John Garamendi

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. I am going to pick up right on the issues that you raised. These are the essential elements of a manufacturing strategy. So if we are going to make it in America, we need to make things in America and these are the essential things. You talk about trade policy. We cannot continue just to give it all away and just expect to be importers of cheap products made elsewhere. So we need good trade policies that position America's manufacturing sector to be competitive. We speak specifically here of China, a lot of issues involved in China, currency; and it goes on and on. But this is one of the areas where we must stand firmly or else we will lose it because somebody else is going to make it and ship it here. Unfairly, taxes. The tax policy of the Nation needs to encourage manufacturing. I want to give two examples that were part of the Democratic agenda, and these are now in law. Last year, as part of our program, we provided a tax break for American manufacturers who invested in capital equipment. We said, don't worry about depreciation. You invest in capital equipment, that is grow your manufacturing capacity and you could write off against your taxes in 1 year, that investment. That's a tax policy. The second tax policy we said is it's not right for American corporations to get a tax break when they offshore jobs. We said enough of that. No more, you are going to do that. On both of these policies, our Republican colleagues refuse to join us. So presumably they want to continue giving corporations tax breaks when they send jobs offshore, and they don't care whether American companies invest here in the United States with capital equipment. Energy, crucial, crucial. We cannot any longer put our future to risk on international oil markets. We are seeing it today, the extraordinary rise in the cost of gasoline and diesel, energy policy, energy independence, advanced biofuels, conservation, electric cars, all of those things. Labor, you talked about labor. Again, it was the labor movement that created the middle class in America by standing firm and saying the workers of America need to share in the great wealth of America. We have seen the decline of labor, and we have seen the equal decline of the middle class. They go together. Labor, fair labor rules, what's going on in the Midwest, Wisconsin, your State of Ohio, other States, is wrong. The labor movement and collective bargaining is crucial to America's middle class because that gives the foundation, education policy. What in the world are our Republican colleagues thinking about when they cut education funding? If we are going to compete, we need a well- educated workforce, and you can't do it on the cheap. It requires an investment. I use intellectual property here; we could just as easily use the word ``research.'' It is from the research that the new products are created. It's in those new products that the great profits are, and it's where we must protect the research. Again, my Republican colleagues, why are you reducing the research budget for America? Why are you doing that, when, in fact, that's where the future industries come from? Don't, don't cut there. And, finally, infrastructure, the foundation upon which everything moves, including thought. We used to think of infrastructure being roads, streets, water systems, sanitation systems, yes. And now it's the intellectual infrastructure, the intellectual highway. All of that infrastructure is crucial if we fail to invest. By the way, in terms of the Net highway, access to the Net, the United States falls behind virtually every other industrialized country in the world and in many cases behind developing countries. This is a Make it in America strategy. These are the elements: trade policy, tax policy, energy policy, labor policy, education, research, intellectual property and infrastructure. This is the Democratic agenda. This is what we are putting forth. This is what we will fight for because this is how you build the American middle class, by making it in America. I want to thank my colleagues Ms. Sutton; Mr. Clarke, who was here earlier; our minority leader. We use the words minority whip now. You were our majority leader just a few months ago, and you will once again be because this agenda, the Make it in America, is the American solution to our economy and to our economic growth and to rebuilding the great American middle class. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Your kind words are much appreciated. But you are very much a part of this. This logo itself and the theme Make It In America was one that you developed. And we appreciate that and value the leadership that you have put into this. I want to turn back to our colleague from Ohio. We have about 7 minutes, I believe, and we are going to wrap this thing up. Mr. Hoyer, thank you very much. We really appreciate your work here. Ms. Sutton, if you will carry on, I am going to find one more of these placards.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Well, I love the title, but even more so, I love the purpose of your legislation. Using our tax dollars to build the infrastructure, the water, the sanitation systems that every city, every community needs, and using that money to buy American-made pumps and pipes and fittings and valves and all of the rest of the things that go into those kinds of systems. It's not the only place where American taxpayers' money can be used. Let me give you a couple of examples, and these are my pieces of my legislation that deal with a similar theme. We all pay gasoline tax and a diesel tax--18\1/2\ cents on the Federal side and 25 cents for diesel on the Federal side. Where does that money go? It goes to build our streets, highways, and buy our buses and trains. We need a firm policy that says if it is American taxpayer money, it's going to be used to buy American-made buses, trains, American-made steel, concrete. We need to use our tax money to build the American economy so that we are making those things in America. I'm going to give you the poster child for the wrong policy. State of California going to rebuild the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, a multibillion dollar project. Bids went out. An American contractor came in with two bids. One bid was for steel in America, and the other bid was for steel made in China. The Chinese steel was 10 percent cheaper. The State of California--wrong-headed, big mistake--went out and said, Well, we're going to save 10 percent. Turns out, the Chinese steel was defective, the welds were defective, the bridge was delayed. The 10 percent disappeared. The 10 percent was added. The American jobs were lost. Never ever, ever again should that happen in America. If it's American taxpayer money, then by golly, use American- made products. I love it. Don't let American jobs go down the drain. Make sure we are making it in America. One more thing, and then I want to turn to our minority whip to talk about Make It in America. We also use American taxpayer dollars to build the solar systems and the wind turbine systems in America. Are they made in America? They ought to be. There are American manufacturers that make wind turbines and make solar. Once again, our taxpayer money. Is it going to be used to buy solar panels from China, wind turbines from Europe, or is it going to be used to buy American-made wind turbines and American-made solar panels? We must pass legislation, and it ought to be Democrat and Republican alike, that says finally it's going to be American made. We are going to make it in America so that Americans can make it. Let me now turn to Steny Hoyer, our esteemed leader, the whip of the Democratic caucus. Mr. Hoyer.

Mr. GARAMENDI. I thought you did.

Mr. GARAMENDI. There's a piece of legislation that someone introduced that's called Don't Let American Jobs Go Down the Drain. Do you know who that was who introduced that piece of legislation?

Mr. GARAMENDI. Could you just yield for a moment?

Mr. GARAMENDI. And yet we're seeing across this Nation a Republican attack on unions claiming that unions are bad. But the great history of this Nation is that the union movement, collective bargaining over these many, many decades did in fact create the middle class. And so that in the 1960s was the period of time when the middle class of America was at its peak. It had the greatest distribution of wealth. The greatest share of the income went to the middle class. It was also the time when the union movement was the strongest in America. Since that time through a variety of governmental policies, we have seen a decline in the union movement and a commensurate consistent decline in the middle class. We're going to build the middle class. This is about making it in America. This is about rebuilding the middle class. I want to now turn to our colleague from the great industrial--the once and future great industrial center of America, Ohio, and share with us--you've got some specific proposals that you've put forward. I'd like to talk about them. I know that our Congresslady from Illinois has, and I do, too, so we're going to talk about specific things that we're going to do to rebuild the middle class by making it in America.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Our Republican colleagues have consistently said we ought to listen. And apparently all that we know about tax policy, there's little or no support for reducing the taxes on the super wealthy but rather they go the other way. And we're wondering what they're thinking over on the other side of the aisle as they continue to skew to create the unshared prosperity by even reducing further the taxes on the super wealthy.

Mr. GARAMENDI. We're talking about super trickle-down theory here.

Mr. GARAMENDI. The Republican budget proposal put out yesterday calls for a tax decrease for that 0.1 percent from 35 percent to 25 percent.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Would you yield for a moment?

Mr. GARAMENDI. Go ahead.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you so very much. And how correct you are in laying out this strategy of how we can move the American manufacturing industry: Education, a well-educated workforce; research on fundamental issues like energy systems, batteries, transportation; and then making those things in America, importing from Detroit to American consumers and selling around the world. However, when the Republicans put together a proposal such as H.R. 1--their continuing resolution that would cut 700,000 jobs out--it also cut out the research budget for energy research, for battery research, for transportation research, and in addition to that, research for health. The National Institutes of Health budget was decimated. That's not good public policy. We need to make these financial investments. And if the Democratic strategy of making it in America is carried forward, Detroit will prosper and America will prosper. Another part of our country in trouble for manufacturing, but a great manufacturing center of America, is Illinois. Our Representative from that great State is here to join us, Jan Schakowsky.

Mr. GARAMENDI. In the Republican continuing resolution, H.R. 1, they reduce the research budget for energy research here in America, cutting out vital research at the Department of Energy, at the laboratories across this Nation. And what are they thinking?

Mr. GARAMENDI. Would the gentleman yield for a moment?

Mr. GARAMENDI. Precisely so. Look at their budget proposal. Their budget proposal says that the oil companies in the last 10 years have earned a profit of $947 billion. That would be $53 billion less than $1 trillion in profits, nearly $1 trillion in profits. Yet our Republican colleagues say they need to continue to be subsidized by the American taxpayers. Hello? What's that all about? Do you want to balance the budget? Remove those subsidies from the oil companies, and let them pay taxes. Why should we be subsidizing the wealthiest industry in the world, the oil industry? That's what they want to do--and you talk about tax breaks. Good heavens. I want to turn now to our colleague from the great City of Detroit. We loved that advertisement in the Super Bowl. We now call Hansen Clarke the ``imported from Detroit Representative.'' Please share with us your thoughts here.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, there is a lot of discussion here on the floor, around Washington, and across this Nation about the American financial situation. Some people say America is broke. There couldn't be anything further from the truth than that statement. America is a strong, vibrant economy that far and away is the largest economy in the world. We are nowhere near broke. We do have a problem. We are running at a current deficit, and that deficit is expected to grow. But to understand the deficit and to begin the process of addressing it, we need to understand from whence it came. And so I am going to start this discussion out with, hopefully, an opportunity to get a sense of how it is that the American deficit has risen to the point where it is today. Really, we need to look back to the Ronald Reagan period. During the Ronald Reagan period, he ended his Presidency with a projected $1.4 trillion deficit for the 10 years beyond his Presidency. So we look at these things saying, okay, Ronald Reagan had 8 years. And then what was projected as a result of the policies during his Presidency? Well, what was projected was that the American deficit would grow by $1.4 trillion. The first George Bush came into office, and at the end of his Presidency, 4 years, the projection for the 10 years after he left office, continuing the policies that were in place at the end of his Presidency, the deficit would grow to $3.3 trillion. Similarly, the Clinton administration was in office for 8 years, and the policies that were put in place during those 8 years were projected to literally wipe out the American deficit--literally gone. A $5.6 trillion surplus as a result of the policies that were put in during the Clinton period. Those policies were tax policies. Those were the expenditure policies, a policy that we call today the PAYGO policy. That is, if you are going to start a new program, how are you going to pay for it? If you are going to cut taxes, what are you going to reduce in the expenditure pattern? So, Reagan, a $1.4 trillion deficit projected beyond his Presidency. Bush, add another $3.3 trillion. Clinton comes along, 8 years, deficits turn into a whopping surplus and literally paying off the American debt. George W. Bush comes in in 2001, and right off the bat, major tax cuts not associated with spending cuts but just major tax cuts. That was in 2001, followed up with a second round of major tax cuts in 2003, and in between a whole new Medicare entitlement adding a new expenditure at the same time that taxes were being reduced. And for those of you that remember that period in 2001, we did have 9/11, and immediately we started the Afghanistan war. I think most of us would agree that that was the right thing to do, but it was not paid for. It was actually borrowed money that paid for the early Afghanistan war, followed a couple of years later, 18 months later, with the Iraq war, which once again was not paid for but, rather, borrowed money. The result of all of that and the total pullback of the American Government from regulating the financial industry, the housing markets, was the Great Recession. At the end of the George W. Bush period, it was projected by the CBO, nonpartisan Budget Office, that the deficit would grow by $11.5 trillion if the same policies were left in place. So where is today's deficit coming from? It is coming from the Reagan period, the first Bush period, the Clinton policies terminated, and the George W. Bush policies put in place, leaving us with a projected $11.5 trillion deficit for the next 10 years. Now, the rest of the story is that, as a result of the Great Recession, the Obama administration came into office looking at this situation: An economy that was headed into not a recession but a depression and a huge deficit. That was put on Mr. Obama's plate the day he took office. To deal with the Great Recession that could have become a great depression, a stimulus program was put in place, and it was expensive. And a bailout of Wall Street was actually put in place during the last 2 months of the Bush administration. A combination of those was somewhere about $1.5 trillion to $1.6 trillion, a huge whopping sum of money, but done for a good purpose. And I don't know many economists, in fact I know of none, who would say it was not necessary. It was necessary that we deal with the Wall Street collapse and successfully stabilized Wall Street, the financial industry. It could have been done differently. Most of that money has now been repaid. The money that was spent, about $750 billion, on stimulating the economy was similarly successful in stabilizing the economy and causing it to rebound slowly, but nonetheless rebound. Here we are today debating the best way to deal with the deficit. We have a proposal from the President that over the next 5 years to 6 years would significantly reduce the annual deficit; not creating a situation such as ended the Clinton administration, but bringing the deficit back into a situation that is sustainable. That is the President's proposal, based upon holding steady, no growth in the Federal budget over the next 5 years, having the economy bounce back; ending one of the tax breaks that was put in place by George W. Bush back in 2003, that is, the high income, that is, the millionaire- billionaire tax break which is still in place but would end under the President's proposal. It is following along closely the recommendations of the Deficit Reduction Commission that was appointed. Now, that is the President's proposal. What we are debating on the floor beginning early this year with H.R. 1, H.R. 1, a continuing resolution to fund the government for the remainder of the year, was a $60 billion reduction in the discretionary expenditures of this government. No one believed that that would have a significant impact on the long-term deficit problem, but it would have a very significant impact on vital, vital programs that are necessary to continue the operations of this government. So what are we to do? H.R. 1 passed this House and was rejected by the Senate. For me, that was the right thing to do, because H.R. 1 was estimated by two different economists, not Democratic economists, but independent economists, that it would kill 700,000 jobs across this Nation; immediately increase unemployment in America, reducing tax revenues--unemployed people don't pay taxes--but simultaneously increasing the expenditures for unemployment insurance, welfare and the like. That is not a very wise thing to do, but that is what our colleagues on the Republican side suggested we should do. And it passed, with unanimous Republican support. I think there were three or four Democrats that voted for it. I think they were wrong. I think the Republicans were wrong. That doesn't solve the deficit. You cannot take 14 percent of the Federal budget, which happens to be the discretionary expenditures that were targeted by our Republican colleagues in H.R. 1, and expect to do anything meaningful about the deficit. The deficit has to be dealt with over a long period of time, and it has to be dealt with in such a way that we actually put in place the foundations for strong economic growth. What are those foundations? Well, in my view, there are six of them. If this economy is going to grow soon, mid-term and late, that is, in the years ahead, we have to have the best educated workforce in the world. So in the Republican proposal was an elimination of funding for higher education, funding for the Pell Grants that allow young men and women, and older men and women, to go into the university system. Not a wise thing to do. The second thing, if we are going to have a foundation of good, solid economic growth into the future, we need to have the best research in the world. Once again, the proposal, H.R. 1, and the two subsequent continuing resolutions that have funded the government cut, cut research, critical research at our national laboratories. Nearly $800 million of funding for the Department of Energy research programs would be eliminated, laying off some 6,000 researchers, Ph.D.'s, scientists at the national laboratories that are working on research for energy production. No one in this Nation would argue that we do not have an energy crisis. Check out the price of gasoline. We have a serious energy crisis. Yet the proposal would go right at the heart of the research that we need in order to solve the energy problem. Conservation, nuclear, cleanup of nuclear, research into photovoltaic, geothermal, all of the renewable energy research largely reduced and in some cases totally eliminated. Health care. The fastest growing segment of our economy is health care. Research at the National Institutes of Health is wiped out, largely reduced. What kind of policy is that? If we are going to have a strong economy, we need to have a well-educated workforce. We need the research. Thirdly, we need to take up the issue of manufacturing. We need to make the things that come out of research. Manufacturing really does matter. If we were to take the American manufacturing sector, as weak as it is today, it would still rank as the ninth biggest economy in the world. Manufacturing in the United States took an enormous hit during the Great Recession. About 25 percent of the jobs that were lost were in manufacturing. We hollowed out our manufacturing sector. If we are to grow this economy, if we are to have a serious reduction in the deficit, then we are going to have to make sure that manufacturing returns as a principal part of the American economy. I am going to move on with the other three elements and then come back to manufacturing. We need to have a very strong infrastructure. This is everything from water to sanitation to transportation, rail systems and air systems. One of the things that will be brought up on the floor has to do with the air transportation system in the United States. That infrastructure is critical. Yet in the proposal that we have had from our Republican colleagues, we are actually weakening the infrastructure system of this Nation. That is not a wise thing to do. But, nonetheless, our economy depends upon that infrastructure. International investments are necessary. We need to export. We cannot find our economy growing if we continue to rely on imports. They may be cheap, but in their cheapness, they destroy the American manufacturing sector. So we need to keep that in mind as a principal investment that we need to make. It doesn't come cheaply. It requires us to spend money on the Department of Commerce that is out there helping to open markets for America. It requires us to finance the Export-Import Bank and other Federal Government agencies that actually support the export of goods and services from America. And, of course, we have got to pay attention to the defense of this Nation. In the Defense Department, we need to always strive for efficiency. Now, I happen to oppose the war in Afghanistan. It is costing us about $120 billion a year. My view is we ought to end that quickly and spend some money focusing directly on the real threat, and that is the threat from al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. We will come to that in a different discussion. But those are the six critical investments: education, research, manufacturing, infrastructure, international trade, and defense. Are we doing well at those? Not if my Republican colleagues get their way with regard to the discretionary budget cuts. There are some things that we can do that are not expensive. In fact, they actually will create jobs with no additional Federal expenditure. Let me turn to that at this moment. My Democratic colleagues and I have developed a program that we call Make It in America. Make It in America. If America is going to make it, then we have to make it in America. What are we making? We need to make all of the things that this economy and this world needs for energy security--photovoltaic, geothermal, the new biofuels, the advanced biofuels--all of those things in the energy sector that allow us to prosper and to address the energy crisis, including--and I know the problem of Japan and the nuclear systems there. But 20 percent of our energy presently comes from nuclear. And that's going to be part of the future. So we need to make sure that we make it well, safely, and that those systems are made in America. Manufacturing matters, and we need to make sure that our manufacturing sector is up to speed and actually making things in America. We cannot count on the Chinese or the Indians or any other nation to provide us with our manufactured goods. And the reason is that's where the well-paying middle class jobs are. It's been hollowed out over the last decade by, I think, unwise policies; but nonetheless we can restore it. Let me tell you a couple of ways that we're proposing to do this in the Democratic Caucus. I love these charts. They seem to actually make a lot of sense and help display what we're talking about. If we're going to make it in America, we need to make sure that we are educating and researching; and so these are crucial investments that I've talked about before--research, the health sector, science, a well-educated workforce with teachers that are capable of doing what we call the STEM--the science, technology, engineering, and manufacturing kinds of education. And we need to make sure that our workers are prepared to take on these jobs. So that's the first step. That's the education and the research step of it. And these are investments, and we need to make those investments. Let me give you a couple of other examples of where public policy really becomes important. Photovoltaic, invented in America. Wind turbines, they have been around a long, long time, windmills and the like; but many of the modern technologies that are in the wind turbine system are American research. And, of course, transportation. It turns out that we don't really do much of this--or at least a year ago we didn't do much of this. We were importing the solar systems, the photovoltaic systems, importing many of the wind turbines that are out there in the wind farms providing us with energy and importing from other countries buses and trains and light rail systems. What we say in the Democratic Caucus is each of these are programs that are subsidized or paid for with your tax money. There are subsidies for solar, photovoltaic systems. Good. We've need to do these kind of things for energy security, and it's a good place to spend tax money to encourage the development of those kinds of systems. All well and good. But where are those solar panels made? Are they made in America, or are they made overseas? Our view and my own personal legislation is if you want to use American taxpayer moneys to help you buy a solar system either on your business or on your home, then you buy American-made solar systems. If your transit district wants to buy a bus using our tax dollars--this is the excise tax on gasoline--18\1/2\ cents for gasoline and 25-plus cents for diesel fuel--if you want to go buy a bus from your local transit district--good. We need public transportation. But if you're going to use the public's tax money to buy that bus, then you buy a bus that's made in America. Make it in America. If you're using our tax dollars as a transit district or as a business or as a homeowner with a solar panel or a bus, then you use that tax money to buy an American-made bus. Similarly, with wind turbines. This is a personal thing for me. In 1978, I authored the first State legislation for wind solar tax credits to get that industry started. And it did start. Altamont Hills, California, which I currently represent, has the oldest wind farm in America. Good. We're rebuilding those turbines, putting in new modern turbines, and we're expanding the wind industry in this Nation. Good. We need to do that. And we're using our tax money to subsidize it. That's good, too. But where is that wind turbine built? Is it built in Europe--Spain, Germany, Belgium? Or is it built in America? Too many of these have been built in other countries using our tax money. And I'm saying with my legislation and the support of others that if you're going to use American taxpayer money to invest in wind turbines, then you buy American-made equipment, period. We don't need to buy Chinese wind turbines when we can make those in America. These are ways in which we can rebuild our manufacturing base. It turns out that in the San Francisco Bay Area there is the Alameda- Contra Costa Transit District that has within that district one of the last remaining bus manufacturers in America. But until very recently that transit district refused to buy buses from a bus manufacturer in that district that was making buses that were every bit as good as buses made anywhere in the world. They have recently changed that policy. Similarly, in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Bay Area Rapid Transit District, BART, was buying trains and wanted to continue to buy over $300 million of trains from foreign manufacturers. Many of us said whoa, whoa, whoa. Stop. Time out. Don't do that. Let's buy trains that are made in America. So Siemens, a German company, has established a manufacturing plant and is upgrading a long-existing manufacturing plant in Sacramento to prepare itself to successfully bid for the manufacture of high-speed trains in California and around the Nation, as well as light rail systems, which they are now and have been for some time producing in the Sacramento manufacturing plant. Good. That's how we can use our tax dollars to rebuild the American manufacturing base. As we do that, we rebuild a vital part of America's economy, that part of America's economy that was traditionally the heart and soul of middle America, the great American manufacturing sector. This is possible. Does it take new money? It takes a redirection of money that we have been spending for some time. Let me add one more thing to it. As we look at the renewable industry, let us think about where we can find additional money to enhance the renewable energy industry. For one century, America has subsidized through various tax breaks the oil industry. We did that for the purpose of creating a very strong, viable oil industry that provided us with energy. It was eminently successful. The oil industry is the most profitable industry in America, and probably around the world. Very, very successful. Do they need a continuation of tax breaks? Well, if you ask them, of course. Everybody wants a tax break. But do they need it? Not when they're running over the last 10 years just short of a trillion dollars of profit. The American oil industry in the last decade has earned $950 billion of profit. Do they need a tax break anymore? I think not. I think we take that tax break, which, depending upon how much and whose estimate, is somewhere north of $10 billion, maybe as much as $20 billion a year, and use that money to build our renewable energy sector, subsidizing these kinds of things--photovoltaic, advanced biofuels, algae fuels, wind turbines--and to enhance our transportation sector. These are strategies that we ought to employ. However, as to what is happening today, instead of taking the long-term view and making critical investments that actually will give us the foundation and the start to rebuild the American economy, we are going the other direction. I should say, my Republican colleagues are going the other direction. Many of us think it is the wrong direction. We should not shortchange those investments that actually will create short-term and long-term economic growth. It's critical that we continue to invest in those six things: education, research, transportation, manufacturing-- obviously, we have to continue to invest in national defense, but we'd better be very, very wise. As we do these investments--and, in fact, in everything the government does--we must always strive for two goals: that every program be effective, which is that it actually achieves its stated purpose, and that it be done efficiently. I call these the two E's: efficient and effective. If it's not efficient, then change the program so that it would be efficient. If it's ineffective and inefficient, it should be terminated. It's very simple. But if it is effective and efficient, then maybe we ought to continue it. Now, in this recent week, we've had our Republican colleagues put forth four bills that literally terminate all of the Federal Government programs, save two, to rebuild the housing industry in America and, more importantly, to help those families that are in desperate trouble with their mortgages. Of those programs, some of them were ineffective, necessary but not yet effective and not up to the kind of efficiency that we would want. That doesn't mean they should be terminated; that means they should be modified because the problem continues to exist. There is a homeowner mortgage problem in America of enormous, enormous importance. Some 10 million American homes are underwater. It's a problem. We've got to find a way of dealing with that, not just ignore it and not just wipe out programs that we would need. We need to have efficiency, so we look for not a bill that would eliminate it but, rather, a bill that would modify, create more efficiency, and continue to address the problem. To this date, our Republican colleagues have only moved to terminate, not to replace, not to rebuild. Similarly, with health care, there has only been a bill to terminate, not a bill to improve when we know that we've got an ongoing problem. I'm going to just wrap this up and let it go where we are, but let me go back and review very, very quickly. There has been a raging debate here in Congress about the deficit. Where did it come from? How did we get to where we are? How do we solve this problem in the future? The deficit didn't start with the Obama administration. It started way back, actually, a little bit before the Reagan administration, the Reagan and the George Bush I administrations. It was dramatically altered by Clinton, which actually would have, if those policies had continued, created a surplus, almost wiping out the total debt of America. Then it was run up bigtime during the George W. Bush administration. These are projections 10 years following, if we'd continued the same policies, as to what would happen. That's where it started. Then there was the great recession and the effort now to deal with that. The Obama administration has put forth a proposal that follows closely, along with the recommendations of the deficit reduction commission, that says: Don't--don't--do anything that would harm the current recovery, like make an austerity program, like make massive cuts. Yet our Republican colleagues have done and proposed exactly that. Fortunately, the Senate has not gone along with that, but we are nickel and diming our way towards $30 billion of cuts that may, in fact, cause us to see a decline rather than a continued growth in the economy. We must watch that very carefully. So that's the deficit piece of it. Manufacturing matters. We need to be sure that we rebuild our manufacturing sector. There are many different pieces of legislation, of tax policy. I didn't mention this earlier, but one of the tax policies put forth by the Democrats last December--it actually went into law--was to encourage investment by private companies in capital equipment, allowing those companies in the first year to write off immediately 100 percent of the cost of capital equipment. A good idea. Unfortunately, very few of our Republican colleagues voted for that. In the manufacturing sector, let's make it in America. Let's use our tax dollars to make it in America. With all of the energy programs, transportation programs, let's use our tax dollars to buy American-made equipment. Finally, research and education. This is not where the cuts should occur. Yet our Republican colleagues are suggesting that that's exactly where it should happen: major cuts in research, energy, education, health care. You cannot make those cuts and expect this economy to be competitive. One little fact that I just heard about today is that it is expected in the coming year that the Chinese economy will produce more scientific advancements than will the American economy. This will be the first time in, perhaps, three-quarters of a century that the United States Government will give up its lead in scientific advancements. This is not the time for this Nation to make cuts in our science agenda, whether it's in the medical/health care area, the energy area, or in any of the other kinds of research in which we have always been the leader. Food for thought. Things for us to consider. I would like the American people to be aware of the real deficit story. You cannot solve it by making massive cuts in just 14 percent of the budget. Yet that's what our Republican colleagues are doing. We need a long-term plan, one that is 5 years, 10 years, to bring our budget back into balance. We can do it. It was done during the Clinton period. This little chart here gives you some idea of one half of how the Clinton period brought about a budget surplus. This is the spending side, and these are the expenditures of the American Government as a percentage of the economy. During the Reagan/Bush period, 22-23 percent of the American economy was for government expenditures. It dropped down to 21, but it basically bounced between 21 and 23 percent. During the Clinton period, as a result of policies that were put in place during his period-- PAYGO, reinventing government, and other governmental policies--we saw a steady decline in the percentage of the economy that was going to the Federal Government. At the same time, we had very strong economic growth. Those are two of the three things that operate together. There was also a Clinton tax increase that took place that basically added an additional tax burden at the very, very top of the income categories. So the combination of those reductions in the percentage of the economy that was used, good economic growth, and a tax increase that occurred in the very early period, particularly a tax increase on the very wealthy, led to a surplus. George W. Bush came in in 2001-2002, and things reversed. First of all, there's an increase in the percentage of the economy that went to government, principally the Medicare drug program and the wars, and then this very, very steep rise that occurred right at the end of the Bush administration as a result of two things: one, a plummeting of the American economy as the Great Recession took hold in 2008 and the effort to deal with the Great Recession with the stimulus; and right here at the end of the Bush 2, the financial bailout. And so that's why we saw this extremely high line. Now, you notice that in the last period, which is the 2010-11 period, we've begun to see a decline once again in the percentage of the government, of the economy that is government spending; and, if we follow carefully the budget that's been put together by the Obama administration, this line will continue to fall back into the 20 percent, 21 percent range, bringing back into balance the Federal expenditure. It cannot and will not happen overnight. It's going to take us 5 years, maybe even longer, to bring this thing back into balance. Keep in mind the words that were used by the recommendation of the budget deficit commission: Don't do anything immediately to harm the American economy by making rapid, unnecessary, unwise cuts in the Federal expenditure. That will put people out of work. 700,000 people would lose their jobs immediately with the proposal that was put forth by the Republicans but fortunately stopped by the Senate. If that had become law, 700,000 jobs immediately lost and a spike once again in this ratio of government spending. So we've got work to do. We can do this, but we need to take the long vision, and we need to be very careful that we make the critical investments.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, had I been able to vote on H.R. 1076, legislation that would decimate public radio in America, I would have voted ``no.'' National Public Radio (NPR) is one of America's most vital and trusted news sources, utilized by 27 million Americans each week. Taking away federal assistance for public radio would hurt 900 public radio stations, especially smaller stations in rural America that lack a sizable donor base. Access to popular and informative news programming, including All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Forum, On Point, and This American Life, would be jeopardized in smaller markets. Broadly available access to informative and objective news in America would be compromised. My office has received many calls and letters from residents throughout the 10th Congressional District, urging Congress to preserve NPR's budget. My constituents understand that public broadcasting is a critical and cost-effective American investment, and I stand with them. H.R. 1076 harms our economy and American competitiveness. The Congressional Budget Office has determined that this legislation will have zero impact on the budget and the deficit, but it will likely destroy 9,000 jobs. Our support of public broadcasting is a tremendous bargain for the American people. At a time of increasing competition in the global economy, America's future prosperity depends on a knowledgeable workforce, and our robust democracy depends on a well- informed citizenry. H.R. 1076 takes away vital information from the American people, and that is why I am deeply opposed to this pointless and destructive bill.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you very much, Mr. Tonko. You are a tremendous representative of New York State and America. Your passion for the build it in America, Make It in America agenda, is so very obvious. We thank you for that. I want to wrap this session up by going back to what we dealt with on the floor earlier today. Earlier today, we dealt with a continuing resolution that would go for 3 weeks, and it has a series of cuts in it. Some of those cuts are appropriate. Some of them are very, very detrimental. For example, about $120 million of reduction in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That is where we get information on tsunamis. That is where we get information on hurricanes. Why we would cut that out, I have no idea. It is going to be very, very detrimental to America. On research, we have talked about that, not only in this bill. Agricultural research, so we can move forward once more with a new green revolution so that there will be food for the people of this world and for ourselves, that was cut out of this budget. And if you love to have germs and other problems with your food, well, you will love what the Republicans did earlier this afternoon when they cut some $24 million out of the animal and plant inspection services. Why we want to have contaminated food, I don't know, but apparently our Republican colleagues do know. So, anyway, that has been done. But if you take the whole thing in context, I want to point out here that in December, with the continuing resolution in December that was a Democratic-sponsored resolution to continue funding the government for about 3 months, we cut $41 billion out of the budget; $41 billion out of the budget. Now, when the Republicans came in, they decided to do a new resolution a couple of weeks ago, and that resolution would actually eliminate some 700,000 jobs in America. Is it going to lead to a solution to the deficit? Not really, because we are talking about the discretionary spending, which is a very, very small part of the American budget. As such, there is no way you can really solve the deficit problem in that way. Yes, we need to make reductions. That is why we did $41 billion back in December. But those were targeted cuts that continued to allow America to invest in those things that create jobs. We are now into a new set of continuing resolutions, 2 weeks 2 weeks ago, another 3 weeks this week. That is no way to run a government, but that is apparently what we have been reduced to. Now, I understand the argument that we didn't get an appropriation bill last fall. Why wasn't there an appropriation bill last fall? The reason is that it was blocked in the Senate by a handful of folks that threatened a filibuster. That is why we don't have a resolution. That is why we have been thrown into this continuing resolution problem. What we need to do is take the long term. In President Obama's budget, the long-term deficit is dealt with over a period of 5 years, bringing down the deficit to a point where it is an acceptable part of the American economy. It allows the economy to grow with investments that are made now in infrastructure, education, investments made in research and development, so that we can grow the economy for tomorrow. That is a wise way to do it. But a feeding frenzy of cuts that actually would eliminate 700,000 jobs is not the way you grow the American economy. We have to be wise. We have to have the long term. And we have had the long term before. During the Clinton administration, we actually balanced the budget for the last 2\1/2\ years of that administration; and had those policies gone forward during the Bush administration, had those policies been kept in place, we would have eliminated the American debt. It would have been gone. But those policies were radically changed by the George W. Bush administration; two tax cuts, not paid for, most of those benefits going to the high end of the economy, to the very, very wealthy, resulting in a significant increase in the deficit; and then an increase in the Medicare program for drug benefits, again not paid for, increasing the deficit; and two wars, neither of which were paid for, the Afghanistan war and the Iraq war, not paid for but, rather, borrowed money from China and other places. The result of that was an enormous increase in the deficit followed by the Great Recession, which was basically caused by greed, Wall Street greed and the elimination of regulation. It was as though you had an NFL football game and you wiped out the sidelines, you took the referees off the field, sent them back to the locker room, and said, Okay, play ball, boys. You know what would happen. Chaos. That is what we got in the financial sector when regulation was removed, and we wound up with the Great Recession. We need to put in place sound regulation, good regulation, and we need to have the referees on the field. We also need to have a long- term vision on how to deal with the deficit, and you cannot do it by just, in a feeding frenzy, wiping out critical programs that create future economic growth. Unfortunately, that is what our Republican colleagues have suggested we do. We are not there yet. H.R. 1, the resolution that would have lost 700,000 jobs, was stopped in the Senate. We are now into a process of short-term continuing resolutions to keep the government going. Be wise as you put forward those resolutions, I would ask my colleagues on the Republican side. It is a great challenge. It is a challenge that we must and we will meet. We need a balanced, long-term vision, bringing the economy along, allowing it to grow and to build in the future, whether that be the green tech economy of the future, the medical systems, the health care systems. We have great opportunity, but those opportunities will not be met if we are not wise and if we have the wrong kinds of deficit reduction plans, which, again, we saw today on this floor not more than an hour ago. I thank my colleagues for their participation.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Tonko, if I could just pick up on one of the issues you raised, which is the ways in which we spend our money. Now, we all pay gasoline tax. Right now, it seems as though we are being taxed by the oil companies an extra 50 cents or $1 because the price of gasoline is way up there, but actually the Federal tax on gasoline is about 18.5 cents and on diesel some 25 cents. That money is used to build our infrastructure, our streets, our roads, the interstate highway system, as well as trains, buses, and the like. The question is, where do we spend that money? Now, previously we would spend that money on buses that were made overseas. We would spend that money on trains and light rail cars that were made overseas. But our agenda here is to bring it home to America. If it is our tax money, we want that money to be spent on things that are made in America. Let me give you a couple of examples on transportation. Buses: Are they made in America? Our tax money, is it being used to purchase buses that are made in America? It can be. I have a bill that I have introduced that says if it is our tax money, it is going to be spent on American-made equipment. It happens to be the exact same policy that China is following, and it is a good policy. You have talked about solar and you have talked about wind, the energy future of tomorrow. People and economists that look at the energy issues say that if we go to renewable energy, clean energy sources, we can have an enormous new economy in America. But if we fail to take up the challenge, that economy will be overseas. How can we jump-start the American economy in the new energy sector? We can do it by using our tax money to support American-made solar systems, whether they are panels like this or the new solar thermal programs, the wind systems. It's our tax money that is allowing these systems to be built. But are those American-made? My legislation would say, yes, they must be American made. I will give you one example of where this has worked, and this is the President's agenda on high-speed rail. It happens to be mine. I introduced a piece of legislation in California in 1989 that established the High-Speed Rail Commission. We need to do that. And in the legislation, and this was the Recovery Act, the stimulus, it said: money for high-speed rail must be spent on American-made equipment. So Siemens, Austin, other companies are establishing manufacturing facilities in America. We can do it with wise public policy. I know that you have talked about this and you have introduced some legislation of your own. So if you would share with us your views on how this is working.

Mr. GARAMENDI. I'll come to the future, but I'd like to add one to the past, and that is, in the legislation that we passed last December, without any Republican votes, there was a provision that gave to every business in America the opportunity to immediately write off, against their taxes, 100 percent of a capital investment. So if they wanted to expand their business they could write off immediately, not depreciate over several years, but immediately. Not a Republican vote for that. There was also in that piece of legislation, actually in a previous piece of legislation, a tax provision, one of the things we talk about here on our agenda, that would eliminate a tax break that American corporations had when they offshored a job. When they sent a job offshore, American corporations received about $12 billion in tax breaks every year. Well, what's that about? We eliminated it. Again, we had no help from our colleagues on the Republican side. So our agenda started way before this year. We're going to carry it forward with your leadership. And we've got an agenda here of seven different elements in that, tax policy being one of them. Thank you so much for your leadership on all of this.

Mr. GARAMENDI. I thank you very much, Mr. Hoyer. And we thank you for your leadership on this entire agenda because this is about middle class America. This is the middle class America that was rapidly disappearing over the last 15 to 20 years as we exported American manufacturing jobs. Your agenda, the Make It in America agenda, brings those jobs back to America. I will note that there are a couple of pieces of legislation that you could add to that list.

Mr. GARAMENDI. That kind of legislation is the type of policy we ought to be pushing forward here, one that rewards American corporations that are actually making things in America and employing Americans. I'm going to turn to our minority whip in just a moment, but this Make It in America slogan was created by Steny Hoyer, and there are about six, seven different policies, some of which we have already covered. We haven't talked about trade yet, but tax policy, which is what you just brought forward, a tax incentive for corporations to be good citizens here. Mr. Tonko talked about energy policy. Labor, certainly that's part of what you talked about; education, which we haven't yet covered; intellectual property, which is, in fact, that research agenda; and the infrastructure. These are all elements of the Make It in America agenda. Mr. Hoyer, this is your concept of using this term ``Make It in America.'' Would you share with us where we are today with this whole agenda and how things are moving along.

Mr. GARAMENDI. If the gentleman will yield, not more than 23 minutes ago, the House, under the Republican leadership, voted to remove almost $120 million of funding for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That's where the information comes from about the tsunami. The tsunami warning came from that agency. And here we find the Republicans pulling money out of that not more than 25 minutes ago here on the floor. I would like now to turn to our colleague from the great State of Illinois. Jan, if you would share with us. I know that you have got a project underway, a bill that you are about to introduce. Perhaps you can share it with us.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you, Mr. Tonko. I would also point out that in the continuing resolution, H.R. 1, that passed this House by the Republican Party, the innovation was essentially destroyed. There had been a layoff of over 6,000 researchers at our national laboratories; money for the ARPA-E, which is the advanced energy research program which was decimated, literally stopped, so that the energy issues you talked about would not be funded going forward. And in the National Institutes of Health, cancer research, heart ailment research, those were also cut. So one thing after another, all that new technology, including technology for the health of Americans, was defunded.