Steve Kagen

Mr. KAGEN

Mr. KAGEN. Madam Speaker, due to an illness in my family I was not able to be present for votes on July 13th through July 15th. Had I been present for rollcall 434 on motion to suspend the rules and pass, as amended, I would have voted in favor of H.R. 4514 Colonel Charles Young Home Study Act. Had I been present for rollcall 435 on motion to suspend the rules and pass as amended, I would have voted in favor of H.R. 4438 San Antonio Missions National Historical Park Boundary Expansion Act of 2010. Had I been present for rollcall 436 on motion to suspend the rules and pass, I would have voted in favor of H.R. 4773 Fort Pulaski National Monument Lease Authorization Act. Had I been present for rollcall 438 on agreeing to the resolution, I would have voted in favor of providing for consideration of the bill (H.R. 1722) to improve teleworking in executive agencies by developing a telework program that allows employees to telework at least 20 percent of the hours worked in every 2 administrative workweeks, and for other purposes. Had I been present for rollcall 439 on the motion to suspend the rules and pass, as amended, I would have voted in favor of amending the Hydrographic Services Improvement Act of 1998 to authorize funds to acquire hydrographic data and provide hydrographic services specific to the Arctic for safe navigation, delineating the United States extend continental shelf, and the monitoring and description of costal changes. Had I been present for rollcall 441 on passage, I would have voted in favor of H.R. 1722 Telework Improvements Act. Had I been present for rollcall 442 on motion to suspend the rules and pass, I would have voted in favor of S. 1508 Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act. Had I been present for rollcall 443 on agreeing to the resolution, I would have voted in favor of providing for consideration of H.R. 5114 Flood Insurance Reform Priorities Act. Had I been present for rollcall 444 on agreeing to the amendment, I would have voted in favor of H.R. 5114 Murphy of New York Amendment No. 11. Had I been present for rollcall 447 on passage, I would have voted in favor of H.R. 1722 the Telework Improvements Act.

Mr. KAGEN

Mr. KAGEN. We are beginning to build a better Nation. We are beginning to put people back to work. There is a great deal of work to do, but our trade deals have to be balanced. Where I come from, people don't want fair trade or free trade; they want it to be balanced. And if China is sending us a ship with $50 million worth of goods that they produced and unloading it for sale here in the United States, then they should purchase from our manufacturers, from our workers, $50 million worth of goods, again, to take back to their country. We have to balance our trade deals. But it is hard to balance a trade deal when the country manipulates its currency and begins with a 20 to 40 percent price advantage just because they are cheating on the price of their money. It is hard to balance a trade deal when China is subsidizing foreign investors to come in and gives them taxes for free, a free ride for several years. It is hard to have a balanced trade deal when you have got value-added taxes that benefit the Chinese Government's corporations. When you understand that there is no difference between the government and a corporation, I don't know of a single company that can defeat a government, especially one that is manipulating its currency. You know they have got a ``buy China'' policy. We need to balance this deal, have a level playing field, and it begins by manufacturing, giving our manufacturers the tax advantages they need to create American jobs for American workers. For too long, for too long the Republican tax policy has been to reward the wealthy, not those who are working. If you reward work instead of wealth, we can begin to not just balance our trade deals, but keep people in their own homes to solve our housing crisis and make certain that people have a positive future once again.

Mr. KAGEN. I certainly appreciate my colleague's comments and I couldn't agree with her more that what we are talking about is our national security. If you don't make anything, you won't have anything. If we don't have a viable economy, we cannot defend ourselves with our military. So we need to manufacture things here in America if, for nothing else, for our own national security.

Mr. KAGEN. That was the stimulus bill. More and more people would be out of work. We stabilized State governments. We stabilized private corporations like road builders, like asphalt people, like bridge builders. We stabilized State and local governments to make sure that the police would be there when you dial 911. We stabilized fire departments to make sure if you're on fire at home, help will be on the way. But no, somebody over there has got people confused and angry that somehow it just didn't work. Look, many economists have said that the economic stimulus bill that we passed last year simply wasn't big enough to get us all the way out of the economic ditch that we're in, but make no mistake about it. The Democratic Party and all of us here in Congress who are voting ``yes'' for progress, we are cleaning up after the biggest elephant parade in American history. There is so much mess to clean up. Now, I always told my patients that it would take you about as long to get better as it took you to get sick and to come into my office, and it's going to take us a while to work our way back into prosperity. We will succeed but people in America have an election coming up, and not to be electioneering, but you have to ask yourself the question: What would your life be like without the stimulus bill and having the police and firemen there when you need them? What would your children's life be like at school not to have a qualified educator and teacher in the room to help your children get that world-class education they're going to need to compete against unfair trade deals, as we have with Asia? So the bill clearly worked and the testimony yesterday in the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee was a resounding ``yes.'' I asked each of the gentlemen there to testify, a hypothetical question: If you had been in Congress, knowing what you know now about how it benefited your company, would you have voted for the stimulus bill. Yes, yes, yes, yes, universally it has helped. Now, where do we need to invest? Here in America. And when I ask my constituents I say, look, I'm your hired hand. I've got your tax dollars right here. Where should we build the next bridge, the next school, in the sands of Iraq, maybe in northern or southeastern Afghanistan? No, Doc, we need that invested here at home. Our Nation's infrastructure is about $2.1 trillion behind. We need to build our bridges once again, our schools, our water treatment plants. Our hard-earned tax dollars are better invested here at home to grow the economy, to grow the jobs that we need, not on Wall Street but on Main Street, and the real contest here is who are we listening to. Now, if the C-SPAN camera pans around, they will see a whole lot of empty chairs, but there are three Members standing up having a conversation about in which direction we're going to be moving. But you have to ask the question: who are these other gentlemen and ladies listening to? I'm listening to Elaine from Peshtigo. You're listening to people back home from California, from Ohio, and this is a painful job. This is a painful job because progress is so slow. But be confident, America. We're beginning to make progress. We're moving our economy forward and up. We need to move up, not down.

Mr. KAGEN. Everybody that we represent understands the United States of America can't pay its bills, can't pay its debts on unemployment checks. We need real checks, checks that come from manufacturing. And that we can do with balanced trade, but we are running out of time. The American people understand that. That's part of their anger. That's part of their great frustration. And I know that we have been listening to them on the Democratic side of the aisle, and we are moving as hard and pressing as hard as we can against any administration, against anyone in the United States Senate to begin to identify how we can begin to make things in America again, put people back to work so they can stay in their own home.

Mr. KAGEN. Yes, yes, the doctor in the House. Thank you. I was very moved by the idea of steel being targeted for extinction by Communist China. I was very moved. But I represent Paper Valley, you know, Kimberly-Clark, Proctor & Gamble. We have 22 different paper companies in my district or just outside of it. We invented the tissue business and femcare products. We have some tremendous paper products. But we have some problems. The problem is that China has targeted not just steel for extinction here in America, but also automobiles, and a number of other things. And the list goes on: armaments, power generation, oil and petrochemicals, telecommunications, civil aviation, shipping, machinery, automobiles, information technology, iron, steel. They have some very strategic plans underway to target everything we manufacture for extinction to take the jobs away. And let me detail how they did it in paper. The government would purchase raw materials in Brazil, at government expense ship it over to China, ship it from the port on trucks up to the paper mill, make the paper. And then again at government expense, after the government allows slave-like wages to be paid, the government then pays for the paper to be shipped back to the port, shipped over off of Oakland, and then dumped into the United States of America below our cost of production. Well, as Ms. Sutton pointed out, the International Trade Commission can at times be effective, but it takes so long. You know, justice delayed is justice denied. In health care, treatment delayed is malpractice. And what happened in the paper industry, we lost two paper companies in my district because of unfair trade and unbalanced trade with Communist China. Only recently did the Appleton company that makes coated paper have a successful case before the ITC. I had the opportunity to testify, much as Betty did, and I was proud to hold up a picture of the family and to let these judges know that we're not talking about dollars and cents and the worth of a piece of paper like a stock. We're talking about people that live in their home and can't chase their job to China. You can't swim to China, get the job. You can't survive there. So the bottom line is we have to ship our values overseas, not our jobs.

Mr. KAGEN. The real question would be where would America be today, where would our economy be today, had we not in February of 2009 passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act? We'd be in the tank.

Mr. KAGEN. Yeah, I was going to actually ask you a question. Isn't it true that we have really begun to close those tax loopholes that allowed these Wall Street corporations, with the Republican support, to take our jobs overseas? Is that really true?

Mr. KAGEN. Right.

Mr. KAGEN. But it was Democrats.

Mr. KAGEN. I sure will. Do you want the 22 cents an hour?

Mr. KAGEN. The wealthy in America have had a 10-year free ride. For the past 10 years, they haven't paid their fair share. As a direct result, 63 percent of the people in America who used to be middle class are now living paycheck to paycheck and week to week, and 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 in their retirement funds. That is going up towards half of the people in this country who will never be able to retire. Things have tilted towards the top. This trickle-up philosophy that Republicans launched on us for the past 8 years really hasn't worked for the middle class. That is why I call it ``middle class destruction,'' and the numbers prove it. We have to keep people in their own homes, but they can only afford homes if they have the higher wage jobs, jobs where they're making things in America. Let me show you this one. If you thought that was bad, here is our competition. How does the middle class become destroyed? How do you compete with garment workers in China who are being paid 82 cents per hour? Well, I guess you go to Cambodia, because they get paid 22 cents per hour. Now, America is watching tonight. Do you think Elaine's children and grandchildren are looking forward to working for 22 cents an hour? Maybe the banks should own all of the homes. As for the middle class in America, I'm not sure why we even talk about it. It's an endangered species.

Mr. KAGEN. We want a middle class to have higher wage jobs, to earn the money they need, to not just educate themselves as workers, but also their family, to begin to save for a retirement that so far they haven't had, and that can only happen with manufacturing jobs. But how can any corporation on Wall Street or Main Street compete with a government? What's really going on in the world today is the idea, the free market capitalism idea that grew up our middle class, the greatest middle class in human history. Free market capitalism has bumped into a brick wall in China because the Chinese and Asian model of capitalism is the government is the business, because over in China, the case against China, they have no environmental protection laws. We do. The cost of everything we make went up. Theirs went down. They have absolutely no social safety net. If a worker in a factory gets injured, he or she is a widget and is gone. No social safety net. And finally, they really, until recently, haven't had a middle class. They're beginning to move up and develop a middle class. But, you know, where I come from, why should we have to have our middle class begin to disappear just so they can develop their own? I think that's wrong. And my final slide here, the chase against China. Everybody on the Democratic side of the aisle is fervently interested in promoting making things in America. But how can we compete against China when they continue to manipulate their currency? It gives them a 20 percent to 40 percent price advantage right out of the chute. When China provides subsidies to investors from foreign nations to come in and not pay taxes for several years, well, we can't afford to do that. We actually care about people in America. And what about the value-added tax, giving them 17 percent benefit? They have import barriers you can't believe. And then they have something else we're going to begin to talk about, like ``Buy American.'' They've had, for a number of years, ``Buy Chinese.'' They have taken advantage of the United States of America. And this Congress, both the House and the Senate, until this point in time, has been had because we fell into this trap of chasing things at the lowest price of production. But these days must come to an end, and I believe it's time for the American people to understand whose side are we on. The Democrats have a policy and a way forward to work our way back into prosperity, and it begins with addressing our trade imbalance with Asia and, specifically, with China. It begins with this administration changing their mind about allowing China to manipulate its currency. It begins with people like Ms. Sutton, Mr. Garamendi, myself, standing up to big corporations on Wall Street and calling them out. It's time to change their ways, begin to make things in America, do that through our trade deals as well. And I yield.

Mr. KAGEN. Would the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. KAGEN. Would the gentleman yield?

Mr. KAGEN. Exactly.

Mr. KAGEN. Those would be banks which derivatized and created these derivatives to somehow gin up the mortgage market to $63 trillion when it was down to $13 trillion. The banks own more homes than people do, but people need to be in their own homes at prices they can afford to pay. Secondly, executives on Wall Street earn incomes that are 300 times that of a worker on the factory floor--300-1. Well, 25, 30 years ago, it was 20- to 25-1. Now it's 300-1. So things have been tilted in Wall Street's favor. Again, whose side are you on--Wall Street's or Main Street's? Third, these numbers are pretty frightening.

Mr. KAGEN. The banks own more homes today than individual people do.

Mr. KAGEN. I certainly would. I want to thank you for convening this special hour to have this conversation about manufacturing things here in America and about making it in America. Ms. Sutton from Ohio described what we need. We need a level playing field because, with a level playing field, we can compete and win against anybody in the world as long as we have a level playing field, but that level playing field hasn't existed for quite some time. I'm not going to point fingers at which party started it, because we all had something to do with it--Democrats and Republicans alike. How did it happen? How did our manufacturing base escape and bleed away? Who opened the door? Who put the hole in the ship? Who bled away our American manufacturing base? I think it was corporate America. I think, today, we are really back to 1910 where our real competition is on Wall Street. So people who are back home, listening tonight, have to ask themselves a question: Well, whose side are we on? Do we have our heads in the boardroom of a Wall Street bank or of a Wall Street corporation that is benefiting by shipping our jobs overseas? No, not at all. We have our feet on the factory floor, and our voting record shows it. You mentioned earlier in your opening remarks about tax cuts. The Democrats have delivered over $300 billion in tax cuts to the middle class--to people like Elaine from Peshtigo, who wrote me this note. It's people like Elaine who have rung the bell: I am soon an 80-year-old woman and a widow. My husband and I farmed, and we certainly had hard times the first years, but the years now are harder for old people. Oil companies take a huge profit. The CEOs make a salary no man on earth is worth. Pill companies are taking huge profits with no consideration for old people. The people of my generation lived through the Depression, World War II and two more wars, and now, in our old age, we face other obstacles. Well, Elaine, from Peshtigo, Wisconsin, has nailed it. We are on her side. We voted to prevent the Republicans from privatizing Social Security. We voted to prevent the Republicans from sending her money to Wall Street. We voted to strengthen Medicare and to make sure that there are services available for prevention--and at no cost to her and to her husband, should he still be around. We have strengthened Medicare, but the Republicans are trying to destroy it. Let me come back to the essential point of being here. We know things are tough for everybody in California, Ohio, Wisconsin, and everywhere else in America. How did it get this way? Well, we have been through some tough times. We are going to make it, but we have a lot of work to do. What happened to our middle class? Middle class destruction. Here is where it is today: Today, the banks own more homes than people do.

Mr. KAGEN

Mr. KAGEN. In Minnesota or Wisconsin, we have the same ideas. The idea is that on a level playing field, whether it's a football field or a manufacturing competition across borders, we can compete and win against anybody. But there has to be, there must be a level playing field. We cannot in this country continue to allow China to manipulate its currency to its own advantage. We cannot allow our own corporations or any international corporation to offshore our jobs. Instead of shipping our jobs overseas, we must export our values. Our values are at stake. We care about our people. We care about our environment. You cannot, you cannot continue in China to sacrifice your environment for economic development. I think we have got the right message. If you don't make anything, you won't have anything. We have got to get back to our base of making things here in America and making sure that we can compete on a level playing field. That's what we are working so hard to do.

Mr. KAGEN. You are thinking the Minnesota Vikings. I represent the Green Bay Packers.

Mr. KAGEN. You can't be any happier than being from Wisconsin. We are still the Dairy State, and I remind that to my colleague each and every opportunity. Let me tell it to you this way. If I heard my colleague from Colorado correctly, you said that today was an important day for taking a positive step forward. We saw our country on the brink of disaster. Why? How did we get into that mess? There were two wars at the same time, and the Republicans didn't pay a dime for either one of them. Two wars without paying a dime for it. There were two tax cuts to the very wealthy in the United States, didn't pay for that either. Four hundred billion dollars handed over to big drug companies in Medicare part D, didn't pay a penny for that benefit either. And then at the tail end of the Bush administration, they cracked the door open to the Treasury and allowed Wall Street speculators to take out nearly a trillion dollars, didn't pay a penny for that either. So we've got a lot of bills that somebody's going to have to pay. We're beginning to move up. The way you do it is to generate private sector jobs. We understand that. But first we had to do a lot of lifting here. We had some tremendous leadership that guided us through these tough times. The first and most important bill that I helped to pass was to live within our means or pay-as-we-go. It worked during President Clinton's time. It will work again during President Obama's time. We are fiscally responsible here on the Democratic side of the aisle. We wish the Republicans would join us in helping us build that better future. You mentioned that it's important to generate jobs. But to do that, small businesses and private businesses that I am very familiar with, we need to lower the cost of labor. We've done that. To give tax credits for those employers who will hire people. We did more than that. According to the Republican adviser to President Reagan, Mr. Bruce Bartlett, on March 19 he said these words: Federal taxes are very considerably lower by every measure since Obama became President. Last year's stimulus bill enacted with no Republican support reduced Federal taxes by almost a $100 billion in 2009 and by $222 billion this year. It was news even at USA Today where the headline reads, ``Tax Bills in 2009 At Lowest Level Since 1950.'' If people in Wisconsin were looking for lower taxes, the Democrats have delivered it to the middle class. They didn't feel it, though. You're not going to get credit for it because the economy was on its knees. We were so deep into this recession. But today is historic because we did pass a bill, a financial reform regulation bill that guarantees no more bailouts, no more bad loans to people who can't afford to pay them back. The taxpayers won't be on the hook for the speculators on Wall Street. And most importantly, a consumer protection agency that will finally put someone on the side of the consumer looking out only for their best interest. It wasn't done with a Republican-led House of Representatives or Congress. It was done with Democratic leadership. And it will take Democratic leadership and a strong spine to stand up and take credit for all of the benefits that we're bringing to every American no matter what party they're in, because we're going to have to work together and across the aisle to guarantee that we can generate the jobs we need to work our way back into prosperity to make things here in America again and begin to get a balanced trade deal, not just with Europe, but most importantly with China. I yield to Mr. Garamendi.

Mr. KAGEN. Mr. Garamendi, I thank you for yielding briefly, but I am from the great State of Wisconsin. And I know that occasionally the State of California has dabbled in the dairy business. And somewhere you've got a moniker that says somehow your cows are happier.

Mr. KAGEN

Mr. KAGEN. Mr. Speaker, let us never forget, never forget how we got into this economic mess. It was the losing Republican ideas that brought forward an economic policy that drove our economy into the ditch, and now they want the keys to the car back. But after driving our economy into the ditch, we cannot allow that to happen. What did they deliver? Two wars at the same time without paying a dime, a $400 billion handout to big drug companies, helping to ship our jobs overseas, an $8 trillion loss of wealth in our housing bubble as we crashed into a deep recession. We cannot allow them to have the keys to this car again. We are beginning to turn this economy around. We are rebuilding America, job by job, block by block and city by city. We need to work together in this, but we can't go back to those failed and losing policies of the past.

Mr. KAGEN

Mr. KAGEN. I rise in support of this amendment and ask a question: Whose side are these gentlemen on? The leader of Iran was there with the leader of Afghanistan 1 day after our Secretary of Defense, Secretary Gates, was there. Are these our friends? Are these the people you are willing to invest $35 billion in? Two thousand three hundred years of human history have proven one thing in Afghanistan: It's easy to get into Afghanistan, and very hard to get out. When you leave, they will shoot you in the rear end. Forty percent of all money we are investing in Afghanistan is being stolen. One hundred al Qaeda were there before we had the surge. This is our time to leave Afghanistan, with all honor and respect. We will always support our troops, but not a losing policy.