John Garamendi

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Well, you couldn't be more accurate, and you certainly did make the point. I was looking at the picture there. You have got the Northeast corridor, the entire Amtrak system underneath that bridge into Union Station, which I think is probably just to what I would say stage left, and the rail system goes through there, and then the highway system. I didn't realize that this is holding up the reconstruction of Union Station.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Well, we have done it over and over again, and the general talk around this building is that we are going to kick the can down the road yet again, probably for another 6 months, just like we extended the last one for 9 months. It is not the way to do it, and the result is bad public policy and an inability to really build the foundation for our economic future. You mentioned the funding, the notion of a joint committee hearing between the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and the Committee on Ways and Means to discuss the funding options that you just described, and so we should talk about what the options are, and then select the one that makes the most sense for this Nation's well- being. We can do that. That is what we were hired to do and what the voters put us here for.

Mr. GARAMENDI. We really must do that. Yesterday, I was in the Central Valley--Modesto, California--for a meeting, and I had to drive to San Francisco for a speech over Interstate 580, the Altamont Pass, and it is so broken up. There is the fast lane on the Altamont Pass, as you go up over the mountain, that actually has about a 6-inch crack in the fast lane. As you drive down, you are driving down on one side of the crack. You have one wheel on one side and the other wheel on the other side of this crack, and you say, ``Whoa, I hope I can make it through here.'' That is a major transportation route with tens of thousands of cars traveling on it every day. So the state of good repair? Not in California. What does it mean? If we were to take the GROW AMERICA Act that you are going to introduce, it would mean that, compared to this year, 2015, we would have $7.6 billion more across the Nation to repair the highways in our Nation. The Altamont Pass, it is downright dangerous--I was shocked--but they don't have any money to fix it. There would be $7.6 billion for all of this Nation to do it. Then the buses, the transit agency in San Francisco. I was parked in San Francisco, waiting for a stoplight. A bus pulls up, and it had to be a 1950 bus. It was rusted out, and I am sure the seats were torn apart. All good credit to San Francisco for trying, but across the Nation, it is the same way--here in Washington, D.C., with the transit agencies, Amtrak. By the way, Amtrak came to Congress. They wanted money--this is some good news--and we actually passed an Amtrak bill out of the House of Representatives a couple of months ago. Yet do you know what they wanted to do? They wanted to get a waiver on the Buy America provisions. They have to build, I think, 28 locomotives and train sets--high-speed--and they didn't want to buy it in America. I am going, no, no way. If we are going to spend American taxpayer money, spend it on American-made equipment, on American jobs. Make It In America. No way are you going to get out of that. I also want to talk about this, but you have got a bridge behind you.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Hello, America. Do you know what is going to happen in just a few days? In 7 legislative days, the United States highway trust fund runs out of money--kaput, it is over--a fund established by President Eisenhower in the 1950s, out of money. What is the House of Representatives doing? What is your Representative and your Senator doing? Well, I suspect debating the Trans-Pacific Partnership--the TPA--when, in fact, this is the big jobs issue. The trade negotiations, you can debate it forever; but if you really want to create jobs in America, pay attention to this, America. Pay attention to the fact that the Federal highway trust fund expires in 7 legislative days. We have got work to do here; we have got a lot of work to do, and it is not happening. I am a Californian. I represent the State of California. We have a pretty high opinion of ourselves in California, maybe deserved or not; but what it means to us when the highway trust fund shuts down, what it means is a lot of jobs. 73,572 jobs will be jeopardized at the end of this month of May. We are looking at 5,692 active highway and transit projects will stop, red light stop, don't go forward. For California, in just 7 legislative days, a very, very important thing happens--actually, far, far more important than the Trans-Pacific Partnership or the trade promotion authority. This is where the big jobs are in America. Building the infrastructure of America is how you create jobs today and on into the future because you lay the foundation for economic growth. If you couple those transportation programs with another long, longstanding American law, which is Buy America, Make It In America, you not only create the foundation, but you also create immediate manufacturing jobs of all kinds. From the bulldozers, to the tractors and the backhoes, to the steel and the concrete, you buy it in America; you build the infrastructure in America, and you create immediate jobs. How many? Well, I think we all know Duke University. It is more than a basketball school. It also happens to be one of the more thoughtful research institutions in the United States. They produced a little book that about 535 of the Representatives of the American people ought to be reading. This ought to be the bedtime reading for the Senators and the Members of Congress: ``Infrastructure Investment Creates American Jobs,'' Duke University Center on Globalization, Governance, and Competitiveness. I am going to read just a few things here just to drive this point home. Old and broken transportation infrastructure makes the United States less competitive than 15 of our major trading partners and makes manufacturers less efficient in getting goods to market. You want to get goods to market, build the infrastructure. Underinvestment costs the United States over 900,000 jobs, including more than 97,000 American manufacturing jobs. You want to Make It In America, build the infrastructure. Maximizing American-made materials when rebuilding infrastructure has the potential to create even more jobs. Relying on American-made inputs can also mitigate safety concerns related to large-scale outsourcing. It is our Make It In America policy. It is the agenda that we have been driving for the last 5 years here. Build the infrastructure, Buy America, Make It In America. Competitiveness, a lot of talk, everybody wants to talk about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or the TPA. You want to be competitive; you build the American infrastructure--again, Duke University. The United States boasts the world's largest stock of transportation infrastructure as measured by combined bridges, airports, seaports, and miles of road, rail, pipeline, and inland waterways. It is a very good start, foundation. The United States is not well positioned compared to its major trading partners in terms of quality of transportation infrastructure. Global assessments of transportation infrastructure place the United States in 16th place out of 144 nations. You want to improve our competitiveness, you want to create jobs, build the infrastructure. The quality of transportation infrastructure affects the United States' competitiveness, point No. 6, and here is what we can do about it. Instead of the administration's spending all of its energy and all of its time talking about how we are going to deal with international trade that, in all likelihood, will create fewer jobs in America--so much so that they have to put into that Trans-Pacific Partnership a provision that would actually pay American workers who have lost their jobs--why don't they talk about their own GROW AMERICA Act? This is the Department of Transportation. This is the President's program, the GROW AMERICA Act. It is, really, a good piece of legislation. It is not yet introduced, unfortunately, but it calls for $7.6 billion to fix our highway system--this is all annual--$6.8 billion to improve public transportation, $3.4 billion to strengthen our rail systems--Amtrak and other kinds of rail systems--and $1 billion to accelerate our freight support system. If you really want to do international trade, you really have to build the freight management system in this Nation. It has got to go out, not just in, and you can't do it with the antiquated freight systems that we have in the United States. This is $476 billion over a 4-year period of time. It is a good project--it is fully paid for--but we are not even talking about it here. We have got work to do. The purpose of this 1 hour, which will, actually, be significantly less than an hour, is to say, ``Hello, America. Wake up. Ask your Members of Congress: 'What are you doing about transportation? What are you doing in 7 legislative days to fix the transportation system? Are you paying attention? Are you paying attention to your State? to your community that you represent? to the jobs that you are going to see and the highway projects and the transit projects? Are you paying attention?''' In 7 legislative days, at the end of this month, the Federal highway trust fund terminates along with the projects that are supported by it. It is a problem. It is our problem. We need the courage to act, and we need to pay attention to what is really important, which happens to be the transportation infrastructure of this great Nation. We need to rebuild it. Joining me this hour is the gentlewoman representing the Capital of the United States, Washington, D.C., Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, the ranking member of the Highways and Transit Subcommittee of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Delegate Norton, thank you for joining us tonight. I am looking forward to your presentation.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Chairman, we just heard Mr. Quigley and Mr. Simpson in a debate about this very same issue, and I don't want to cover the exact same ground, but I want to put this in the context of, I think, a very serious concern that all of us ought to have. The rebuilding, or what is known as the life extension program for our nuclear bombs, is but one small part, actually, one very large part, but small in comparison to the total reconditioning, rebuilding of our entire nuclear enterprise. And when you consider the totality of what we are doing in this appropriations bill and last night, when we took up the defense authorization bill, you can only, and you must, come to the conclusion that the United States is now involved in a very significant, total restructuring and rebuilding of our entire nuclear deterrent system. It is not just the six to seven different nuclear warheads that are going to be rebuilt at a cost of several tens of billions of dollars; it is also all of the delivery systems. We are, in fact, engaged in a new nuclear arms race. Now, many of us grew up in the sixties and seventies--fifties, sixties, and seventies--and I think all of us have a memory of the arms race and all of the drills, hiding underneath the table, all of that trouble. I think we have a memory of what went on with the Cuban Missile Crisis. When you step back and look at what we are doing in the appropriations bill before us as well as in the National Defense Authorization Act, you must come to the conclusion that we are on the path to spend $1 trillion over the next 25 to 30 years rebuilding the entire nuclear enterprise. We have, in this bill, all of the nuclear weapons. In this one, we went from some $9 million last year for this W80 to over $190 million in this bill. Yes, there are safeguards and, yes, we ought to pull all of this money back until we decide how this fits into the new cruise missile, the new long-range cruise missile replacing the old variety. That goes on the new stealth bomber, the LSRO, a new stealth bomber, at $550 million a copy, more than half a billion dollars a plane. A cruise missile, a new plane doing the exact same thing, and that is to be added to a new Minuteman missile for the silos in the Midwest, the upper Midwest, new Minuteman III missiles. That will be added to the new submarines that are going out there with new missiles and new warheads and, on top of that, some new stealth technology that is going on that we really can't even talk about. But it is happening, $1 trillion in a nuclear arms race that is being replicated by China and Russia, the United Kingdom and France. What in the world is this world coming to? This isn't Iran. Iran is a separate issue, significantly important, but this is different. This is the major nuclear-armed countries in the world, all of them, upgrading their nuclear systems. We have the new bombs, new precision bombs. We have the new delivery system, stealth. It is extraordinarily dangerous because the hair trigger of the past and all of the rules of the past are now going to be put aside, and now we have a really, really, fine hair trigger. You won't know but a few minutes ahead of time when it is incoming because it is a stealth bomber or a cruise missile or even a hypersonic missile. And suddenly, there you are; you have got seconds to make a decision about whether you are going to annihilate the world or not. How do you respond to this? And you have got Russia over there talking about using a nuclear weapon as a deterrent to reduce some sort of standard military conflict. This is an extraordinarily dangerous situation. I want to draw the attention of the entire House and use this particular effort to reduce this account by $25 million. The gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Quigley), I think, had a better proposal, and that is to reduce the whole thing. But here we are. Pay attention, men and women of this House and of the Senate. Pay attention to what the overarching issue is here. It is the opening quarter of a new nuclear arms race among the great powers of the world. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Quite correct, there was an error on my part. This is the question of the MOX facility, $125 million to be applied to other cleanup programs across the Nation. That is it. I spoke on a different issue, and the MOX facility came up earlier.

Mr. GARAMENDI. If the gentleman would yield for 15 seconds, I will explain the error, and then I will be out of the way.

Mr. GARAMENDI. If I can go back and talk about the MOX facility now. I stand corrected. The 125 was the MOX facility amendment.

Mr. GARAMENDI. That is what I was speaking to.

Mr. GARAMENDI. That is correct.

Mr. GARAMENDI. So I can come back and do it again?

Mr. GARAMENDI. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. GARAMENDI. I am addressing the facilities, the nuclear pit facilities, the plutonium pit facilities. It is $125 million. The MOX was my colleague from Nebraska's amendment. That was his amendment.

Mr. GARAMENDI. I yield to the gentlewoman from Ohio.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Chairman, I want to raise an issue along the lines of my earlier discussion and part of what we just heard in the previous discussion. That is, where are we going with the nuclear enterprise? What is it all about? Where will it take us? My personal view is that we are in the first quarter of a new nuclear arms race. This amendment deals with a critical part of that effort to rebuild the nuclear weapons systems of the United States. We currently have maybe 10,000 unused nuclear plutonium pits. This is the heart of a nuclear bomb. It is pure plutonium, and it is the heart of the bomb. The 10,000 that are not used came out of nuclear weapons that have been dismantled as a result of the various arms control treaties that have been in place over the last 30 years, all to the good. The MOX facility deals with that unused excess plutonium and others. But this amendment deals with the notion of rebuilding and increasing the capacity of the United States to produce new plutonium pits. We presently have the capacity to produce somewhere between 5 and 10 plutonium pits, again, the heart of a nuclear weapon, in the existing facilities. We are going to spend a few billion dollars--unknown--but somewhere probably between $1 billion and $2 billion or $3 billion building the facilities to increase the capacity to manufacture these plutonium pits to 50 to 80 a year. Now, testimony that we have received in the Strategic Forces Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee indicates that nobody knows what you are going to do with them or whether you even need the pits, but they want to build the facility just in case. You go: Wait a minute, you have 10,000 out there; what are you going to do? Why are you doing this? It has never been answered other than: Well, we might need it some day. Well, God willing, we will never need it some day. Five to 10 a year, more than we need, 50 to 80, the military doesn't know what to do with it; the NNSA doesn't know what to do with it, but they want to build the manufacturing facility even so. This amendment simply says let's take $125 million of that and apply it to something useful like cleaning up what is going on out there. Just keep in mind that we are talking about an enormous amount of money here for the production or the manufacturing facilities of these pits. It is not just the facility for the plutonium, but it is also for the rest of the bombs, so it is probably going to be well over $10 billion by the time we finish, and then you have the operating costs, if we ever operate at all. Be careful here. We are into a massive expenditure of over $1 trillion over the next 20 to 25 years. I have asked the military: Tell us how we are going to spend that. They say: Well, we really don't know. They gave me a document that is a bunch of equations with no explanation of what the factors are. I am asking for information. I was shut down in committee yesterday, but we all ought to demand information. What is going on here? What are we talking about? A new long-range stealth bomber to replace the B-2, new cruise missiles, new submarines, new missiles for land and sea, and new warheads to go on top of it; and, all the while, other countries are trying to match us. It is a nuclear arms race well underway. Are we causing it? We are clearly part of it. Russia and China are also involved in this and matching technology, spending a vast amount of money. Just think what we could do if we took one-quarter of that and spent it on education. What could we do for the American people? I think I hear the knock-knock of time having run out, and that frightens me because time is running out on this issue, and we need to pay attention here. Mr. Chairman, I thank Mr. Simpson and his committee for paying attention to all of this.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Chairman, I commend the gentleman for taking up this issue. The MOX facility lifecycle cost is now over $47 billion and at the end of the day will not solve the problem. The disposition of the unnecessary plutonium stock can be done in other ways. We ought to set aside that money. You are quite correct to put it into nonproliferation issues, trying to figure out where the loose nukes might be around the world. Mr. Chairman, I will draw your attention and the attention of the gentlemen and gentlewomen here today that in yesterday's National Defense Authorization Act, those facilities that sense the movement of nuclear materials across borders, the in-place were withdrawn, taken out. We ought to pay attention to that, put those back in in one more piece. I commend the gentleman for being right on. And we do need to sort out the MOX facility and come to some conclusion; otherwise, we are in a $47 billion rathole that won't solve the problem.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from Idaho's concerns and the way he is approaching it is really quite commendable and the right way to go about it. Two studies have been done, the most recent dealing with the $47 million. That speaks to the current MOX procedure and process. The blending down, you have correctly analyzed the problem there because it doesn't take into account the full cost, and then you have still got to dispose of this stuff someplace. There is also the vitrification of it, which is blending down, putting it into a glass container, and then storing that. Those have problems. There is another option that will be analyzed and is coming out later in this year, in September, and that is the use of a fast reactor to actually burn the plutonium and, thereby, make it unusable for weapons. It also would generate a significant amount of energy, which could produce steam and electrical energy along the way. That study is coming out later this year. In the meantime, we ought to do what you are doing here, and that is, just slow down, take a look at this. And for those who are concerned about the jobs in the Savannah River area, a lot of this work can be done there in any one of these options. Just don't do something that doesn't work, which is the current process underway. So you could do a fast reactor there. Use that as a method of consuming the plutonium and rendering it unuseful. There are many different ways to do it. But we are headed down a rathole. Slow down. Stop. I commend both the gentleman from Nebraska and the gentleman from Idaho for where they are going on this. Carry on.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, Earth Day 2015 is rapidly approaching. I would like to draw the attention of the House and the American citizens to the reality of climate change. Global warming is real. Take a look at California. We are in the midst of the fourth year of a very severe drought. You can debate whether the drought is or is not the result of climate change; but you cannot debate the fact that CO2 in our atmosphere is approaching 400 parts per million, the highest it has ever been in over 800,000 years. You cannot debate the fact that it is a heck of a lot warmer in California in the last decade than it has ever been in recorded time, and you cannot debate the fact that the snow level in California is rapidly rising up the Sierra Nevada and the Siskiyou Mountains, leaving us with an ever smaller snow reservoir. This is a real problem. We need to address it with very strong, powerful legislation here in Congress, most of which has not been done. We have a challenge out ahead of us. I hope and pray that we meet that challenge.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Tonko, thank you so very much. You keep bringing these issues so clearly to all of us. There are some among the 435 Members of this House who believe that the Federal Government should not have a role in these kinds of projects, and I think they are doing two things as they advocate that the Federal Government ought to get out of this business. First of all, they are ignoring the Constitution, which specifically says Congress is supposed to take care of postal roads. They are also ignoring the Founding Fathers. Washington asked his Treasury Secretary, Hamilton, to develop a program on advancing the American economy, and he came back with a program to build ports, postal roads, and canals. So this has been a long history of America from the beginning--that the Federal Government has a role in all of these. This morning, we had a hearing in the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee about the highway bill, about the surface transportation bill. We note that the President put forward what I call the GROW AMERICA Act II--this is this year's version of last year's bill--that is for $478 billion, a 6-year program, $176 billion more than proposed last year, and fully paid for. I notice that the ranking member of the Highways and Transit Subcommittee of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee has joined us. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton of Washington, D.C., is with us now. This is her turf as ranking member of that committee. Thank you so very much for joining us, Ms. Norton. Share with us your thoughts on how we can grow America--grow the middle class, increase the paychecks for Americans, and build our infrastructure.

Mr. GARAMENDI. They call for a big investment there. One of the things we think ought to be in this bill--in fact, it is in the bill-- is a very strong Buy America provision. This is a locomotive, electric locomotive for the Amtrak line here on the Northeast corridor from Washington, D.C., to Boston, and this locomotive is 100 percent American made. It is made in Sacramento, California, of all places, by a German company, Siemens, who looked at the American Recovery Act, and there was $700 million in there to build these locomotives, and they said 100 percent American made. And Siemens looked at that and goes: $700 million, make it in America, we can do that, and they are doing it. These are now being deployed on the east coast line. But the next phase is a high-speed line between Washington and Boston, and that high-speed line calls for a new kind of train, high- speed train, and out of our committee we said that it is going to be built in America. Now, Mr. Tonko, here is where I turn this over to you. It turns out that one of the foreign companies, Alstom, which is a French company, has a manufacturing plant in upstate New York, maybe near your district. If so, you are going to have those middle class manufacturing jobs when this bill passes with a 100 percent Buy America provision.

Mr. GARAMENDI. We know that one of the key opportunities that presents itself to Congress in the next 3 months is the surface transportation bill. We know that we have to have it out of here, renew it by the end of May. We know that if we do that, the construction season--while being a little bit rocky because we are late in getting this done--will be able to move forward through the summer and then on into the fall. One of the tasks that our Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton has is to push that out, and if in that piece of legislation we maintain the Buy America provisions, it is not just the construction jobs, it is going to be the manufacturing jobs, and men and women that will build the light rail, that will build the buses, that will build the Metro systems, will put together the pieces of the port, the bridges, wherever they may be, and of course the highways. Ms. Norton, you have got a task out ahead of you. I know you are up to it. If you would like to share some additional thoughts, we would be delighted to hear from you.