John Garamendi

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Well, you're right on an issue that is very close to my own policies, which is, if it's American taxpayer money that's being used to buy a bus, a light railcar, a streetcar, a locomotive, or a train set for BART in California or the Metro system here in Washington, D.C., then our money must be used to buy American-made equipment. Plain and simple, those are American jobs. We had a terrible example of bad policy in California. The San Francisco Bay Bridge, Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge, a multibillion- dollar project, the steel in that bridge went up to bid. It's $1 billion or so of steel for the bridge. One contractor put in two bids. One bid was 10 percent cheaper, and that was Chinese steel. The other bid was American steel, and it was 10 percent more. So the bridge authority, in its wisdom, selected the cheaper. It turns out that cheaper is not necessarily better and, ultimately, not cheaper. It turned out that it was far more expensive. There were serious flaws in the steel, in the welding, and 6,000 to 8,000 jobs were in China rather than in the United States. Ultimately, the cost was higher, and we did not benefit in the United States, even in California, from the increased economic activity that would have occurred if the direct jobs in manufacturing and welding and fabricating that steel were in the United States. We don't want that ever again. If it's our taxpayer money, from whatever source, then make it in America. Use our money to buy domestic-made buses and trains and steel. We've got work to do. I put this one up here, not to get away from the transit systems and the public transportation systems, which are critically important, but we've got 150,000 miles of road that need repair. The transportation bill that had been offered by our colleagues on the Republican side doesn't even get close to keeping up with what we need in the highway system and repairing the bridges that are falling down or could fall down across America. We have work to do. We need to reignite the American Dream, and part of that dream has been the world's best transportation system. Unfortunately, over the last decade or two, we have seen that decline in American status in transportation. Whether we're in the third world or the second world, we're surely not in the first world for highway transportation or for the public transportation system. We have work to do to reignite the American Dream. This transportation bill that ultimately we must pass, the Senate and the House, we must come together and pass a bill that is adequately funded, that provides for public transportation as well as for the road transportation. Our Republican colleagues are not even close to that. They've got a $75 billion hole in their wallet not filled by the programs that have been put forward. I know that you've been serving on this committee. You're far more familiar than I am with it. So let's just continue with this for a little while.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Is this Mr. Romney?

Mr. GARAMENDI. Seriously? I've heard him say a lot of things, but----

Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you so very much for circling back to the transportation issue. That issue is still before this House. There has been no hearing, and the bill that was put forth by the Republicans simply has gone nowhere. In fact, it hit the brick wall. I'm sure one of the reasons it hit the brick wall is that there is no way to create a modern transportation system in that bill. For example, we both talked about streetcars and light-rail cars. In California, there is a factory near Sacramento that makes light-rail cars. I'm delighted there's a factory now in Portland, Oregon, that is building streetcars. And the factory in Sacramento is also building locomotives. The reason this is happening is that the Democrats, in their recovery legislation, the stimulus bill that gets such bad press--totally undeserved, I might add--actually had a clause in it that American taxpayers' money was going to be used to Make It in America. And that started or propelled both of these operations as cities decided they would use some of their own money, some State money, and some of the Federal money to enhance their public transportation programs. However, the transportation bill that you brought up just a moment ago totally removes the public transportation sector from the bill. Now I don't know how we're ever going to build buses, trains, and light rail, Amtrak, without the support of the Federal Government. I know you were deeply involved in this. I heard you talk about this once before--with a little bit of animation. You may want to circle back and pick that up again.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I look forward to this hour with my colleagues to talk about jobs. How do we create jobs in America? We are now well over 14 months of the Republican control of this House, and not one significant bill has passed this House that would create new jobs. There are many bills to wipe out environmental laws, many bills to wipe out regulations that protect the citizens of the United States from pollution and contamination of one sort or another, but where are the jobs bills? We absolutely have to create the jobs in America. Today, we are going to take about an hour to discuss how we can create jobs in America. One of the principal ways is to Make It in America: Manufacturing Matters. Manufacturing was the heart and soul of and the foundation for the great middle class, the rise of the middle class here in the United States. It wasn't too long ago that manufacturing in the United States was a big deal. About 20, 23 years ago, we had almost 20 million Americans in manufacturing. It also happened to coincide with the largest percentage of Americans that were in the middle class. Over the intervening years, we've seen the slow decline until we hit this period of 2000 to 2009, and we saw a precipitous drop to just over 11 million manufacturing jobs in America. That coincided with the decline of the middle class in the United States. So what we want to do today is to focus on, how can we rebuild the American middle class? One of the principal ways of doing it is to focus on manufacturing and to focus specifically on rebuilding the great manufacturing sector in the United States. There are many, many ways to do this. My colleague from Oregon is here to join us, and I know that there are many things that are happening in Oregon that speak directly to this, one of which is competition between Oregon and California for the manufacturing of light railcars. I'll let my colleague from Oregon go first, and then I'll pound on him that California is a better place to manufacture light railcars than Oregon. But either way, they're made in America, and that's to the benefit of all Americans. Please join me, and let's see where we can take this.

Mr. GARAMENDI

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

Mr. GARAMENDI. I suppose it's time to just finish up this debate, so I yield myself the balance of my time. A quick quote from Paul Thomsen of Ormat Technologies in committee representing the geothermal industry at the legislative hearing June 23, 2011: If we can get to an implementation that is consistent with what the current policy currently is, we would be very happy with that and I don't think this necessarily requires a total exemption from NEPA. Let it be that. We'll go on. They don't need an exemption. And it was just stated that if you've got an area, a resource area, what difference does it make if somebody drills within that area. I can tell you what difference it makes. In California, regarding the geysers--a huge resource, one of the very first in the United States--it makes a great deal of difference where somebody else drills in your neighborhood, because that drilling can dry up your resource. It is exceedingly important to understand the geology and understand the environmental risks associated with exploratory and then the development. No need for an exemption unless, of course, you want to, once again, nibble away at NEPA until it's not worth having at all, which apparently is the strategy we're seeing from this committee and these numerous amendments. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GARAMENDI. It sounds good, doesn't it? Until the well happens to destroy the neighbor's well or until the well happens to destroy one of the many hot springs or geysers that exist in public parks, national parks. It sounds good until you begin to understand the implications of what happens when there is no environmental review. Oh, yeah, it sounds good. But I will guarantee you this, that if this exemption goes forward, it will only be a matter of time before there is a major controversy over the exploration of a well and the effect on surrounding resources. If that's what the majority wants, then go ahead. The result will be a huge blow-up such as we now see with fracking. We don't need that. What we need to do is rapidly expand our geothermal production in America, and there are many different resources available to us. I would just remind my friend from Colorado that the kind of geothermal he's talking about is not the deep well, hot geothermal, but rather a geothermal that uses the ambient temperature of the soil several feet deep into the ground. That's a different kind of geothermal situation. What we're talking about here is tapping a hot portion of the Earth and extracting from that the energy that's possible. Do it with care, because there is the potential for very serious problems if you do it incorrectly. Take a look. And, by the way, to our knowledge, the geothermal industry is not interested in this exemption. There may be some company out there; but in testimony before the committee, it was clear that the geothermal industry said, We don't need this; things are moving along the way we want them to move along. Understand that there is competition between geothermal companies. One person may be on this side of the geothermal resource, another on the other side, a third entity comes in and tries to extract the oil, the energy in a test well, and, voila, now we've got conflict. Without a review, those things will happen. There is no need for a categoric exemption. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GARAMENDI. May I ask the remaining time.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you. We're all for geothermal. There's nobody on this side that's opposed to geothermal. We think it is a really good resource. In fact, in my own history way back in California, the first geothermal wells were drilled when I was on the Resources Committee in the State. We did it well. We required an upfront review of the potential wells, and we continued to do that in California. And it turns out that this particular law would waive the NEPA requirements, simply a categorical exemption for geothermal test wells. It's not necessary, and not wise. Already the Bureau of Land Management rapidly approves thermal test wells with a very quick environmental review to determine if there's any potential problem in that particular area from that particular well. In fact, about 72 applications had been made, and 47 had been done very quickly. Why were the others not done? There was a potential problem. Perhaps they were near somebody else's resource, perhaps they were in an area that was environmentally sensitive, perhaps they were in an area where you could draw down a naturally occurring hot spring or a geyser. So there are reasons for the review, and there is no reason for a categorical exemption unless, of course, you want to somehow, bit by bit, terminate NEPA, which seems the strategy of the Republicans here, just nibble away enough so that NEPA has no meaning. I would draw the attention to the majority here that the natural gas industry obtained an exemption for natural gas fracking from the EPA regulations. The result, at least in Pennsylvania and in New York, was extraordinary trouble for the natural gas industry. So let's not rush forward here. There's a process in place that provides for an exemption, a very quick process to determine if that particular well is appropriate and allowed to go forward. Where there's trouble, don't do it. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. My good friend and colleague just asked a very good question: Why don't we have a good American energy policy? You won't get it with this bill. This may be the worst American energy policy I've ever seen. Oil shale, are you kidding me? There is no way that you're going to see oil shale developed within the United States at any time probably in our lifetimes. It didn't work in the 1980s. It's not likely to work in the next two decades. So what's this all about? And by the way, if you happen to be from Colorado, Utah, Arizona, California or New Mexico, you'd want to go, Whoa, wait a minute. Oil shale? That takes a lot of water. We don't have enough water, and you're going to use it for that? I don't think so. Come on. Let's get real here. We do need a real energy policy. You're going to open up ANWR? There are some very special places in this world, and ANWR happens to be one of them. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge happens to be one of those places. You're not going to open it up. And by the way, as for those of us from California, my good friends on the Republican side are always talking about states' rights. They're always talking about states' rights. Your little piece of legislation here strips away the right of California to take care of its own coastline. It's not just authorizing the offshore drilling. You take away California's coastal zone management powers, stripping away from Californians--all 38 million of us--our ability to take care of our own coast. Something is terribly wrong with this piece of energy legislation. You're going to fund the transportation with this while stripping money away from the Land and Water Conservation Fund? How does that work? How does that work? And by the way, the money won't be there anyway. This is not an energy policy--this is a stupid policy--and there ought to be 435 reasons. Each and every person in this House is affected in a negative way by this piece of legislation. There are 435 of us who ought to say, Put this aside just as we have discovered the underlying bill on transportation has found little support and has to go back and be reworked because of its insufficiencies. This is no way to fund a transportation bill. This is no way to treat California. This is no way to have an energy policy for America. Yes, we do need an energy policy, and we do need to have many different elements to it; but we don't sacrifice those special places like the California coast, like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, like Bristol Bay, like the coast of Florida, like the east coast of the United States. We do not sacrifice that for an energy policy that doesn't solve the problem that this is purported to solve.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Tonko, you are so very correct about reigniting the American Dream. One of the dreams I have is to drive down Interstate 5 in California and not have my car knocked to pieces on the unimproved and the falling-apart highways. In America today, we have 150,000 miles of roads that are in desperate need of repair--150,000 miles. That's about 50 times back and forth across America. Now, if we did that and repaired those highways, what could happen? What could happen if we actually built a real robust transportation network in America? Well, back to the jobs issue, back to making it in America: What if our tax dollars were to be used to buy American-made equipment? This piece of legislation, H.R. 613, is now working its way into the transportation bill. The bill that our Republican colleagues put out has a very, very weak Buy America. This particular bill, H.R. 613--I happen to be the author, and I'm kind of proud of the piece of legislation--would require that our tax dollars, which will be used to fund the transportation program, the airports, the NextGen system and the roads and bridges that both Mr. Tonko and Mr. Altmire talked about, that those be made in America, that we make it in America. We would use our tax dollars to actually make these things in America. So if we're going to build a high-speed rail, let's make it in America. In fact, that's happened. In the stimulus bill, the American Recovery Act, there was a provision for some $12 billion for high-speed rail in various parts of the United States, and an additional sentence was added to that law that said all of this money must be spent on trains and equipment made in America. Guess what happened? Foreign companies that built high-speed systems decided, oh, $12 billion, we want a piece of that. And so they came to America, and they built manufacturing facilities. One was built in Sacramento. Secretary LaHood was just there a couple of days ago visiting that factory. The German company, Siemens, built a large manufacturing plant in Sacramento, California, to make light rail and to make locomotives for Amtrak, to make and to be prepared to build the high-speed rail systems that are coming. Why did they do it? Because it was the law of the land that said your tax money, American taxpayer money, must be spent on American-made equipment. But what this bill does is it extends that idea as we go forward so that when we build bridges, the steel is American steel, and it's put together by American welders and by American ironworkers, and that the cement is American cement and that the computer systems that are being used to develop these things are American made. We can rebuild the American manufacturing sector when we decide it is the public policy that we use American taxpayer dollars to make it in America once again. There's another piece of legislation that does the same thing for energy products. You've heard of solar systems, the photovoltaic systems, the big wind turbines that we're beginning to see across America. All of those energy products are essential elements in the future. Once again, our taxpayer money is used to support that. And my legislation says if you're going to get American taxpayer money to support your solar system or your wind farm, then you're going to buy American-made solar panels, solar equipment and wind turbines. We can make it in America. So all of these things fit together--a transportation program that is going to give America what it needs to travel and an education program so that our workers are prepared and an R&D, research and development, program that allows us to innovate for tomorrow's economy. Mr. Tonko, I think we have about 2 minutes left. Could you wrap it up for us?

Mr. GARAMENDI. What happened that you were talking about earlier?

Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you, Mr. Altmire, for getting us started. And I've got to compliment you on the really neat segue that you used, the Erie Canal to move to modern transportation. That was very nicely done. We do have a real challenge. This week, we're going to be taking up a transportation bill that the Secretary of Transportation, who has now been in office nearly 3\1/2\ years and who was a Member of the House of Representatives for I think over 20 years and a Republican, says that this is the worst transportation bill he has ever seen. Ever seen. This transportation bill that we are going to be taking up is underfunded. It totally eliminates from the funding stream the public transportation sector. So we're talking about Amtrak, buses, light rail, the metro systems here in Washington, New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Atlanta and other places that are going to be cut out of the funding stream. There's a whole lot of other things that are within this piece of legislation that are nonsense and nonstarters and ultimately detract from the goal that you so well stated, Mr. Altmire, of building that infrastructure that we need for a modern, thriving, growing economy that's based upon manufacturing. Now, if all you're doing is sending buy-and-sell signals over the Internet, I guess you don't need a highway. But if you're sending cars and rail systems and you're sending equipment back and forth across America, you better have all of that transportation infrastructure in place. So as we rebuild the American manufacturing sector, we will need this in place. Now, Mr. Tonko, you took the train from New York today.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Altmire, I was about to respond that, while the lighting at Rensselaer is obviously good, it's California where the light-emitting diode--the LED--is actually being manufactured by a new startup company called Bridgelux, which has taken that technology and, with a little bit of assistance, is going to being able to manufacture in America. However, controlling this for the next 20 minutes, we're going to move to transportation. Mr. Altmire, why don't you get us going on transportation.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Altmire, if you could wait just a moment. Now you've got me engaged in this, and you talked about your community college. We are going to be going to our community college in Fairfield, the Solano Community College, and we're going to take the work that was done by this Congress in 2010 when it brought the Pell Grants down into the community colleges. Previously, the Pell Grants were only available at the 4-year college level, but now the community college students can also vie for the Pell Grants and the loan programs that had been significantly improved back in 2010, before we lost the majority here. We took back from the big Wall Street banks the student loan programs, reducing the interest rates, reducing the hassle for students, and making loans far cheaper and more available. Just this year, the President took one additional step under his authority and stretched out the payment mechanisms so that no graduated student who had taken out a loan needs to pay more than 10 percent of their annual income to repay that loan. All of this is part of investing in the human capital, investing in the workers. I suspect the three of us could go on for a long time about education.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you, Mr. Tonko. Mr. Altmire, I see you are kind of ready to go here.

Mr. GARAMENDI. We have work to do indeed. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Exactly.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Tonko, thank you. And you really hit one of those issues directly, particularly the education issue. And we ought not jump to transportation before we deal with the investment in the human capital, that is, in the American worker. And the President did, in his budget, lay out $8 billion for community colleges to work directly with companies to educate their workforce. I can give a specific example. Again, in Davis, California, there is a biopesticide firm that actually goes out and finds microbes, or various kinds of naturally occurring materials, and uses that and makes that into a biopesticide, not a chemical but a biopesticide. They need technicians in their laboratories and in their manufacturing. They go to the community college to bring up the necessary skills and bring those workers in. So there are jobs out there, but they have to have the education behind them. So much of what the President is proposing--not only with community colleges, but with the Pell Grants and proposing $30 billion going into our K-12 schools so that those schools can be upgraded, and an additional $30 billion to bring the teachers back into the classroom.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you very much for pointing out the eye of the eagle. We have to keep our eye on this particular prize, and that's rebuilding the American manufacturing sector. I handed this chart to Mr. Tonko a while ago. It really needs a further explanation. What we did beginning in 2000, actually before that, was to develop a FIRE economy--finance, insurance, real estate--not manufacturing. So manufacturing was allowed to decline, and of course real estate, finance, and insurance grew and became the essential economy in the year 2000 to 2010. And, of course, the great collapse in 2007 and 2008 as a result of, as Mr. Tonko said, regulatory oversight disappearing and anything goes. We're reversing that. Mr. Altmire, you talked about the egregious tax policy of giving the tax breaks when companies offshore jobs. It was actually in 2009, just before the new Congress came into effect, that we enacted legislation that eliminated much of those tax breaks. Now, there is more to be done. In the President's budget, he calls for the full elimination of tax breaks to companies that offshore jobs and, as he said here in the State of the Union address, turns that around and gives a tax break to companies that bring jobs back to America. In his budget and in his proposals are specific actions on tax law that we must take to carry out that commitment to American and foreign countries that want to bring jobs back to America. We can do this. Public policy plays into this--the budget and the research and development piece of it. That's the genesis. That's the start of the idea of a new business or of a new technology and then the manufacturing support that goes with it. There is the tax policy, and we've talked about the vast manufacturing systems. All of those are the feedstock to get these companies up and going so that the entrepreneur, in using the research and creating a small business, will ultimately create a bigger middle class, reigniting the American Dream in doing that. Mr. Tonko, I'm not sure where we want to go with this. I think we ought to spend a few moments talking about transportation if that's okay with you gentlemen.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Indeed we do. We have much work to do. Mr. Altmire, you've been working long and hard here in the U.S. Congress on these issues. Carry on this discussion.

Mr. GARAMENDI. You mentioned something that we actually talked about last week. I want to hand you this chart. If you would hold that one up there and let me go back to the microphone. You mentioned the effort that we made in the 2002 change from a manufacturing economy to what this chart calls a FIRE economy--finance, insurance, and real estate--a FIRE economy, one that collapsed because it was about manipulating money instead of creating mechanical engineers and chemical engineers and nuclear engineers. We created financial engineers. The result? Not good. The Great Recession. Please excuse me for interrupting.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Tonko, may I interrupt you for a moment?