John Garamendi

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Your grandfather.

Mr. GARAMENDI. I was just thinking that I have got more stories to tell, but I really want to turn to our colleague from New York. Mr. Tonko and I are often on the floor--with you also--to discuss jobs in America, how to enhance our American economy with research, economic development of all kinds, transportation infrastructure, Make It In America. Mr. Tonko, tonight we are on a somewhat different subject, but I know it is one that you are very familiar with, one that you have spent your entire career addressing in trying to help seniors and others who have been on the short end of the stick. Thank you so much for joining us, Mr. Tonko.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, indeed, we do have an extraordinary country. Down through the last 230 years, this Congress has met, has discussed, decided, voted upon, and set in place policies that advanced our country. And we are so very fortunate, all of us Americans, to be living here with all the promise that this incredible history has given us. But at this period of time, we also have some profound questions about where this country is going. We wake up and we say: What is happening here? What is happening in the international scene? What is all this about Russia hacking? What is all this about trying to influence the American election? Did they really, and did it really happen, and was it effective? Well, we know it really happened. The American public is scratching their head and they are saying: What is it? And then all this talk about change, all this talk about we are going to change things; we are going to repeal ObamaCare, and we are going to replace it with something great. Hmmm. I wonder what that might be. And I suspect all across this Nation there are men, women, families that are also wondering: What do they mean it will be great? What is it that is great? Well, if you were to go around the Capitol, if you were to talk to Members in the House of Representatives or over in the Senate and say: So it is gonna be great; what is it? Well, we will tell you tomorrow or we will tell you later, but it will be great. Maybe, maybe not. Right now, the Senate is working on a piece of legislation that will set the stage for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act--and some would derisively call it ObamaCare. Repeal it. Oh, yeah, get rid of that thing. But not to where it is going to be great as soon as it is gone. Really? I don't think so. I know that in my part of California, a lot of people--in fact, more than 20,000--don't think it is great at all. They are going to lose their health care. And there are a whole lot of seniors in my community that are going: Wow, it is going to be great. Really? But I will lose my annual check-up. And that awesome drug doughnut hole that was so frightening just years ago is going to come back? That is not so great. I drove into town or into the Capitol today. I don't live so far away, but it is 20 degrees, and I decided I would rather drive than freeze. So I drove in and an advertisement came on the radio, and it said: You are going to get a trillion-dollar tax cut. Wonderful. The middle class will have a trillion-dollar tax cut. I said: Well, that is not what I saw last night when I read the statistics about the great repeal of the Affordable Care Act. In fact, I read something quite different from the tax committees, from Americans, various people. Let me put something up here. Here it is. Who gets that trillion- dollar tax cut? Who is it? Is it the middle class? Well, I don't think so, because when you look at the numbers, it goes to the very wealthy. They are the ones who are going to get the tax cut with the repeal of ObamaCare. When the Affordable Care Act is repealed the way it is presently going, the bill that is over in the Senate will require that the taxes that were put in place to support the Affordable Care Act and to provide insurance for 20 million people--that is both the government insurance, the Medicaid, Medi- Cal in California, and the subsidized insurance from the various programs that exist State by State--that money was raised from the wealthy. When the tax cuts come into place, here is the real story. The top 1 percent--do you remember the 1 percenters? Do you remember all that discussion about the 1 percenters and the 99? The 1 percenters get 57 percent of that trillion dollars, and everyone else gets to split the remaining 43 percent. The top one-tenth of the taxpayers in California--we are talking about the superwealthy. We are talking about the folks that are actually going to be in the President-elect's Cabinet, you know, the billionaires that he is going to put in the Cabinet. We are talking about those guys--oh, roughly a $200,000-a-year tax break. But after all, they are hurting. They need a few more hundred thousand dollars along the way. So the trillion-dollar tax break that is the foundation of the repeal, if you eliminate the money, the program is not working. There will not be annual visits for seniors so that they can stay healthy, so that they can control their blood pressure, diabetes, mammograms, and all the rest that go with it. There won't be money for the 3.7 million Californians that presently are able to get coverage under the Medi-Cal program. There won't be money for the almost 2 million Californians that are in the subsidized pool called Covered California. That money won't be there. Those folks are going to be out. And by the way, the repeal will remove the insurance for 30 million Americans all across the country. But who gets the real benefit here? The superwealthy, the top 1 percent will get 57 percent of that trillion-dollar tax break, and the rest of us will share in the 43 percent remaining. Another way to look at it, folks. It will be great, but for whom? Well, if you break the American public into the five sectors, the first 20 percent, next 20, next 20, next 20, and then the top 20--so these are the real poor down here in the lower 20 percent, and these are the superwealthy in the top 20 percent. So what happens? When you repeal the Affordable Care Act, as is now happening in the Senate--and it will be over here either this week or early next week; and then this House will take it up and it, too, will vote on that very same budget bill that will create a trillion-dollar tax cut over the next decade--who will get the money? There you go. The top 20 percent will wind up with a full 74 percent of that. Despite that little advertisement that I heard on the radio, which said, ``Oh, the poor and the middle class are going to get it,'' really? Let's see. Of the bottom 20 percent--6.7--oh, and the next will get 5.9 percent of it--do you have any idea what they are going to lose? They are going to lose the subsidies on their insurance programs. They won't be able to afford it. They will lose their insurance. For some of them, they are on the Medicaid or the Medi-Cal program in California, and they will be out of luck unless, of course, the State of California can find $16.8 billion to replace the money that just disappeared with the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, and that money is then transferred to the top 20 percent. These folks down here, the bottom 20 percent--actually, the bottom 60 percent of the American public are the losers. Who are the winners? The ones who are already able to buy insurance. I love this trick. I was the Insurance Commissioner in California. I loved this little trick: ``Not to worry. We are going to give an opportunity for people to buy their own insurance and give them a tax break.'' Do you mean these people down here have enough money jingling around in their pockets that they are going to be able to go out and buy the insurance and get the tax break? Uh-uh. It is the folks up here on top who will, once again, benefit. This really is a massive shift of $1 trillion from those people who are now insured, for those people who are now able to get care in the clinics that have been established across America--in outlying areas and in rural areas in my district. It is a massive shift from the ability of those people to get health care, for those people who are on the exchanges and are able to get subsidized insurance so that they can afford it, for those people who are seniors and are able to get their free annual checkups and have their drug costs reduced as the doughnut hole shrinks. It is a massive shift of money being taken directly out of their benefits and their pockets and going to the wealthy of America. That is what is happening. That is what this repeal of the Affordable Care Act is. Then you look at the implications of that. What about the hospitals that have been able to ramp up their services? What about the reforms that were in the Affordable Care Act--the insurance reforms--that said to the insurance companies: ``Oh, no, no, no, you can no longer discriminate because that person happens to be a woman or has a preexisting condition''? This is important, Mr. Speaker. If you are scratching your head and wondering what is going on here, listen carefully because this super rapid train is about to come into the House of Representatives and sweep through here, wiping out the healthcare benefits of 30 million Americans. For those who are not directly affected, they, too, are going to wind up in a very precarious situation because the reforms will also be repealed. Joining me tonight to discuss this and Social Security--oh, by the way, Social Security is also on the chopping block--are two of my colleagues: Marcy Kaptur from Ohio, who has been an extraordinary leader on the issues of manufacturing, of making it in America, of looking out for seniors, and for people who are in need of help and support. Congresswoman Kaptur, would you care to join us and share with us your thoughts on what is happening in Washington?

Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you very much, Ms. Kaptur. I loved your talk of the history and how it came to pass that we have Social Security and Medicare and what happened when we did not. It was really profound. It reminded me of my own history. I remember, as a young kid, that my father took me to the county hospital where the neighboring rancher was--we were out on a ranch in California--and it was horrible. That is where he was sent to die because there was no Medicare.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Oh, the stench was unbelievable.

Mr. GARAMENDI. I am sorry your father endured that.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Tonko very much. It is always a pleasure and learning experience to be on the floor with Mr. Tonko. I now yield to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur). We are about to wrap it up as we are nearly out of time.

Mr. GARAMENDI. As we look at this issue, this conversation puts before us and the American people really two paths to travel. The President-elect recently said: We're going to repeal ObamaCare, and it'll be great. And our Republican colleagues have bought into that and are now processing legislation to do that. The discussion today from my two colleagues here indicates another path, and that is, make it better. Make the Affordable Care Act better. The drug issue, there is no reason in the world that the pharmaceutical companies should be prevented from price competition. They are. It is the law of the land that prevents the government and other purchasers-- the government from negotiating prices. That is a law that can be changed. There are many things that we could do to improve the health care of America. But two paths: one, working together to improve the Affordable Care Act and Medicare and Medicaid, and the Veterans Administration, the programs that provide the health care and the insurance for Americans; or another one, a path that is going to be extraordinarily destructive. The repeal of the Affordable Care Act, which is already underway in the Senate and will soon be over here in the House, promises Americans not just the 30 million that have insurance but all Americans with a very serious health problem in the future. Final comments, and then we will be out of time.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. ``The Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to prejudice any claims of the United States, or of any particular State.''

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize and commend Neelam Canto-Lugo for her extraordinary service to the people of Nepal. Through her volunteer work with the Women Development Advocacy Center, Neelam provided entrepreneurial training to Nepalese youth, women, and community organizers. Upon her return to the States, Neelam has continued her important work with the organization, supporting its digital literacy and micro-enterprise acceleration projects. To date, Neelam has raised $9,800 and has received a donation of eleven computers, which will provide greater opportunity to economically disadvantaged women and empower rural entrepreneurs. On behalf of the people of California's 3rd Congressional District, please accept my sincere congratulations as well as my best wishes for the future.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, tonight I will continue on a quest that we have been challenged with for the last 7 years, and that is how to grow the American economy. Coming out of the Great Recession, where we lost millions of jobs and some 2 million manufacturing jobs that were in addition to the previous 6 million that had been lost in the years ahead of the Great Recession, we searched for how to rebuild the American economy and the great manufacturing base that once was the foundation for economic growth and the foundation for the middle class. This quest takes us yet again to, really, something that most Americans do not consider as manufacturing. Let me start with a very quick review of the project that we have been working on, which we call the Make It In America project, so that Americans can make it. Wouldn't we want all of our families to be able to make it in America, to be able to buy that house, to educate our kids, to take the vacation? So the Make It In America project includes trade, about which there has been much discussion in these recent years, in the debates in the election process; tax policy, which we will be dealing with shortly, and I may touch on that just lightly today; energy policy; labor; education; research; and infrastructure. These are some of the critical elements that we focus on when we talk about making it in America so that Americans can make it in America. Today I want to talk about a couple of pieces of this that we normally don't think about when we talk about manufacturing. So we will just put this up here and be reminded about American manufacturing. Think of the American farmer. Is that manufacturing? Well, I don't know. You take sun, water, earth, seeds, effort, entrepreneurialism, and you make something called food. We are going to take it just a step beyond that, because part of the manufacturing in America really is the preparation of food for Americans; in other words, the producing of the food taken out of the field and prepared for sale to American families--some of it in the grocery stores, some of it now in farmer's markets. But the manufacturing of food is a huge industry. It is also an industry that has enormous growth potential. We know that, for example, just in the Central Valley of California, which I represent--the Sacramento Valley and the San Joaquin Valley--there are 1,659 food and beverage manufacturing establishments that are part of that food chain: taking rice from the fields in my district to the brewery and producing something that many Americans want on a Sunday afternoon at the tailgate party before the football game, beer, or maybe it is from the vineyards to the winery, and then think about all of the other pieces that go into that. There is the package in which the six-pack is packed or the crate into which the bottles of wine are sent off to the local retail store. All of those pieces are also expanded by the machinery that is in the winery or in the brewery or in the tomato factory. All of these are jobs. And in many cases, these are American manufacturing jobs way, way back in the chain that have produced the pump or the electric motor or the pipe or the vat into which all of these products would be manufactured. So when we talk about manufacturing in the food industry, which is usually ignored when we talk about manufacturing in America, we need to realize that it is a huge part of the American economy and the American manufacturing scene. I was recently at one of the largest tomato packing plants in California, the CPC plant in Woodland, California, that produces every kind of tomato paste you might want, all of the tomato sauce, all of the salsa. You name it, it is manufactured there in a very complex environment in which, seasonally, there are 1,200 workers and, annually, 125 that are left to maintain, to improve the equipment, and to take care of any problems that occurred in that manufacturing process. There are also hundreds of employed truckers who then take those cases of tomato paste, put them on the truck, and ship them all the way across America, or put them on a train or put them in a container to be taken to the Port of Oakland and then shipped overseas. So when you consider the agricultural industry, think beyond the farmer. Think to what one of the bosses at a big winery in California told me as I was touring there a couple of years ago. When I was talking about manufacturing, he said: Hey, come. Let's take a look out the back of my office. I said: Fine. Let's go. He said: Do you see that? I said: Yes. Those are huge tanks and pumps and all the rest. He said: No. That is a manufacturing facility, and what we make is the best wine in the entire world. Indeed, it was very, very good wine. So when we talk about bringing manufacturing jobs back to America-- and there has been much discussion, as Mr. Trump has gone off to a Carrier plant in Indiana--we ought to also think about food manufacturing, and that is something that is not going to disappear from the American scene because, hey, it is grown here in America, and it needs to be processed here in America. I want to take this so that we understand the full extent of the potential here. And if we have these elements in place, we will be able to create a very significant number of jobs. Trade policy, I am not going to get into that anymore, but this is a big piece of every trade deal: Will American agriculture, the farmers and the processors of those products, be able to trade into the international market? By and large, American agriculture has been precluded, through various trade deals of the past, from being able to reach its full potential in international trade. I want to talk specifically about labor for a moment, and these are the statistics from the California Department of Labor Marketing and Information Division. Between 2012 and 2022--so 4 of those years have already gone by-- there will be, in California, 51,900 total openings in the food manufacturing sector. Some of those are replacements; 27,000 of those would be to replace people who are retiring and 24,000 will be new openings as the manufacturing of food expands. They are in every category you can imagine: packing and filling machine operators, cleaners of the vehicles and the equipment, inspectors, industrial machine mechanics, packers and packagers, drivers and sale workers, general operations, and managers. That is a huge number. There are almost 52,000 new jobs available just in the food processing sector of the California economy. Now, we make policy around here in every one of these areas, and the policies can enhance the food industry in the United States and create even more jobs in the United States. I want to give one example, and this is a piece of legislation that we have introduced here in Congress. We call it the American Food for American Schools Act-- American food for American schools. It is H.R. 6299. Now, for years, we have had the School Lunch Act, providing nutritional food for kids at school, and the law has been pretty clear. It is Federal tax dollars, your tax dollars, mine. The American taxpayers' money is supposed to be used to buy American-produced food. So maybe it is a peach or an apple, or maybe it is orange juice or perhaps one of those little packages of mixed fruits. Whatever it happens to be, your tax dollars are supposed to be spent on American-produced food. However, that is not necessarily the case, because there is a loophole as wide as a container ship, and schools across the Nation have been able to use that loophole to avoid buying American food, even though they are using American taxpayer dollars. So what we intend to do here is to tighten up that loophole and make it clear that if a school district intends to buy food produced in China or in Egypt or anywhere else around the world that they will have to tell the public that they are not buying American food, they are buying food produced somewhere else around the world, and using the tax dollars from the parents to buy foreign food rather than supporting the American farmer. I want to give you a couple of examples of the egregious nature of this waiver. Sacramento, California, is at the heart of the canned peach industry. Nearly all the canned peaches are grown within 50 miles of Sacramento. The Sacramento City Unified School District decided that, to save a few cents per can, they would reach out and buy Chinese peaches. I don't mean a peach that is Chinese but, rather, peaches that are grown in China, canned in China under food security and safety regulations that are anybody's guess as to what they are, and serve that in California, in Sacramento. It turns out that that created a bit of a stir and a bit of a problem for the school district, and they backed off, but that big loophole remains, and so the American Food for American Schools Act would close that loophole, providing opportunities for employment here in the United States and, in the case of Sacramento, in the Sacramento region. So we tightened it up. We say if a school district wants to bypass the Federal law and use American taxpayer money to buy strawberries from Egypt--which, by the way, happened to have been contaminated and were actually purchased by a school district across this nation, contaminated with hepatitis A. Recalls occurred. School districts used those strawberries. In one case in California, they made smoothies of it. Fortunately, to this date, we know of no illnesses that have been caused. But, clearly, if they had bought American, this would not have been a problem. So there would be notification, and there would be a very tight loophole through which the school districts would have to pass to avoid this issue of using American taxpayer dollars to buy American food. So the American Food for American Schools Act will have to be taken up next year. I believe it already is a bipartisan bill, and I would expect that next year it will have even more support as we make it clear that if we want to make it in America then we have to use our laws to support the American manufacturing sector. And tonight, if it is not yet clear, I will say it again. The farmer manufactures food-- sunlight, water, soil, nutrients, entrepreneurial activity, hard work and labor to make the food--and then that food moves through the processing chain, creating additional manufacturing jobs. By the way, these are not low-paying jobs. The average is $20 an hour. So we are talking about wages that are at the bottom end of the middle class structure. What we are looking at here are many different ways to achieve a rebirth, a regeneration of the American manufacturing sector, and today we bring something that I think most people didn't expect when we talk about making it in America. They didn't expect us to be saying that if we are going to make it in America, if Americans are going to be able to make it, then we ought to look to the manufacturing sector, broadly defined, whether it is agriculture or, as we talked about last week in the manufacturing of high-speed rail, the manufacturing of trains and vehicles of all kinds. So when your tax dollars are being spent, I would ask all of my colleagues and all of the public: Hey, are my tax dollars being spent on American-made goods and services, or are you buying foreign? That is a question for us to answer here and to write laws that encourage that your tax dollars will be spent on American-made goods and services. So we can make it in America. We can manufacture in America, and America can prosper as a result of the laws and the policies we put in place here. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the chairman of the committee, Mr. Thornberry; the ranking member, Mr. Smith; and the members, my colleagues, for an exceptional piece of work here. This is an extremely important bill. I do support it; however, I do have some reservations. I would like to speak to at least one of them at the moment. I want to bring to the attention of the Members section 671 of the NDAA concerning the ongoing bonus clawback issue affecting thousands of California National Guardsmen. While I am pleased that a permanent legislative fix is one step closer to the President's desk, I think some of the language needs to be clarified further to ensure that guardsmen are treated fairly. First and foremost, I have concerns with the standard use to determine if a guardsman's debt should be waived or not. The current language says the DOD needs to produce a preponderance of evidence to demonstrate fraud on the part of the guardsman and withhold their bonus. What does that mean in practice? We are not sure. This is vague and subject to interpretation. I believe this standard must be better defined, and we will continue to work on that in the future. I am also concerned about subsection (c)(1)(B), which gives the Department of Defense far too much leeway in determining which cases warrant review. Though Secretary Carter has pledged to review every case, this gives DOD the option of ignoring about 2,000 cases. That would be a problem. Our job isn't yet done. There will be a hearing next week on this issue. We will attempt to get further clarification to protect those men and women who accepted a bonus, went to war, performed their duties, and are now subject to a clawback. That should not happen. One more thing to bring to the attention of the committee is the strategic arms portion of this bill, which continues a trillion-dollar project of recapitalizing our entire nuclear arsenal. We should pay attention to that in the future. It is extraordinarily expensive and dangerous.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, our previous speaker spoke about the need to revitalize the American economy, and he talked about the regulatory environment as being one of the impediments. Certainly, there are many, many regulations that could impede economic development, but there are also regulations that might enhance economic development. Today I want to continue with what is now a 6-year effort--oh, yes, let's get this right side up. There we go--to Make It In America. Specifically, today, it is about manufacturing because manufacturing matters. When I first came to Congress in 2009, we were in the midst of the Great Recession, and millions of Americans had lost their jobs. We saw the Rust Belt literally collapse; we saw factories close; we saw our shipyards opened with nothing happening except in the U.S. naval yards. So here we are some 6 years later: the economy is recovering, and we can talk about regulations; but what I would like to talk about tonight are positive regulations--regulations and laws that grow the American economy, not regulations that would hinder. Specifically, as part of this Make It in America agenda, we have these fundamental policies. If we are going to rebuild the American economy, a big part of it has to be manufacturing. It does matter. So what are those issues that are involved in rebuilding the American economy? There are trade issues, and we have heard a lot about that in the recent Presidential campaign. Undoubtedly, the Congress will deal with that; Taxes. The debate about taxes really was not very clear in the Presidential election, but we are certainly going to be dealing with tax policy here, and we should. There is no doubt that the American tax policy hinders economic growth in many, many ways for small companies and encourages large companies to leave town--to leave America--and leave American workers and communities behind. We have seen too much of that; so tax policy becomes a very, very important part of this; With regard to energy and labor, I am going to go specifically to those; but just quickly are the educational policies. There is a lot of jabbering around here, on the floor of Congress, and out around the world about educational policies: Are our schools good enough? They don't measure up. We need to have charter schools. We are going to go into that in a big way with our new President; but one of the most important parts of education, when we talk about rebuilding the American economy, is that we have properly trained workers whether they are in the computer field--in computer science--or whether they are in the shipyards welding the parts of a ship. A well-trained, well- prepared workforce is absolutely essential for the growth of the American economy; but education is not the subject today, nor is research; Infrastructure. It is part of what we are going to talk about today, and I am going to try to do this in, maybe, 10 minutes, but not much longer than that. What I want to focus on is energy policy and labor. Did you know-- does America know--that the United States has become a net exporter of natural gas? Yes. We do have a boom in the energy industry. It has slowed down a little bit with the drop in the value of crude oil and natural gas; but, nonetheless, as of today, the United States is a net exporter of natural gas. That gas is exported to Canada and Mexico and other parts of the world. When it is exported to other parts of the world, it is exported in ships in liquefied form, called liquefied natural gas, LNG. On ships, liquefied natural gas is part of that export that has turned America from an importing country to an exporting country, which is good for all of us; but let us realize that that natural gas and, for that matter, crude oil, which is also now being exported, is a strategic national asset, a strategic national resource. It is absolutely crucial to the American economy. I will give you one example--Dow. The big chemical company is bringing back to the United States much of the manufacturing that it once did overseas of plastic and other products because of the strategic national asset called natural gas. The price of natural gas was low enough that that big, international, domestic, American company--Dow--is returning to the United States to manufacture. It is the same thing with oil. These are strategic national assets that we are now exporting. The question for us in public policy is: Can we, in some way, use this strategic national resource to expand the American economy? The answer is: absolutely, yes. It is not just to the benefit of the energy companies. Maybe we could wish them well as they export our strategic national asset to places around the world and gain a healthy profit--okay--but shouldn't that be shared with the rest of America? I believe it should, and I know it could. Here is how, and it deals with this issue of labor and manufacturing: Make It In America. Manufacturing matters. Here is the deal. Those export facilities for LNG are big operations--lots of pipe, lots of plumbing, lots of containers, all of which are or could be made in America, creating American jobs. Now, once that natural gas is liquefied--that is, compressed into a liquid-- and goes on a ship, the questions are: Where did that ship come from, and who are the sailors on the ship? It used to be, back when the North Slope of Alaska opened up, that the steel in the Trans-Alaska Pipeline and the ships that would then take that oil to the West Coast ports would be American ships with American sailors. It was the law. It was the regulation. Here you had a situation in which the law and regulations created American jobs for mariners and for the American shipyards. If we were to apply that same principle to the export of LNG, that strategic national resource, think of what would happen. This year, 2016, the first export facility in Louisiana, Cheniere, began exporting LNG on ships. They were not American ships. There were no American sailors on those ships. The policy of the North Slope oil was not extended to the export of LNG, to the detriment of American jobs. So here is what we ought to do. There is an energy bill floating around somewhere in the Senate and the House. Nobody knows exactly where it is. But in that energy bill, there is a section that enhances and speeds up the licensing of six other LNG export facilities around the United States on various coasts--on the East Coast, the Gulf Coast, as well as the West Coast. Why not take what we did with the North Slope oil, requiring that it be on American-built ships with American sailors, and apply that same principle, same law, to the export of LNG as these new facilities come online? It is said that the facility on the Gulf Coast, the Cheniere facility in its first part--there are three different pieces of that that will come in over time--the first part of that facility will take 100 ships to export the liquefied natural gas from that one facility. We are probably talking about a few hundred LNG ships to export the liquefied natural gas not only from the existing facility in the Gulf Coast, but to the other facilities that will be built in the future. Perhaps as much as 12 percent of the total natural gas, that strategic national asset, will be exported, requiring hundreds of ships. What if we passed a law called Energizing America? I like that title. In fact, we are going to introduce it tomorrow, Energizing America. It is a piece of legislation that would require that we provide 15 percent of the total export on American-built ships. Think about it. Perhaps over the next decade, our shipyards would be building maybe as many as a hundred ships. But let's just say it is 10, 20, 30 ships. Perhaps more than 100,000 people could be employed in the construction of those ships. This would be a good regulation, wouldn't it? It would be a regulation that would put Americans back to work. It would be a law that would say a strategic national asset of this Nation will also benefit another strategic national asset: the American shipyards. Our U.S. Navy depends on those shipyards. Every U.S. naval ship is built in America in American shipyards. And if we were to expand those shipyards, we would find more competition for the naval ships, perhaps a lower price. Perhaps we would also be able to employ marine engineers, welders, plumbers, steamfitters, steelworkers, not only at the shipyards, but in the manufacturing of the engines here in the United States. Make it in America. Build it in America. All it takes are a couple of paragraphs of law. That is all it would take, a couple of paragraphs of law that say between now and 2024, in the next 8 years, 15 percent of that liquefied natural gas must be on American-built ships with American sailors. Now, it turns out that these American ships and the sailors are a strategic necessity for our U.S. military. Because it turns out that if you are going to project American power around the world, you have to be able to get there with the men, the women, and the materials--and that means ships. So we would build the U.S. merchant marine. We would build American shipyards so that they would be competitive around the world, and we would employ tens of thousands--and perhaps even hundreds or more thousand--of American workers in our shipyards. It is possible. All it takes is a law. So when this energy bill starts moving around--and maybe here in the lameduck session--I would propose a simple amendment: between now and 2024, 15 percent of that export of LNG would be on American-built ships with American sailors. Oh, by the way, there are some older American LNG ships that could be reflagged for the purposes of meeting at least part of that 15 percent in the initial years. And then after 2025, let's ramp it up to 30 percent. Let's keep our shipyards busy. Let's keep our steelworkers, our welders, our plumbers, our marine engineers, our factories busy in the future with a very simple law that would be a really good regulation. Oh, I can hear the whining of the oil industry and of the natural gas industry, ``Oh, it is going to be too expensive.'' It is not nearly as expensive as not having American jobs and not be being able to project American power because we do not have a robust merchant marine and a robust number of American ships. Consider this fact: after World War II, we had 1,200 American ships, American sailors on them, all American flagged. In the 1980s, we had 500. Today, we have less than 80. We are seeing the disappearance of the American merchant marine. American sailors, American-flagged ships, American shipyards are all diminishing and very rapidly disappearing. It is up to us, your elected officials--myself, my colleagues, 434 other Members of Congress and the 100 Senators. And, I guess, the new President is interested in making America great again. Hey, here is how you can do it, President-elect Trump. Do it in policies that once again call for making it in America. So what are my colleagues going to do? Let this opportunity slip? Let this opportunity disappear? Forget about the strategic nature of energy in the United States, the strategic necessity of being able to project American power with American sailors and American ships to go wherever we want? Oh, yes, I heard somebody say, well, we could contract to have ships sent to move our military: Oh, yeah, hello, Mr. Xi. Oh, yeah, I am phoning. Yeah, I'm phoning from Washington, D.C., and, yeah, can you folks in Beijing send over ships so that we can send men and material to the South China Sea? It is not likely to happen, right? We can't depend on other countries. We have to depend on our own abilities, our own shipyards, our own mariners. We can do it. There are many bad regulations to be sure. There are some that hinder the economy. But I would propose to you that a very good law could be used to build the American economy by simply requiring that the export of liquefied natural gas be done on American ships, 15 percent between now and 2024, and thereafter, 30 percent, echoing what we did back in the 1960s when the North Slope of Alaska opened up and that oil came south. American steel pipe and American-made ships with American sailors, we can do it once again for the benefit of our country, for our national security, and for American workers and American businesses. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Peach Tree Health for its 25 years of providing quality and affordable healthcare to medically underserved communities in the 3rd District of California. Peach Tree Health is a federally qualified health center and an independent non-profit corporation based in Marysville, California. It has successfully extended its services throughout three counties within the 3rd District without sacrificing its core values of compassion, integrity, excellence, and cooperation in providing care for almost 30,000 patients. In August, Peach Tree Health opened its first clinic in Sacramento County, launching a unique vision care service designed to maximize access to any child regardless of their family's ability to pay. In 2017, Peach Tree Health will be opening a comprehensive Pediatric Center in Yuba City, California, that will offer health and dental services. The Department of Health and Human Services recently awarded Peach Tree Health a federal grant that will allow it to enhance its health information technology, further enhancing the quality of care it provides. Congratulations to Peach Tree Health on this important milestone and its continued work offering personalized health services at affordable rates. Its services are of great importance to communities throughout the 3rd District and I look forward to working with them in the future.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, is there anybody among us here who does not believe our children ought to have nutritious, safe food in the schools, in the school nutrition program? I think we all do. However, you may not know that back home in your school districts that your school is using your taxpayer money to buy food grown in China or someplace else in the world. Is it safe? Maybe yes. Maybe no. You don't know. We are going to introduce a bill here, and I would seek the support of all the Members here. We call it American Food for American Schools. Why not? Why not American food in the school nutrition programs, the lunch programs? In our own area in Sacramento, California, the school district there decided they ought to buy Chinese peaches, yet the biggest peach-growing place in all the United States is the Sacramento region. Let's do that. Let's make sure that our students have nutritious, safe, American-grown food. So American Food for American Schools. Seek your attention to this; seek your support on this. I am quite sure the American public and parents and students would say: yeah, right on.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, thank you for the opportunity here to discuss something that we have talked about now for almost 7 years. It is called infrastructure. It is called Make It In America. It is all about American bridges falling down. This is the bridge in Washington State as one approaches the British Columbia boundary, Interstate 5, the interstate that runs from the Canadian border to the Mexican border. And on this particular day, you couldn't get there because the bridge collapsed. Not unusual. All across America, there are tens of thousands of bridges that are in a state of imminent collapse, downright dangerous. But, hey, we don't have any other way to get across the river, so take your chances. After all, it is American infrastructure. There was a lot of discussion in the last presidential campaign about infrastructure, a lot of hooting and shouting, and maybe in the months ahead some progress. Last year this Congress, together with the Senate and with President Obama's signature, passed a 5-year surface transportation bill. Good. Very good. However, there's not even enough money in it to maintain our bridges so that they don't fall down. So we need to get on with rebuilding America. I could probably quote the words of the President-elect or the Democratic nominee who didn't successfully win that election, but they would all come down to the same thing: we need to build our infrastructure. And indeed we do. In doing so, we are going to put people to work, lots of people to work if we do it right. Here is how you multiply the effect of infrastructure construction on the employment. There is no doubt, for every dollar we spend on infrastructure, we will grow the economy by a little more than $2, and we will put several tens of thousands of people to work if we spend a billion dollars or more. We know those statistics; they are out there, and they are true. But if you really, really want to grow this economy, and you want to bring manufacturing back to the United States, then you ought to pay attention to what we have been working on here for the last 7 years, and this is what we call the Make It In America agenda. Yes, that infrastructure is essential. But what if your tax dollars were spent on jobs in the United States, on American-made steel, American-made concrete, American-made rebars, structural elements of all kinds? What if your tax dollars were actually spent here in America rather than in that very sad, sad situation in California, in my California? Oh, yes, let me put this up. This is an embarrassment. Oh, not this one. That one. You see, that is the San Francisco Bay bridge. It was completed about 4 years ago, 3 years ago now, and the original cost was somewhere around $1 billion or so. It actually turned out to be some $6 billion or more. But the thing that really, really was embarrassing is that the steel in that bridge was not American steel. It was Chinese steel. The toll dollars of those who cross this bridge for the next 50 years wind up in China, not in the United States, not in American steel mills, not in the pockets of American workers who are working those mills, and not in the pockets of the welders who put together the steel structures but, rather, in China's pocket. Terrible embarrassment. Why did it happen? Well, they thought it would be about 10 percent cheaper. It didn't happen. It turned out that it was much, much more expensive. Why? Because the steel was of less quality, the welds weren't good, and the inspectors were Chinese and overlooked some of the problems. Let me give you another example here. This is really embarrassing. For my California colleagues, please forgive me, but these are facts; and for all of us, pay attention. What happens when you build into a project, a buy America provision? What happens is American jobs and things are done well and things are done on time. The New York Tappan Zee bridge made with United States-produced steel, about a $3.9 billion total cost, and 7,728 direct American jobs as a result of that steel being American steel. On time, on budget, and made in America. So here is the deal, folks. If, Mr. President-elect, you want an infrastructure program, if you want to bring manufacturing back to America, then you better pay attention to this, which is Make It In America. Use our tax dollars, your tax dollars, the American tax dollars on American-made goods and services, not on something from some other place. This doesn't violate trade agreements; and if it does, those trade agreements ought to be changed. This is about rebuilding the American manufacturing sector. Let me give you another example. Yes, one of my favorites. Another example, beyond the bridge, the Tappan Zee bridge, which is a very good example, and a very bad example, the Bay bridge, San Francisco Oakland Bay bridge. For those of you who don't know what a locomotive looks like, that is an Amtrak locomotive, 100 percent made in America. But America doesn't build locomotives anymore. Well, that used to be true. Maybe a decade ago we didn't build locomotives. However, in the wisdom of this Congress and President Obama and the Senate, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed, otherwise known as the stimulus bill. In the stimulus bill, there was written a few tens of billions of dollars to build locomotives--let me put it this way, to buy locomotives for the Amtrak system. This one is an electric locomotive for the Northeast corridor here on the East Coast. Somebody somewhere in that piece of legislation--maybe it was a Democrat, maybe it was a Republican, maybe it was a staffer, an independent, I don't know, but somebody wrote into that provision for the purchase of Amtrak locomotives, about 70 of them, actually a little more than 70 of them, that they must be not 10 percent American made, not 20, not 30, not 90, but 100 percent American made so that every single thing on that locomotive had to be American made. Well, the great manufacturers in the United States--General Electric and General Motors--and some foreign manufacturers looked at that and said: 100 percent American made? It doesn't work. They don't build locomotives in the United States anymore. How could you build 100 percent American made? Well, this little German company called Siemens, one of the biggest industrial companies in the entire world, said: How many billions involved here? Lots of zeros, lots of billions. Seventy locomotives, 100 percent American made. We are a German company, 100 percent. How many billions was that? I will tell you what. We will do it. And Siemens did it. In the United States, they built that locomotive and about 60 some others in Sacramento, California, where there was no locomotive manufacturing plant until the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act became law and billions of dollars became available. That German company went to Sacramento, California, just outside my district where I spent more than 40 years representing the area, and said: We can do it. And they did it. And now they have contracts across this Nation to build in America not just locomotives like this but also railcars, light railcars, transit systems, and the like. We can make it in America, and your tax dollars can actually be used to employ people in America and to build manufacturing systems in the United States if--and here is the key--in the months ahead, this Congress, working with the next President, actually decides that they are going to put into public policy that your tax dollars are going to be spent on American-made equipment. Now, in that bill I talked about a little while ago, the FAST Act, which is a 5-year transportation bill, I and a few of my colleagues were successful in increasing by a little, teeny, tiny bit the American content on buses and light rail systems--not to 100 percent which is what I wanted, but from 60 to 70 percent. And that will be several thousand jobs over time across the United States. But we should be bold. If, as the President-elect says, he wants to rebuild American manufacturing, make America great again--which of us doesn't want that to happen--we all do--then I would suggest, Mr. President-elect and my Republican colleagues and my Democratic colleagues, that we build into any infrastructure bill two very, very important things. The first is that American taxpayer dollars will be 100 percent spent on American- made equipment, whether that is the steel for the wheels of the Amtrak trains, the structures for the bridges, or the concrete, whatever. American-made. Your tax dollars spent on America. So what are we going to do here? The second thing. I shouldn't forget this. There are those that would use this infrastructure legislation to further diminish the power of the American worker to stand together united and participate in achieving a fair wage. We must not allow this effort to rebuild the American infrastructure to be an excuse for eliminating the unions in the United States. We have seen enough of that. We have seen the effect of that. The diminution of the wages for the working men and women is directly parallel to the diminution of the labor movement in California and the United States. So, let's pay attention here. Men and women joining together, arguing and debating and standing for their rights and their wages and their working conditions is a time-honored and essential condition of the United States middle class and the working men and women, wherever they happen to be across this Nation. As we go about this process of building America, of reinvigorating the manufacturing sector of the United States and making it in America once again, let us remember that there are key points that must be paid attention to. There is a term that was used in the California fields by our friends from Mexico, and the term was, Si se puede; or, Yes, we can. We can make it in America. We can rebuild the American manufacturing sector. We can strengthen American families financially and otherwise by doing these things, but only if we use your taxpayer dollars here in America and strengthen the buy-America provisions and no further diminution in the American labor movement. Yes, we can. Now, let's keep this in mind. It ought to be our motto. It ought to be the words by which we set our compass: to make it in America, use your tax dollars, buy American products, and strengthen the American family. Mr. Speaker, I have talked about this issue for the last 7 years, and I have talked about this issue for about the last 17 minutes. I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee), an incredible spokesperson for what is right in America and what is wrong.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Staff Sergeant Aaron M. Tobler of the United States Air Force who has been named one of the twelve Outstanding Airmen of the Year for 2016. Aaron enlisted in the Air Force Reserve in 2011 and received honors at both basic training and technical school. He is currently a Geospatial Intelligence Analyst assigned to the 50th Intelligence Squadron at Distributed Ground Station-Two at Beale Air Force Base, California where his job is to exploit high-value targets and satisfy intelligence requirements in support of Combatant Commanders around the World. As a direct result of Staff Sergeant Tobler's work, weapon manufacturing compounds were identified and destroyed, crippling an entire terrorist network. He also facilitated successful over watch of Joint Task Force troop convoys, ensuring over two thousand miles of roads were clear of threats. When he's not working for the Air Force, Aaron is an active member in his community. He is a manager with the California Department of Social Services in Sacramento, and serves on the Board of Directors for Rocklin Residents Unite for Fido community group, an organization that offers scholarships to wounded veterans to receive training for their service dogs. He is involved in several community fundraising events, offering strategic support and is a regular blood donor. Staff Sergeant Aaron Tobler exemplifies what it means to be an Outstanding Airman. His has accumulated many accolades and medals in his Air Force career, and now he can add being the first Reservist in the Intelligence Career Field to ever be selected as an Outstanding Airman of the Year as one of his many accomplishments. Mr. Speaker, I am honored that Sergeant Tobler and his family are assigned to Beale Air Force Base in my district. And it is my privilege to recognize him here for his outstanding contributions to California and to the United States.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in honor of Lieutenant Colonel Ira Stephen ``Shooter'' Eadie, who died on September 20, 2016 while flying a routine training mission. At 9:05am, the TU-25 piloted by Lt Col Eadie and his trainee crashed near the Sutter Buttes in California. They were assigned to the 1st Reconnaissance Squadron at Beale Air Force Base. Although both pilots ejected from the aircraft, Lt Col Eadie did not survive. Lt Col Eadie was a respected pilot who began his military career in the Navy, flying P-3 patrol aircraft. He eventually joined the Air Force and became a U-2 pilot. The U-2 is a notoriously difficult aircraft to fly--becoming a U-2 pilot means you are among the very best. He was part of an elite, tight-knit group of pilots, whose flights more closely mirror those of astronauts--the U-2 flies at altitudes over 70,000 feet, at the very edge of the atmosphere, affording the pilot breathtaking views of the horizon, watching nighttime creep across the Earth. Steve was a loving and devoted family man. He met his wife Ashley in Lake City, FL, and together they raised six children, and recently welcomed a granddaughter. Mr. Speaker, pilots fondly quote, ``Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth, and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings''. Today, it is my heartfelt honor to remember a cherished member of the flying community, Lt Col ``Shooter'' Eadie, who has put out his hand, and touched the face of God. In the days to come, may strength and comfort be granted to his family and friends, the 1st Reconnaissance Squadron and Beale Air Force Base, and the entire Dragon Lady community.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Staff Sergeant Aaron Tobler of the United States Air Force who has been named one of the twelve Outstanding Airmen of the Year for 2016. Aaron enlisted in the Air Force Reserve in 2011 and received honors at both basic training and technical school. He is currently a Geospatial Intelligence Analyst assigned to the 50th Intelligence Squadron at Distributed Ground Station-Two at Beale Air Force Base, California. His mission is to exploit high-value targets and satisfy intelligence requirements in support of Combatant Commanders around the World. As a direct result of Staff Sergeant Tobler's work, weapon manufacturing compounds were identified and destroyed, crippling an entire terrorist network. He also facilitated successful overwatch of Joint Task Force troop convoys, ensuring over two thousand miles of roads were clear of threats. When he's not working for the Air Force, Aaron is an active member in his community. He is a manager with the California Department of Social Services in Sacramento, and serves on the Board of Directors for Rocklin Residents Unite for Fido community group, an organization that offers scholarships to wounded veterans to receive training for their service dogs. He is involved in several community fundraising events, offering strategic support and is a regular blood donor. Staff Sergeant Aaron Tobler exemplifies what it means to be an Outstanding Airman. He has accumulated many accolades and medals in his Air Force career, and now he can add being the first Reservist in the Intelligence Career Field to ever be selected as an Outstanding Airman of the Year as one of his many accomplishments. Mr. Speaker, I am honored that Sergeant Tobler and his family are assigned to Beale Air Force Base in my district. And it is my privilege to recognize him here for his outstanding contributions to California and to the United States.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in honor of Lieutenant Colonel Ira Stephen ``Shooter'' Eadie, who died on September 20, 2016 while flying a routine training mission. At 9:05 am, the TU-2S piloted by Lt Col Eadie and his trainee crashed near the Sutter Buttes in California. They were assigned to the 1st Reconnaissance Squadron at Beale Air Force Base. Although both pilots ejected from the aircraft, Lt Col Eadie did not survive. Lt Col Eadie was a respected pilot who began his military career in the Navy, flying P-3 patrol aircraft. He eventually joined the Air Force and became a U-2 pilot. The U-2 is a notoriously difficult aircraft to fly--becoming a U-2 pilot means you are among the very best. He was part of an elite, tight-knit group of pilots, whose flights more closely mirror those of astronauts--the U-2 flies at altitudes over 70,000 feet, at the very edge of the atmosphere, affording the pilot breathtaking views of the horizon, watching nighttime creep across the Earth. Steve was a loving and devoted family man. He met his wife Ashley in Lake City, FL, and together they raised six children, and recently welcomed a granddaughter. Mr. Speaker, pilots fondly quote, ``Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth, and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings''. Today, it is my heartfelt honor to remember a cherished member of the flying community, Lt Col ``Shooter'' Eadie, who has put out his hand, and touched the face of God. In the days to come, may strength and comfort be granted to his family and friends, the 1st Reconnaissance Squadron and Beale Air Force Base, and the entire Dragon Lady community.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record the following materials: statement from dhs press secretary laura keehhner on the adoption of national backup system to gps (February 7, 2008) Today the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will begin implementing an independent national positioning, navigation and timing system that complements the Global Positioning System (GPS) in the event of an outage or disruption in service. The enhanced Loran, or eLoran, system will be a land-based, independent system and will mitigate any safety, security, or economic effects of a GPS outage or disruption. GPS is a satellite-based system widely used for positioning, navigation, and timing. The eLoran system will be an enhanced and modernized version of Loran-C, long used by mariners and aviators and originally developed for civil marine use in coastal areas. In addition to providing backup coverage, the signal strength and penetration capability of eLoran will provide support to first responders and other operators in environments that GPS cannot support, such as under heavy foliage, in some underground areas, and in dense high-rise structures. The system will use modernized transmitting stations and an upgraded network.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I join Chairman Hunter in strong support for the legislation and to advance this new policy initiative to improve the oversight of the Coast Guard and the major acquisition programs, and also to advance the safety and security of the U.S. maritime industry. H.R. 5978, the Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Amendments Act, is bipartisan legislation. We have talked about some of the provisions that are not in the bill. I will try to talk about those that are in the bill. It deserves the robust support from Members on both sides of the aisle, and I urge its quick passage, probably as early as today. I thank the gentleman, Mr. Hunter, for his unwavering support of the Coast Guard and the work that we are able to do together with the members of the committee. Of great significance, this legislation will address an overlooked and underappreciated threat to our national and economic security: the fact that GPS, Global Positioning System, it has been identified for nearly 20 years as the single point of failure, with serious implications for our national security and economy. I know we are not able to use these little machines called cell phones on the floor, but if we could, they are totally reliant on GPS. You go down to the ATM, it will not work without GPS. Our systems of navigation, including such things as positive train control, totally dependent upon GPS. In fact, Wall Street, totally dependent on GPS. It is timing, navigation, and positioning. That is GPS. We have no backup; other countries do. You might ask, why is China, why is Russia, why are they building a GLAN-based backup to GPS? Well, they know that if there is trouble, the first thing that is going to disappear is GPS. Right now, GPS can be knocked out by somebody driving down the freeway with their 18-wheeler and using an antiradar device. You might ask what happened at the Newark airport. That is exactly what happened. GPS was knocked out by somebody on Interstate 95 with a radar device. It is a very weak signal, but it is an extraordinarily important signal. So this bill provides for a backup system which has been discussed for nearly 20 years, and we have gone round and round the Bush--I guess that is the right thing--and the Clinton, in between, without any action. So this bill would actually push this forward to give us an opportunity to establish a backup system, which is actually very old but will be updated with the enhanced LORAN system, dating back to the 1940s, which was the first navigational system that we built in the United States. Much of the system is already available; the towers, the locations, much of that is in place. This would authorize a public-private partnership to put that in place. I won't go into it anymore, but it is high time that we get on with this. The chairman laid out how it is going to be done in his talk and, hopefully, we can finally get this underway. There are many, many other pieces that are in this legislation. We have talked a little bit about the Coast Guard icebreakers. We do have a study--oh, my goodness, another study. It is the best we could do at the moment. The chairman and I talked about what we would like to accomplish with more than that with his actual authorization. The block buy, we have got to do it, and, hopefully, we will. There are other things that are in the bill that the chairman has described. I won't go into them today in any more detail but to say that, in my written statement, it will be covered. One more thing, to back up the GPS, I include in the Record about 15 years of studies by Federal Government agencies that all say we have got to have a backup system, and the eLORAN is the best. Mr. Chairman, shall we continue on and beat this for a while longer or shall we say let's pass the bill and get on with it? I am pleased to rise and join Chairman Hunter in strong support of this legislation to advance new policy initiatives to improve the oversight of the Coast Guard's major acquisition programs and to advance the safety and security of the U.S. maritime industry. H.R. 5978, the Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Amendments Act of 2016, is bipartisan legislation that was developed to address issues that have arisen since the Congress passed a two-year comprehensive Coast Guard authorization bill earlier this year. This legislation is deserving of robust support from members on both sides of the aisle and I urge its quick passage by the House today so it can be sent to the other body for its consideration and passage before the 114th Congress adjourns sine die. I want to thank Chairman Hunter for his unwavering leadership and for the cooperative spirit of this excellent staff in working with me and other Democratic members to address our interests and concerns in this legislation. Of greatest significance, this legislation will address an overlooked need and under-appreciated threat to our national and economic security--the fact that the Global Positioning System, or GPS, has been identified as a single point of failure with serious implications for our national security and economy. GPS has revolutionized how we live, work, and play. Signals provided by GPS satellites ensure that literally everything that we routinely depend on not only runs, but runs with unprecedented reliability and precision. We have all benefitted from GPS: whether through the distribution of power from our electric grid; the coordination of timing signals for trains and traffic signals; or, to improve the efficiency of maritime search and rescue missions launched by the Coast Guard. There is no denying that GPS has been a tremendous technological asset. But the reality is that GPS signals are relatively weak and fairly easy to degrade, disrupt or jam. This is not a hypothetical matter; this threat is real, and it is happening now. Just last week, the Commandant of the Coast Guard, Admiral Paul Zukunft, while speaking at a National Harbor Safety Conference in Portland, Oregon, cited over 100 instances in which vessels experienced disruption to their GPS reception. There is nothing we can do to change the underlying physics of the GPS signal. We can, however, take necessary and appropriate actions now to ensure that a reliable land-based back-up system for positioning, navigation and timing signals is available when needed. Moreover, if the Russians, the Chinese, the EU, and other nations are developing land-based GPS back-up systems, the United States should have its own system as well. Since 2001 the Federal Government, notably the PNT Executive Committee, has been evaluating options. The Executive Committee concluded in December, 2014 that an enhanced LORAN, or eLORAN system, would be the most cost-effective and reliable back-up for GPS signals. What this legislation will do is force the Federal Government to finally take action on its own recommendation. The Coast Guard, which for decades operated the LORAN-C navigation system (the predecessor of GPS), would be directed to publish a request for proposals, complete a plan for the architecture of an eLORAN system, and get a system built and fully operational within three years. Make no mistake, this is a significant undertaking. But the stakes of doing nothing is a risky roll of the dice we would be well-advised to avoid. I strongly urge members on both sides to support this important provision. I am also very pleased that this legislation continues to move forward in our efforts to recapitalize the Coast Guard's legacy fleet of polar class heavy icebreakers. It is clear that we are witnessing the opening of the Arctic to maritime commerce, and with it, the creation of a whole new ocean of operational responsibility for the Coast Guard. In this most challenging of maritime environments, it is vital that the Service has the icebreaking capabilities it will need to operate safely and effectively. I must express my disappointment that we were unable to retain the ``block buy'' provision that was reported out of the Transportation Committee. Nevertheless, the analysis of multi-year procurement and block buy contracting called for in this legislation would be helpful to have on hand when the Congress ultimately does appropriate funds for the construction of these vital new national security assets. I also want to express my support for other provisions in the bill, notably language that will ensure commercial fishermen a full three years to comply with new alternative safety compliance program requirements from the date the Coast Guard publishes these requirements. Additionally, I want to express my support for the provision that would grant to the Coast Guard authority to reimburse private entities for their costs to construct a Federal navigation aid. The additional sideboards that were added have clarified the scope and intent of this new authority. I want to thank Congressman Blake Farenthold for his willingness to work to improve this provision. Mr. Speaker, I again want to express my appreciation to Chairman Hunter and his staff for their support for the Coast Guard and the U.S. Maritime industry, and for their collaboration in developing this legislation. I also want to thank the Chairman of the full Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Congressman Bill Shuster, and the Ranking Member on the full Committee, Congressman Peter DeFazio, for their leadership and support for the Committee's maritime agenda. In closing, this legislation is bipartisan and non-controversial. It deserves the full support of the House. NSPD-39: U.S. Space-Based Position, Navigation, and Timing Policy, December 15, 2004