastructure has a problem.
  Here is the problem.
  The American infrastructure is falling down, falling apart, overused, 
overworn, and in desperate need of rebuilding. We can do it. America 
once built the greatest infrastructure in the world. We are falling 
way, way behind in our own country and we are not even keeping up with 
other countries, such as China, which is building everything everywhere 
and laying in place an infrastructure that will carry them into the 
future.

                              {time}  2045

  Here is why we are not keeping up. Here is why we are falling down. 
Here is why we have potholes. Here is why cars are losing their ability 
to stay on the road. It is not because the drivers can't drive but 
because we are not spending the money that we once did. Way back in 
2002, we were spending some $325 billion a year. Right now, we are down 
to somewhere below $250 billion on infrastructure. That is why we see 
bridges collapsing. That is why we have the transportation snarls and 
all of the problems in our transportation system.
  As they say in the Middle East, just wait. It will get worse. Here in 
America, we are just 2 months away from this happening. We are going to 
fall off the transportation bridge. The funding for transportation 
programs, funded by the Federal Government, will run out of money 
sometime in August, perhaps in early September, depending on several 
factors that are simply unknown, but the funding for the maintenance 
and construction of our roads and bridges by the Federal Government 
will be over. There will be no more Federal funding available unless 
this Congress acts.
  We have a roadmap. We have a plan. We have a program. President Obama 
and the Transportation Department, with Secretary Foxx, recently laid 
out a program called the GROW AMERICA Act. It is a program that would 
provide $302 billion over the next 4 years, which is money that is 
desperately needed for rail, buses, ports, the freight system--
``buses'' meaning light rail, heavy rail. It is for the transit systems 
in our cities and the rail systems--Amtrak--bridges and highways. All 
of this is available. The GROW AMERICA Act is a real proposal. It is 
one that this Congress should take up. If there are some who have 
better ideas and better plans, bring them forward. For highways, it is 
about $199 billion. For bridges and buses, it is about $79 billion and 
about $10 billion for the freight systems. For the rail, it is another 
$10 billion to $12 billion.
  All of this is possible, but we need to do this. We need to finance 
it, and this program by the President is fully financed. The $302 
billion relies upon the existing excise tax that all of us pay for our 
gasoline, for our diesel fuel. The President would add another $100 
billion or so to fill up the pot so that we would have the $302 
billion, which is some 27 percent more than we presently are spending 
on the transportation system. Where does that extra money come from? It 
comes from corporate reforms, but that is not the only proposal on how 
to finance our transportation system.
  In a few minutes, I will turn this over to my colleague from Oregon 
(Mr. Blumenauer), who will talk about that in some more detail. Also 
joining us tonight is my colleague from Kansas City, Missouri (Mr. 
Cleaver), who will be talking about his transportation system in that 
area.
  But this is a real plan--a real proposal--all of the details that we 
would need on how we could develop the freight programs: where you 
would connect the ports to the rail systems, how you would provide 
those intermodal proposals, how we could repair the bridges--the 
funding for it--over a period of time, and the highways. It is all 
coordinated around fixing the things that are broken, not necessarily 
adding but fixing first, fixing what is broken.
  For the rail systems, critically important is the intercity rail, 
which is the Amtrak system here on the east coast. Then this happens to 
be the Capitol Corridor in my own district, which runs from Roseville, 
all the way through San Jose and through San Francisco. It is one of 
the most heavily used rail corridors in the entire system.
  One of the things that we also talk about here in the Make It In 
America is that we spend our tax money on American-made goods. If we 
are going

[[Page 10829]]

to spend $302 billion of American taxpayer money, my legislation would 
increase the Buy American provisions, and I want to give you just one 
brief example of what it means:
  This is the most modern locomotive in the United States, and it is, 
arguably, one of the most modern electric locomotives in the entire 
world. It is built in Sacramento. This is money that was made available 
in the American Recovery Act, the stimulus bill. Written into that bill 
was a provision that said that money--some $800 million--for Amtrak 
locomotives had to be spent 100 percent on American-made locomotives. 
Siemens, the big German manufacturing company, looked at that, and it 
said: $800 million and 100 percent American made? We could do that. So 
they took their factory in Sacramento and expanded it, and this is the 
first locomotive among those that will come off the lines--some 70 or 
80 of them--that will be 100 percent American made. This locomotive 
will soon be operating here on the East Coast Corridor. Eventually, we 
will get those in Sacramento, but those will be diesel elective.
  The final point I want to make before turning this over to my 
colleague Mr. Blumenauer is this. These were men and women in my 
district--Fairfield, California--in December of last year, who attended 
a job fair that I put on in Fairfield. I expected to find a few of my 
fellow citizens attending that. This job fair took place in December, 
and the temperature was just below 40 degrees. It was a foggy and 
rather cold day. More than 1,000 people lined up outside our job fair 
seeking a job.
  Americans want to go to work. Americans want to work. They want those 
good, middle class jobs that come from building the infrastructure. It 
is just not the hard hat jobs. These are the technicians, the 
engineers, the accountants, the secretaries, the people who are working 
on the software. There are all of those jobs, and these are the men and 
women who want them.
  So our plea today to our colleagues on the Republican side is: Let's 
go to work. Let's go to work here in the Congress. Let's put forward a 
transportation bill that avoids that transportation cliff, that allows 
the American public to go back to work--tens of thousands of jobs. 
Indeed, 3.5 million Americans will lose their jobs in the coming year 
if we fail to put together a transportation bill. That 3.5 million plus 
thousands upon thousands more will be able to go to work if we get this 
transportation program moving.
  The President has given us a program, the GROW AMERICA Act. If there 
are those with better ideas, they should come forward. We should act 
upon that legislation, improve upon it and figure out the financing. If 
the President's notion of ending unnecessary corporate tax loopholes 
and giveaways isn't the best way, then let's put together a better way.
  With that, Mr. Speaker, I would yield back my share of the time and, 
if possible, turn it over to my colleague, the gentleman from Oregon 
(Mr. Blumenauer), to manage the remaining portion of this session.

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