John Garamendi

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, the one result of all this will be a further diminution in the status of the Congress. There's a way to resolve this, but it's not to resolve it by delaying for 1 year all of the good that is in the Affordable Care Act, all of the insurance reform--and I was the insurance commissioner and I can tell you how important it is that the insurance reform is there--and all of the Medicaid programs and the millions of Americans that have the opportunity, all of those children that are now being covered. For what? For the 42nd, 43rd time, another failed effort, instead of sitting down and working to solve the problem. It's a tragedy that we are about to go through this process. For what? So that some of the wealthiest, most profitable business in America can have a $30 billion tax reduction? I suppose that's important. So that you can say once again the Affordable Care Act, ObamaCare, is wrong? I remember the days when the Nation shut down its government. It was bad.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, 18 years and 3 days ago, I was Deputy Secretary at the United States Department of the Interior. It was a vibrant place. The attorneys were doing their work. The accountants were busy. The national parks were open, and the rangers were at the gates. They were explaining the great wonders of this land. The Fish & Wildlife Service was caring for those creatures that we care so much about. The researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey were doing their thing, and then Congress failed to pass an appropriation bill. The next day it was silent. The entire building was empty. The rangers shut the doors to the national parks. The research ceased. To this day, I don't believe there's a person in this room or in this Capitol that can remember what the fight was about, but America can remember the shutdown of the government. And here today, we're in it once again. And the question that the American people will ask is: What is this all about? And the end result of it is that the status of this House will diminish once more.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Ryan and Mr. Pallone, thank you so very much for joining us on this discussion about the Affordable Care Act and the way in which the Republican Party here in the House is using its repeal as a lever to really shut down government. It's not a good situation. We normally spend our time here on the floor talking about jobs, infrastructure, how we can move this committee and this Nation forward. We hope to get back to that next week. We've got a critical vote coming in the next couple of days, or tomorrow or the next day, about the health care of America and more importantly about the way in which this government should operate. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Pallone, thank you so very much for your comments about New Jersey. Mr. Ryan, I think we have maybe 2\1/2\ minutes left if you'd like to close, and I'll take the last 30 seconds and then we'll thank the public for their attention.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Very good. We are joined here now by our distinguished senior Member from the State of New Jersey.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you very much, Mr. Castro, and thank you for pointing out that one junior Senator doesn't represent all of Texas. I know you represent the heart of Texas--that is, the people of Texas. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time I have remaining.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you very much, Mr. Tonko. In previous weeks, you and I and Mr. Ryan and Mr. Castro have had the pleasure of talking on this floor about putting people to work, about jobs, about creating the infrastructure, the education, the training that's necessary to move Americans, but this week, we find ourselves caught up in this leveraging of the necessity of funding government and of paying our bills--the debt limit--and using that as a lever to destroy a very important law that provides real benefits to every American. Mr. Castro, we thank you for joining us. We know that Texas was much discussed in the previous hour. I am sure that you have some thoughts about all of this, so please join us. Thank you very much.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you very much, Ms. Wilson. Thank you for laying out the way in which the Affordable Care Act will benefit and how people can use that act, how they can access the exchanges and the benefits that are found in it. I would like now to call on one of my colleagues from the Midwest, Mr. Ryan, if you would care to join us.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, we just heard a remarkable hour of problems that were so overblown as to be really not worthy of much discussion. But I think the American public really needs to understand what this last hour was all about. In fact, the Affordable Health Care Act is working. And it's actually working very, very well for millions upon millions of Americans. I just want to read some facts and then move on to what is really going on here, which is an effort to try to leverage the necessity of funding the Federal Government, which is something we must do every year to provide the money to continue all of the work of the Federal Government. They're trying to use that as a lever to gain something that they've been unable to do in a Presidential election year. The last Presidential election year, the issue of the Affordable Health Care Act was front and center, and the American people heard more than a year of debate about the Affordable Health Care Act, whether it was good or not so good, all the benefits and all of the problems that it might be. At the end, in November of last year, the American public decisively said that the Affordable Health Care Act and President Obama should continue. That was the decision by Americans. In the House of Representatives we gained seats on the Democrat side, and I think about 2 million more voted Democratic than they voted Republican. Although, because of the redistricting and the gerrymandering, the House remained in Republican hands. Just understand what's going on here. What could not be achieved in the democratic process of an election is attempted to be achieved in two absolutely critical moments in the annual processing of the Federal Government. The first moment, which comes up on October 1, is the necessity to provide money to carry on all of the tasks of the Federal Government-- the Social Security Administration, the National Parks, and on and on. Nearly every aspect of the Federal Government has to be funded every year. That is a moment that is now being used as a lever to try to achieve what could not be achieved in an election. After all, America is a democracy. We make our decisions through the electoral process, not by trying to lever, using a critical moment, basically, the funding of the American Government. Now two or 3 weeks beyond October 1 there will be yet another moment of critical importance, and that is the ability of the American Government to continue to pay its bills. It's called the debt limit. Until 2011, this was a routine process in which the Congress would continue to say, Okay, we will increase the debt limit so that we can pay our bills. It was done during Democrat and Republican administrations routinely. There was always some discussion about the debt and the deficit, as it should be. In fact, the President, Mr. Obama, when he was in the Senate, railed against this issue of deficit. Now he's on the other side of that. That often happens. But the fact of the matter is that in this process, these two moments of time are now being used as a lever to achieve in the legislative process what could not be achieved in the electoral process. So much for democracy. Just a few facts about the Affordable Care Act, or ObamaCare, as it's become to be known. Nearly 13 million Americans have benefited from over $1.1 billion in rebates from insurance companies. I was the insurance commissioner in California in 8 years. And I knew then, as I know now, that the insurance companies were overcharging the public for their health insurance policies. However, I did not have any authority under California law to order rebates. The Affordable Health Care Act sets up a system that requires the insurance companies to pay at least 80 percent of the premium dollar for medical services. If they don't, they have to do a rebate. It's the law that they want to repeal. That's $1.1 billion. Also, 105 million Americans, including 71 million Americans in private plans and 34 million seniors in Medicare, have received access to free preventative services. Do you want to hold down the cost of medical services? Do prevention. The Affordable Health Care Act requires that every insurance policy, including Medicare, provide a free medical checkup every year. Guess what has happened? The cost curve has bent downward. Why? Because serious illnesses are either treated or delayed. Diabetes, strokes, and heart conditions are analyzed early and treated, reducing the cost of health care and, far more important, keeping people alive and healthy. Moving on. Thirty million women are receiving free coverage for comprehensive women's preventative services, including a well-woman visit and diabetes screening. They want to repeal that: 30 million American women receiving free diagnostic care. They want to repeal it. Seventeen million children with preexisting health conditions can no longer be denied coverage. I was the insurance commissioner. I cannot tell you the numbers of times that I begged for a law that would require insurance companies to continue or to provide insurance for a newborn child that had a serious illness, time after time, in California. Insurance companies would insure the mother for the delivery. And the moment that child was delivered, the child had no coverage. Bankruptcies and lack of medical care ensued. Seventeen million children will be denied health care coverage if they are successful in repealing the Affordable Health Care Act. That's 17 million children. Also, 6.6 million young adults to the age of 26 have taken advantage of the ObamaCare law, the Affordable Health Care Act, to stay on their parents' health insurance plan. Do you have a kid in college or a kid that's graduated from college that's 21 or 22? They can stay on your plan. Before the Affordable Care Act, before ObamaCare, they had very little opportunity to get insurance. They would have to go out and buy their own policy. They were able to stay on their parents' policy. That's 6.6 million young adults that will not be insured if they are successful in repealing the Affordable Health Care Act. Also, 100 million Americans no longer have a lifetime exclusion. Previously, most health insurance policies in the United States set a limit on the amount of coverage that a person could have during their lifetime or in a given year. Now, 100 million Americans no longer have a lifetime exclusion, and 100 million Americans are able to get comprehensive coverage for the duration of their illness. They want to affect the well-being of 100 million Americans. You've heard about the senior doughnut hole, the drug coverage. Written into the law in 2003, providing drug coverage for seniors-- Medicare part D--was a doughnut hole. You got the first couple of thousand dollars covered. After that, 100 percent of the cost had to be paid by the seniors. The Affordable Health Care Act is shrinking the doughnut hole every year. And in another 2 or 3 years, that doughnut hole will be closed, providing an extraordinarily important benefit to seniors. I know this problem in my communities. Before the Affordable Health Care Act, before ObamaCare, seniors would reach that doughnut hole threshold and they could not afford to continue to buy their pharmaceutical products. So what did they do? Their blood pressure went up, their diabetes was not treated, and they became seriously ill. They want to repeal the Affordable Health Care Act, and the doughnut hole will not be closed if they are successful. Shall we continue on? In California, on October 1, 4 million Californians for the first time will have access to an insurance exchange, a marketplace, a free marketplace--which we talk about all the time. But one does not exist in California until October 1, where the uninsured in California, including this Member of Congress, will be able to go to a rational marketplace that lists numerous health care policies, five different levels of coverage, all of them uniform, all of them priced, where I and 4 million other Californians can select the policy of our choice-- not a government policy, but a private insurance company policy; a marketplace, a free market solution to the 40 million Americans that are not insured and the 4 million in California that are not insured today. We rail back and forth, Democrats and Republicans alike, about the necessity of a free market. For the first time ever in this Nation, a free market, rational market system is established, not only in California, but in every State in this Union. And thirty-three State Governors have refused to set up a free market rational system called an exchange--called an exchange in which insurance companies will lay out their policies, lay out their price, lay out their coverages, exclusions and the rest; and the public will be able to have price information, quality information, and make a choice. That's what's called a free market. And they want to repeal it. So what are those people to do? You know, 435 of us represent the people of America. I spent an hour listening to some 20 people who may, in their own mind, believe that they're representing their people. But I know, from my experience as insurance commissioner in California, that for the first time across this Nation, we have the opportunity to have a market system, a health insurance market system that is rational, that is sensible, in which prices are available, in which quality and multiple products are available--not a government-run health system, but rather a market system established by this government so that the people of this Nation can pick and choose which private policy they want. If you're over 65, you can get your Medicare; and you will continue to get it with the additional benefits that are in the Affordable Care Act. If you're not yet 65 and you happen to have been unemployed at the age of 50, prior to the Affordable Care Act you were in the deepest of trouble. You were virtually uninsurable. Why? Because you were 50 years of age. You were entering that period when you were expensive; you were likely to get health issues. Insurance companies routinely discriminated against you. If you happen to be a woman, you were in even deeper trouble. Those days are gone--unless the Republican Party succeeds in repealing, delaying, and defunding the Affordable Care Act. The American people have an opportunity today to get insurance--or they will on October 1. Exchanges will operate across the country, some run by States such as California and New York, where the Governor said this makes sense to the people in my State and we're going to do it. Others, like Texas and Montana, the Governor said, oh, we don't care about our people; therefore, the Federal Government is stepping in to set up exchanges. Whatever you may have heard over this last hour about a government- run health care system, it is not true, except if you happen to be on Medicare. Medicare is a government-run health insurance program in which the delivery is not provided by the government, but provided by a multiplicity of health care providers. Individual doctors, groups of doctors, hospitals, big health care medical centers such as the University of California-San Francisco. Yes, Medicare is a government health insurance system; it is not a delivery system. There is one, however; it's called the U.S. military. Military hospitals and veterans hospitals, those are government delivery systems. So whatever you may have heard about the government takeover of health care, not true unless you happen to be in the military, a veteran, or on Medicare. Even the Medicaid program is State run, not run by the Federal Government. Oh, there are so many falsehoods. You could fill this entire room with the falsehoods that we've heard over the last months. But the reality is that the Affordable Health Care Act is good for America. It is reducing the inflation rate in health care. We've already seen the lowest inflation rate in the last 3 years, since the enactment of the Affordable Health Care Act, over the last 25 years. So are we going to shut down government so that the opponents who failed in an election, who failed in Congress in 2010 to stop the Affordable Care Act, failed in the Presidential election, in Senate elections, are we going to shut down government so that they can leverage something that they could not achieve in an electoral process? I don't think so. I don't think the American Government will stand for it. I don't think the American people will stand for it. I wanted to talk about jobs. I wanted to talk about my district. I wanted to talk about the necessity of a farm bill so that there will be food on the table for the poor, so that there will be a program that the farmers in my district will know what they will face as they begin to plant their winter crops. That bill languishes because of this process that we're seeing. I wanted to talk about a transportation bill that we must write and fund so that we can build the infrastructure, so that we can put people back to work. But, no, we're caught up here in this process. There are things that we need to do in America, and here we are. Here we are. This is not good for America. The Affordable Health Care Act is good for Americans. And when we provide health insurance for every American, we will be a much more just society, and we will have a stronger economy. This road is out ahead of us. I'm going to be joined by my colleagues. I yield to my colleague, the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wilson).

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I think we have no further speakers here, which gives me 4 minutes to lay out the case, which may be quite sufficient, and I yield myself the balance of my time. With regard to regular order, I haven't been around here long enough to know that regular order does not, apparently, include a hearing. There's been no hearing on this bill. The bill simply came to the full committee and was up or down for a vote. I had the opportunity to object at that time--and continue to object at this moment. Yes, this is about jobs, but it's also about safety. There's a reason why the law was passed, and that is protect those men and women that are on the body, presumably to enjoy, in this case, the Mississippi or Ohio Rivers. But if this bill were to become law, they would not know that they are actually in a very dangerous situation. It's been said that we're not to worry; after all, we're not at open sea. We're miles and miles from shore. But I would remind those who care to think about safety that the Concordia was 900 feet off the Italian coast when it sank--quickly--and 30 people lost their lives only 900 feet from the coast. Now, it was saltwater, to be sure. Nonetheless, they were near the coast. There are plenty of places on the Mississippi that are more than 900 feet from the coast. And I want you to imagine a fire breaking out on the front part of the ship, which is the only way to escape. By the way, this ship has had 15 mechanical failures in the last 20 years. These were mechanical failures that, if they were to continue, would cause the fire extinguishing system not to work, even though it's not in the staterooms and the public areas but only in the nonpublic areas. We really ought not be doing this. A lot has been said about whether it's an earmark or not. This bill applies to one ship. It only applies to the Delta Queen. It applies to no other ship. There's a financial benefit to the owners of this ship. If this were to happen, they would be able to travel up and down the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, perhaps others, without having to meet the normal fire safety requirements. That's a financial benefit. And not with 49 passengers, but with as many as 170 or 179. That's a financial benefit. That meets my definition of an earmark--when it goes to a single private entity for their financial success. What are we concerned about here? Jobs. Yes, we're concerned about jobs. They are the men and women that would be able to get those jobs. They are the people that I care about and that I met with yesterday about jobs in the maritime industry throughout this Nation. But nowhere in the discussions we had yesterday in Oakland, California, was the issue of jobs less important or more important than safety. I just think we ought to be very careful here. We ought to be very, very careful because we're talking about life safety issues. I would pray and I would hope that all 435 of us that are going to deal with this bill shortly in an up-or-down vote would never have to face the moment at some day in the future over the next 15 years, should this become law, where a fire breaks out on this ship, because if it were to break out, there would be a great deal of sorrow. I suspect there will be a few amongst us who vote for this measure that would say, I made a very, very bad mistake. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GARAMENDI. May I inquire as to the time I have available?

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the esteemed gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. Esty).

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Clay).

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time I have available?

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, several things. We just heard our colleague who is supporting this bill talking about American history, that this is an icon of American history. In fact, it was American history that created the law that requires all vessels that are over 90 and more than 50 people to actually be fire-safe. It is, sir, American history that has put in place the law that you're trying to waive. That history is one of disaster after disaster, in which thousands of people have lost their lives in boats that were not safe, that were made of wood. Now, I happen to know the Delta King, the exact twin of the Delta Queen. It's parked on the Sacramento River, not more than a half mile from the Capitol, and I've been on it many, many times; and it does overnight a few guests. But it is a fire trap, and that's why it's not going up and down the Sacramento River. By the way, the law that you said only applies to the sea applies to every river and every lake in the United States. So it's a little incorrect to say that this is only oceangoing vessels that are applicable to this particular law. It's not. It's all vessels. All vessels that have more than 50 people on board overnight have to meet these requirements. We ought not do this. Regular order was completely set aside to move this bill rapidly through the Transportation Committee; and by the way, there was opposition, and he's talking right now, opposition to a waiver of a fire safety law that is intended to protect the public. Yes, the Delta Queen, like the Delta King, is historic; and like the Delta King, the Delta Queen is a fire trap. We ought not be passing this law. And we ought to be following regular order, and we ought to be listening to the Coast Guard that says, don't do this. Don't do this. That's what the U.S. Coast Guard says, because it is not safe. Now, this boat can operate. It can operate with 179 people or more on day trips. It can tie up to a wharf, and it can have 49 people on board going up and down the river, or even more, they can get off, they can go to a hotel, as they have for many years. This is still a viable operation. But under no circumstance should this body, 435 of us, say not to worry about fire safety; it's not going to be an issue. After all, somebody's watching 24 hours a day, as required on every vessel. Let's keep in mind that the fire suppression system that was mentioned by our colleague in support of this legislation does not work and is not in the public spaces. The staterooms, where people are sleeping, the dining rooms, the other rooms on board, will not have fire suppression, that is, sprinkler systems. This boat will not be upgraded in a way that will make it safe. We simply ought not do this. And, yes, you can guarantee that this side of the aisle is seriously concerned about jobs, and we're seriously concerned about the men and women that work on this boat, that they work in a fire-safe environment. This boat will not be a fire-safe environment. And so those men and women that we are concerned about having jobs ought to have jobs in a safe environment. They will not. Very simply put, this is a bad piece of legislation. This is not about jobs. This is about saving lives, or, in the case of this bill, about putting lives at risk. Is that what we want to do? I don't think so.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Madam Speaker, I rise today on a sad note. Last week, a true American hero died, Richard Tuttle, at the age of 92. He was a gunner on a B-24 flying over Europe during World War II. He was shot down and spent 18 months in one of the prison camps. He was also a dear friend of my family. He and Sally Tuttle lived in Mokelumne Hill. He became one of the very first commissioners of the California Energy Commission and went on to become a judge. He was a dear friend. His loss will be felt throughout the community. Our condolences go out to his family. [From the Calaveras Enterprise, Sept. 3, 2013] WWII Veteran Honored for Heroic Bombing Raid--Moke Hill Man Was a B-24 Gunner (By Joel Metzger) Thousands of tracer bullets whizzed by as a battery of anti-aircraft gunners targeted the B-24 Liberator in which Mokelumne Hill resident Richard Tuttle was flying Aug. 1, 1943. Tuttle was a 22-year-old staff sergeant at the time and he flew as a radio operator and machine gunner with the 44th Bomb Group, nicknamed ``The Flying Eightballs.'' ``The German flak gunners were just blasting away at us the whole time,'' Tuttle, now 92, remembered. ``They came at us with heavy firepower. Every plane took hits.'' Tuttle's bomber was screaming along at more than 200 mph only 20 feet above the ground. The operation's target was a group of nine oil refineries in the area of Ploiesti, Romania. These refineries were known as Adolph ``Hitler's gas station,'' because they provided about 35 percent of the gas and diesel fuel used by the Axis war machine. The mission turned out to be one of the costliest for the United States Air Force--53 aircraft and 660 airmen were lost. Never had the Air Force lost so many men on a single mission, which is why the day was later referred to as ``Black Sunday.'' Seventy years later, Tuttle was honored at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio, for his participation on the mission, which was called Operation Tidal Wave. He had been awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross for his heroism and extraordinary achievement during the mission. The gathering commemorated the most highly decorated single military action in U.S. history. ``There were only 75 men who were on that raid who are still alive,'' Tuttle said. ``They wanted to put on a little something for us.'' While in Ohio, Tuttle enjoyed activities at the Air Force Museum, a celebratory dinner, big band music from the era, meeting other veterans and a tour of a B-24. ``It was the first time I'd been in a B-24 since I was shot down,'' Tuttle said with a big smile. ``I could see exactly where I used to sit, complete with the little window looking out. It was just as I remembered.'' ``I enjoyed it to no end,'' Tuttle said of the event. ``There's nothing like being treated like a hero.'' Being treated like a hero was something Tuttle earned. Surviving the harrowing mission of 1943 was no small feat. Dust filled the desert air as motors roared to life at airfields around Bengazi, Libya, in the early morning hours of Aug. 1, 1943. Tuttle gravely took his position as radio operator and gunner in one of the 178 B-24s and prepared for the longest mission flight of his life--more than 2,400 miles, round trip. He sent and received coded messages during the missions. On occasion, he would man the top turret that housed twin .50 caliber machine guns. Along with Tuttle, another Calaveras County resident, Joseph ``Topper'' Huberty, of San Andreas, was on the mission. He later became a Calaveras County Superior Court judge. The B-24s were equipped with extra fuel tanks in their bomb bays to increase capacity to 3,100 gallons. Of the 178 planes that took off, only 88 would return--55 of which were damaged during the mission. The formation crossed the Mediterranean and Adriatic seas and the Pindus Mountains in Albania before crossing into Romania, where they dropped to low altitude to avoid detection by German radar. Mission commanders ordered complete radio silence for the duration of the flight. Despite these precautions, the Germans became aware of the approaching American planes. Due to an inability to communicate effectively, the formation of planes had become scattered and flew off course. Even though everything hadn't gone according to plan, the mission moved forward. When nearing Ploiesti, a navigation error caused a group of planes to follow the wrong railroad tracks toward the objective. This caused the planes to fly through an extensive air defense system around Bucharest before they even reached the defenses protecting the oil refineries. ``It was supposed to be a surprise, but there was no doubt they were ready for us,'' Tuttle said. The mission has been described as an ``aerial Gettysburg.'' One pilot likened the raid to ``driving down the main street of your hometown with everybody shooting at you.'' ``In order to be on target, we followed railroad lines for 35 miles on the way in,'' Tuttle said. ``We were coming in on a straight line, which made us sitting ducks for the flak gunners. ``I was standing between pilot and copilot. The top turret gunman was above me with his knees on my shoulders. I could look out at the No. 3 engine through a little window. I saw the tracer bullets going by, some making an impact. ``We were as low as we could get without crashing.'' With so much anti-aircraft fire directed at his plane, Tuttle said he didn't know if he was going to survive, but he was sure of one thing. ``This was it, this was what I joined the war for,'' Tuttle said. ``I spent three years in the goddamned military to do some good. ``I was scared,'' he continued. ``But that's what courage is--even when you're scared, you go on fighting. ``We had all 10 machine guns firing at once and the entire plane was vibrating,'' he said, adding the continuous fire was so intense the gun barrels were in danger of warping from the heat. ``One formation went in with 13 planes and only six came out. They hit us hard. I had a 20 mm cannon shell lodge in my radio transmitter right by my toe. It came within about three inches of my foot.'' After running the railroad gauntlet, Tuttle's B-24 reached the target refinery and he remembers seeing quite a few cables holding up towers in the area. ``We snapped the cables with our plane,'' he said. ``Unfortunately, sometimes the cables snapped the plane. See, we lost a lot of planes. We dropped all the bombs right on it. That's why we went in low--so we could be accurate. Some of the bombs had delayed fuses so they went off maybe 20 or 30 seconds later.'' After delivering the payload, Tuttle's plane peeled off and ``got the hell out of there. ``We stayed down low. This made it much harder for fighter planes to hit us,'' Tuttle said. ``If they made a pass and missed, they'd hit the ground. We had a long way to go--over the Balkans, across the Mediterranean and back to Libya.'' A tally of the flight log totaled about 16 hours in the air. Looking back on the mission, Tuttle said it was unlike any other. ``It was the greatest air-to-ground combat in history,'' he said. ``There's never been another one like it, because everything has changed.'' While it may have been one-of-a-kind, the mission was very costly. During the mission, 310 airmen were killed and 108 were captured as prisoners of war. Tuttle flew 19 other missions during his time in the service--well 18 and a half, because he was shot down on a mission to Wiener Neustadt, Austria, on Oct. 1, 1943. ``I dropped bombs on Germany all over the place,'' he said. ``I never got injured, but one time a bullet passed so close to my big toe it raised a blood blister.'' On the day he was shot down, the pilot had just dropped the plane's complement of bombs on a German fighter plane manufacturing plant. ``We dropped all the bombs, which was good because the bomb bay was clear when it came time for me to bail out,'' Tuttle said, adding the plane was at about 19,000 feet. ``The co- pilot gave me the thumbs-up and I rolled out of the bomb bay. I was going to delay opening my chute, because it enhanced my chances of surviving the jump.'' Tuttle said he watched his plane spiral downward until it crashed in a fireball into the Austrian countryside. ``Four guys went down with the plane,'' he said, shaking his head at how quickly his world changed from thinking he might die to having hope for survival after he jumped out of the plane. ``All of a sudden I'm over an Austrian meadow, two or three miles up, floating gently in the breeze looking around at the peaceful countryside, and I thought, `Hell, I might survive this war.' '' Tuttle touched down in the middle of a thicket, rolled up his chute and concealed himself under bushes until enemy soldiers started yelling nearby. Concerned they might begin shooting into the thicket, Tuttle opted to surrender. ``I thought I better get out of there,'' he said. ``I came out with my hands up and said, `You got me.' '' Tuttle was taken to the infamous Stalag 17 camp and spent 19 months there as a prisoner of war. ``We were not treated well,'' he said. ``I got down to 137 pounds from 175.'' Tuttle remembers sleeping on burlap nailed to a wooden frame without sheets or pillows. He and his compatriots called the beds ``fart sacks.'' ``We often ate what we called `wet dog soup.' It smelled like a wet dog. It was a real favorite,'' he with a sarcastic laugh. ``Sometimes we got a few turnips and potatoes. It was not good.'' The occasional book that was sent into the camp and a secret radio smuggled to him by allied forces that kept him up to date on the war were small comforts to which Tuttle clung. When the war ended, Tuttle was released from the camp and walked down a road in Austria. That's when he saw the first American soldiers he had seen in many months. ``They were throwing German guns into piles. I was so glad to see them,'' Tuttle said, his voice choked with emotion and tears welling in his eyes. ``The war was over.'' Tuttle was taken to a hospital in England to ``get fattened up'' and later returned to the U.S., where he had a long career serving as a distinguished attorney and superior court judge. Just a few years ago, Tuttle wrote down his experiences at Ploesti within the context of his autobiography, ``Nevada City and Beyond, an Unscripted Life.'' Tuttle plans to live out the remainder of his days in Mokelumne Hill with his wife Sally. ``During the war, I gained a better understanding of life, what it means and why some values are worth fighting for,'' Tuttle said. ``Looking back, I'm proud of what I did. Damn proud.''

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you for the opportunity to speak here. Mr. Speaker, if this were only about work reforms, that would be something, but it's far, far more. These are devastating cuts. Hunger is real. In my northern counties, the counties along the Sacramento River--Sutter, Glenn, Colusa, and Yuba--20 percent of the citizens are hungry. They need food. This bill would dramatically affect that. My daughter is a teacher. She has a community garden. She went to find a kid from her kindergarten class who wasn't getting on the bus. He was hidden underneath the cucumbers in the garden, stuffing his pockets full of tomatoes and cucumbers, so that on the weekend he would have food for himself and his brother. Hunger is real--it's real in every one of our districts--and this particular bill devastates the food programs for seniors, for working men and women, and for those who desperately need help. I oppose the bill. I would ask for compassion from our colleagues on the Republican side and to put this bill down and get on with decent legislation.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Tonko, thank you very, very much. Indeed, our best days are ahead of us. Even in the dismal days of the Great Depression in the thirties, Franklin Roosevelt laid it out very clearly when 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. If 95 percent of the wealth that's been generated over the last 5 years winds up with 1 percent, we've got a problem, because the economy isn't going to grow and what will happen is this: hunger in America. Later this week, we'll take up the nutrition bill for this Nation. There are those who want to remove $40 billion from the nutrition programs for our children, for our seniors, for those that are unemployed, and for those that are searching for work. We can do better; we really can. The best days are ahead of us if this Congress and the Senate, together with the President, work together and lay out those plans that have informed us historically that they work. Investment--investments are those things that make America strong-- infrastructure, research, education, those are things that are timeless and work year after year. They're also things that have recently been reduced and cut. We can't let this happen in America. We cannot allow that to happen. Mr. Speaker, with that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Well, if you take a look at Superstorm Sandy--I don't know what they're going to call the storm that is occurring in Colorado, but we're also seeing the necessity to prepare for climate change and these new very strong, very dangerous storms that we now have seen repeated. There's going to be a major infrastructure investment rebuilding Colorado, just as there was a major infrastructure investment in rebuilding the east coast following Superstorm Sandy. As that investment is made, we will see the economy begin to pick up as men and women return to work, if we take--what I think we ought to do is to spend that money on American-made concrete and steel and the like. As we rebuild these necessary infrastructure works we will add to the economic potential of that rebuilding. Now, how are we going to pay for it? Let's get down to what has been, I think, the most common complaint here: oh, you're just going to borrow the money and we're going to run up the deficit. Well, Martin Feldstein was very clear today that if you make an investment in infrastructure, you're going to immediately employ people, and you will be making a major step towards solving the deficit problem. You do that now, he said. Begin that investment now. Yes, you're going to borrow the money, not all of it, and there are ways that we can get, that we'll deal with that. But there is a necessity of enhancing the economy. His suggestion was the infrastructure as one of the principal ways of doing that. Now, we have ways of financing this. It's been discussed forever, dating back to the mid- and early nineties, that we ought to have an infrastructure bank. The Europeans have an infrastructure bank. It's proved to be very successful. The money goes out to build infrastructure. The repayment is made by bridge tolls, by fees on roads, by canal fees, other kinds of fees. That money comes back. It's circulated. The President has called for an infrastructure bank, taking an idea that's been before Congress for the last 20 years, and he said, let's do it. Let's do it. We can borrow money at the Federal level still, less than 3 percent, sometimes 2 percent, put that into an infrastructure bank, invite the private sector pension funds and others to become part of that bank, and then lend that money out to those projects that have a cash flow, toll bridges, sanitation projects, waterworks, other kinds of things, so that we can get this economy moving. We also had a program coming out of the stimulus bill called Build America Bonds, BABs, Build America Bonds. Those lasted all of 2 years, and then our colleagues here refused to reenact the Build America Bonds. These are other ways in which local entities can borrow the money and build the infrastructure and get their economy going. And, furthermore, laying the foundation for future economic growth: you can't build a city on yesterday's infrastructure. You need to replace it, to be sure; and this is part of the problem in our cities, the aging infrastructure, the waterworks, the sanitation system and the rest. We need to rebuild that, but you also need to expand the infrastructure. One final way that we can talk about financing this is how we do spend the tax revenue that does come in to the American Treasury. Right now, Congress is debating on how to spend money for the next fiscal year which begins on October 1, how are we going to spend it. Part of that appropriation process is to appropriate $87 billion for the Afghanistan war in the coming year, October 1 through the 2014 year, until September 30, $87 billion for Afghanistan. How much money for flood protection in Colorado, flood protection in my district, flood protection across the Eastern Seaboard to build the seawalls? Virtually nothing. But $87 billion for Afghanistan. For what? For what? To build facilities that we will either destroy as we leave or will be destroyed shortly after we leave? Seven billion dollars for the Afghan National Army, $2.5 billion of which is for good things to be done, no line items, no particular knowledge about what they're going to spend that money on. I suspect most of it's going to wind up in some bank account by some crook in the Bahrain banks. $2.5 billion. What could we do with $2.5 billion here in America? And by the way, we're drawing down the troops in Afghanistan. We're actually going to spend more money in Afghanistan next year than we are this year, even though we have 60 percent fewer troops in Afghanistan. We're making choices. Your Representatives, 435 of us, and 100 Members of the Senate, are making choices about how your money's going to be spent. And by the way, I haven't talked about the nuclear bombs, 5,000 of them. We're going to rebuild them. Now, there's a good investment. Really? I don't think so, not when the levees in my district can't be rebuilt to protect my citizens from floods, to rebuild a nuclear weapon that we don't need in the first place. I don't think so. So we're making choices. We're making choices for you, the American taxpayers, about how your money's going to be spent. For me, I want to spend it in America. I want to spend it on American-made goods and equipment, not on products from China, as happened with the newly reopened San Francisco-Oakland Bay bridge-- steel from China, not from America. I want that money spent here, and I want that money spent on our infrastructure, on our education, on research, energy projects. We're going to make choices. We're making those choices right now. We're up against the wall. By the end of this month, September 30, the government runs out of money. Where are we going to spend it? Or are we going to spend it all? Are we just going to shut down government? I don't know. I'm worried. I'm worried about the choices that we're making. I'm worried about more expenditure in Afghanistan and not here at home. I'm worried about rebuilding all these nuclear weapons that, God willing, we'll never use. Choices. Can we actually build America? Can we find the willingness to create an infrastructure bank? Can we find the willingness to bring the money back home and spend it here to build this economy? Because, ultimately, as our Joint Chiefs of Staff have said repeatedly, it's the American economy. Without that strength, there won't be military strength. I've gone on too far here. Mr. Tonko, let's begin to wrap this up.

Mr. GARAMENDI. What was that canal?

Mr. GARAMENDI. Let's not forget, this is not new economics. George Washington in his first month in office, and this is the first President, folks, his first month in office, turned to his Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton, and said, develop an economic policy. Hamilton came back a couple of months later, not with a report that we would have, several thousand pages, but maybe 50 or 60 pages, and he laid out an economic policy. Number one on his agenda was to build America's infrastructure--ports, canals. I know you're going to launch into the Erie Canal now that I've mentioned canals, which is your favorite subject. And he also talked about roads. He talked about laying down the infrastructure for the growth of the economy. Before we get to your Erie Canal, I want to talk about something that actually happened. This is a good thing. This is a very good thing. In the stimulus bill, which by the way did work, not as robust as we would have liked, but it did work, there was a provision to build locomotives for Amtrak. I think it was about $800 million over a period of years would be spent on building locomotives for the east coast. This is so you can get home, Mr. Tonko, on the east coast here. These locomotives were to be 100 percent American-made. I don't know who wrote that provision, but it was one of the very few provisions in the stimulus bill that said make it in America, 100 percent American-made. Siemens, a German company, one of the big international industrial companies, said, $800 million. Oh, you have to make it in America. Okay. Siemens had a factory in Sacramento, California, to manufacture light rail cars, you know, street cars and the like. They got this contract. This is the first locomotive made in America by Siemens under that stimulus provision. They're going to make, I think, 80 of these over the period of the next several years, 100 percent American-made. And now, across the United States, as a result of this infrastructure investment, we're beginning to see companies in a supply chain, some that are making the wheels, the truck underneath, which is where the wheels attach to the locomotive, the facility up on top that attaches to the electric lines. All of this, American-made, 100 percent American-made. And by the way, I have a piece of legislation in that would continue that that says if you're going to spend your tax money on transportation systems, highways, bridges, locomotives and the like, it's going to be your tax money used to buy American-made equipment, just like George Washington said we ought to do it.

Mr. GARAMENDI. We know there is an immediate return on investment in infrastructure. Mark Zandi laid it out there. You invest $1 in infrastructure now, and you get back $1.57, and you have somebody working immediately. They become a taxpayer rather than a tax receiver. So there are some real opportunities here. I want to just take a couple of seconds. I was reading The Wall Street Journal as I was flying from California today, and there was an article by Martin Feldstein, who was Ronald Reagan's chief economic adviser, and he focused in his article on several things and growing the economy. How do you get the economy growing? He specifically talked about infrastructure. He talked about infrastructure as a way to immediately employ people. We certainly agree with that. And it's also a way you lay the foundation for future economic growth because that infrastructure is then available for the future. I was in Fresno, California, I guess 2 or 3 years ago, and went to the high school to talk at an educational conference there, and they are setting this conference in an auditorium that was built by the WPA, the Works Progress Administration in the Roosevelt period, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt period. So we were using this wonderful auditorium 70 years later. You go, wow, there's an infrastructure investment in education. So it is by building this infrastructure we employ people immediately, and we then have the foundation for future economic growth. You mentioned the water system, sanitation, electrical energy systems. Roads, highways and the like. And it's jobs today. I want to talk about how we can finance them.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Tonko, we were talking about this earlier before we came up here, and you may want to take up this issue. This is an issue of what an infrastructure investment needs to grow the economy.