John Garamendi

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you so very much, Mr. Horsford. Thank you for your passion, for your knowledge, for your concern about your constituents, and particularly about those men and women that are from the military. I also have two major Air Force bases in my district with a very large population of veterans, both young and old, from the various wars and conflicts of the past. And they need a shot. Your legislation ought to be the law. It simply should be the law of the land. We should put these people back to work. We showed the picture earlier of the people lined up; 147 of those were veterans. I think about 14 were actually hired that day and given a chance. I often put this up when we have these opportunities to speak on the floor about jobs and putting men and women back to work, because this is kind of a compass that I like to use when I think about legislation, when I think about what we ought to be doing here. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, FDR, talking about a New Deal, he said this: A 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. We need to think about that often here on the floor. The issues that we have talked about today--putting people back to working, the minimum wage, and unemployment insurance, and food stamps or the SNAP program-- all speak to this fundamental test of America's moral compass. A 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. December 28--Representative Horsford laid out that date--December 28, millions upon millions of Americans will lose their unemployment insurance, not because they are lazy, not because they don't want to work. These people, 971 of them last Friday in my district at my jobs fair, they want to go to work. Many of them will lose their unemployment insurance on December 28. Joining us today is a remarkable woman, incredible background in caring about the people of America, working on a national program to make sure that women have a good shot. Incidentally, let me put this up there just before I introduce Representative Edwards. Today is a remarkable day for women. The new CEO of General Motors is a woman. She is not going to be on the unemployment line. She has spent 30-some years with General Motors, has visited the very, very top. I understand coming from the factory floor, all the way to the top. That is your story too, Donna Edwards, incredible Representative from the State of Maryland. I think you wanted to talk to us about your citizens, your constituents.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Representative Kaptur, you have been at this for a long time. You come from an area in this Nation that in recent decades has been called the Rust Belt. I think that is not the situation, with your leadership. We have seen a resurgence in American manufacturing; and 20, 25 years ago, we had just under 20 million Americans working in manufacturing with those middle-income jobs. This is the middle class. They were able to support their family, educate, get a boat, go on vacation, buy a house, provide the food, and take care of their family, just as you described. And then we have seen in the last 20 years an enormous decline--from 20 million down to just under 11 million manufacturing jobs, and a lot of that decline had to do with American policies. You mentioned trade programs. Clearly, that had a lot to do with offshoring tax policies that encouraged corporations to send jobs offshore rather than keeping jobs here. And there are other labor policies and the like that made it difficult for the American family to earn that living. Our challenge is to reinvigorate the working American families' opportunity. And to address that, I will say that I heard a remarkable speech by a freshman. And it is not that I have been here so long. Steve Horsford from Las Vegas gave a speech on the floor here about a week ago, talking about these issues and talking about the challenge that American families face. I asked him to join us. I was impressed by his grasp of the issue and the passion with which he spoke. Representative Horsford, welcome to the one hour of what we call Make It in America, the American Jobs Program.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you very much, General Enyart. Joining us also is another Representative from the Midwest who has considerable experience here in the House of Representatives--Ohio, in this case--Marcy Kaptur. Welcome. I am delighted you are with us. You talked about making it in America and about American jobs many times, and we have shared this floor on that subject in the past. Welcome.

Mr. GARAMENDI. I have one of those in my district, too.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, we come here about every week to talk about jobs in America. This last Friday, we held a jobs fair in my district in Fairfield, California, and it was a remarkable event. I have been around a long time. I have seen many, many things. As remarkable as it was, it was also one of the saddest events I have been to. I have been to a lot of funerals and a lot of tragedies over the years, but this one ranks very high. I put this picture up here because this is a picture of the second hour after that job fair had begun. The line outside the building, where we had some 40 employers that were offering to hire people, stretched over 200 yards. The temperature was about 37, 38 degrees. It was one of those cold mornings, and these people were determined to get a job. They were willing to stand in that line for up to an hour and a half, some of them perhaps even 2 hours, just to have a shot, just to be able to talk to an employer, to have the opportunity to look face- to-face at an employer and say, ``I want to work.'' The stories were incredible. I spent about an hour, maybe an hour and 20 minutes, talking to the men and women that were in this line. I remember one gentleman who had served several tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. He said he was with the Army Rangers, said he had four Purple Hearts. He left the military and is now unemployed. In fact, in this line were 141 veterans, unemployed, looking for work. They have skills, know when to get up in the morning, know what it takes to go to work, to put in a full day or more--unemployed. A young woman, fresh out of school, a child at home, she wanted to go to work. She had an associate's degree in social welfare programs, human relations, anything in that area. She said: I will take any job. I just want to go to work. I want to take care of my child. Another woman, 50, 55, divorced, had an 18-year-old child. Her alimony is over: I have got to go to work. I have got to support myself. The stories of life, the stories of America, the stories of 971 people that stood in line just to have a shot at a job. There are 435 of us in this room on a full day. We have a job. We are employed, and we have a good wage. We have a very good wage, and we have health care. And we are not doing our job. We are not doing the job that America sent us here for. America sent us here to put America back to work. That is our job. We are not living up to that. Two years ago, the President of the United States put forth in his State of the Union message an American jobs plan, an American jobs plan to put people in this Nation back to work. It was complete: education, retraining, a research component for the next sector of this economy for the future, a transportation infrastructure sector, a way to finance it--2 years ago. Mr. Speaker, 971 people were standing in the cold in Fairfield, California, just wanting a shot at a job; and here we are, 2 years after the President of the United States put forward a jobs plan for America, and it has not been done. The majority in this House has refused to bring up even one of those programs. I am going to talk about those things tonight, those things that we can do here in America, that we can do so that when 971 of my constituents are willing to line up to get a job, they will have one. They will have that opportunity. They will have a shot at the future. It is a disgrace that after 2 years with a complete plan that would put people back to work, the majority has refused to bring forward any part of that legislation. It is a disgrace. It is time for this country to go back to work. It is time for this House to go back to work to put Americans back on the job. You want to deal with the deficit? Put people to work. They will become taxpayers. You want to deal with food stamps? You want to cut food stamps? Put people to work. Build the infrastructure. Put the teachers back in the classroom. But no, you are going to slash the benefits. These people, searching for a job, know that unless this Congress-- and I see our esteemed leadership and the Republicans leaving this House, this floor. These people want to go to work. They are losing, in the next 2 weeks, their unemployment benefits. What will become of them? What will become of those 971 people, including 141 veterans who have fought, who have been wounded? What is going to become of them? Joining me today are my colleagues on the Democratic side. I would like to start with my colleague from Illinois, General Bill Enyart, who is now a Member of the House of Representatives. Bill, please join us.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Blumenauer, you are bringing about a very important piece of legislation that will help us finance the systems that we need to build. We talk about immediate jobs. In talking about those immediate jobs, for every dollar that we would invest in transportation infrastructure, you get $1.59 of economic growth immediately back. Mr. Blumenauer, I know you have to go. You have another meeting. Thank you very much for bringing this critical issue to our attention. Now let me carry on for a few seconds about the infrastructure issue. If we make that critical investment, if we follow the leadership of Mr. Blumenauer, where we actually collect the money that is needed for our systems and put those dollars to work in America, several very important things will happen in the American economy. First of all, you lay down the foundation for immediate and future economic growth. You cannot grow the economy if you cannot move goods, services, and people across the Nation. In my State of California, we understand what gridlock is. We have got gridlock here in Congress. That is political gridlock. In California, when you are talking about gridlock, you are talking about sitting on a freeway and going nowhere; you are talking about the shipments of goods in and out of the ports that are delayed because they cannot get to the rail systems. They cannot get to the highways of America because of gridlock at the ports. We have an enormous necessity to lay in place the transportation infrastructure that can then allow the American economy to grow. That is point one. Point two is, in doing that infrastructure improvement, if we use the American taxpayer dollars--in this case, collected from the excise tax on gasoline and fuel--if we use that money to buy American-made equipment, we generate an additional economic growth model, and that is the reestablishment of the American manufacturing system. Twenty years ago we had about somewhere between 19 and 20 million Americans in manufacturing making all kind of things, from Caterpillar bulldozers and graders and loaders, to farm equipment, to airplanes, and technology systems from computers and the like. That was 20 years ago. Today there is just over 11 million in the manufacturing sector. We have lost 9 million manufacturing jobs in America. Those are the heart and soul of the American middle class. That is where a mother or a father could get a job, provide the income for their family, buy a home, buy the car, the boat, take the vacation, send their kids to college. That was where the American middle class found its foundation. It has been decimated by a number of policies that were enacted by previous Congresses and by a lack of attention all across this Nation to the foundational imperative of manufacturing. So we have been talking here for more than 2\1/2\ years now about a Make It In America agenda. If we are going to finance our transportation systems, then add to that a clause that says, the material, the bridges, the steel, the concrete, the equipment, will be American-made. It will be made in America. In doing so, we can go right back to Alexander Hamilton and George Washington, who wrote the first economic development plan for this Nation, and said use the American taxpayer money to support American industries. Hey, I am with Alex and George. They were correct. Use our taxpayer money to support American businesses, buy American, make it in America. It works. Let me give you an example. In Sacramento, California, near my district, is a manufacturing plant that was expanded, actually doubled in size in the last 2 years. It was doubled in size to build electric locomotives for Amtrak on the east coast corridor, between Washington, DC, and Boston. About 80 new locomotives are going to be built in Sacramento, California because, in the stimulus bill, the Recovery Act, somebody, probably a staffer, maybe a Senator, maybe a Member of Congress, wrote in one sentence and said, this 700-plus million dollars for the locomotives will be spent on American-made equipment, 100 percent American-made. American companies looked at that, shrugged their shoulders. A German company, Siemens, said, oh, $700 million contract, we can do it. Siemens took their light rail manufacturing plant in Sacramento, took that contract, doubled the size of their plant, doubled the size of their workforce, and is now building 100 percent American-made locomotives in Sacramento, California. Where 100 years ago they used to build locomotives, now they are doing it again. Why? Because somebody went all the way back to the very first President, took something that he said, and it was, we are going to spend American taxpayer money on American-made goods, in this case, American-made locomotives. Think about it. Think about the potential. Think about the potential if we were to really invest in infrastructure, if we were to follow Mr. Blumenauer's piece of legislation, take the money, invest in the roads, invest in our freeways, rebuild the bridges, of which more than 6,000 are about to fall down or could fall down in the United States. Repair, rebuild, expand, allow the foundation of economic growth to grow, and use that taxpayer money for American jobs, buying American- made equipment. Think of the possibilities. Think of the possibilities. Think back to where we started this conversation, about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, that it is our task not to add more to those who have much, but, rather, to add to those who have little. Those men and women in the construction trades that have lost their job, where unemployment is well over 30, 40 percent, think about them being able to get that middle class job building the infrastructure. Think about the manufacturers out there, the small businesses, the large businesses, the supply train that Siemens has set up all across this Nation to provide the electronics, to provide the electric motors and all of the steel, that huge supply train. Think about what could be done if we put in place policies today, here in the United States Congress, to build our infrastructure, to use our taxpayer money for American jobs; that unemployed individual that is now on food stamps, perhaps on a welfare check, getting a job in that manufacturing sector that is providing that tool that is going to be used on that locomotive. Think about that unemployed family, that construction worker, the operating engineer who has been sitting on the sidelines, surviving on food stamps and on assistance, able to go back to work, sitting on that Caterpillar tractor that is manufactured in America, providing the income necessary for his family and providing the taxes necessary for the growth of this Nation's ability to reduce its deficit. It is possible. We can do this. We can rebuild America. We can compete with anybody. There is no other culture in the world that is so entrepreneurial, so driven to succeed. But here we are, 435 of us, caught up in a gridlock where we can't do anything, where the transportation bill languishes, where the farm bill languishes, so that our farmers don't know what to plant next year. This has got to end. We have got to stop this. We need to think back on those giants of America's past. George Washington told Alexander Hamilton, give me a manufacturing program for the United States, an economic development program. Alexander Hamilton came back; we need to build ports, roads, canals. We need to protect American industry with wise laws and trade laws. We need to have a tax policy that encourages investment, and we need to make sure that we are using the tax money to buy American-made. Think back on Jefferson, who told his Treasury Secretary, give me a plan for the next century, the 1800s, an economic development plan. Teddy Roosevelt, and then Franklin Roosevelt, Eisenhower, men of vision, leaders of vision that were willing to step forward, willing to use the resources of this Nation, collecting those resources and dispensing those resources across the Nation to build the foundation for economic growth. The Make It In America agenda is available to us today. That agenda is a trade policy that protects American industry, not a free trade that gives it away, but a fair trade policy that protects American industry; a tax policy that encourages economic growth here in the United States, that rewards corporations for bringing it home, and ends tax breaks for corporations that ship the jobs offshore, an energy policy that utilizes the great energy capacity of this Nation, everything from conservation and wind and solar and, indeed, the petroleum products. We need that energy policy in place today so that the wind industry in the United States, which is a huge industry in my district, can count on tomorrow's tax policy, which will end in less than a year, so they are not building. When we give a tax credit for solar, and when we give a tax credit for wind, or to the oil industry, we tell them, you only get that tax credit when you buy American-made solar panels, wind turbines and the like, because, after all, you are using American taxpayer money. We need a labor policy so that we can re-educate those men and women who will no longer have a job in an industry that is no longer in existence. We need to make sure that labor has a fair shot, and in the labor policy we absolutely must raise the minimum wage. That holds up the floor, and deals with the issue of poverty in America. Education, research, infrastructure. This is the Make It In America agenda. This is the agenda that we can grow jobs in America. This is the agenda that can address the American Dream. This is the agenda that goes back to what Franklin Delano Roosevelt said when he talked about freedom from want. Freedom from want means that you must be able to get a decent job in America to support yourself and your family, so that the working men and women of America have a shot at the generation of wealth that this country can produce. Franklin Delano Roosevelt said it is our task not to provide more for those who have much, but to provide for those who have little. So when you find that the policies of America have allowed this kind of wealth distribution to take place over the last 5 years, you know that those policies need to change. Those policies have to change. When 1 percent of the American population is able to gather 95 percent of the wealth generated in this Nation between 2009 and 2012, something is terribly wrong with the policies of this Nation. That is what happened. That is what Americans have labored for, so that 95 percent of the wealth generated by the men and women who work in America winds up in the hands of 1 percent of this population. We have got some policy problems. We have to deal with this. If you believe what Bill Clinton said about the American Dream, being able to provide for your family, being able to provide that education, being able to make things better not only for yourself but for the next generation, then this kind of issue has to be dealt with. This is a fundamental economic problem. The growth of this economy is dependent upon the ability of the American workers to have an income so that they can pursue their dream, and when the wealth winds up with this kind of a skewed situation, the 95 percent are not able to become the consumers to buy the home, to buy the car, to develop the opportunities that they need for their family. How can we deal with this? Well, one way we heard about today. We heard from Mr. Blumenauer about the necessity of building our transportation system so that the foundation for economic growth is in place, the transportation system. We need to do that, and doing so will put Americans back to work with those good, middle class jobs for working American families. We need to put in place a Make It In America policy. Trade, taxes, energy, labor, education, research infrastructure, that is our agenda. That is our agenda for growth in America. It is also our agenda for dealing with the deficit. You want to deal with the deficit, put Americans back to work. Watch that tax money come into the coffers of this Nation's treasury. It will happen. But you keep a large percentage of Americans out of work, you keep them at low wages, and you keep them unemployed, you are not going to able to deal with the deficit. Go back to work Americans--and you deal with the deficit. How do you do that? Infrastructure, trade policy, make sure your tax policy is in place that encourages economic growth and investment and all the rest. We can do this. We can do this. We are America. We have done this in the past. We have had leaders in the past that have talked about these things and done them. We have had a Congress in the past that has listened to their own leadership, to those among their caucuses that said, Let's get on with it. Let's build for the future. Those leaders are here--not at this moment, but they are here on this floor day after day. They know. They understand, If you want to deal with the deficit, put Americans back to work. If you want to deal with the American Dream, give them a good job. Raise the minimum wage so that every working person at least can provide food on their table and shelter for themselves and their families. It is all possible. This isn't something new to America. This is what America has done before. And this is our job. This is our job. The Congress of the United States, the Senate, the administration, that is what we are here for. That is our job. Mr. Speaker, before I yield back, first I have got to talk about one other thing, and that is another challenge that we face, and that challenge is about climate change. This is real, folks. This is not something that a bunch of scientists have dreamed up. This is a very, very real issue for this world. Many of the policies we talk about here can directly go to the issue of climate change. I represent 200 miles of the Sacramento River Valley, from the very beginning of the Sacramento River at the beginning of the San Francisco Bay, 200 miles up, past the city of Sacramento, past the cities of Yuba City, Marysville, all the way to Chico. It is an area that is one of the most flood-prone areas in America. Climate change is going to increase rainfall--maybe not the total rainfall throughout the year, but the incidence of extraordinary, heavy downpours will increase. Not too many people want to ascribe the recent typhoon in the Philippines to climate change, but there is ever-increasing evidence that extreme storms are a result of climate change. And it figures: more heat, more moisture, more storms, more precipitation--it is all there. So as we go forward, dealing with these issues of economic development, of infrastructure, we need to keep in mind the issue of climate change and its immediate effect: droughts in some areas, where there weren't droughts before; floods in other areas, where there is a need to put in the infrastructure. In the case of my district, the infrastructure of levees. My constituents are at risk. My constituents need the Federal Government to pass a Water Resources Development Act that provides the foundation and the authorization for levee improvements, and they need the appropriations. They need the money. It is our task to keep America safe, whether that is from some military threat from somewhere in the world or from some natural threat, for example, extreme storms, extreme flooding, making sure the infrastructure, the levees, and the protections for our citizens are in place. I want us to deal with that; and as we put together the Water Resources Development Act, where I have the privilege of being on the conference committee, we intend to do our best to make sure that the authorization for those projects necessary for water development, as well as flood protection, are in place. And then we must go about the task of finding a way to pay for it. Mr. Blumenauer is introducing a bill tomorrow to find a way to pay for the transportation systems. We need to do the same for the water infrastructure systems. We cannot neglect this task. It is our job. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Amazing.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Just before we came on the floor to talk about this issue of inequality in America and how we might deal with it, we heard our colleagues from the State of New York talk about the tragic transit accident that occurred. In listening to them, a couple of the Members talked about the need for rail improvement, upgrading the rail system in New York. If I am to hear you correctly, unless we provide additional revenue in the transportation funding program, there will be no money to upgrade the rail systems in New York or anywhere else around the United States.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Blumenauer, there is no doubt that you are taking up the responsibility. You have been a leader for many years on this issue of transportation, how we can fund it, what we must do. I guess I knew, but I didn't realize it was coming so quickly, that we would fall off the transportation cliff, that the next fiscal year, 10 months from now, the transportation programs funded by the Federal Government simply run out of money. Isn't it 90 percent or more of the funding that will be gone? Did I understand that correctly?

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, we have an opportunity today to talk about some things that are really important to America. I want to start really with this quote by Franklin Delano Roosevelt which kind of talks about where I am coming from and where I think we ought to be going as a Nation right now. I will try to explain this in a few moments, and then move on to really deal with this problem that we have in our Nation of income inequality, lost opportunity, or the absence of opportunity. FDR said: The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is rather whether we provide enough for those who have too little. In America today, there are many, many Americans that have far too little. One out of four children in America goes to bed hungry at night. Unemployment remains at a peak level, somewhere north of 7-8 percent. Real unemployment, that is, the unemployment of people who would like to work more, would like to have a full-time job, remains very, very high. What can we do about it? Well, we can think about the great American ideal, the American Dream. This gentleman pretty well laid it out. This is Bill Clinton talking about the American Dream. He said: If you work hard and play by the rules, you have the freedom and the opportunity to pursue your dreams and leave your kids a country where they can chase theirs. So between these two Presidents, I think we lay out a philosophy that is well worth our attention: make sure those who have little have an opportunity, that we pay attention to their needs, and that we make sure that the American Dream is always in place. Let's talk about that dream. How about the dream of going to college, college education. The ideal is college education is open to everyone. In reality, in 2007, one-half of the children from wealthy households completed college. Only 9 percent of the children from low-income households completed college. This gap is widening and has continued to widen since 2007, and obviously since 1989. The American Dream. How about this dream: FDR also talked about the four freedoms and one of them had to do with freedom from want. Part of the American Dream, it has been denied. As a result of the Great Recession, in 2010, a total of 46.2 million Americans were below the poverty level, the highest number of 52 years. The American Dream denied. When we talk about the American Dream and we talk about what Roosevelt said about those who have much versus those who have little, so what is going on in America? In America today, income inequality is growing. The ideal is you work hard, you will do okay. In reality, the U.S. ranks 93 in the world in income inequality, behind Great Britain, Australia, Nigeria, Argentina, and Japan. The American Dream: you work hard, you will do okay. The reality: income inequality in the United States is greater than the income inequality in Nigeria. Yes, it is. So what are we going to do? Well, here is what we are doing. Since the Great Recession, the recovery has been slow. We Democrats have some answers on what to do about that recovery, and we will get to that in a few moments, but I think we need to understand what has happened in the last 5 years. We have seen the economy grow. Every quarter since 2009, the economy has grown. The private sector economy has grown. Where did that wealth go? Where did the wealth of this Nation go? Well, 95 percent of the wealth generated in this Nation since 2009 has gone to the top 1 percent of Americans. The remaining 99 percent have had to split what was left. During the Clinton economy, it was reversed. The top 1 percent took 45 percent, and the bottom 99 percent took the remaining. So 1 percent took 95 percent, 99 percent were left with 5 percent. Income inequality: What do we do about it? How do we achieve the goals of President Clinton when he talked about the American Dream? How do we achieve the goals of FDR when he talked about our purpose, not to provide more for those who have great but to provide for those who have little? How can we do it? Well, one way we can do it is a long American tradition dating back to George Washington. In his first year in office, George Washington called upon Alexander Hamilton, his Treasury Secretary, to figure out how to grow the American economy. They were interested in manufacturing. The United States was basically exporting raw materials to Great Britain. George Washington wanted to build the American economy. So he said, Alex, give me a plan. So Alexander Hamilton came back a few months later with a plan, an economic development plan, based on manufacturing, and in that economic development plan, he said we need to do about a dozen things. He said we need to build the infrastructure of the United States. He said we need to build the canals, the roads, and the ports. He said we needed to protect American manufacturing, so make sure that there are proper duties and tariffs on imported goods so that they would not overcome American manufacturers but, rather, level the playing field so that American manufacturers would have a shot. He said we needed to also make sure that we had good international trade agreements and use the American taxpayer money to buy American manufactured goods. It is all there. So for those who want to pay attention to the Founding Fathers, they ought to pay attention to what George Washington and Alexander Hamilton talked about in the first days of the first administration of this wonderful democracy we call America. Let's talk for a moment about infrastructure. Let's talk about those roads that George Washington described, Alexander Hamilton talked and wrote about in his report. Where are we with our infrastructure today? Joining me today is my colleague from Oregon, who has been working on the infrastructure issue now for more than a decade. He understands the problems that we have in our transportation systems and has a proposal. I now yield to Earl Blumenauer of Oregon.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Officer Rudy Xavier Contreras, Jr., who is retiring this December after 30 years of law enforcement service with the California Highway Patrol. After graduating from the CHP Academy in West Sacramento on December 22, 1983, Officer Contreras served with the CHP across the State of California, including many years in the Solano and Woodland areas. He handled a variety of assignments throughout his career, with assignments ranging from Field Training Officer to Officer in Charge. During Officer Contreras' assignment to Dignitary Protection, he served a distinguished term as my security officer when I was California's Insurance Commissioner and Lieutenant Governor. He was also the primary officer assigned to Lieutenant Governor Abel Maldonado and State Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones. Officer Contreras was a loyal representative of the law enforcement community and admired for his hard work, dedication, and positive work ethic. He has become a dear friend and I thank him for his service.

Mr. GARAMENDI

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

Mr. GARAMENDI. I like that word, too. Can we compromise on that?

Mr. GARAMENDI. Well, thank you so very much. And I look forward to working with you on that issue. I know it is going to be coming. Well, we don't know exactly when. But they are trying to wrap up. Our trade rep, our ambassador is trying to wrap this up and present it to us. And they are talking fast-track. And I am going, time-out, guys. Time-out. We need to review. We need to make sure that it is fair trade. Not just free trade, but fair trade--fair to the American worker, fair to the American manufacturer, farmer, and the like.

Mr. GARAMENDI. General Enyart, Congressman Enyart, or Bill, thank you so very, very much. I really appreciate working with you tonight on this critical issue, the fundamental investment. Let's remember, this is not new. The Army Corps of Engineers has been around since the very earliest days of our democracy. The Army Corps has been responsible for the waterways of America, and the Water Resources Reform and Development Act is going to be an opportunity for America to really move its infrastructure, particularly the trade. Remember, just to review, we are talking 13 million jobs immediately depend upon the Water Resources Reform and Development Act. We are talking about 99 percent of our trade travels through our ports and waterways, whether it is on the Mississippi, the Sacramento, the San Joaquin Rivers, or the great ports and the coastal part of America. It is critically important. And as we do these things, we have the opportunity to reach back into the history of America and remember what the Founding Fathers talked about way back in George Washington's very early days: that these fundamental investments in what they called canals and ports and roads were critical to the growth of the United States at the very, very outset. George Washington and Alexander Hamilton also recognized the importance of international trade and that we get those trade policies correct. So as we get ready to do the Water Resources Reform and Development Act, which is critical--and the conference committee starts tomorrow, and I have the honor of being on that conference committee--we also think about the way in which the trade of America is dependent upon our work in getting sound policies in place. And it is also critically important in dealing with the issue of international trade agreements, whether it is the transpacific trade program or the new one that is being worked on with Europe, we have to protect our own jobs. We have to protect the American economy. And in doing so, we must carry out our constitutional responsibility given to us by the United States House of Representatives and the Senators. The Constitution says that it is the legislature, Congress and the Senate, that shall set trade policy, and that requires that we have the opportunity to look at the details of every trade policy and not fast- track trash through the House. Joining me and taking up, as I wrap up my hour, is my colleague on the Republican side. Why don't you take my last couple of minutes, and then you can have your own half hour.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Well, this is part of what we ought to be doing, and that is looking at these issues and maximizing the potential and the benefit that comes from a project. Let me give you another example of the same thing, and it is along the environmental line. Right now the Corps of Engineers, while dredging in the San Francisco Bay area--let's just say the Port of Oakland over here. When they dredge there, they have to use the cheapest way of disposing of the dredging materials, called spoils, mostly sand and clay. They take it out here to Alcatraz, and they dump it in Alcatraz, and the tide takes it out past the San Francisco Golden Gate. Well, we are saying, wait a minute. That is extremely valuable material to build habitat in areas that have been despoiled over the years. For example, down here in the southern part of the bay, these were great salt flats where the salt industry used the bay and evaporated the bay water to get salt. Well, those need to be restored. And it is quite possible that the material from the dredging could be used in that way or another habitat program, even up here into the delta. But it is not the cheapest. So we are looking at a little tweak here that would allow the Port of Oakland or the other ports in the San Francisco Bay area and, really, around the Nation to do an environmental project along with the dredging project very similar to what you are talking about on the Mississippi River. So I see common cause here. I see common cause where we can maximize the total benefit for the Nation. It could be an additional cost that the port will have to pick up. Okay. But we get a twofer. We get environmental benefits as well as the economic benefits to the port. Have you got any other things on your list?

Mr. GARAMENDI. But ``compromise'' is not a dirty word in my lexicon. Compromise is absolutely necessary. There are things in the bill that I would have written differently. In the conference committee, there are going to be differences between the House and the Senate in how we do. You have mentioned some of the issues. The environmental issues, some of them are controversial. But there is a major part of this bill to speed these projects forward and to hold the Corps of Engineers responsible for getting things done. Part of it is they have got 3 years to do the initial study, and they have got $3 million to get that study done, and their feet are going to be held to that commitment to get these projects moving forward. So there is a lot of reform in here, in the bureaucracy of the way this system has worked. There is also a lot of reform in this on allowing the local partnerships. All of these programs are partnerships. They are partners with the local governments, ports, as you described earlier, local levee districts, and the like. Those partnerships, under present law, have a very difficult time to start a program early, to get it going without the Corps' permission. So what we have, we call it ``crediting.'' And that allows these local governments, local ports to begin a project. Eventually, there is a whole new process in here for selecting which projects will be done. By the way, we are not going to do earmarks. There are no earmarks in this legislation. No earmarks are allowed in the future. But there is a process to prioritize projects across the Nation, and ultimately, Congress is taking back some of its power to set the priorities for the Nation. But that crediting that allows the local governments to get started, we are going to want to move that a little bit forward because in my district, because of the austerity budgets and the sequestration, many necessary projects are not allowed to move forward. But with a little tweaking of this language, which I will be working to get done, it will allow some of these projects to go forward. And the local share would then be counted if and when--if and when the Federal Government, the Corps of Engineers, actually decides to make that a national project. So this is going to be very important. It is probably important in your area, for some of the levees in your area that are maintained now by the local levee districts and flood protection districts. We spent a lot of time in the House and also in the Senate. We are going to have to work out some of the differences, some of the compromises. Not so much Democratic and Republican, but some regional differences and some differences about how the system should work, so we will work on that. We have got about another 5, 7 minutes, so if you would like to wrap, and then I will wrap. And then I am going to do something that is not too common here. I am going to take this ball of some of this international trade and I am going to toss it to my Republican colleague, and we will let him bat it around for a while.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Well, we also, Mr. Enyart, in California we have those same issues. Let me swap places with you. I want to put up one of the maps here of California. Mr. Enyart, you were talking about the central part of America. You certainly can see it here, as you were discussing the Mississippi River system and your area, up here in the Illinois area. In California, we think we are a real big State and we have got a lot of people, and this legislation is extremely important for California. I am going to just point out some of the--San Francisco Bay, one of the great maritime bays in the world. We would argue there is none more beautiful nor more important than the San Francisco Bay. In and out of this Bay flows a vast amount of commerce to the Port of Oakland, and also up to the rivers, into the central part of California, through the delta on the Sacramento and the San Joaquin River, where trade now goes, international trade, to the Port of Sacramento and the Port of Stockton. Very, very important because, like Illinois and the great Midwest, we have a vast agricultural economy here in the central valley of California, and a lot of that, particularly rice from my district, goes out of the Port of Stockton and Sacramento. Both of those ports now have channels that are of insufficient depth to bring in the large ships, and so it becomes much more expensive. The issue you raised, Mr. Enyart, about the cost of shipping, if you have small ships that can't carry a full cargo because of the depth of channel, it gets more expensive. So in this area, channel maintenance at the Port of Oakland, channel maintenance for the Ports of Sacramento and the like and, of course, up along the Contra Costa County area, where the refineries and the oil tankers come and go. As you move further south, we have got the ports, mostly fishing down here along the coast and, of course, Monterey, which is famous, Pebble Beach and the Monterey Bay area. Then you get down to Los Angeles, and the two great, great harbors of America, side by side, together form the largest harbor system in this Nation, and you can argue whether it is the largest in the world, but it is surely big, the Port of Los Angeles, represented by Congresswoman Hahn, and the Port of Long Beach, side by side there in the Los Angeles area, Long Beach represented by Mr. Lowenthal. Those ports are really one of the major engines of international trade and economic growth, and of course, from those ports, those great cargos move in and out, all across America on the railways and highways. So we have that. Then of course you can get down here to San Diego, some other harbors along the way in Orange County, and then the harbor of San Diego, which is extremely important for the military. Any time you happen to get to San Diego, you will see the aircraft carriers there from the U.S. Navy and other critical equipment and ships of the U.S. Navy. All of that is important. Here in my district--I am going to put up another map, and this is where I really get involved. This is a map of, obviously, San Francisco Bay here, with the harbor of San Francisco, the Port of San Francisco, the Port of Oakland, Alameda in here and up along the Contra Costa coast. As you get into the delta, this is the largest inland delta, or the largest delta on the west coast of the Western Hemisphere, and one of the great inland deltas of the world. There are more than 1,000 miles of waterways here in this delta area. I represent about half of that area, the Sacramento River going up here and the San Joaquin River coming here, and then down into the great San Joaquin Valley. These areas are all protected by levees, and so the rivers are confined within those levees, and many of those levees, as I said a while ago, are more than 100 years old, and they need protection. The water system of California, water flowing from the north, across these, through these waterways that are channeled by the levees to the great pumps down here, delivering water to southern California and the San Joaquin Valley, depends upon these levees. This is part of the WRRDA bill, and so these levees and protecting the water system of California and the great agricultural enterprises of the delta are critically important, and the Water Resource Reform and Development Act provides money for the maintenance and the continuing studies of these levees, as well as for many of the critical environmental habitats in the area. As you move up the Sacramento River, you will come to the great metropolis of Sacramento, which I talked about, and here, the American River coming in with the Sacramento River. Right in this area is, arguably, the highest flood danger area in America, and there is a project right here in the Natomas area that is absolutely crucial, crucial to life and limb. Then as you move on up in the rest of my district, going up 200 miles from here to here, you have Yuba City and Marysville, again, communities that have flooded in the past, with the loss of life, and those too are dependent upon the success of the WRRDA bill. Now, what we are going to do tomorrow, and in the days ahead as we move through this conference committee--and my task, is to get the policy set. But the other side of it is the money. Where's the money coming from? Well, the austerity budgets that have been such the prize of our Republican colleagues really have stripped money away from the projects that we have been talking about, stripped money away from the maintenance of the ports, the dredging of the channels, and the protection and enhancement of the levees. That money has been stripped away. So, with the first sequestration that took place about 8 months ago, $250 million of money that the Corps of Engineers would have for the ports, for the channels, and for the levees, disappeared. That was Sequestration 1. On January 15, Sequestration 2 hits, with another $90 billion hit, and we are not sure exactly how much the Corps of Engineers will lose, but they are going to lose a vast amount of money. So all of the talk, all of the energy that we are putting into writing the appropriate policies to reform, to improve, to put programs in place for the American economy, aren't going to happen. Well, many of them are not going to happen because of the austerity budgets and the two sequestrations. This is a critical problem, a critical problem, and I would reach out to my colleagues, both Democrat and Republican, and say, but there is money. There is money available, but we are not spending it in the right place. In the budget bill that passed the House of Representatives a few months ago, there was an increase in the authorization well above what the President wanted to build and rebuild nuclear bombs, over $12 billion over the next decade, for just one life-extension program on a nuclear weapon, the B-61--$12 billion. Now, it can be argued, and I would argue this, that that was an extraordinarily inappropriate place to spend money. We don't need that bomb for deterrence, I don't believe. The military may argue that we do, but then they can never get enough of these things. My argument is, we need to spend the money where real danger exists, and that real danger exists on America's rivers when these levees are not up to standard. When the levees protecting New Orleans were not up to standard, people died, billions upon billions were lost. When the levees in Sacramento are not up to standard, billions will be lost and people will die, and that is an immediate threat. We have got plenty of other nuclear weapons for deterrence, but to spend $12 billion in a way that I believe would be better spent on things that protect real people in real-life situations--so we are making judgments here. First of all, we are making a judgment--well, I wouldn't say either you or I, Mr. Enyart, are making this judgment, but our colleagues, particularly on the Republican side, are making a judgment that they believe you can build the American economy with austerity; that is, to cut the Federal expenditures. I disagree. There are critical investments that the Federal Government should and must make. This is not new. Often we hear the talk around here, the Founding Fathers. Mr. Enyart, have you heard people talk about, well, the Founding Fathers would do thus and so? We hear it all the time. The Founding Fathers, let's take Washington and Hamilton, shortly after he was inaugurated-- Oh, by the way, Washington refused to be inaugurated in a suit made in England. He was inaugurated in a suit made in America. There was only one tailor at the time that would do that, but he did it. Then he told Hamilton, I want a policy to build the American manufacturing sector. Hamilton came back some days later, probably 2 or 3 months, with a program, not 2,000 pages, but probably a couple of hundred pages at the most, and he said: We need, in America, to do the following things: to build the American economy and the American manufacturing base. He said, one, we need to build ports. We need to build canals, and we need to protect American industry by using American taxpayer dollars to buy American-made goods. He said, beware of trade policies. Hamilton and Washington wanted trade policies that protected the American manufacturing sector and American agriculture. Interestingly, in the next few days, or in the next few weeks, we are going to have the question of trade policy before us here in the House of Representatives, and it is likely to be the Trans-Pacific Trade Program. What is it? Well, they want to fast-track it, where not one person on this floor will be able to say, wait a minute; we ought to change this, or we ought to change that. So we ought to be paying attention to the Founding Fathers who said, watch trade policy. Protect American jobs. So as we go through all of this, in my district, we are going to have to have the money, American taxpayer money, plus a lot of local taxpayer money to protect the citizens in my district and the ports. About $1.8 billion is collected at the ports to rebuild, to dredge, and to maintain the ports. About half that money is siphoned off for other projects. Beware of austerity budgets. No more sequestration. This Nation cannot afford that terrible policy of sequestration because it will rip the heart out of the critical investments that America has to make. I have rambled on here for a little while and went off to some other things. Mr. Enyart, would you like to pick it up for a while?

Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you very much. Sometimes I want to call you Congressman, and sometimes I want to call you General. Always we are going to say that you really know the Mississippi. You served there in the National Guard, providing the protection to the people, and to have a very good sense of what is necessary in that part of Illinois and beyond. As you were talking about the issues of moving goods and services up and down the great Mississippi River system--Ohio, Missouri, and the other rivers--there is about $1.4 trillion of goods that move down that river into the other ports across America and is shipped out across the entire world. That is 30 million jobs. You were talking about that. You also raised a point that is very important, and that is that it is not just the ongoing jobs of the tugboats and the barges, the granaries and all of that, but it is also the job of building the infrastructure itself. The men and women that are going to get out there and put together the new docks, the new levee systems--all of those things require manpower. And we know that there is an enormous benefit. Every dollar that is invested in infrastructure returns well over $3 back into the economy immediately, to say nothing of the long- term benefit that comes of having that new lock system in place, more efficient, longer locks so, as you said, more of those barges than just one towline can work their way through the lock and not have to be broken up into smaller towlines. So there are a lot of issues in this piece of legislation. It is going to be an extremely important moment in moving the economy forward. This is the first time in 6 years. It has been 6 years since the Congress and the Senate got together to do a water resource reform and development program. Why? I guess we just couldn't quite figure it out, but we have to do it this time. There is a need for very serious reform in this system. We know that many of the projects that are undertaken, that the Corps of Engineers is working on, are forever trying to get in line and get in place. We know that many projects simply are derelict; they never should be built. So the bill removes $12 billion of derelict projects that should never be built and replaces them with new projects that are critically important. Some of those are the locks along the Mississippi and the Ohio system and some of the other dams that are out there. For me in California, we know that these projects are critically important. The city of Sacramento, Mr. Enyart, is one of the most flood-risk cities--in fact, it is No. 2 in flood risk; probably No. 1, now that New Orleans has had an opportunity to have its flood walls rebuilt following the devastation of Katrina. Now it is Sacramento. It is a huge population in a very risky area, a population that I represent part of and share with Congresswoman Matsui, the city of Sacramento. It is a little different than New Orleans. When Katrina came through, it was flooded, to be sure, and terribly damaged. Many lives were lost. But the water was warm. In Sacramento, if the levees were to break on the American River or the Sacramento River system and flood that system, we are talking about very cold water, water that people would not survive in for more than a few minutes because of the temperature and hypothermia. So we really need to build those levees. As I go into this task of being on the conference committee where I will serve as one of the representatives of the House of Representatives, I will be looking at those kinds of projects that are really about human life, the safety of my constituents and the safety of constituents all around this Nation where these levees need to be built to a high standard. Many of them need to be repaired in my district, the delta of California. Many of the levees are over 100 years old and were never built to standards that would be applicable today. So we have work to do. We have levees to build. We have ports to build. We have channels to dredge. We have jobs that will be created when we pass this bill and adequately fund it. One other thing that is possible here is not only will we create jobs directly in building the ports, dredging the rivers and channels, building the levees and repairing them--those are direct jobs. Not only will we do that. We will also have the long-term foundation, the investment necessary for future economic growth. We will also, if we do one more thing--and I hope to get this into the legislation. That is to make sure that there is a strong buy America provision. This is going to be American taxpayer money that is going to be used for the steel in the locks, for the cement, for the pilings in the piers and probably the dredges that will be used for the channel. This is all American taxpayer money that will be used to buy and maintain that equipment. If it is American taxpayer money, then, by golly, you ought to be buying American goods. So buy American. Use our taxpayer money to build the rest of the manufacturing sector of America. Build our steel industry by buying American steel for the locks and for the piers and for the cement and for the other work that needs to be done. Make it in America. It is very simple. Use American taxpayer money to make it in America and to buy American goods. So I am going to be working very diligently on that conference committee to make sure that this buy America provision is strongly embedded in the legislation. I know that if we are able to do that, we will not only improve our levees, dredge the channels, build the ports, but we will also have the opportunity to make American jobs in the manufacturing sector. Mr. Enyart, you may have some additional thoughts that you would like to bring to our attention. If so, please have at it.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, thank you very much for this opportunity. At least once a week we come before the House to talk about jobs, that little four-letter word that is so important on everybody's mind--can I get a job, will I have a job, what does it take to get a job in America. We still have far too high unemployment, and we still have a great need to ensure that our jobs produce the kinds of wages and opportunities that Americans really want. They want to be able to buy a home, have a car, raise their families, provide the necessities, and see their kids get a great education and opportunity. We have a long way to go. We have come a long way, but we still have a long way to go. One of the critical ways that America can and must build jobs is build the infrastructure, to make sure that those foundations of the economy will grow, upon which cities will be built, those things that allow us to prosper, the critical investments. In this case, the physical investments are the issue that we are going to talk about today. We have an opportunity. Beginning tomorrow, a conference committee will be formed here in the Capitol made up of Senators, Republican and Democrat, and Members of the House of Representatives, both Republican and Democrat, sitting down together. Oh, yeah, together, actually at the same table, tomorrow morning, 9:30, to beginning a conference committee on the Water Resources Reform and Development Act, otherwise known as WRRDA. If you are around here long enough, you know what that means, but I guess the rest of the world really needs to know it is the Water Resources Reform and Development Act. And so 13 million jobs, 13 million jobs in America depend upon how well that conference committee does its work. The House of Representatives a few weeks back put out its version of the bill. The Senate did several months ago. Senator Barbara Boxer from the State of California, my colleague, will be chairing that committee. We have work to do. We have the task of making sure that 13 million American jobs that depend upon the Water Resources Reform and Development Act will be secure. It is a big one. So what is involved in the Water Resources Reform and Development Act? Well, how about this: 99 percent of America's international trade travels through our ports and waterways. That is a big number. I suppose there is some 1 percent that travels on airplanes, and those are probably very high-ticket, high-priced items. But if you are talking about the great, almost the entire, majority of America's work, that goes through our ports and waterways. This is what the Water Resources Reform and Development Act is all about. It is about our ports, the great ports of America. It is about the waterways of America. It is about the locks and the dams on the rivers. Let me put this up for just a second. This is an interesting map. I don't know if many Americans have really considered the map of the United States and the waters of the United States. Obviously, the coastline, we don't have Alaska on this map, but it should be there also. The great coasts, the east coast, the gulf coast, the Pacific coast, and of course on and around Alaska. That is not all. Each of these rivers also is a waterway upon which commerce flows; and tomorrow, with the conference committee for the WRRDA bill, we will be discussing how to make these rivers more attuned to the environment and to commerce. On the great Mississippi River, the Missouri, the Ohio, and the Illinois Rivers and all the way up into Wisconsin, an enormous amount of America's commerce flows along those rivers. And joining me in just a moment will be Representative Bill Enyart from the State of Illinois, and he will be talking about some of these issues as they relate to that part of the world. But this great river system in the central part of America is a major highway. There are interstate roads, to be sure, and there are local and county roads, but most of them feed into this great system that moves up and down the Mississippi River. The Water Resources Reform and Development Act is all about that. It is all about that commerce on that great river and about whether the locks and the levees that are on that river are adequate to meet the needs of commerce and the needs of public protection. For those of us on the west coast and the east coast and even into the gulf, it is about the ports. It is about the ports of America and whether those ports are adequate for the commerce that we need to have. So when you happen to go by a port and you see one of these tied up at the dock, you can think about the American economy and about 99 percent of the international trade that goes in and out of our ports. It is a big deal. It is a very, very big deal, and most of America's ports are antiquated. The shoals, that is the mud and sand at the bottom of the ports, have been accreted, that is, built up over the last several years; and it needs constant dredging. And so part of what we will be dealing with at the WRRDA conference committee is the dredging of the ports and quite possibly the shore side, what is going on there. These are subjects that we will come to in the next few minutes as we talk more about how we can build jobs in America and simultaneously build the American economy by building the great infrastructure. One more issue I want to put up here before I call on Mr. Enyart is this one. You see all of these rivers here; they are critically important. They are critically important for commerce and trade and obviously water and agriculture and all the rest. But sometimes-- virtually every year--they are also a major problem for America. This happens to be a picture of a levee break on the Sacramento River system. I happen to represent 200 miles of the Sacramento River. This break is all too common across America; and so the Water Resources Reform and Development Act, which will be up tomorrow in the conference committee--it is not going to be finished but at least it will make some progress toward completion--will deal with the levees. The Army Corps of Engineers is the responsible Federal agency for the maintenance of the rivers, for the waters of America, whether they are in the rivers or along the shore. They are responsible for the ports, that is, for the maintenance of the ports, not the ports themselves. And in my district, the Army Corps of Engineers plays a major role in public safety because it is their responsibility to make sure that these levees are adequate to the challenge of a flood. When those levees are not adequate, great damage is done across America. It is approximately $22.3 billion of annual unspent American treasure that is still in the pockets of America and the governments of America when these levees work. When they fail, it is a huge expense--floods, flood damage, and the like. I would like now to call on the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Enyart) to share with us his view of the necessity for the Water Resources Reform and Development Act and the way it protects and helps his district.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Officer Steven Trojanowski who is retiring after more than 35 years of law enforcement service, with nearly 24 years of that service to the City of Fairfield. After serving five years as a Reserve Deputy with the Placer County Sheriff's Office and six years as a Deputy Sheriff with the Contra Costa Sheriff's Office, he was hired as a Police Officer with the Fairfield Police Department on November 27, 1989. Officer Trojanowski served the community in a number of capacities within Patrol, Traffic, Investigations, and Quality of Life Bureaus. In addition to routine patrol assignments, he has served as a DUI Enforcement Officer, Detective, Field Training Officer, provided law enforcement support to the City's Quality Neighborhoods Team (QNT), and earned a Lifesaving Award. Some of his most significant contributions to the Police Department have been his knowledge and experience, solid investigative skills, and quality reporting techniques. Officer Trojanowski has been a dedicated team member and a positive representation of the Fairfield Police Department. He has been a valued employee and his commitment to the community was second to none. Officer Trojanowski was a loyal representative of the law enforcement community and admired for his hard work, dedication, and positive work ethic.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, 435 Members of the House of Representatives spent the last 10 days back in their districts. I suspect, like me, they had a chance to meet with their constituents to talk about the issues of the day and to see America's real progress, the progress that is taking place in our communities. I would like to share some of those experiences that I had over the last 10 days with the Members of this House because they are instructive about what we ought to be doing here in the House of Representatives. Every person I talk to, probably more than 30 meetings, many of them public in nature, townhall meetings, meetings at manufacturing plants with the workers, meetings at the universities, all of those people had the same agenda. Frankly, it ought to be our agenda because it is America's agenda. They want this economy to grow. They want this economy to provide the job opportunities that Americans must have. Those good hardworking American families, they want to go to work, they want to have a decent wage, and they want to be certain that when they are sick they have an affordable health care policy. We hear a lot of rhetoric here about the Affordable Care Act and ObamaCare, but back home people are trying to figure out their insurance programs, just like they do every time at this time of year. Every year it is time to renew your insurance policy and people look at new policies. They put aside the old policy. They get a notice that their old policy, the cost has gone up or the coverage has changed. Now they are in the same situation, but we have a name for it now. We call it ObamaCare. Americans always in the fall have a high level of confusion as they try to figure out what to do with their health care for the coming year. At one meeting I attended this last week with a group of doctors and administrators, they said: This will work it out, this is no different than we have seen every year. We know that at the end of this process the health care insurance will go on and people will have coverage. Then they added: But this year, there will be far more people with health care coverage, and in our hospital there will not be as much uncompensated care, that is, people that don't have insurance. So they said: Just keep working at it, let this thing settle down, let it go forward because we know that in California millions of our citizens and our neighbors will finally have health care insurance. But hey, this is a place of rhetoric, this is a place where we create problems like the new crisis that is going to come up in just 2\1/2\ months. Oh yeah, we have manufactured yet another crisis. On January 15, we are going to have to go through our quarterly funding of the strongest government in the entire world. Hello, you said. You mean you are actually funding the United States Government once every 3 months? You don't have a full year funding? That's right, we don't. So we have yet one more manufactured crisis. Be aware, January 15 is coming. Is there another government shutdown? The American people, my constituents in my district, said: Don't let it happen again, don't let it happen again. It hurt us, it hurt us. In our businesses, we had to lay off people. But Mr. Congressman, what we want is a steady, steady policy out of Washington. We want to know what the long-term looks like. We want to know what the long-term tax policy is. We want to know what the funding programs are going to be for the military, for the social welfare programs. We don't want to have to--as one constituent told me as I visited their Head Start program--we don't want to have to lay people off, we don't want to have to tell the children, the 600 in my district that are no longer in the Head Start program: Oh, I am sorry, you can't come to school next week because funding from Washington was cut. It is time for us in the House of Representatives to settle down. It is time for us to put aside all of our rhetoric. We know we have to work together. It is time for us to come up with some long-term solutions for America's problems. Tonight I would like to talk about how we can build jobs here in the United States, how we can rebuild the manufacturing sector of the United States economy, a sector of the economy that just 15 years ago employed just under 20 million Americans with solid jobs, where the wife or the husband could go to work each day knowing that they would bring home a paycheck sufficient to pay the mortgage on the house, to buy a car, and they had a health insurance policy provided by their employer. Now, we are somewhere near 11 million Americans in manufacturing, and many of those health insurance programs have disappeared. What we need to do is go back to the basics. We need to go back to those critical investments, both public and private, that have created this incredible economy. Even though manufacturing is smaller, nonetheless the economy of the United States remains the biggest in the world. But if we continue with this 3-month funding of the Federal Government, if we continue to withdraw the critical public investments and the critical inducements to the private sector to make their investments, we will see our economy slip away. We will see the strength of this Nation ebb, and we will wonder down the line what happened. Well, there are several things that allow America to build these kinds of things. That's a modern locomotive, an electric locomotive destined to be on the Amtrak lines here on the east coast. It was the first modern locomotive made in America, 100 percent American made in probably the last 60-70 years. How did it come to pass that this locomotive and about 77 other locomotives just like it will be on the tracks here on the east coast, 100 percent American made? How did that happen? Well, it happened with government policy. And so the men and women and children who ride the trains here on the eastern corridor are going to have a new system available to them. Critical investments were made over the years, critical investments in each one of these issues, and these are the ways in each of these areas, in international trade, in tax policy, in energy policy, labor relations issues, education, research, and infrastructure. Oh, by the way, none of this is new. These are not new things. These have been in place in America since George Washington's time. Indeed, George Washington reached out to Alexander Hamilton shortly after he was inaugurated as the first President of the United States, and said, Hey, Alex, I need some help here. I want to build the American economy, Alex, so what can we do? Well, Alexander Hamilton said, Let me work on it. He came back about 2 months later with a report. Our reports are usually 2,000 or 3,000 pages. His was maybe less than 50. He said there are things that we can do at the Federal level to grow the American economy, to build the manufacturing sector of America. He called it manufacturers, and he said trade policy. We need a trade policy that protects American manufacturers against cheap imports coming into the United States, against those who would subsidize their businesses to the detriment of American businesses. He said trade policy. We need a trade policy that protects American manufacturing. That was Alexander Hamilton in his report to George Washington in the first months of the first administration of the United States Government. Tax policy was also there. He said that in tax policy we shouldn't be taxing ours, our manufacturing products. We should be taxing those products that are coming from overseas. Those are called duties, and so tax policy was part of it. Actually, energy policy wasn't on the list at the time so we can kind of put that aside, although that is an extremely important discussion for today; but for the purposes of today, we will let that go. Labor at the time was not such a good thing. There were no laws protecting the men and women who worked, and certainly there was slavery and all the horrible things that went with that; but labor policy was also not part of what he talked about. But he did talk about education. This was probably a conversation that I'm not sure Hamilton and Jefferson had, but education was very much a part of the early effort in the American Government to stimulate economic growth, manufacturing and the like. Interestingly, research wasn't specifically called out; but while they didn't use the term ``research,'' they used the word ``patent,'' ``patents,'' and ``patent policy'' which was also part of this report. While they didn't say ``research'' formally, what they did say was out of the innovative and inventive mind of Americans would come new ideas and there needed to be a patent policy to allow those new ideas to mature and inure to the benefit of the inventor and the entrepreneur. So way back at the very beginning of this Nation's economic future, certain policies were laid in place that actually led to the extraordinary growth in infrastructure. Hamilton specifically said, and George Washington agreed, that there needed to be a transportation policy for the United States. We are calling that infrastructure today. Then they called it canals, ports, roads. Today we call it canals, ports, roads, airports, we call it Internet, we call it telecommunication systems. It is the infrastructure upon which the economy then grows. Way back in the 1780s, these ideas were presented to the Congress of the United States, some of them enacted by the Congress, some of them enacted by the various State governments. And over the years, as generations have gone by, as new men and women have come to sit here in the Halls of this great Congress and in the Senate, and new Presidents, there has been a constant drumbeat of critical investment by the United States Government in the foundation of economic growth. And today, in the debates that are occurring here on the floor of this House and across this Nation, there is a debate about the role of the Federal Government in the future economy of the United States. You just heard part of that debate from some of my colleagues who preceded me here on the floor saying that the United States Government really ought not be involved in health care too much. Okay, they didn't like the Affordable Care Act. They want it to disappear, repealed, defunded or otherwise gone. Well, okay. But there is this thing called Medicare. I don't hear anybody on the floor saying--well, they actually did call for the repeal of Medicare, but that hasn't gone very far. But the Federal Government is involved in many, many aspects of American life; and in those things that create economic growth, you will find us now involved soon in a debate about trade policy. Should we have unlimited free trade in which the American businesses are open to unfair competition from around the world, from workers that are paid virtually nothing in some of the less developed countries of the world where there are no laws about working conditions, where factories collapse? Should American businesses have to compete with that kind of competition? I think not. So I would use the words ``fair trade,'' not free trade, but fair trade--trade policies that are fair to the American worker, that give the American worker a chance to compete in the world markets rather than having our business simply run away chasing the cheapest wage rate in the world. So trade policy is going to be discussed here with the Trans-Pacific partnership program and perhaps a similar one for Europe. We must be very careful, very, very careful as we analyze this that the American worker is not put in a disadvantageous position and situation where they will lose their job to competition, unfair competition from around the world. So it has to be fair trade. Let me move down here to the infrastructure issue. My district is 200 miles of the Sacramento River Valley. I probably have 1,000 miles of levees that protect farms and ranches and cities from floods. We have had disastrous floods in California over the years and over the centuries. Those levees are critical, a critical infrastructure to protect not only human life and property, but to allow businesses to grow. Right now without proper levees, farmers who want to put in a feed mill, farmers in my district who grow rice who want to put in a rice drying facility and a silo in which to store that rice, or even a cow barn for their dairy, find it difficult and in many cases impossible because the levee that holds back the floodwaters from their farm does not meet the 100-year flood standard set by the Corps of Engineers and FEMA. Therefore, they can't build unless they get insurance, and the insurance program is unaffordable. So we see right here that the growth in the agricultural sector in my district is retarded from lack of investment in the levees, upgrading and maintaining those levees so they meet the minimum standards. This is something the Federal Government has played a role in forever, it seems. Certainly for the last century and a half, the Federal Government has been involved through the Army Corps of Engineers in building levees to protect cities, whether it is on the Ohio River, the Mississippi, the Missouri, or in California, the Sacramento and the San Joaquin Rivers in that central valley and beyond. So what are we doing today? Well, we passed a Water Resources Development Act a couple of weeks ago. Good for us. The Senate has passed their bill. We need a conference committee. I understand the Senate has named conferees. The House of Representatives has yet to do so. All of that is good. We will set out a good policy, I hope, one that sets proper controls, provides for prioritization, a policy that would make sure that there is no waste, fraud and abuse, and that efficient and effective policies are the ones that would be funded by the American taxpayer. All good. But there is a problem. The problem is, where is the money to pay for this? It is not there. Why? Sequestration and severe budget cuts. We are actually seeing a very rapid decline in the amount of money that is available for infrastructure investment and for other programs that the Federal Government has carried out over many, many decades. So we can put the best policies in place; but unless we have the money to build these structures, then those farmers that want to improve their operation are not going to be able to do so. So we ought to think seriously about infrastructure investment, in this case protection for floods. The same thing goes for the cities in my district and across this Nation. We know there is a big brouhaha going on around here about the increasing cost of flood insurance. Yes, it is a real problem: like quadruple, in some cases there is a ten-fold, increase in the cost of flood insurance in certain communities around the Nation. Everybody goes, We didn't mean to do that. Indeed, we didn't mean to do that; but it did happen. Now we have to back that off. As we back that off, we need to consider the fact that it is not just flood insurance; it is the protection from floods. And so when Superstorm Sandy comes again, will the east coast be prepared with the necessary flood walls and facilities to repel the flood? Only if we adequately finance the infrastructure investment in this case for flood protection. Highways and bridges, well, I don't know, there is probably several thousand bridges in the United States that you want to cross very quickly, or you don't want to be on that bridge with a very heavy truck. We have deficient bridges in every part of the United States. We have seen those bridges collapse with catastrophic results, people losing their lives, cars into the rivers, trucks into the rivers. These bridges have to be repaired. And drive on any highway in the United States, you will see some new asphalt, some new concrete, but you are going to see a whole lot more new potholes. You are going to see the deterioration of the highway system in the United States. There is insufficient money even to maintain the repair and good state of those highways. It goes on and on. Where will we find the revenue? We are continuing to see a decline in the willingness of the Federal Government, us, Members of Congress, to fund these programs. Infrastructure, critically important in many ways, and I have only dealt with two of those issues here tonight. I want to pick up the one that is really the genesis of economic growth, and it is research. I mentioned earlier that George Washington, while he didn't use the word ``research,'' used the word ``patent,'' which comes from research being done by some individual or group that created a new product. They got their patent on it so that they could then use that in the commercial marketplace and hopefully make a profit. Research has been around a long time. Most of the research in the early days was probably mostly in the area of the military, done in part by the military, dating way back, in trying to upgrade their weapons. But beginning in the 1860s, Abraham Lincoln signed a law called the land-grant college program and established, across the United States, a series of colleges and universities who had a specific function of researching for agriculture. Over the years, that has grown into an extraordinary research capability within the United States. And now, not only do we have the agricultural research--and I must say, with some pride, that I represent the University of California, Davis, which is the largest, most successful, most advanced in total--I am not putting down anybody else--agricultural research program in the world. There are a lot of other great programs out there, but in terms of size and reach, the University of California, Davis is way out front. What other kinds of research are there funded by the United States Government? The National Institutes of Health. How do we keep people healthy? What about disease? What about heart conditions, cancer? The National Institutes of Health; the National Science Foundation; NOAA, dealing with oceans and atmosphere; NASA, dealing with space. All of these research projects are fundamental to economic growth, and all of them have Federal funding. Some of them have partnerships with State, some with private funding, but these partnerships have created the foundation for economic growth. I had the pleasure of being at the University of California, Davis earlier this last week, meeting with the heads of four departments, each of them engaged in a different kind of research--earth science research in some cases, water research in others. Everybody knows that California has its water issues, and right now we are in the early stages of what I hope and pray is not a drought. We have these researchers out there and other research on health issues. All of them are saying that the sequestration and the budget cuts of the Federal Government are severely impacting critical research that was about to mature into a solution for a health problem, into a new way of conserving water or a new energy system using hydrogen or solar. But those projects that they were working on have been stalled and, in some cases, set aside, so the opportunity for economic growth coming from that research is slowed or stopped. We can't allow that to happen. Not only is it immediate jobs, but that is the research that will create future jobs. I want to give one example of the way in which research actually works out together with regulations, regulations to protect our air, regulations to protect our water--the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and other regulations. Some of them are now dealing with the issue of climate change. I am a member of the Safe Climate Caucus, and there are many of us that belong to this caucus. We are trying to say we have got global warming. Whether the tragic typhoon in the Philippines was directly caused by global warming--I think it is no accident that we are seeing stronger storms just as predicted. Anyway, our Safe Climate Caucus is concerned that many here in Congress are trying to shut down commonsense Environmental Protection Agency guidelines that are designed to keep our air and our water clean and healthy and to reduce the disastrous consequences of climate change. These regulations can actually drive technological development and they can strengthen our economy. When those policies are paired with the entrepreneurship, the inventiveness of the individuals and businesses out there, some really interesting things happen and jobs are created. Last week I visited one such program in California. It is a program put together by Recology, which is a company that operates in my district and in San Francisco. They are a recycling, a composting, and a landfill company, and they have a landfill. They are involved in some very interesting and innovative ways to separate the waste, to recycle, all to the good. But they have another project. They have teamed up with a company called G2 Energy. It has put in place a facility to take the methane gas that comes off of the landfill that at one point went up in the atmosphere--do keep in mind that methane gas is around a 20 times more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. They put in a project to capture that methane gas, take it out of the landfill, put it in a pipe with a vacuum, run it over to a Caterpillar engine manufactured in America--actually, it is a big marine engine that probably was driving some very large ship, but it now is sitting there next to the landfill, attached to a generator, and producing an extraordinary amount of electricity. That is innovation, and that is the kind of things that can be done. That methane coming off the landfill into the Caterpillar engine and into the generator will replace more than a million gallons of diesel fuel that was once used to run that very same kind of an engine. That is the kind of innovation that can occur when coupled with research and wise public policy. There are so many other pieces to all of this, and we will talk about it in the days ahead. One of the things that I want to just kind wind up with is why it is important. So, do keep in mind trade policy, tax policy, energy, labor policy, education, research, and infrastructure. These are the foundational investments that any economy must make if they want to see sustained economic growth. Unfortunately, we are falling off the power curve on many of these policies. Here is why it is important. Here is why this discussion is important. Here is why manufacturing and growth in the American economy is important. These are words that Franklin Delano Roosevelt put forward. 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. We know that after the great meltdown in 2008 and 2009 that millions of Americans lost their jobs. We also know that, in the last 5 years, the economy has come back, that additional wealth has been created. We do know that the gross national product of the United States, which is its wealth, has grown. What most people don't know is where that wealth went. That wealth went to the top 10 percent. About 95 percent of the wealth generated over the last 5 years has wound up in the hands of the top 10 percent, the most wealthy people in America. So the words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt come directly back to a manufacturing and jobs policy for the United States. If we make the critical investments to grow the economy, to provide the infrastructure, to do the research, to deal with the international trade, to think back to what George Washington had in mind as a Founding Father, then we can begin to establish policies that grow the American economy, that reestablish America as the mightiest manufacturing country in the world, and, in so doing, create those jobs for hardworking Americans that go to work every day, want to pay their bills, want to pay their house mortgage, buy the car, see that their kids get an education, see that they have an adequate health insurance program. If we do those things, then these words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt will begin to ring true, and we will begin to add enough for those who, today, have too little. That should be our challenge. It is not our place to make sure that the superwealthy and the billionaires and others get even more. It is our place that those who struggle every day, many in poverty--and the poverty rate in California is 25 percent or more--that those who struggle every day to provide for their family, that they have a chance of a good education, an opportunity to get that job, that middle class job. If they have that, then this country will prosper and the kinds of divisions that sometimes rake us over the coals and cause us great consternation and trouble will be abated. They will never disappear--I have no illusions--but they will be abated, and they will be less. That should be our goal. As we approach the next fiscal crisis, just 2 months away, we should think about those men and women out there that I saw--and I suspect many of my colleagues saw as they returned home and went to their districts and went to all their meetings--who said: Can you just give us certainty? Can you stop the interminable fighting and the chaos that is causing us such concern, that is causing me not to invest in my business? Just give us certainty. Give us a program that builds a foundation so that my business can grow and prosper. Give us the tax policy that has the proper incentives, not just for those who have great wealth, but for those who are trying to grow their business. Give us a trade policy that is fairer to the American worker, fairer to the American business, that doesn't just give away this great country's wealth to some other company around the world, that doesn't encourage our businesses, our American corporations to go offshore. Put those policies in place so that we can grow the American economy, so that Americans can have a decent job and fulfill their own personal vision of the American Dream. They can get on that ladder, leading wherever they want it to lead, climb as high as they can, that the impairments and the impediments are not there. That should be our goal. We have about 2 months to avoid yet one other crisis. As we avoid it, I hope we keep in mind those things that create real wealth and real opportunity for all Americans. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Chair, I want to thank Committee Chairman Shuster and Ranking Member Rahall, as well as Subcommittee Chairman Gibbs and Ranking Member Bishop for their hard work in putting together a bill that all of us can support. There are many good things in the bill and a few things that still need some work. The Water Resources Reform and Development Act (WRRDA) is a vitally important bill to my constituents in the 3rd District of California. The levee projects that are authorized will provide life-saving protection for residents throughout California's flood prone Central Valley, while other construction projects will help to rebuild our crumbling water infrastructure and create jobs. The improvements to revitalize our ports and waterways will bolster business development and ensure that products grown and manufactured in the United States will continue to be exported around the world. I commend Committee leadership for finding a way to authorize much needed projects without violating the earmark ban. The Natomas Levee Improvement Project will be authorized when this bill becomes law, resulting in increased flood protection for thousands of residents in the Sacramento area. However, there is more we could do. There are approximately 15 projects that have Chief's Reports in the pipeline. They aren't yet completed, but should be in the next several months. I urge an expansion of the authorization to include those projects that will have completed Chief's Reports by the end of the Fiscal Year so that important projects like the one in the Sutter Basin can begin work without wondering when we might get around to passing another WRDA bill. Much needed language was included to instruct the Corps to revise its regulations regarding levee vegetation. Each part of the country is different and it is vital that the Corps have the flexibility to make determinations based on the individual community and what is needed to provide the most protection. As the bill moves forward in the process, I urge my colleagues to be open to discussing changes to the crediting provisions. Crediting is critical to ensure timely investments in public infrastructure and encourage local communities to start sooner than later to respond to flood threats. One slight change I would like to see would be to move the milestone earlier as to when a non-federal sponsor of a project could begin receiving credit. This does not obligate additional federal funds, nor does it guarantee a non-federal sponsor will receive credit. It merely lets local communities begin to address risks to the public safety as soon as possible. The Committee has taken strides to reform the way money in the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund (HMTF) is spent. Over the next several years, more funding will be funneled back to our ports to ensure those paying into the fund actually receive the dollars back to maintain the infrastructure. Again, more can be done to make sure California gets a fair shake. Most of our ports are donors to the fund, but get little back. The world is only getting smaller and we must do all that we can to ensure American products can get out of our country and into the global market. All of our ports are important to international trade and all should get adequate funding to be the best they can be. This bill is a milestone in a divided Congress and represents compromise in an era of partisanship. A vote for this bill today is a vote for jobs and for our economy, two things we can all support.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Chairman, this bill is extremely important, and I urge support of the bill. There is much in it to like; there are a few things that I think we ought to tweak as we move along. The levee vegetation issue is addressed. It should be modified slightly. There will be an effort to do that later. The crediting issue is still out and about. It should be modified. It is extremely important to allow projects to move forward with local money, so I urge some modification in that. Ports are absolutely critically important. There is great progress made in this and the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund being used for its intended purpose. I commend all involved in that. The Chief's Report issue has been significantly improved. I want to thank the chairman and others for bringing back to this Congress the power that the Constitution gives it. The Chief's Report issue is there. I would recommend that we modify it slightly to give a little bit more leeway on when and where a Chief's Report is. All in all, it is a great bill. Congratulations, and thanks to all who were involved in writing it.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate this presentation. We had one of those very important moments to recognize the long service of one of our colleagues. As we listen to those eulogies, I think all of us should be reminded of the awesome responsibilities that we share here in the House of Representatives. Bill Young, obviously, felt those responsibilities deeply. He carried them out for an extraordinary length of time--43 years. We are thankful for his service, for his memory, and also for what he has taught us about perseverance and steadfastness and also, as you can tell from the various eulogies, about working across the aisle. Working across the aisle and finding the middle ground is what I want to spend some time on tonight. Like my 434 colleagues, when we finished voting last Thursday, we all left this Chamber, I think, in a rather somber mood, realizing that 16 days had passed and our government was shut down and there was the likelihood of damage to America and Americans. When we got home, I suspect all of us--and I know this certainly was my case--were confronted by our constituents. They were not happy. In fact, they were angry. They were angry that their government--the government of the strongest, most powerful Nation in the world--wasn't operating because its legislative body had failed. And we had failed to find the common ground; we had failed to protect this Nation and Americans. It was a grand debate over the Affordable Health Care Act, then it morphed into some other kind of concerns, and ultimately wound up somewhere about the deficit and about the default. At the end of that process, I don't think Americans really much cared what the debate was about. What they cared about was the very nature of our government and whether it would be able to operate. It was a heavy toll. It was a heavy toll on our Nation. It is estimated it was well over a $24 billion hit to the economy; and I know in my own district, there was a tremendous hit. As I got off the plane here in Washington, D.C., as I was returning today from California, at the airport, ready to fly back to California, was the chancellor of the University of California-Davis. She caught me as I got off the plane, and she expressed her deep concern for the university and its operations. Research projects that were under way simply stopped. Sitting next to me on the airplane coming out was a woman who was running a health and nutrition program for the U.S. Department of Agriculture that was associated with the University of California- Davis. It was shut down for 16 days, and just the enormous challenge of shutting down and starting back up, the loss of efficiency and the lost research that took place. Those kinds of problems are repeated throughout my district. At Travis and Beale Air Force bases, over a thousand civilian employees were furloughed. In Lake County, the county family service center which provides support for victims of child abuse, domestic abuse, and rape had to reduce its services. As I mentioned, the University of California and the U.S. Department of Agriculture weren't able to operate. Farmers who needed to get loans at the service center couldn't get them--right in the middle of the harvest season. Companies that needed licenses from the Department of Commerce to export advanced technology had all of their orders on hold; and, undoubtedly, some of them were lost. In the far north of California, the wildlife refuges were closed during the opening of the duck season and also the antelope and deer season. In my own district in Dixon, an annual ``stand down'' for struggling veterans had to scramble for money to cover the Department of Labor loan that was not made available. The Small Business Administration was unable to approve business loans. The entire economy of the United States lost over $24 billion. The economic growth of the Nation probably lost as much as half a percentage point. And for what? It is hard to even begin to describe what the argument was all about over the Affordable Care Act--an act that is now providing health care services to over 4 million young men and women who are able to stay on their families' health insurance, for seniors who are getting preventive health care services. It goes on and on. But here we are, once again. We got past all of that. Where do we go tomorrow? Well, tomorrow we begin once again the struggle to define this government's future and, really, to define the future of America. I am going to spend a few moments talking about that struggle because on January 15 there will be yet one more crisis point--a focal point upon which the issues of government will be leveraged one way or the other. We have seen five such crisis points in the last 3 years, and each one a crisis building up to a point where the American economy doesn't know what to expect and therefore does not make the critical investments, does not attempt to grow, because they don't know what the economic and political future will be. We are going to endure that not just once in the next 3 months, but twice. January 15 will be the first opportunity for the next crisis--a crisis that will be about opening government or not. Because, once again, it will be a funding crisis. Will we be able to appropriate the money to operate the Federal Government? Less than a month later, on February 7, there will be one additional debt crisis. Once again, a default cliff will be reached. And so the American economy, like a racehorse at a gate, hearing the trumpet, looking for the gate to open, ready to get out there and charge down the track, the American economy will face once again that gate slamming shut on it. Even as it wants to grow, even as that great American racehorse economy wants to head down the track, that gate has the potential of slamming shut. The uncertainty will be there once again. We have got to end these fiscal crises. It is in the interest of Democrats and Republicans to end these manufactured crises and to put in place a long-term, stable policy that allows this government to make the critical investments to grow the economy, to put in place a tax policy that is sensible and long range and helps to balance the budget, that makes the necessary cuts to those programs that are not essential, and maintains and even enhances those that are essential. Let me put up on the board just for a moment some of the numbers that we are dealing with over the next couple of months. I don't say this is the best chart. It is actually a bit confusing, but I think we need to try to understand the numbers. This number, $1.203 trillion, was what President Obama suggested be the Federal budget for the year 2014. Back in 2010, the actual amount was $1.188 trillion. That is what we actually budgeted and spent that year. That was 2010. So there was some growth that the President recommended for the Federal budget. What actually happened was quite different. What actually happened is down here in these lower numbers. This year, the House Republican budget, otherwise known as the Ryan budget, called for $1.095 trillion, which is significantly under the President's budget. In 2011, the debt crisis came up once again and the August 2011 compromise said that we would spend $1.066 trillion in the 2014 budget. The Senate actually said we would spend $1.058 billion. What did we actually do? What we actually did last week was to authorize an expenditure of $986 billion--a huge difference of some $217 billion less than recommended by the President. What does this number mean? This number means that across this Nation vital programs in the military, vital programs in education, in health care, in agriculture, and in every activity of the government, except those of Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid, were substantially reduced. That put an enormous drag on the economy. So not only was the economy faced with a 16-day shutdown, but it was also faced with a shallow and less robust Federal Government, laying off people all across this Nation. For the University of California at Davis, it meant that $40 million of research programs were not funded. Simply stopped. This kind of effect on the Nation's budget or the Nation's economic activity is going to continue. And in the year ahead, economists predict that it will continue to cause a slowdown in the growth of the economy, lowering tax revenues, actually increasing the deficit, and creating higher unemployment--or at least not reducing the unemployment rate in this Nation. We need to change that. We need to set in place a different policy. And here is where I want to go with this discussion. What is it that we really need to do to grow the American economy, to make sure all of the rungs on the economic ladder are in place and providing the opportunity for every American to have a decent job? Hardworking Americans want to go to work. They want to have a job where they can support their family, where they can meet their own personal and family needs and participate in their communities in a meaningful way with a good, middle class job. There are ways that we can do that. One of them is what we call the Make It In America agenda. The Make It In America agenda involves seven different policies, such as international trade policies. Instead of giving away our jobs to some foreign country, making sure that our trade programs actually encourage economic growth at home, not encourage economic growth in China. Also, that there be a tax policy that ends unnecessary tax loopholes and rebates for those companies that are profitable. For example, of the top 20 American corporations, about half of them pay little or no corporate income tax. The tax system is set up in such a way that they are able to avoid their fair share of the cost of government. So we need to make sure that the tax policies of the United States are wise, that they support economic growth, that they don't provide unnecessary tax breaks and loopholes to those individuals and corporations that don't need them. I will give you one example of such a huge tax loophole: The five biggest oil companies in America together receive somewhere between $4 billion and $5 billion in reduced taxes every year. This is the most profitable industry in the world. Why are they getting subsidies? Why are we subsidizing them? Why is the American taxpayer subsidizing the most profitable industry in the world, the oil industry? This is just one example of tax subsidies, tax breaks, that ought to be removed and seriously looked at. We could significantly increase the revenue to the Federal Government by eliminating these unnecessary, unwise, and quite foolish tax breaks and subsidies that many corporations and some individuals receive. Energy policy is extremely important. We need a wise energy policy. Right now, the United States is in the midst of an energy boom. It is reducing the cost of energy. All across this Nation, we are seeing the effect of this in the coal industry as natural gas is replacing coal- fired power plants, reducing greenhouse gas emissions. All of that is a very, very good thing. Also, we need to continue to move towards sustainable energy, the green energy systems--wind, solar, hydroelectric, geothermal--and other kinds of sustainable energy policies. I am going to skip down here to research because this is where we have a real opportunity to tie together the research agenda with the energy agenda. An example: We know that most of the oil that is produced in the United States and is imported is used for the transportation industry. Recently, the Transportation Department provided a grant to the University of California at Davis to do some research on sustainable transportation. The world's top scientists have concluded that there really is such a thing as climate change and that it poses a very serious threat to humanity. The most recent report came out less than a month ago and concluded that we are in for some very serious troubles ahead unless we are able to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, particularly carbon dioxide, a good deal of which comes from the transportation industry. The good news is that we as the American public, through this government, can rise to the challenge, and communities, like the one I represent in Davis, California, are leading the way. The University of California at Davis has received a cutting-edge research grant for the research into transportation systems that are sustainable and that are not relying as much or at all on the carbon fuels, gasoline and diesel. So what are they--plug-in hybrids? Alternative fuels such as advanced biofuels, hydrogen fueling infrastructure and many other kinds of transportation--batteries and the like--are going to be part of this research. The Department of Transportation asked the University of California at Davis to lead the National Center for Sustainable Transportation. This new consortium will consult policymakers as they implement real- world strategies to address climate change and other threats. In other words, by combining research and energy, we can move away from the dependence upon oil, particularly foreign oil, reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. So, as you go through this Make It In America agenda, certainly energy policy will be coupled with the research agenda. Another part of this is labor. Is labor ready to accept the kinds of challenges that we are going to find in the new, modern manufacturing sector? We need to invest in labor so that we have a well-educated labor force, and we need to invest in the reeducation of those men and women who have lost their jobs. Just two decades ago, we had nearly 20 million Americans in the manufacturing sector. Today, it is probably closer to 11 million. That means some 9 million Americans who once had jobs in the manufacturing sector are no longer employed in that sector. They need to be reeducated either in advanced manufacturing technologies or in other sectors. The labor force is constantly evolving, and one of the roles of the Federal Government through the Department of Education and the Department of Labor and Commerce is to provide that reeducation necessary as one of the old manufacturing technologies moves, dies out and as new ones come along so that the labor force is able to move into those new jobs. So you see the combination of education and labor. These things work together. On the educational side, it has been shown many, many times that an education really needs to start prekindergarten; yet one of the effects of sequestration, together with the government shutdown, was a significant reduction in prekindergarten education. In my district, some 6,000 young people were unable to participate in the Head Start program, not just for 16 days but for the many days out ahead, so they will enter kindergarten substantially behind their peers, providing an anchor to the economy as they move through their educational process, quite possibly becoming one of the high majority or the high percentage of students who drops out of high school. As you move down this Make It In America agenda, we come down to one that is a fundamental investment, and that is the infrastructure system. We have a very high unemployment rate. There is no doubt about it. One of the ways to immediately employ Americans is to build the foundation for economic growth. These are all part of the foundation for economic growth. This is the concrete and steel when we talk about infrastructure. These are the roads, the airports, the railroads, the mass transportation systems, the sanitation systems, the water systems. So infrastructure becomes a critical part of any of the efforts that we need to make to rebuild America, to provide the foundation and to put Americans back to work. There is some very interesting research that has come out of this, and here is a piece of it: for every dollar invested in infrastructure, $1.57 is pumped back into the economy. So if, for example, the Federal Government were to undertake the robust infrastructure program that the President put forth a year ago and reiterated in his State of the Union speech this last February and if we passed legislation, as he wanted, to put $50 billion additional into the infrastructure program, the economy would not only be spending the dollar; it would be getting back $1.57 for every one of those $50 billion that the President wanted to put into America's infrastructure. Men and women would be working; the economy would begin to move forward more rapidly; and we would begin to see the kind of economic growth that this Nation needs to have, that the men and women who are unemployed or those who are seeking better jobs would want to have, and we would be laying the foundation for future economic growth. We must keep this in mind. There are several things that could be done in this regard. One of them you just heard about during the brief interruption when the Rules Committee came here to put before this House tomorrow and in the days ahead the Water Resources Development Act. This used to be biennial legislation that Congress would pass every 2 years to put in place the water, resources, the development of levees, transportation systems, such as the locks and the rivers and the channels, the ports, other kinds of water transportation systems. You had water; you had sanitation systems; you had levees. All of these critically important infrastructure projects are in the Water Resources Development Act. It has been 5 years since there has been a Water Resources Development Act, but we have a chance now to push forward in this House of Representatives in the next few days an extremely important infrastructure piece of legislation. The good news is there is a good chance we will do it. The bad news is it is inadequately funded. There is not sufficient money in that program to actually build the kinds of things that we must have. So what are we going to do? One of the solutions was again proposed by the President in his infrastructure program that he presented to Congress, which has really not been acted on yet--an infrastructure bank, a bank that has been in existence in Europe for almost 30 years now. It is a public-private partnership in which the government invests money and in which private investors can also invest. That money would then be available for those kinds of infrastructure projects that are cash flow projects--for example, a sanitation system, a toll road, a toll bridge, an airport, a water system. All of these kinds of infrastructures have fees associated with them, so there is a cash flow that is generated sufficient to pay off the loan that is made available through the infrastructure bank. Such a program has been introduced here in the House of Representatives since at least the early 1990s. It doesn't exist--it has never been passed--although, every year, one or another Member of the House of Representatives has tried. I know Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro has introduced this for at least the last 15 years, but it has never been acted upon. You have to wonder why. This seems to me to be eminently wise that we would create an infrastructure bank. The Federal Government can borrow money today. A 10-year note is just over, I think, 2.6 percent. That is really cheap money. Borrow that money. Put it in this bank. Loan it out at 2.8 percent to various cities, counties, water systems, and build the infrastructure. That is cheap money. It gives us a chance to get the economy growing, to employ people, to build the foundation for economic growth, and to raise taxes, not by increasing the tax rate but by people paying taxes because they are now working. What a novel idea-- people who work pay taxes just as we ought to be doing. So these are a couple of ideas about how we can move the economy forward. There is another piece of this Make It In America agenda, and it is this: H.R. 1524. I like this piece of legislation. It is one I have introduced. What it basically says is: if we are going to build those clean energy projects--the wind, the solar, the advanced fuel, the hydrogen systems--all of which are subsidized by your tax money, then your tax money must be spent on American made: American-made wind turbines, American-made solar panels. Let's Make It In America. Why should we spend your tax money to buy steel from China to build the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge? I am sure your answer would be we shouldn't, but we did--6,000 new jobs in China, zero in America. It was supposed to be 10 percent cheaper. It turned out to be 10 percent more expensive because there were flaws in the steel; the welds were not satisfactory. No, no. That is American taxpayer money. That American taxpayer money should have been used to buy American-made steel and to create a new, high-tech steel mill not in China, which is what happened, but, rather, in America. We ought to be buying American. We ought to be using our tax money to buy American-made goods and services, and that is exactly what this bill does. This is part of the Make It In America agenda. I am going to show you one other little picture here. Normally, our trains don't run upside down, so let me make it right-side up: This is an electric locomotive--brand new, made in Sacramento, California, by Siemens, the German manufacturing company, which is one of the world's biggest manufacturing companies. Why in the world are they making electric locomotives for Amtrak in Sacramento? Why are they doing that? For years, Siemens has had a light-rail trolley manufacturing plant in Sacramento. In the American Recovery Act--the stimulus bill--there was some $600 million for the purchase of 80 locomotives to replace the aging locomotives on the east coast Amtrak lines. Added to that $600 million was a sentence that said, this money had to be spent only on American-made locomotives. Siemens looked at that and goes: Hmmm, we can make locomotives in America--and they did, in Sacramento, California. Probably a couple of thousand jobs, suppliers from all over the Nation providing the parts-- the electrical systems and the rest--for this locomotive, made in America, with American taxpayer money, because someone in the stimulus bill added a sentence to an appropriation and said, this money must be spent on American-made locomotives. We can do that with every one of our expenditures--or at least many of our expenditures--using your taxpayer money on American-made goods and services, a very, very wise thing to do, which, incidentally, was first suggested by George Washington and Alexander Hamilton. So if you want to go back to the Founding Fathers, use some of their ideas where they said--Alexander Hamilton in a report to George Washington said that the Federal Government should use its purchasing power to support American industry--buy American, Make It In America, use American taxpayer money on American-made goods and services. Not a bad idea. We need to pass that kind of legislation here. I am going to take just a few more moments and talk about one of the great challenges that we have. I am going to start with this man who seemed to understand what it took to rebuild and to move the American economy and society forward. This is actually on one of the monuments at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial here in Washington, D.C. When I took my grandchildren down there not too long ago, I read this to them and explained to them why this was important during the Great Depression, and why it is important today. Roosevelt said during the height of the depression that ``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.'' The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, but rather it is we provide enough for those who have too little. Most of us have an image of the Great Depression--the food lines, the hungry, the unemployed. America has gone through something not as desperate, but nearly so--the Great Recession, beginning in 2008. Millions of Americans lost their jobs--well over 8, maybe as many as 10 million. Even more lost their homes, and there was a lot of hurt upon our land. We have been working now since 2008 to restore the American economy. The stimulus bill was one such way--the proposals of the President--to rebuild the American infrastructure, to educate our kids, and a host of other things, what he called the American Jobs Program--incidentally, not taken up by our colleagues here in the House of Representatives on the majority side. Nonetheless, he recommended different ways to address this fundamental issue. How do we provide enough for those who have too little? How are we doing? How is America doing on meeting the challenge that Franklin Roosevelt laid out? The answer is seen in this chart and the answer is: not well at all. We are miserably failing to meet the challenge that Franklin Delano Roosevelt laid out during the Great Depression. Here is what it is: of the economic growth from 2009 to 2012, the fraction of the growth that went to the top 1 percent--this is the new wealth that was generated by the American economy, the growth in the economy, the wealth, the growth in the economy--the top 1 percent got 95 percent of all of that wealth that was generated. The 99 percenters--99 percent of the American people--got to share 5 percent of the wealth that was generated by the economy. This is a great tragedy. This is an unparalleled tragedy in the American economy. This is not just a 3-year period; this has actually been happening--not at the same horrible distribution that you see here--but it has actually been a phenomenon that has been going on in the American economy where the rich get richer and the great majority of Americans are standing still. When I am not in my district and I hear people talk about their lives, they are talking about the fact that they are literally standing still economically. Poll after poll indicates that the American public knows and understands this. When asked how they are doing, they basically say they are just treading water, they are not moving forward, they are just doing the very best they can to hang on, to keep their nose above the water, to not go under. We have to address this phenomenon. This doesn't happen because of the weather, it doesn't happen because of God or some other mysterious force. This happens because of policy, policy that this Congress, together with the Senate and even the Supreme Court and the President, put in place, a policy that is skewing the nature of the American economy in such a way as to add great wealth to those who already have great wealth and little to those who have very little. We need to adopt policies to change this. On the floor of the House of Representatives, there should be a piece of legislation to raise the minimum wage. $10 is a bare minimum. California--my home State--did that, raised the minimum wage to $10 and then a couple of steps will go on in the future, a couple of higher steps. That is good, that is good for everyone, even those businesses small and large that are going to pay that higher wage. What it does is to share the wealth that is generated by this economy, providing those at the bottom, those hardworking men and women that are at the bottom, the opportunity to sustain their families, to sustain their livelihood. That is but one. If we make those critical investments that create economic growth, particularly education and job training, and put in place the programs that enhance manufacturing, we will see this begin to change, and we will see the 99 percenters begin to take their fair share of the wealth that they are generating. It is the men and women that toil, wherever they may be--in the Federal Government, in the State governments, in the manufacturing, in the fields of America--wherever they may be, those are the men and women that are creating wealth. I understand capital. It has a role in this, but capital and labor together. What we are seeing here is the men and women that toil are not getting the wealth that they helped to create. This is a challenge. Tax policy is part of it. Policy such as minimum wage, the role of the labor unions putting pressure on the system so that the men and women that are working in those businesses are able to share more of that wealth. They are all part of this system, and we need to pay attention to it here on the floor. So let's keep in mind the 99 percenters, who in the years 2009 to 2012 received 5 percent of the total wealth generated by the largest economy in the world--the American economy. Public policy means a lot. Over the next several days, this Congress is going to deal with some profoundly important questions. The question of the role of the Federal Government--will we have another sequestration debacle on January 15? We could. The current sequestration, which the military is saying is a disaster for them, the education community, the research community, the transportation community, the health, the social welfare community, all say the sequestration is an unmitigated disaster. They know, and the American public will soon know, that on January 15 the second shoe will fall and another $105 billion will be taken out of the economy beginning on January 15 unless this House of Representatives and the Senate, together with the President, come up with a viable alternative, one in which the growth of the economy can be assured, in which the continued austerity programs which are holding back an incredibly powerful resource called the American economy are put aside, and we put in place those policies that create economic growth. We have an enormous challenge. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.