John Garamendi

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. You were on the committee.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Work with the kids on their homework.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Well, you had an opportunity to learn about the private sector and learn about the necessity of transportation; and I think your business was dependent on that, both to get the materials to your lumber mill and then to export.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, about a month and a half ago, we heard the President speak to us about the economy, about his goals for America. He labeled his speech ``middle class economics,'' and tonight, I want to pick this issue up once again. We are here most every week discussing this issue, although last time we were up here, we took up another important issue, Alzheimer's. But I want to come back to middle class economics, why it is important. Well, basically, it is important because it drives our economy. The great majority of Americans want to be in the middle class, and most of them are. Unfortunately, we have seen the decline of the middle class, their ability to own a home, a car, to provide for their family--but if the middle class is healthy, it will drive our economy, and it will create jobs, so the focus on the middle class becomes very, very important. We can do this by strengthening their wages. If they are able to earn more money, then they will buy the home, the car, and the economy will grow, and other people will be able to enjoy the fruits of our economy. I am going to focus on infrastructure in a moment, but I just want to skip that over and go down to the other things. Health care--who among us doesn't want to have a good health care program, so that if we get sick or injured, we will be able to get to a doctor, get to a hospital, get the care we need to get back on our feet, and to once again be productive or, in our old age, be able to enjoy our retirement? So the affordable health care becomes really important, and here, we have the Affordable Health Care Act as part of that. Finally, we need to develop policies to grow the middle class, and one such policy is infrastructure, which is the focus of tonight's discussion. I want to just stay with this infrastructure issue for a few moments, and then I am going to invite my colleague from Minnesota, Rick Nolan, to join us here. Let me talk about this also. The other theme, in addition to the middle class economics, is the Make It In America theme that we have been talking about for 4 years now. Trade, taxes, energy, labor, education, research, and infrastructure, these are the elements that we fold into our Make It In America agenda. We talk about trade. There is going to be a lot of discussion about that here in Congress over the next several months as the Trans-Pacific Partnership comes up. Taxes, which we will pick up with the infrastructure issue in a few moments--energy is also part of the infrastructure issue. Anyway, Make It In America means bringing the jobs back home, employing Americans, doing the things that we need to do in this country, whether it is the health care sector; the infrastructure; building the roads, the bridges, and the like; or education. That is the Make It In America agenda, and it is part of the middle class economics. In fact, it is the key to it. Why is infrastructure important? Well, there are certain things like this, a collapsed bridge. This is on Interstate 5 in the State of Washington. This is a bridge near the Canadian border. About 3 years ago, it went into the river, collapsed--one of about 163,000 deficient bridges here in the United States. So, yep, we have got a problem. Are we going to be able to address this problem? Well, we had better. Actually, it is 156,000. I was a little bit overanxious there. The American Society of Civil Engineers, who build these things, have graded the American infrastructure, and I just want to go through it: aviation, our airports, which I believe the Vice President, in referring to LaGuardia, said even the developing countries have a better airport than LaGuardia in New York City, aviation, a D; bridges, C-plus--as I said, 156,000 deficient; dams, D; running water, D; energy, D-plus; hazardous waste, D; inland waterways, D; levees, to protect us from floods, D; our ports, a C; public parks and recreation, C; our railroads, C-plus--whoa, a C-plus; our highways, a D; our schools, that is where our kids are, a D; solid waste, we are doing pretty well, that is a B; our transit systems, D; wastewater, a D. Incidentally, in California, we are in the midst of a major drought, and it is perfectly clear that the wastewater systems are inadequate. If we were to also fund the recycling programs which could be connected to the wastewater, we could, in southern California, over the next half decade, create a million acre feet of new water as we recycle the water from the fifth biggest river on the west coast of the Western Hemisphere, the sanitation plants in southern California. So we have got some work out ahead of us. Let me bring this home before I invite my colleague from the great State of Minnesota to join us on this issue. Earlier today, I was reading an article in The Sacramento Bee about the transportation systems in Sacramento. Let me just share some of these thoughts with you. In Sacramento, the average commuter spends 32 hours each year stuck in traffic. This amounts to $669 of lost productivity. That is literally wages that could have been earned if they weren't stuck in traffic. For all of the commuters in the Sacramento area, which I represent, that is $834 million of commuting time. For the truckers in the area that are trying to pass through Sacramento on Interstate 5, on Interstate 80 or Highway 50, it is $199 million of lost productivity. There is another alternative. Down in Riverside, a southern California city that I once represented when I was lieutenant governor, they want to build a 13-mile streetcar system in the city of Riverside. It would cost about $300 million. The economic analysis that was done on that indicates that if they were to do it, there would be a 4-to-1 return on investment. Now, you tell me which investment banker on Wall Street wouldn't want to have a 4-to-1 return on their investment. Well, the city of Riverside could have a 4-to-1 return on their investment of $300 million to build that 13-mile streetcar section. That is property values and economic development. This morning, The Wall Street Journal published an article in which the American Society of Civil Engineers was quoted that between 2012 and 2022, in America, because of the insufficient infrastructure--and remember, I just read you their GPA, mostly Ds--lost sales, $1 trillion of lost sales. For the United States, the delays will cost $3.1 trillion. And to bring it home to a single company--a big company but, nonetheless, just one company--United Parcel Service, UPS, all of those big brown trucks that are out there, $105 million in lost revenue. There is a solution. The President has put forward to us, the Members of Congress, a 6-year, $478 billion transportation plan that will be paid for--fully paid for with the current gasoline and diesel tax not increased, keep it the same--and going out to those American corporations that are stiffing the American taxpayer by hiding their profits overseas. The President says: Bring those profits home; pay your fair share of the taxes. So there is a fully paid-for proposal before us here in the House of Representatives for a $478 billion, 6- year transportation program. Now, I think our Speaker represents an area in Ohio near Kentucky, and I believe there is a bridge in that area called the Brent Spence Bridge. It crosses the Ohio River between Kentucky and Ohio. It was built for 80,000 cars a day, and now there are over 200,000 cars a day that pass over that bridge--or try to pass over that bridge--creating a monumental traffic jam and slowing down the entire economy in that region. By the way, don't ever walk or drive underneath the bridge because the concrete in the bridge is falling off. They have a nice little safety net over the road beneath it, so perhaps, therefore, you won't be hit by a falling piece of concrete. So the issue for us, the Representatives of the American public, is: Are we willing to put together a full transportation program so that these kinds of bridge collapses are pictures of yesterday, not the pictures of tomorrow's future? I would like to have the gentleman from Minnesota, Mr. Rick Nolan, join us now. If you would come on down and join us, perhaps here on the floor, and take one of the microphones. Mr. Nolan, you have a fascinating history here in the House of Representatives. You were here in the early seventies as a Representative and then decided to go back to Minnesota and build a business, a lumber manufacturing, a timber manufacturing business. It was very successful. Then you came back to straighten us out, bringing all of that history to us. Welcome, Mr. Nolan. Thank you so very much for joining us this evening as we talk about transportation and infrastructure in America.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you, Mr. Rohrabacher. I know in your district--in the Orange County area--there is major medical research going on at the University of California at Irvine and, certainly, at UCLA, at the mind institutes there. Out of that research do come new technologies, new drugs, new kinds of equipment, some of which are patentable; and the licensing of the new drugs through the FDA is always a challenge, so we do have multiple tasks here. We have to deal with the patent laws and the availability of patent research dollars and then have to make sure that the drug actually is made available to address the illness. I thank you so very much for joining us. Mr. Speaker, I want to go back to a couple of things that we were talking about earlier on the research side. Our goal is to ramp up this research to try to get to the level that is suggested. Now, we always look at cost benefit. Is this research going to pay off? I think it will. As I was preparing for this evening, I came across an email, actually, from the University of California at Davis, which I represent--near Sacramento--at their California National Primate Research Center. They have been using stem cell research to address the issue of Alzheimer's. What they have found is that they are able to use this Nouvelle stem cell therapy in primates, which is similar to the human brain, and to actually have some success. They have now taken it the next step further. Here is where we are into the FDA and the approval of drugs, Mr. Rohrabacher. They have taken it the next step further, and they are doing clinical human trials with this drug, and it seems to restore the human brain. Now, that is a long way before we get to the end of this story, but this is what happens when we have research developing a new therapy--in this case, a stem cell therapy with primates--and now transferring it over to the human in a clinical trial. How exciting it is--the possibilities--not just in slowing down the progress of the disease, which has been the short-term goal, but maybe in being able to restore the human brain. Wow. Wow. I think of my mother-in-law. I think of those whom I know who have come down with this illness, and I am going, wow, what if? What if it had been available? Well, it could be. I know, Mr. Rohrabacher, you are very interested in international work. You have traveled extensively. You are involved with other countries and their research. This is not just a United States issue; this is an international issue. Earlier last year, in June, the new cochair of the Alzheimer's Task Force here in Washington, in the House of Representatives, conducted a bipartisan international conference in New York at the United Nations, pulling together researchers from around the world. We have another piece of this puzzle available to us in the United States-- international research, NIH research, research at the universities, at the various mind institutes around the Nation--all of that. As a result of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, with improvised explosive devices and the extraordinary impact that those have had on our military--the soldiers, the marines, and others who have suffered from those explosions--we are now, in the military budget, appropriating a significant amount of money for research into traumatic brain injury as well as into posttraumatic stress syndrome, trying to understand the human mind. What happens when you get that blow against the head? What causes the brain to react and to deteriorate? That research also informs us about Alzheimer's. One of the goals that I will be pursuing this year is to try to bring together all of these research programs that are underway. Even the National Football League is engaging in research having to do with traumatic brain injury to the football players in the professional football leagues. They are trying to understand what it is all about. So, if we could pull together all of that research and pool the information and make it available--perhaps what is going on at UC Davis and at other research institutions--I think we can jump-start the solution. Fortunately, I won't be doing this alone. Our former colleague here, Patrick Kennedy, heads up an organization called the One Mind organization, and that is their goal: to pull together the research--to get all of the international, the military, the National Institutes of Health, the National Football League--and to have all of us working towards a common goal of understanding the human mind, what the injuries are, and how we can deal with Alzheimer's as a result of all of that. I am going to put up a couple more pieces of this puzzle and the trauma that it brings. We discussed this briefly early on, and I just want to come back to this. The already high cost of Alzheimer's will skyrocket as the baby boomers age. This is driven by three things: one, the cost of treating Alzheimer's, which is very expensive and is ongoing; secondly, there is no known cure; and, thirdly, the demographic growth of the population. Today, you are looking at somewhere around $225 billion spent by the government and private and individuals and families on Alzheimer's, and it is expected to grow to close to $1 trillion by 2050. This is an extraordinary growth rate. A lot of this money is going to be taxpayer money spent on Medicare and Medicaid. This one shows the cost increases to Medicare and Medicaid. In 2010, Medicare and Medicaid were spending about $122 billion. In 2020, it is expected to go up to nearly $200 billion and then just continue to escalate. This, many think, is the way in which Medicare and Medicaid will be bankrupted--just with Alzheimer's alone. Now, this is the government spending. The private spending--private insurance and families--will probably be spending somewhere around a third of this amount in the years ahead. So, if we are able--and we believe we can. Just take one look at what is going on at UC Davis, and that is just one of dozens and dozens of examples. What is happening is that the research is coming on. The first goal is to delay the onset. It is anticipated that, if we were able to quickly ramp up to $2 billion a year of research, we would, within the next 4 to 5 years, be able to find a way, perhaps with a drug therapy, to delay the onset of Alzheimer's by 5 years. What does that mean? That means that the $2 billion that is spent on research leading to the delay--not the cure but just the delay of the onset--would, in the next 3 years, after that delay goes into place, save the taxpayers the $2 billion that was spent on research, and then those savings would continue on into the future. If you are a financial analyst on Wall Street and if you are able to get a payback within 3 years, you are thinking that that is a pretty good investment. So we ought to look at this in terms of cost benefit, in terms of investment--the financial side of it. That is appropriate. Yet, on the human side, think what could be done. Think what could be done to those families, to my wife's mother--my mother-in-law--if her illness were delayed 5 years. She would have had 5 more years of healthy life. She didn't die of heart disease or cancer. She died of Alzheimer's. She could have had an additional 5 years if we had been able, at that moment, to have delayed the onset of the disease. As we understand how to delay the onset, we will also learn how to cure the disease. This is where we are headed. This is our goal. This is what we want to try to accomplish. I am going to put this one up because it is so dramatic. Here is the cost of treatment today for the Federal Government. This is 2014: $150 billion from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. CMS: $150 billion. These are actually 2012 expenditures. Then this is where we are spending the money: $560 million on research. It is lopsided. My final point before I turn back my time today is to take these two charts, actually. This one: Research works. Research saves lives. Research improves the quality of life for Americans. Cancer research: we have decreased the cancer rate for breast cancer. Cancer research: we have decreased by 8 percent prostate cancer. HIV/ AIDS research: a 42 percent decrease in the death rate. Heart disease and stroke: 23 and 16 percent. Alzheimer's: we are not there yet. We are researching, but we are not there yet, so we wind up with a death rate that is rapidly increasing. Ultimately, it is about this: it is about my family, and it is about your family. It is about the American families. It is about the American families who are enduring their loved ones--their parents, their grandparents--slowly, slowly dying of Alzheimer's, losing their mental capabilities. It affected our family, and I suspect it has affected your family. It doesn't have to be. We can deal with this. Yes, we can--si, se puede. We can do this, and your Congress--Democrat and Republican--is working on this issue. We are going to beat Alzheimer's. It is our task. It is our challenge. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Let's do it. Yes, we can. Si, se puede. Thank you very much. I really appreciate your leadership on this. I know this is a personal issue for you with family having been impacted by it. I want to just take a few moments--and I know you are going to have to take off and head to another meeting--but Alzheimer's is very, very much a personal thing. This is my wife, Patti, with her mother as her mother was entering the last year of her 15-year struggle with Alzheimer's. We had the good fortune of Patti's mom, Merle, living with us in our home, and we were able to take care of her. We had a daycare come in to handle the issues during the day. But then in the evening, Patti and I took care of her. It turned out to be a good experience for us where the family really pulled together, the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren all coming together. I think our situation was, perhaps, unusual in that my mother-in-law was always kind, always gentle, even though in the last couple of years she could not speak and was unable to really move very much. But, nonetheless, it was a period of time where the grandchildren came to know her in a very different way. I remember one incident that took place about a year, maybe 14 months before she died. Her speech was garbled and not really clear. We couldn't understand. But our little 3-year-old granddaughter climbed up on great-grandma's bed and was listening to the great-grandmother talk. The rest of us adults were gathered around and we were talking about whatever it was, and our little 3-year old began to translate what great-grandma was saying. We were suddenly caught up in the awareness that, while the mind was not functioning fully, it was, nonetheless, functioning in a way in which this woman, who was then 90 years old, was able to understand what we were saying, but because of this disease was unable to articulate, at least to us, her involvement in the conversation. It was one of those moments when we realized that this illness destroys the mind a piece at a time. It doesn't just wipe out, as a stroke might, but it takes away the cognitive ability of the mind in a slow progression through time. This progression was about 15 years, but other progressions might be very, very rapid. I know earlier today our colleague from Missouri, Vicky Hartzler, had intended to join us, but was called away late this evening. Her mother died just 3 weeks ago of this illness. She explained some of the way in which it happened. When we come back in about a month to do another Special Order hour, I will ask her to join us and, hopefully, she will be able to share her experiences. But I suspect among the 435 of us here there are, perhaps, more than 50 percent of us whose families have been personally impacted, and then the neighbors, as Mr. Goodlatte was sharing with us. If you would like to join in, let's have a colloquy. We will share thoughts about what we can do about the research effort. I will put up some charts and we can chat on for a few minutes.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Higgins, thank you for sharing your thoughts on this dreaded disease for which there is no known cure and there is no way to diagnose it until it is present. You cannot get ahead of this illness, but there are ways we can make progress. You pointed out what has happened over the last decade with extraordinary research efforts, and this chart really lays it out there as to where we are. For breast cancer, we have seen a decline of 2 percent in breast cancer deaths; prostate cancer, an 8 percent decline; heart disease, a 16 percent decline; stroke, 23 percent decline; and then one of the great victories, HIV/AIDS, a 42 percent decline in the number of deaths. This is the result of research, an extraordinary amount of research going on, not only in the United States but around the world, resulting in significant drops in the death rates for those diseases. On the other hand, Alzheimer's, where we have just over $500 million of research, we have seen a 68 percent increase in the death rates. This is the story of Alzheimer's. This is the challenge that we face. This is the challenge that every American family faces and our communities. We will talk more about this a little later. The cochair of the Alzheimer's Task Force here in the Congress of the United States is the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Maxine Waters), who has joined us this evening to talk about the work that the task force is doing and her own commitment to this profoundly important issue. Maxine and I have had the pleasure of working together for 40 years, so it is all good.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Let me just pick up this chart. You mentioned research in your opening remarks, and then again. Your leadership on this has been absolutely extraordinary--the bills that you have introduced and the encouragement you have given to others to introduce legislation and push it forward. I think this is where we are going to spend our time--fighting for research. I am going to go through this. Ms. Waters, I know you must leave. Thank you so very much for joining us. This poster shows how we are spending our National Institutes of Health research dollars. We can be thankful for each piece of this research that is going on. First, on the cancer research ongoing with considerable success--and I will come back and show an earlier poster that I had--we are spending $5.418 billion. This is in fiscal year 2014--$5.418 billion. What does that result in? Well, over the years, between 2000 and 2010, we have seen breast cancer deaths decline by 2 percent, prostate cancer decline by 8 percent. That is what research will do. It is successful. With HIV/AIDS, just under $3 billion spent annually in 2014, and again we are seeing HIV/AIDS an incredible success story. Still with us, but nonetheless, we have seen death from HIV/AIDS decline by 42 percent as we have invested $3 billion over the years; in 2014, $3 billion, and a little less in the previous years. Similarly, cardiovascular illnesses--heart disease, stroke, and heart attacks--we are spending around $2 billion of your taxpayer money on this particular disease. What is the result? The result is that deaths from heart disease from 2000-2010, deaths from heart disease are down by 16 percent and stroke down by 23 percent. What does this mean? This means that research really works. Where are we with Alzheimer's research? Alzheimer's research in 2014 was $566 million, just over half a billion dollars for Alzheimer's research. And where are we with Alzheimer's? Well, that same period of time, we have seen Alzheimer's deaths increase by 68 percent, in part because there is no cure except death, and that is what has happened. As the baby boomers age, as that cohort of the population moves through into advanced age, Alzheimer's is taking a grip on those people. So this is the story. Our goal this year, along with the research that Ms. Waters has already discussed, and some other bills that will be discussed in the days ahead, our goal this year is to ramp up this research. A project, as a result of the legislation that was passed in the year 2011, gave us information from the National Institutes of Health and other scientists that the appropriate level of funding to understand Alzheimer's, to find a cure or at least a way of prolonging health and delaying the onset of the illness, should be about $2 billion a year, something similar to what we are spending on cardiovascular research. Fortunately, in last year's budget--that is the 2015 budget, that is the current budget--we increased the funding by about $25 million. Good. We are not getting very close to $2 billion, which is the goal to really get and understand this disease. But, nonetheless, we put $25 million more into it last year. I hope that all of us who are concerned about this make a full-court press this year to try to get that number up to a much more substantial number so that we can really get at this research. The President, recognizing this problem--as was discussed earlier by one of our colleagues here--the President has proposed an additional $50 million. Good. But, once again, not what the scientists tell us we need to really adequately fund this illness. So we are going to work on this. I notice that my colleague from California--would you like to join us? This is a bipartisan Special Order hour. Unusual, to be sure. Usually, we talk both sides--one side talks about the other side, the other side talks about them. This time we are talking about a common problem that affects all of us--Democrat, Republican, Independent, left, right, center, up, and down--all Americans. My colleague from California, welcome.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Congresswoman Waters, thank you so very, very much for your leadership as cochair of the Alzheimer's task force here in Congress. Obviously, it is leading to some good pieces of legislation. Last year, when you introduced that legislation, I had the privilege and pleasure of being a coauthor. I will join you again as you introduce those pieces of legislation. I bet we can get all 194 members of the task force on board. That will give us--let's see, we need 18 plus 6--24 more Members and we can get it past the House of Representatives.

Mr. GARAMENDI. I thank the gentleman from Virginia for joining us and for his commitment to this very serious issue. There are approximately 5.1 million Americans who have Alzheimer's today, and it is expected to substantially grow. As the baby boomers come into their latter years, we would expect to see as many as 13 million Americans with this disease in the years ahead. It will be an incredible challenge for this Nation. I now yield to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Higgins) for him to join us and share his thoughts on this issue.

Mr. GARAMENDI. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, ``Alzheimer's,'' a word that brings fear and trauma to families all across America and, indeed, around the world. Tonight we are going to spend our time talking about this dreaded disease for which there is no known cure and which always ends in death. I would like now to turn to my colleague, this being a bipartisan Special Order hour, unusual to be sure, but absolutely appropriate given the fact that this illness affects virtually every American family. I yield to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte).

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. I want to thank you and Mr. Tonko for joining us, so I have got Ohio and New York. Mr. Hoyer was here earlier from Maryland and Mr. Welch from Vermont. We covered a large part of the United States. We are all talking about what the President has put forth as a national policy of middle class economics: how we can grow the American economy, why it is so important for the middle class to really succeed, because that creates demand that then America businesses can fulfill in their many, many ways. I notice that the esteemed chairman of the Rules Committee is here, and I suspect he wants to present us with some information. Mr. Sessions, if you are ready--and I will continue on until you are ready. In the meantime, the elements of the middle class economics, we know why it is important. It builds the demand that the businesses can then fulfill--American business--and so you really create the jobs with that demand. It also gives us higher wages. You are strengthening the middle class with higher wages. We talk about infrastructure. We will spend a lot of time talking about infrastructure as we come up to the May deadline where we must renew the infrastructure law, the surface highway transportation. All of these are pieces of the puzzle. We are nearly out of time, but I see the esteemed chairman of the Rules Committee. Mr. Chairman, I yield.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Madam Speaker, and Members, wow. There are actually people here in the audience and Members. We have talked a lot about middle class economics, but why? Why is it important? Why did the President raise this issue in his State of the Union? What is this all about? We are going to spend some time here today working our way through middle class economics, and some of my colleagues may join me, and I asked the Republicans, if they want to join, they could too. It is okay, Madam Speaker, that they are not listening. But this is really an important issue. So why is middle class economics important? What is it all about? It is really about driving the economy. If you want to create jobs in America, if you want to have economic growth in America, the middle class of America, the great middle class, the millions upon millions of men and women that are working families, they need to grow. And so middle class economics is all about growing the American economy, because that is where demand is created. We often talk about the job creators, and businesses really create product and they create profit. But it is the middle class that actually creates the growth in the economy by creating the demand. So if we are able to grow the middle class, grow the paychecks, increase the vast number of Americans who are in the middle class, we will create the jobs. So that is why middle class economics is on our agenda. There are other pieces of this. It leads to higher wages. So when you increase the middle class, you increase the higher wages, creating the demand. So that is what this is all about. It is about opportunity. It is about growing the ability of the working families in America to make it, to have a shot at education, to have a shot at a home. So that is what we are going to talk about today in the next 46 minutes, about middle class economics. The President brought this issue to us. We are going to spend some time discussing this. I notice that our fearless whip, Steny Hoyer of Maryland, has joined us. Mr. Hoyer, please, let's get into this conversation.

Mr. GARAMENDI. I thank you, Mr. Hoyer. Nobody has been at this longer than you. You have been working in the Halls of Congress and across this Nation advocating for the middle class. Both Democrats and Republicans now agree that the middle class in America has stalled out. They have not seen the increase in their paychecks. In fact, in the last couple of years, there has actually been a decrease on the average middle-American paycheck. So what we are all about and what the President proposed to us in his State of the Union was middle class economics. And it is critically important, if we want to grow the jobs in this Nation, that we have got to pay attention to the middle class and how they can improve themselves, how they can have a higher standard of living, have greater paychecks. In doing so, we will grow this economy. We will be able to deal with the deficit. There are numerous ways in which this can be done. We need to look for higher wages. Infrastructure is critically important. In the budget that the President just put forth yesterday, there is a major advancement that he is proposing for infrastructure, a 6-year program, over $600 billion in that 6-year period--$673 billion building our roads, rebuilding our bridges, our ports, our communication systems. When you do that, you actually are going to grow the economy, and it is the middle class that will have those jobs. So this is all about growing the middle class, otherwise known as middle class economics. That is what we are going to debate this year. We are going to spend the next several months as we put together the budget first and then the appropriations and the various pieces of legislation--for example, reauthorizing the surface transportation program. We want to structure that. We, the Democrats, want to structure that in such a way that the principal benefits flow to the working families of America so that they can see greater wages, so that they can see greater opportunities. And there are many, many pieces to this puzzle that we need to pay attention to. So we want to grow American jobs. The gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) was here just a moment ago. And he has been talking about this theme of making it in America, which builds on the Buy America laws which have been in effect for more than 40 years. Our taxpayer money must be spent, should be spent on American-made equipment. We will come to this in a little more detail, but these are the fundamental parts of growing American jobs. You make things in America, whether that happens to be a movie or a new app for your iPhone or a train or a plane, whatever it happens to be. Make it in America; and use our taxpayer money to buy American-made equipment. This one here: a well-educated workforce is fundamental to growing any economy, whether it be in Bangladesh or in the United States, the education of the workforce. If you have a well-educated workforce, your economy will grow. America used to have the best education system in the world. We are not there anymore. We have fallen way off that power curve. We have got to establish America's position as having the best educated workforce in the entire world. Now, the President, in his State of the Union and as part of the middle class economics, spoke to this issue when he talked about community colleges, all Americans being able to get 2 years of education at a community college, perhaps to pick up an AA degree or some skill set, and that it be free. What an important, important element that is in having a well-educated workforce. There are many, many other pieces to this educated workforce, and we will, over the next several weeks and months, be talking about this as we go forward. Research and development. Well, I am from California, and I represent a major research university, the University of California, Davis. You can just see spreading out from that university new businesses in biotechnology, biomedical, biopharmaceutical. We are seeing energy programs and new companies being created from the research at the universities. This is not just at Davis, California, but certainly Silicon Valley is a prime example of the skill being used all across this Nation, and other research institutions around the Nation. These are the ways in which you grow American jobs. We talked earlier about infrastructure. We will come back to that. Trade policies are also critically important. We will be debating the Trans-Pacific Partnership here and the TTIP, the European trade agreement. In those trade agreements, it is vitally important that we don't give away the American jobs. It will be a great debate. Very important. We have seen what happened with NAFTA and other trade agreements when we have simply allowed the offshoring of American jobs. So these are six pieces of how you grow American jobs. I notice my colleague from Vermont is here. If you would care to join us in this conversation, I would be delighted.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Chairman, I have always looked forward to a dialogue, a bipartisan dialogue, on important issues, and I didn't quite know that we would come to that at this moment while we await your staff bringing down their papers. In the meantime, I thank my colleagues very much, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GARAMENDI. If I may interrupt here for a second? Thank you for the courtesy that you provided to me in the Rules Committee when the liquefied natural gas--the LNG bill came up and when we talked about how we could use that strategic asset to enhance another strategic asset, the American shipbuilding industry. You were kind. We had a wonderful discussion in the committee and then again on the floor. It is another way in which we can grow the American economy, by using public policy in this way, and there are many, many other pieces to it. I think your staff has just arrived with the papers that you need, so I will yield to you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Tonko, I thank you so very, very much. Ms. Kaptur, we are in what we call the rapid fire. You have about 2 minutes, then I will wrap it up with another minute, and we are out of time. If you would, please.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Ms. Kaptur, you are very, very correct about the role of trade policy and hollowing out the American jobs in almost every sector--you mentioned several sectors--and in every one of those, we have seen this happen. We are going to be engaging in a debate this year about whether we are going to extend trade policies to what is called the Trans-Pacific Partnership and, also, very, very soon, whether we will give away our constitutional obligation to write trade policy, whether we are going to give that away to the administration. For me, this is extremely important. We have seen this year after year, we have seen this problem, and I do not want to see a repeat of it in the new legislation. I would like to just move to a couple of other issues. We have got about 7 minutes left. Perhaps, Mr. Tonko, if you would take a few of those minutes and wrap up, keeping in mind that this is all in the context of middle class economics, how the American family that is struggling to make it in America, how they can do better with a set of policies that we are proposing to the American public--tax policy, infrastructure, educational policy, research--all of these things that are part and parcel of middle class economics.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Tonko, you have been here on the floor with me many times over the last few years, and we keep beating this drum about American jobs. We now have a policy from the President, middle class economics, that has all of the elements, many of which we have talked about on the floor--the research issue, the education issue, the job training issue, the infrastructure, all of those things--and it is all pulled together in middle class economics. Another piece of that puzzle is trade policy. If we are going to grow American jobs, as I put this up before--Make It In America, Buy American, education workforce, research, infrastructure, and then this one down here, trade policy. The gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) has spoken to us on the floor about this issue many times. She is passionate about it. I think she is right about it. We have to be really, really careful as to how we do our international trade programs so that we don't hollow out the great American manufacturing sector, American jobs, whether they are in agriculture or manufacturing, or in other parts of our economy. Ms. Kaptur, we would love to hear from you on this issue. I know that you are passionate about it and very well informed.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Welch, thank you for joining us. Madam Speaker, I am going to carry on here for a few more moments. We are going to talk about a few other things that go into this. That previous placard had Make It In America as one of the principal ways of growing American jobs, and it is really true. Madam Speaker, I want to give you just two examples of how Make It In America and Buy America creates American jobs--or not. Two bridges, one on the west coast, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, and one on the east coast--New York, actually--the Tappan Zee Bridge in New York. This bridge in the San Francisco Bay was supposed to be about a $3 billion project. It turned out to be over $6 billion. Instead of buying American steel, they went out and bought Chinese steel. It was supposed to be 10 percent cheaper. It turned out to be far, far more expensive. It became over budget. It did create 3,000 jobs in China and serious problems with the quality of the steel, the welds, and other problems. Anyway, it wound up almost $4 billion over budget, more than 100 percent more expensive. That was San Francisco. This is my State. This is a major controversy and, if you will, a major scandal in California. In New York, the Tappan Zee Bridge is now under construction. It is 100 percent U.S.-made steel. It is coming in at about $3.9 billion total, under budget, and there were 7,728 American jobs as a direct result of the decision made by New York to buy American, to make it in America. This is the most clear example that I have been able to find--west coast, east coast--and the east coast is making the right decision of buying American, using the American taxpayer dollars in the case of both the commuters in New York or the commuters in San Francisco Bay, paying their money to China in the case of San Francisco Bay Bridge, or to American workers and American steel companies, a prime example of why Make It In America is so critically important because it is all about those middle class jobs. It is about the steelworkers, the ironworkers, and the men and women that are doing the welding that are in the shops and in the steel mill harvesting or mining the coal and the iron ore to make the steel. Keep this in mind, America: when we talk about Make It In America policies and when we talk about middle class economics, we are talking about bringing it home, keeping it home, and building our own economy. China can do what they want to do, but let them do it with somebody else's money and not with American taxpayer money, so we are going to push this policy hard. I want to give you another example, Madam Speaker, and that is that at this moment Amtrak--we know what Amtrak is. It is just the American passenger rail system. Amtrak is requesting a waiver from the Department of Transportation on the Buy America requirements for the purchase of 28 new high-speed rail train sets for the east coast corridor. Amtrak correctly wants to make the trip between Washington, D.C., and Boston a whole lot faster. To do that, they want to transition to a whole new type of train--not the Acela, which was the last version of high speed. They want to go to a real high-speed system here on the east coast. However, we are talking about tens of millions of dollars to be spent on these high-speed train sets, 28 of them. They want to waive the Buy America requirements--waive the Buy America requirements. What happened with the Bay Bridge, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge when they did that? The jobs went overseas. I am saying: No way, no how, are you going to waive the Buy America requirements. They say: Oh, but you don't understand. America doesn't make high-speed trains. Yes, that is correct because we have never had them in the United States, and we never will if we waive the Buy America requirements both for the high-speed rail on the east coast or the high-speed rail on the west coast. No way, no how, Madam Speaker, should we allow American taxpayer money to be spent overseas. Build it in America, make it in America, and hold on to those Buy America requirements. They are legal. They have been in law for nearly half a century. Keep them. Amtrak, I am sorry, but I have talked to the companies that could manufacture these trains. They say: Of course we can make them in America. It is going to take a little while. We have got to build the factory. We can do it. If it is required, we will do it. I will give you an example of how it actually happened. In the stimulus bill, the American Recovery Act, there was a provision, some $700 million for Amtrak to purchase 100 percent American-made locomotives--these are the electric locomotives that will be operating on the east coast corridor, 100 percent American made, $700 million, about 80 different trains, 80 different locomotives. Siemens looked at that and said: Hmm, 700 million, that is a lot of money, 80, 90 trains or locomotives, we can do that. They took their light-rail factory in Sacramento, California, about a mile from my district, a few miles from my home, expanded it, and began the process of making it in America. Those new locomotives are 100 percent American made by a German company operating in the United States. Don't tell me you can't do it. Don't tell me that you cannot make aluminum frames for these trains, that you can't make wheels and brake systems in the United States. This is the United States. We used to be--and we must be--at the top of the pack. We can be if we bring it home, if we keep it home, and if we make it in America. Remember. Remember this fiasco in California. Remember what happens when you went to China to buy steel, 100 percent over budget, and a lot of ongoing problems as to the safety of this bridge going forward. Remember New York. They said they were going to buy American. It comes in under budget with 7,728 jobs in the United States, built by Americans. I am not proud of California in this situation. Madam Speaker, there are a couple of other things that are on my mind. As I said, why middle class economics? It is about growing the demands. It is about rebuilding the middle class, giving the purchasing power to the middle class, and growing their wages. Grow the paycheck. Grow the paycheck. Grow the jobs. Grow the paycheck. These are all ways in which we can raise the wage. There is this little #raisethewage, so when you see that out there on your Twitter account, you know what it is about. Grow the paycheck, buy American, education--job training and education. This is a big one: more than 50 percent of the women in America are working, and they are working at the same job as a man for about 75 percent of the wage. Do you want to grow the wage? Do you want a bigger paycheck for American families? Then pay attention to the law that has been in effect in the United States since John F. Kennedy signed it in the sixties, and that is equal pay for equal work. This one down here at the bottom, the men and women at the bottom at the minimum wage. We have been calling for a raise in the minimum wage for months and years here. If you want to help out the American economy, you raise the minimum wage--we--excuse me, not you, us--Members of Congress and the Senate-- raise the minimum wage, and we will see greater purchasing power and a growing economy as a result of that. You don't lose jobs. The economic studies are clear. You are not going to lose jobs by raising the minimum wage. It hasn't happened in California. The minimum wage went up in California a year ago. We have seen job growth. We didn't see less jobs. What we are seeing, Madam Speaker, is greater purchasing power by the families of America, fewer people on food stamps, and fewer people on welfare. As you raise the minimum wage, that is what happens, so this is what we call grow the paycheck, raise the wage. I am going to let education go. We will pick that up later. I want to pick up one of my current challenges. I think anybody that studies American history will know that America was the greatest maritime nation in the world. We would contend with the United Kingdom-- England--as to which was the greatest maritime nation, and we surpassed England. We have lost that. We have seen our maritime industry--our mariners and our ships--decline. We have very, very few ships flying the American flag anymore. All of the cruise ships that are advertised even on the Super Bowl 2 days ago were flagged overseas. They didn't have American crews on them, although all of their passengers seemed to be American-- or at least many of them. What we need to do is to find ways to rebuild the American maritime industry. These are the sailors, the merchant marines, the American mariners, the captains, the sailors, and the engineers. It is also the shipbuilding. The great shipyards of America are in need of business. We do a lot of naval ships. Madam Speaker, this is a fundamental national security issue. The shipyards in America, the ability to build ships for the Navy and for our domestic trade is critical as a security issue. Obviously, it is critical as a jobs issue. We can do this. We are in the process of exporting natural gas with liquefied natural gas. A new terminal by the Cheniere company in Texas will need 100 ships or more just for that one terminal. What I am saying is that if we are going to ship a strategic national asset--natural gas in the form of liquefied natural gas--if we are going to export that, then we ought to use that export to secure a second national security issue, and that is our merchant marines and our shipyards. When this tanker, which happened to have been built in Japan, finds its way to an American port, will it be American sailors? This is a very dangerous thing. You are talking about millions of gallons of natural gas in liquefied form. Will it be American sailors? Will this ship be an American ship? India wants to buy natural gas from the United States. They have a tender offer out. That tender offer says: We want to buy X gazillion cubic meters of natural gas--good--and three of the ships that transport that must be built in India. And I say to India: Great. The other six or seven ships must be built in the United States. You want our gas, terrific. Then we want to have the ships built in the United States with American sailors. This is a fundamental national security issue. I just noticed that my good friend, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Tonko), came to join me on the floor, probably because I was praising New York so profusely with the Tappan Zee Bridge. Mr. Tonko, good for New York. Shame on California for building a bridge with Chinese steel.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Refinance your home; refinance your student debt. It is a bookkeeping procedure at the Federal level. Right now, those students are paying a very, very high interest rate to the U.S. Government, and they are held back. This is a major part of the middle class.

Mr. GARAMENDI. You bet.

Mr. GARAMENDI. We could borrow money at less than 2 percent now for 10 years, probably 3 or 4 percent for 20 years. Why don't we go out and borrow at 2 percent, refinance that debt, and let them pay 2\1/2\ rather than 6, 7, 8, and 9 percent?