John Garamendi

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Representative Tonko, thank you. I was just thinking through that Export-Import, and the buzz inside the Beltway here in Washington that it only helps the big companies-- General Electric and Boeing. The fact of the matter is, yes, it certainly helps those companies export airplanes and jet engines and whatever else, but it is the small companies that really take advantage of it. It is the start-ups and the growing companies that need that support. I asked my staff, actually an intern, to do some research on the kinds of financing mechanisms that China, Japan, and Korea use to export their ships that they make. The great shipbuilding industry is no longer in the United States, it is in those countries. There are one or two European countries that are also involved, but each of those countries support those shipbuilding companies with programs that are exactly the same as the Export-Import Bank, which is a loan guarantee. And it works.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Madam Speaker, when talking on the floor, presenting legislation, it is always good to have a compass, so you can have some sense of where you are going and what it is all about. This is one I often bring to the floor when we talk about the issues of the day. This is from FDR--Franklin Delano Roosevelt--and he said the ``test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.'' It is a compass, and it is a way of judging progress or a lack of progress, and we seem to have more of the latter than the former. We have much to do if we are going to add to those who have little. In America, the American middle class, the working men and women, the families who raise their children try to buy a home, a car, maybe take a vacation--they have been struggling for the last 20 years. It has been tough. They have not seen income growth. The statistics are stark and clear. The middle class of America has stagnated, and, in fact, it has shrunk, as more and more Americans have fallen into the lower income class. There is something we can do about it, and we, Democrats, intend to do just that. We want to jump-start the middle class. We want to put in place policies that will grow the opportunities for the working families of America, for those men and women that get up in the morning, feed their children, get them off to school while they are getting off to a job. There are things we can do. I want to talk about that tonight. Some of my colleagues will join us a little later. Let me put up the agenda for jump-starting the middle class, the Make It In America agenda, rebuilding the American manufacturing sector, which was the heart and--in many ways--the soul of the working middle class of America, where they could get a decent wage, where they know that a husband or a wife, by themselves, could provide sufficient income for the family to have a home, a car, and enjoy the benefits of this great Nation. So we will talk about the Make It In America agenda, and we will go at that in some length tonight because that is our basic subject matter. The other one is very simple. It is a reflection on the demographics, and it is a reflection on the working people of America, and it is women. It is women. What we say is that when women succeed, America succeeds. There is a set of policies that we need to put in place all across this country that will guarantee that the women of America that are out there working day in and day out have an equal opportunity. Right now, they don't. They make about 70 cents on every dollar that a man makes. There is an inequality that exists in America's workplace, and our agenda is to end that inequality, to make sure that whether you are a man or a woman, you are going to be paid an equal amount for the same amount of work, the same experience, the same productivity. So when women succeed, America succeeds. There are several other policies here that are family-friendly policies, and we will talk about that another day. If the middle class is to succeed, if we are going to jump-start the opportunities for the middle class, a key element is education. So that is the third plank--the third leg upon which we rest our policies. How can we jump-start the middle class? Education--there are very many things that we can do in education. One just passed the House of Representatives on a bipartisan vote after almost two decades of struggle. We are revamping the job training programs in America, so that the preparation that people need to get a decent job are streamlined, effective, and efficient, and that is part of it, the job training programs, but it is more than that. American students now have to--in almost every case--borrow an extraordinary amount of money in order to get a higher education, whether it is community college or the 4-year colleges and beyond. That extraordinary debt burden is enhanced by extraordinarily high interest rates, so what we want to do is to bring down those interest rates, and there are three or four different pieces of legislation that our Democratic team has put forth, all of them to accomplish the same goal, bringing down the interest rates. We would like to see it go down to the same interest rates that banks pay for the money that they borrow from the Federal Government and the Federal Reserve--wouldn't that be nice--because it is almost zero, but we don't think we can get that far. We know it can bring that interest rate down from 6, 7, 8 percent down to the 3 percent, maybe the 4 percent range--literally cutting in half the cost of that money. So there are a series of policies on education. Let me turn to the one that we want to focus on tonight, which is the Make It In America agenda. There are many pieces to this. One of them was put forward by our team, and there are about seven different elements to this program. This is our logo, Make It In America, so that Americans can make it. Trade policy, taxes, energy policy, labor, education--which we just talked about--research, and infrastructure, these are the elements of a solid program to have the middle class have an opportunity, to jump- start the working men and women so that they can, once again, make it in America--by rebuilding the manufacturing sector, by having decent trade policies, where we don't give it away and see the American corporations simply run off to China or Bangladesh or wherever to get the lowest possible wage, trade policies that are fair to America. Our tax policy is critically important. If anybody was reading the newspapers, The Wall Street Journal or other business newspapers last week, the word now is ``inversion.'' Well, what is inversion? It is simply a runaway American corporation, running away to the lowest possible tax haven in the world and making themselves domiciled in that country, leaving America behind, where they got their start, where they built their enterprise and simply running away, leaving those who cannot run to pay the burden of operating this great country's security, our defense, and all of the other things we need to do. So tax policy fits into it. Energy policy, labor--we will go through some of these tonight. We won't get to all of them. I want to deal very quickly with this last one, which is the infrastructure. We passed a bill last week, and it was a stopgap. It was a kick the can down the road bill to keep our national highway system funded. It was really a pretty lousy bill. It would extend for some 10 months an inadequate amount of funding for the transportation systems of this Nation, and it was funded by a cockamamie scheme of somehow smoothing pensions, which basically meant that American corporations didn't have to pay as much into their pension system, so that they could pay more in taxes. It is not going to happen. If you wonder why Detroit, why San Jose, why other cities and companies across this Nation have troubles with their pension systems, it is because of this kind of foolish legislation. What are you to do? Let the highway program stop? No. We passed the bill, and we will see where it winds up. What we really need is what the President has proposed--a robust, comprehensive make it and build it in America program. It is called the GROW AMERICA Act, to grow America, to build the infrastructure, and there are several pieces to this piece of legislation--all of them deserve the immediate attention of the 435 of us in the House of Representatives and the 100 Senators--proposed by the President and, therefore, dead on arrival here. If it had been proposed by--I don't know--any other leader in the world, it probably would have passed by now, but the Republicans will not allow President Obama's proposals to move forward. Here it is, the highway system. Now, this is just in 2015. The highway system would get even more money than it has today, some $60 billion total, $7.6 billion to fix the current highway system, and this is in addition to the money that the States and locals are putting in-- public transit, an increase in public transit, the buses, the light rail trains, and the like, inner city rail, Amtrak, boosting that--I am going to come back to Amtrak in a few moments. International trade--back to what I talked about a few moments ago in the Make It In America agenda--international trade, the ports, revamping the ports, a freight policy--really, for the very first time, we would have an opportunity to have, in the United States, a freight policy. How do you get the containers off the ship in Long Beach, put them on a railcar, travel across the United States to some terminal, and then, once again, put them on a truck to go to wherever they are going? A policy, a comprehensive policy about how we move freight is critically important to the United States. International commerce and fair trade is important because it does allow for the boosting and the growth of the American economy. Now, free trade is something different, and that basically means give it away to some other country, which we should not do. This GROW AMERICA Act is one of the principal elements in jump- starting the middle class. Why? Because these are middle class jobs. These are construction jobs on the highways, on the transit system, in the railroads, and certainly in the ports and the freight system-- middle class jobs. How do we grow the economy? Build the infrastructure, increase the jobs for the working men and women and the families of America, and we grow the economy. By the way, we also grow the tax revenues because people are working. They are not tax takers, they are taxpayers. So this is a proposal that the President has put forward. There has not been one hearing in the House of Representatives on this proposal that is now over 4 months old. Why? Why? Why is it that we have not given the President of the United States at least the consideration and the courtesy of having a hearing on his proposal? We should do so because it happens to be a very, very good proposal. Let's take a couple of these elements for a moment. This bridge collapsed. Now, this isn't a bridge from Donetsk in Ukraine that was bombed during that war there. This is a bridge in Washington, a bridge north of Seattle on Interstate 5, the highway system between Canada, the United States, and Mexico, right down the coast, the west coast of California. This bridge collapsed just a couple of years ago. And this is not unusual. We have had bridges collapsing all across the United States. This is part of the GROW AMERICA agenda. It is part of the agenda that we have in mind for the middle class, jump-starting the middle class, because when this bridge is built of American-produced steel in the Buy America laws that are presently on the books--which, by the way, the President says we ought to make even more robust so that your tax dollars are spent on American-made steel, American-made concrete, and the other elements that go into building these infrastructure projects, in other words, spreading the opportunity that comes from the transportation system and the growing and the building of the transportation system into all the other elements in the economy. It can be done. The GROW AMERICA Act is specifically designed to deal with the deficiency in America's roads, and particularly in the bridges. Oh, the economic loss as a result of this highway system being shut down? Unfathomable. Didn't have to happen. And if we pass the GROW AMERICA Act, it is not likely to happen. I want to pick up that little piece about what happens when you spend your tax money on American-made systems. Now, we talk a lot about green energy, as we should. We talk about energy conservation, as we should. We talk about wind turbines, and we talk about alternate energy systems such as solar, as we should. But where are those manufacturers? Where are the wind turbines manufactured? Where are the solar systems manufactured? Oh, China. By the way, we have a trade suit against China for dumping solar panels in the United States and decimating the American manufacturing system. This piece of legislation, 1524, I like it. I am the author of it. H.R. 1524, Make It In America, create clean energy manufacturing jobs-- simple. Your tax dollars must be spent on American-made solar, wind, and green energy systems. Now, if some developer out there wants to build a solar energy plant and use your tax dollars as a subsidy to pay for that plant, then if this becomes law, he must buy American-made solar panels. Now, if he wants to use his own money, he can buy whatever he wants. But I believe your tax dollars ought to be spent on American-made equipment, which is part of the Make It In America agenda. There are many other pieces to this puzzle, and in the Democratic Caucus, we have introduced well over 50 pieces of legislation to advance the program of Make It In America so that the American middle class has a chance to grow and a chance to prosper. We can do that. Any number of those bills--or, in fact, all of them--would advance the middle class, literally jump-starting the middle class and giving American families an opportunity to enjoy the benefits of this incredible society and this incredible country we call America. Joining me tonight is a woman from Ohio who has spent many years dealing with manufacturing and talking about the things we need to do to build and to grow the manufacturing sector of America. I think you come from the heart of that. Marcy Kaptur, welcome. Please share with us your thoughts.

Mr. GARAMENDI. I actually think, if I might say so, it is a small group in the Republican Party that is really taking the lead in this issue. Somehow they believe that government ought not be involved in commercial enterprise, when in fact since the very beginning of our Nation government has been involved, and together with the private sector is responsible for the growth of this incredible economy. This is but one example. There are numerous other ones. I was just thinking about some of the words that the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) spoke regarding energy policy. We are now generating and extracting a large amount of natural gas, and so much so that now there is a desire to export that natural gas in liquid form called liquefied natural gas, LNG. We have to be careful because that natural gas has given us the opportunity to pull down our energy costs, manufacturing costs, so we are now seeing companies returning to the United States. Dow Chemical is but one example. I used to represent their major plant out in Pittsburg, California. They are coming home because of energy policy, so we have to be careful about the export of LNG because it can drive up the price and harm the growth of our manufacturing sector. However--and here is an opportunity--the LNG is a strategic national asset. It is bringing down our cost of energy. Shipbuilding is also a strategic national industry. Our United States Navy, the most powerful and most effective and awesome in the world, depends upon American shipyards. However, private shipbuilding in the United States has basically gone downhill, together with the mariners, the maritime crews that are on those American-built ships. We have an opportunity here. If we are going to export LNG, then we ought to export that LNG on American-built ships with American crews. It is an issue of public policy. We can do this, and in so doing, we can revitalize an important sector of the American economy, the shipbuilding economy, which is found on all of the coasts of America, from Maine, Philadelphia, around in the gulf to San Diego, and all of the way up to Seattle. There are shipyards that are desperate for business, and the LNG export is an opportunity to capture and bring home the shipbuilding, and when it is coupled with the Export-Import Bank issue, we can really restart and rebuild a critical element in the economy of America.

Mr. GARAMENDI. You are so correct. Let me give you an example. Yesterday I called together my manufacturing advisory committee. We had about 50 manufacturers, some very, very large--Boeing was there--and some very small companies. The discussion centered around precisely what you talked about. We had representatives from Lawrence Livermore National Lab, Sandia National Lab, Lawrence Berkeley Lab, and the University of California Davis, researchers, the most advanced research going on in the world. Their discussion was not about nuclear weapons, which you might expect from Lawrence Livermore and Sandia National Labs, because that is their principal job, how to deal with the nuclear weapons issue, but they were talking about technologies that they have come into and have advanced through their research, like laser research. One of the companies that was there was a spinoff from research that was done at Lawrence Livermore National Lab on laser technology, and it is called laser peening. Now you have heard of a ball-peen hammer that is used to strike metal, and in striking the metal, it actually strengthens it. Well, now they are using lasers to strike that metal, and the result of it is that you significantly strengthen the metal. And this is now used by General Electric and others in the manufacturing of some of the internal parts in the jet engines. It substantially strengthens them. That is just one example of the way that research can flow into the manufacturing sector, enhancing the job opportunities for the middle class, and once again, it is made in America and is giving the middle class a jump start. These things all come together, so this manufacturing group yesterday dealt on everything you talked about. They were talking about export. They talked about tax policy. They talked about research into the private sector. Another example, the University of California, which I have the honor of representing, has a very large engineering school. It is one of the largest in the Nation, and they are producing--I think they have 8,000 students in their engineering program. A couple of the graduates, a few years back, developed a new way of programming machine tools--computer-assisted machine tools. They were so advanced that a Japanese machine tool company, one of the largest in the world, began to look at this and said: we need that technology. They incorporated it into their program, and then they decided they needed to be near the researchers. So they have now located in Davis, California, a major manufacturing program to make these very advanced machine tools, using the research that comes from the university, a marvelous example of what we need to do in our public policies.

Mr. GARAMENDI. If I might interrupt you, before you move to the research agenda, which is absolutely critical, today the President of the United States signed the revamping of the job training programs in America. This is a bipartisan effort. It passed the House on a bipartisan vote--I think almost universal votes for the Democrats; the Republicans, maybe two-thirds voted for it and a third against it--but it is a complete revamp of an important element of what you just described, which is the job training and the job preparation and the training that is needed for these advanced manufacturing technologies.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Can I give you another example? It was exciting--it was a really exciting day, Mr. Tonko.

Mr. GARAMENDI. One of the small businesses--of several of them, actually, after listening to the heads of these extraordinary laboratories said: yeah, but I am just a small company, I don't have any money to go and work with you guys on products that we want to develop. The fellow from the SBA, the Small Business Administration, raised his hand--you know, I kind of see him wanting to jump into the conversation--so I called on him and he said: we can help. I am going: You are from the government, and you can help? He said: we can help, we can help, we have a voucher program. I didn't know this existed in the Small Business Administration, but they have a voucher program that a small business that wants to connect to one of the national laboratories or one of the universities can get a voucher that is worth a certain amount of money, take it down to the laboratory, and begin to work with the laboratory on transferring technology to that business. Wow, I mean, do businesses know that such a thing exists? Are we promoting that? Are we supporting the Small Business Administration, so that they can help these small businesses in really what I think is a unique and wonderful way? I interrupted you. My apologizes, Mr. Tonko.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Excuse me. Are you like California, with D ratings?

Mr. GARAMENDI. Let's put aside that lawsuit tomorrow and all the foolishness that it is and at least let you and me and whoever cares to join in this talk about substantive issues the American people really want, which is to do our work to put together programs that actually meet the needs of the people. This is the President's proposal. I know the President has said if it has his name on it, it isn't going anywhere. So take his name off of it and let's just call it an American act. What is it? It is a 4-year program. It is 4 years of transportation infrastructure funding. As you said, it is holistic. It includes many different elements, including planning and research, as you just described. It is $302 billion over the 4 years, which is a substantial increase over what we are presently doing. It is fully paid for and does not increase the deficit. I love my charts. I hope the rest of you like them as much as I do. If you don't, I am going to show them anyway. What happens when we invest a dollar in infrastructure is we actually grow the economy by $1.57. So for every dollar we invest, we get economic growth. We increase the economy in this case by another 57 cents beyond the dollar that we have already spent. And as you just said, you are laying in place the foundation. You have made the capital investment that will endure for years to come. Anyway, in 4 years, this GROW AMERICA Act is $302 billion over the 4- year period. For transportation, the highway system has $199 billion. That is a 22 percent increase over what we are currently spending. In the area of transit systems, it is $72 billion over the 4-year period. That also is an increase. There is research, which we have talked about. The multimodal, this I really like. You talked about the transit hubs, and that is an important piece, but the multimodal freight system is the ports, the trains, and the highways all coming together. I know you have major projects in New York. You may want to talk about those. These are the hubs for which our economy grows because it is the export as well as the import from overseas. It is the rail system that then takes those containers of that cargo and puts it on the rails to go across the country--whether it is BNSF, or UP on the west coast, or the CSX rail system on the east coast--and the trucks, and they all come together in a hub. So there is actually $10 billion for those rail hubs. For the rail system itself to improve the Nation's rails, it is $19 billion over the 4 years. Then there are the special innovative programs that local governments want to do like the TIGER grants. These are local programs. That is $5 billion. It is a substantial growth in what we have been spending over the previous years, and you will remember the chart that shows the decline in spending. It is an opportunity for us to pick it up and push it forward at a much higher level, employing people, growing the economy in the process, and laying down the foundation--the concrete, the steel, the bridges, the rails-- upon which the economy will grow. I know you have examples of this. Please, Mr. Tonko.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Si se pueda. Yes, we can.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Representative Tonko, what is happening tomorrow? The Speaker and the leadership of this House are going to do a press conference to talk about suing the President?

Mr. GARAMENDI. No doubt about that. I am thinking about the Twin Cities. That was another bridge that collapsed more recently. These are real reminders of the necessity of dealing with the reality of transportation. Fortunately, there is a way to solve the transportation and the infrastructure challenges of this Nation. It has been proposed by President Obama. It is called the GROW AMERICA Act. It specifically is designed to rebuild our crumbling transportation system. It is a comprehensive plan. It deals with all of the various parts of the transportation and infrastructure system. There is a major piece for our rail. There is a major piece for inner city transit buses and transit within the cities. There is a piece for the ports, bridges, and highways. All of this is encompassed in the GROW AMERICA Act, which the President and Secretary Foxx of the Department of Transportation proposed a few months ago. The legislation was presented to the House of Representatives, introduced here in the House by Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton about a month and a half ago, and it has simply sat there. The Transportation and Infrastructure Committee of this House has not taken it up, although it should. We should be holding hearings on this issue, because this is what we need to address: the rail system, the buses, the ports, the bridges, the highways, the freight systems; the movement of men, women, materials, and freight all across this country. The program is a very robust program, and over 4 years it will bring us almost back to what we were doing in 2002. Because in 4 years, we would be spending at the level of $325 billion a year over that 4-year period of time. But here is what it means for next year. If we were to pass the GROW AMERICA Act now rather than kicking the can down the road, beginning October 1, 2014, we would have $7.6 billion to fix our highway system. We would have $6.8 billion to improve public transportation: buses, light rail, and intracity rail. We would have $3.4 billion for our rail systems, like what you have here in the Northeast Corridor. Out in California, we have the Capital Corridor, the train system between San Diego and Los Angeles, and so forth. And we would have $1 billion for our freight transportation system, or a total of $18.6 billion more in 2015 to fix our crumbling infrastructure. This is a very robust investment and it covers all of these programs. Each of these programs are necessary in and of themselves, like the highway system, to fill the potholes so that men and women across the country don't have to, as I must do, take my pickup in for a front wheel realignment. And all of these other systems, like transit, rail, port and freight systems, we would be able to grow those. We would be able to begin to fix our infrastructure system, and we would put people back to work.

Mr. GARAMENDI. And we haven't taken up a transportation bill, have we?

Mr. GARAMENDI. We can do it. It is interesting that we spend a lot of time talking on the floor here in the Chamber about government regulation and red tape and all of that. In the GROW AMERICA Act, there are major reforms to speed up projects, to move projects faster--to get the concrete poured, to get the bridge built, to get the airport up and running. Those reforms are very, very important. They, along with the overall bill, are languishing for lack of a hearing, for lack of action. We really have the opportunity to not only put the projects in place, but to put them in place faster with the reforms that are called for in the GROW AMERICA Act. I was starting to talk about the TIGER programs. This is an opportunity for our local county, city, State to put forward innovative projects. For example, the systems that you were talking about, the transit hubs, those can be proposed. They can be graded based upon their utility, on their usefulness. Those are then grant programs--public, local, State, together with the Federal Government. This is a substantial increase. I know these are very popular in California. We keep lining them up, but there hasn't been sufficient money. In the GROW AMERICA Act, there is a significant increase. Some $5 billion would be available for these innovative transportation projects. What is there not to like in this? It is fully paid for--interesting. It is fully paid for in two ways--one, on the existing excise tax on gasoline and diesel. It is not increased, but is still the same. Then the balance--that is, the increase--is to be paid for by closing tax loopholes on corporations. It is interesting that today, as the President was talking about this and also talking about closing tax loopholes on corporations that are offshoring American jobs, The Wall Street Journal--that rather famous and quite good newspaper--carried on its front page, ``The Race to Cut Taxes Fuels Urge to Merge,'' a cute headline. Then, in The New York Times, another headline on the very same subject reads, ``Drug Firms Make Haste to Elude Taxes.'' So right here in these two national newspapers are examples of the kinds of tax avoidance games that are being played by American corporations to avoid paying their fair share of the American taxes. The President, in the GROW AMERICA Act said stop it, stop these kinds of tax loopholes, tax breaks, that American companies are taking to avoid paying their share of the burden of transportation. He wants to close these loopholes, and here are two that clearly ought to be closed immediately.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, it is good to be back here on the floor once again. Tonight, we want to carry on our long-running discussion about how to improve the American economy, how to create jobs here in this Nation and move us all forward, how to rebuild the middle class, how to make sure that every family has the opportunity to earn a good living, buy a home if they want to, educate their kids, get health care, and enjoy the fruits of this great Nation. We often talk about this in the context of Make It In America. This is our jobs agenda. This is the agenda about how to rebuild this Nation, and there are seven different parts to it: trade policy, which we are not talking about tonight; we will talk a little bit about taxes; energy, that is another day; labor; education; and research. We are going to spend tonight talking about this issue, the infrastructure issue of this Nation. Let's see, in California, it is right smack in the middle of commute time, 5:15. I am from California, and I know that my constituents in the Sacramento area on that great Interstate 80 are sitting there in a traffic jam. What a surprise. Or maybe they are on the Caltrain returning from the San Francisco area and held up behind a freight train that is probably carrying bulk and crude oil to the refineries in the Bay Area. They are waiting and waiting and waiting, whether they are on the road or on the train or on the bus, waiting and waiting and waiting. Folks, in case you didn't know it--and I know you did--we have got a transportation problem in America. We have got a very serious problem. So as we talk about jobs, as we talk about our Make it in America agenda, we need to talk about infrastructure, we need to talk about transportation, because this is a big, big issue for America. It is an issue that affects every single one of us. My district also has about, I don't know, 150 miles of Interstate 5. So as you travel from California and you head north, last winter or last year, you would get on Interstate 5, you would get past Seattle, and then you would come to a screeching halt. Why? Because the Interstate 5 bridge in Washington State, just as you got to the Canadian border, collapsed. Wow. How could that happen in America? How could it be that our bridges on a major interstate connecting Canada, United States, and Mexico would collapse? Well, it is because we did not maintain that. It is because our transportation policies are the previous century's policies and they don't fit in this century. So, all across America, you are going to see more of this. In a moment, I am going to turn to my colleague from New York (Mr. Tonko), and he will undoubtedly talk about the problem on that side. It was a big day here in the Congress, because today we did what we do so very well: we kicked the can down the road. We have a major transportation crisis. This isn't the ``bridge to nowhere,'' but this is where we are headed right now. We are headed for a transportation crisis, because in about 3 weeks, maybe 4 weeks, the transportation funds are going to run out of money. So, in an effort to deal with this problem. The United States Congress, led by our Republican leadership, did what it has done for the last 3\1/2\ years, and that is taken their can and kicked it down the road. We passed a stopgap temporary transportation funding bill that will provide us with another 10 months of funding so that the rest of the Nation's transportation systems--the State governments, the local governments, the cities, and even the Federal Government--will be perfectly unsure what the game plan is for the future years. How they will plan, nobody knows, because they don't know what to expect from the Federal Government in terms of funding beyond the next 10 months, which is precisely where we are today. So, doing our very best, the repeated process of kicking the can down the road, we did it once again. Now, I will admit, I voted for it. We had no options, unless we wanted to lose several tens of thousands of jobs. This is what my State government gave to me. If we fall off the bridge and don't fund transportation, here is what will happen to California: 73,572 jobs will be jeopardized; 5,692 active highway and transit projects will come to a screeching stop, which is pretty much what the commuters are doing right now on Interstate 80 between Sacramento and Davis, where it is my district; and California has 172,201 miles of public roads that will continue to be in very, very poor condition. So, given the options that our Republican leadership has presented to us--and, by the way, we don't do anything that they don't allow us to do--they gave us the opportunity to kick the can down the road. Okay, better than nothing, but not the solution. I would like to now turn to my colleague from the State of New York to talk about this system from your area, and then I would like to go back to what we should be doing, what we must be doing, which is to put in place a 4-year transportation program that actually solves our transportation and infrastructure problems, the Grow America Act. What is the view from the east coast? Any better than the west coast? Paul Tonko, my colleague, I yield to you.

Mr. GARAMENDI. We certainly can do it. We certainly ought to do it. Our predecessors have done it. There are 435 of us here in the House of Representatives, and the question is: Are we willing to do it? It can be done. This plan, GROW AMERICA, is fully paid for. Yes, some corporations that are skipping out on their taxes would have to participate, and they should. They ought not be tax dodgers. This is a very interesting plan put forward by our colleague John Delaney, a Representative from Maryland, that would take those profits that these corporations have stored overseas--profits that they have not paid taxes on in America--to repatriate, to bring that money back to America. His program would generate, over a period of 10 years, $720 billion to be used in public-private partnerships to build our infrastructure. There are many, many ideas about how this could be paid for. The President has laid out a plan not to raise the gasoline and the diesel tax, but rather to bring about some tax fairness, and corporations would be required to pay their fair share--all of it good. I suspect we have maybe another 5 minutes or so, but I want to bring up one of our favorite subjects. I am going to put this up. Here we are with the GROW AMERICA Act and all of the things that could be done. This is back to Make It In America. I love this photo. It is one of my favorites. I know, often, you travel on the train from New York down to Washington, D.C.--or back--right about now. This locomotive, which is the most advanced electric locomotive in America, made in America, was paid for by a Make It In America strategy. Part of the transportation program--the American Recovery Act--back in 2008 said that they put aside about $700-plus billion for Amtrak all across the Nation to be used for improving the Amtrak system. They said that that money would be used to build locomotives, and they said 100 percent American-made. Siemens, a German company, said, oh, $700 billion for locomotives made in America, we are a German company, we can build those in America. So in Sacramento, California, in the infrastructure program, Siemens has built a 100 percent American-made locomotive, and it is going to be operating very soon on the Northeast corridor. This is a good thing. This is how we can rebuild the American middle class. This is how we can create jobs, using our infrastructure investments to build jobs in America. It is a fundamental piece of our Make It In America strategy of rebuilding our manufacturing sector where you do have good, solid middle class jobs, where a family can earn a living without both husband and wife having to work all the time or maybe two or three jobs. We are talking about the American Dream being restored, and the infrastructure is a fundamental piece of that--not just because it moves the economy, not just because it is foundational to economic growth, but because it is American middle class jobs. It is the hardhats. It is the welder putting together the new locomotive. It is the engineer designing the system. It is the accountant. It is the secretary handling the paperwork. It is America building each future. The President has laid out a good plan. Is there some way better to do it? Put your ideas on the table, my colleagues, put your ideas on the table. How can you do better than this GROW AMERICA Act? Let's get about doing it. This is our future. This is America's opportunity, and it is fully paid for, doesn't increase the deficit. In fact, it will grow the economy and provide us with those middle class jobs. I know, Mr. Tonko, you have been at this for your entire career, as have I, and to be here in Congress, at this moment, when we had an opportunity, we missed it today. We missed the opportunity today to grow the American economy, and instead, we kicked the can down the road. Better than nothing, but not good enough--nothing to be proud of. Mr. Tonko, a few seconds--I don't know how much time we have.

Mr. GARAMENDI. It is time to close. We can build America. We can build our infrastructure. The President has laid out a worthy plan, comprehensive, and all of the elements of the infrastructure that we must do. It is fully paid for. It is a good starting point. Maybe there is a better way of doing it, but we cannot get it done with short-term, kick the can down the road bills, such as was passed today, but that is better than not doing anything. This is the American future, and the question for all of us, 435: Why did we come here? Did we come here just to pass the time, or did we come here to really build America? We are going to Make It In America. We are Americans, and we will make it. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Tonko, thank you so very much. It is always good to be on the floor with you. Thank you so very much for bringing to our attention once again the history of this Nation, how it was built, the great infrastructure. There is a report card out on how our infrastructure is today. This was put together by the engineers and others who do this kind of work. I am just going to read through this: aviation--these are our airports--D; bridges, C-plus; dams, D; drinking water, D; energy, D; hazardous waste, D; inland waterways, D; levees, D; ports, C--whoa, that is good; public parks and recreation, C-minus; rails, C-plus; roads, D; schools, D; solid waste, B--I guess we can get rid of our trash, that is good--transit, D; and wastewater, D. So, the entire infrastructure is D. Do you want to know why? Well, here is the reason why. Short-term we run out of money. Let's take a look here. In 2002, we spent $325 billion on nondefense structures, all of these things I just talked about, and that was 2002, at the beginning of the Bush Presidency. And then every year after that--we are now down to about $225 billion. So $100 billion of investment, annual investment, disappeared, and so now we are running all of these D scores. It is fortunate that we are not asking for--well, I guess we are asking for reelection. We are in trouble. Just by the way, I got a phone call from my wife, and she said: You know, about the pickup truck, John. I said: What about it? She said: I've got to take it in, the mechanic says the wheels are out of alignment. I said: How much is that going to cost? She said: Somewhere over $100. On average, in San Francisco, $782 is spent on every car every year to repair for the damages of the poor highways in California. I don't think I have New York, Mr. Tonko, but I suspect it is no better there. Let's talk about the future. Excuse me, I am just stuck. I don't want to get stuck on the past, but it is pretty bad. Let's talk about the future.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Madam Chair, during the fifties and sixties, we were engaged in what was known as the cold war. We could not build nuclear weapons fast enough, and we surely built a lot of them. Beginning in the eighties and on into the nineties, we got a little more sane. We and Russia and others became somewhat more sane about what to do with our nuclear weapons, and we began to dismantle many of the nuclear weapons we had, as did Russia. In the nineties, an agreement was reached between the United States and Russia on the disposition--that is, the ultimate disposition and disposal--of the unused, unnecessary plutonium that both the United States and Russia held in their various stockpiles. That was a good thing. You don't want this stuff lying around. You don't want people to get their hands on it, particularly terrorist organizations. So there was a common understanding between Russia and the United States on the disposal of this unused, unnecessary, and extraordinarily dangerous material. The United States undertook to do this in a facility in South Carolina known as the MOX facility, and we have been at it since the late nineties, putting together a facility. It hasn't gone well. In fact, it has gone very, very badly; and in the recent last 2 or 3 years, the administration has decided that this is not going to work and that the facility as designed should be put in cold storage and there should be a new way of dealing with this issue. This amendment would instruct the Department of Energy to undertake a very quick and, in my view, a very appropriate process of going out to those entities and businesses and others around this Nation that can find a way of disposing of this very dangerous plutonium, and do it quickly. It calls for a 6-month process in which the Department of Energy would ask for requests for proposals from qualified companies to dispose of this, including the company that presently does it, AREVA, a French company that is currently operating the facility, have them come forward with a redo of their proposal, can they do it, and other companies. I know of perhaps two that can come forward. Get this thing underway so we can once again carry out our commitment in a treaty with Russia to dispose of our plutonium material. This does not negate the South Carolina facility. In fact, it would hold the South Carolina facility in place and probably lead to the continuation of that facility, perhaps in a new modality, to dispose of the plutonium. That is what it does. It short-circuits--that is, shortens--the time in which the Department of Energy is already moving to do this. Under their present proposal, I would suggest it would probably be a decade before they decide what to do. But they need a kick in the pants, which this amendment does; get out there, go to the companies that know how to do this, and get it done. It is in the interest of the United States and in the interest of Russia to dispose of this unnecessary, unused plutonium. If we don't move forward this way, we are looking at a decade, in my estimation, a decade before the Department of Energy is willing to make a decision. So that is what the amendment does. I suspect I am going to get a point of order here, but I would like all of us to consider the alternative of not doing this. If we don't take a program such as I am proposing here, we are going to wind up with this thing just lingering out there, a huge fight with South Carolina saying we want to go forward with AREVA; AREVA is not working; on and on and on. So I ask for an ``aye'' vote on the amendment and a foregoing of this point of order so we might, as the House of Representatives, take up this amendment. I reserve the balance of my time. Point of Order

Mr. GARAMENDI. Yes, I do.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Madam Chair, I guess I don't understand the suggested ruling. We are spending a pile of money here. We are going to spend, I don't know, some $12 billion on the path we are on. The bill itself proposes to spend money to keep this project going. The administration says we can't go, it is not working, don't do it. All my amendment does is to tell the Department of Energy, get on with what you need to do anyway; that is, figure out how to do this. It doesn't spend any more money. In fact, it would spend a whole lot less money than in the present drafting of this legislation, and it doesn't change law at all. All it does is it directs the Department of Energy to do something, and it specifies how it should be done. That doesn't change law. Well, this whole thing is a law, so the bill itself changes law. So this simply directs how they should carry out their action for which they already have money. Fine, avoid the issue. Let this thing linger, let it fester and rot, and do nothing. And wait 10 years with this plutonium there while the Department of Energy does what it does best which is to contemplate the future rather than getting things done. Now we will take up the point of order, and this amendment would fail on a point of order. I would suggest to anybody who cares to listen, this issue has to be dealt with. This amendment does not select a winner or loser and it doesn't change the fundamental underlying law that we have put in place.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Madam Chair, keeping in mind your admonition that I speak to the point of order and not to the underlying amendment, I don't believe this changes any existing law; although, the entire bill changes existing law. This amendment speaks to one part of what already takes place, and that is that the Department of Energy does consult with MARAD on this subject matter. This amendment simply says that the Department, in that consultation, shall consider the issue of availability of American- flagged crude-LNG tankers. It doesn't say you can't go forward. You can go forward. It doesn't say anything about that. It simply says that, in that consultation, take into account this simple issue. With regard to the point of order, the amendment that preceded my attempt with this amendment did, in fact, change law, but it was not ruled out of order. Now, I accept the fact that I can't have it my way. In fact, I am one of seven children, and I have never really had it my way. But this is not a substantive or even a minor change in law compared to what preceded this amendment. Okay. I know I am going to lose this one, but I am not going to give up on this issue. I appreciate the support of the chair on building American LNG tankers, and we will bring that to the appropriate committee at the appropriate time. In the meantime, Madam Chair, I think you are about to make a ruling.

Mr. GARAMENDI. I do, Madam Chair.

Mr. GARAMENDI. I don't know what more to say here. The points of order are useful, I suppose, but not to me. Madam Chair, to this issue, I would love to see a vote on the House floor on whether we really support our maritime industry, on whether we really support our sailors or not. This is about as minimal an amendment as I could imagine, and I am almost embarrassed in bringing something so weak before this floor on something so important as the future of our maritime industry. I don't know that I have any choice, but to at least try with this small step to bring before the House an amendment that would really help our industries. With that, I yield back the balance of my time.