Airports, Highways, High-Speed Rail, Trains, and Transit: Make it in America Act

Mr. Speaker, thank you very much for the opportunity to take this hour together with my colleagues to discuss jobs in America. I think we know from our recent visits back to our districts that there's a great deal of pain in America. Americans want to go to work, and yet the jobs are not available.

Our President has proposed the American Jobs Act, a program that would put perhaps 1.9 million Americans to work as soon as the Congress of the United States were to pass that legislation. And so that's the subject matter of this hour, how to get Americans back to work and how to pay for it.

I'm going to start with the pay-for, a word that's used around here but perhaps not readily understood by Americans. Pay-for is how are we going to pay for the Federal programs.

Let's start with an analysis of the distribution of income in America. There's been more and more discussion about this in recent weeks, and appropriately so because what has happened over the last 25- 30 years is a skewing, a wide separation of wealth in the United States to a point where it is now perhaps the widest separation between the very wealthy and the middle and poor people in America that has ever occurred in our history. Here's a pretty good description of it. If you take the top 1 percent, we've seen an enormous growth in their income, about 350 percent.

If you take the middle, the other 99 percent of the American population, you see very, very modest growth. And in the case of the poor, you've actually seen a decline in their income over the last two decades. And that's what's happened, this enormous separation between the very wealthy and the middle class, the working men and women of America. It's not that the real rich don't work; just not that many of them. But they sure have got a big share of the money.

Let's take, for example, the top executives of the oil industry. If we were to take the top executives of the big five oil companies and compare them to a firefighter, a firefighter averages about $47,000 a year. An executive, a CEO of an oil company, would have 307 times that amount of income. And if you take a teacher at say $53,000 a year, the CEO would have 273 times the amount of income of a teacher. So what you're seeing here in just the oil industry--and this is repeated certainly in the banking and the Wall Street industries, the financial industries--you see this enormous separation. Thirty, 40 years ago, this was in the range of 40 times, maybe 50 times. But now we're talking 300 to, in the lower 300s, a separation of the super wealthy and the working middle class, the men and women that are out there constructing schools, making our schools or teaching our kids or protecting us, police and firefighters.

I put those graphs up because it provides us with a solution. Before I get to the solution, let's just take one more look at the way this income distribution is occurring here in the United States. The rising inequality since the 1970s saw a very sharp break in the prosperity from an earlier era. From 1946 to 1976, the top 1 percent actually had a very small portion of the total wealth. From 1976 to 1990, we've seen enormous growth in the average income--not the wealth but the average income--of the top 1 percent so that now it dwarfs the rest of the population. So this is why you see Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Oakland, and the other cities talking about the 99ers, the 99 percent. The 99 percent are the rest of us, and the 1 percent are the CEOs, the Wall Street barons and those that have made enormous amounts of income over the last 20 years.

In the last decade, that's become even more apparent with the Bush tax cuts that occurred in 2001 and 2003. They basically significantly lowered the tax rate for the super wealthy and allowed them to keep even more of the extraordinary growth in their salaries and their income.

So how does that relate to American jobs? Well, very, very directly. The American jobs program that the President put forth called the American Jobs Act would provide very substantial opportunities for employment. And what I'd like to talk about is small businesses here. The small businesses of America are given a very substantial tax break in two different ways if they are to hire new people. For example, small businesses with less than $5 million of payroll are able to not pay their payroll tax, in other words, keep that money and go out and hire people. In addition to that, with Veterans Day coming up in just 1 week, we ought to be thinking about the veterans. We know that we have more than 1.5 million Americans that have been overseas fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and a few other places around the world. As those veterans come back, they have become the highest proportion of unemployed in America.

It would seem to me that since we are asking so much of those men and women that have served in our Armed Forces, particularly those that have served in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, we ought to be looking to their interest very directly and making certain that our programs are focused on them. Well, this is not lost on our President. In the American Jobs Act, he deals very directly with this by providing employers with a very powerful incentive to hire veterans. So with Veterans Day coming up, let's take a look at that. Let's take a look at what the President is proposing for the 877,000 unemployed veterans, the men and women that were out there fighting for this country, protecting us and doing what has been asked of them in an extraordinary way. More than 6,000 of them have given their lives, and over 40,000 have been seriously wounded. Of that 40,000, a very large proportion are permanently, permanently damaged in many difficult and extraordinary ways. And 877,000 of them are unemployed. And the President, looking at the necessity of building jobs in America, said, let's take care of those people.

So what he has proposed, and I think this is a terrific idea, is that small businesses, in fact, any business that is out to hire a veteran will be given an immediate $5,600 tax credit so that the taxes owed by that business or that employer would automatically be reduced for every veteran hired by $5,600. Hire an unemployed veteran, and you can reduce your taxes by $5,600. Even more so, if that veteran happens to be among those that have been wounded--and as I said, that is over 40,000--if you were to hire one of those wounded veterans, one of the seriously wounded that is connected with their service disability, the tax credit increases to $9,600. That's a very, very powerful incentive for businesses to hire our veterans. So with Veterans Day 1 week away, it's incumbent upon the 435 of us here in the United States Congress to not just talk the talk, but begin to vote to provide the veterans with the services that they need.

Now why did I start off with this graph? Why did I start off with this, showing the income disparity in the United States? Because this is how we should be paying for it--those Americans that have done extraordinarily well. And we're not talking about just extraordinarily well; we're talking about extraordinarily extraordinarily well. They have seen their income rise to a point of astronomical figures in some cases. And certainly it's seen on Wall Street. It's time for them to push aside the George W. Bush tax cuts. These tax cuts allowed them to keep a very large portion of their income. Taxes went down on income over $250,000 for joint filers, it went down from 39 percent to 35 percent. And do keep in mind all of the tax writeoffs that they're able to take advantage of that most Americans can't get. But nonetheless, since they've had 11 good years, 11 good years where they have received a significant tax cut, I think

it's time for them to share and help our veterans get a job.

And so the President has proposed, as part of his American Jobs Act, which is fully paid for, that those men and women whose annual adjusted gross income after deductions--adjusted gross income after deductions-- is $1 million or more, we're not talking about mom and pop on Main Street here, we're talking about those folks on Wall Street and those CEOs from the energy industry and the oil companies, those folks, it's time for them to come back and help America. It's time for them to stop shipping jobs offshore, stop playing all the Wall Street gambling games that got us in such trouble, and it's time for them to share in a fair way to pay for an American Jobs Act that would put veterans back to work by providing businesses in the United States with a tax credit when they hire one of those 877,000 unemployed veterans that have been out there keeping this country safe.

So if you earn more than $1 million adjusted gross income after all of your deductions, yes, 5.6 percent of that income over and above would be surcharged, and it would go back up to just about 40 percent.

Is that going to hurt anybody? No. Is it going to help somebody? Oh, yes. Oh, yes, it's going to help Americans go back to work. And it's not just in the area of veterans, although we certainly ought to be focusing on this. My plea to my Republican colleagues here on the floor is, let's not just talk about veterans and how we honor them next week. Let's vote this week while we are here to put the American Jobs Act out of this House, or at least put this part of the American Jobs Act out of the House and pay for it with a surcharge on those very fortunate Americans who have worked hard, been lucky, or whatever. Allow them the opportunity to pay for putting our veterans back to work. So let's get with it.

Now I know you're going to go back to your districts, and you're going to go to the veterans parades and you're going to talk all the talk. But here's where the walk occurs: in this House, in this week, we have the opportunity--in fact, we have the obligation--to really help our veterans, to really help them by putting them back to work; and this is one way to do it.

Let me talk for a moment about another way of doing it, and I think I'll deal with this one. Not only are there 877,000 veterans unemployed, but well over 9 million, 12 million Americans, and another 12 million that are underemployed. The President, in his jobs act, says for small businesses, if you hire an unemployed person who's been unemployed for 6 months or more, you can have a $4,000 tax credit. So veterans, $5,600; a wounded veteran--one of our returning heroes-- $9,600; and for a long-term unemployed American, hire somebody and you can reduce your tax burden by $4,000. That's a pretty good deal.

In addition to that, if you're a small business with a payroll of less than $5 million, you can write off, not pay the payroll tax at all. For individual families, the President has proposed--and we all talk about the need for individual families to have additional money in their pocket, so the American Jobs Act said, for individual families, tell you what, half of the payroll tax that you're presently paying-- about 6 percent--you don't have to pay it; you can keep that money. It's over $1,500 a year in the pockets of average Americans out there.

So the President has put together a program here, the American Jobs Act, to deal with unemployed--some 6 million have been unemployed more than 6 months; hire them, get a $4,000 tax credit. Hire an unemployed veteran and you can get a $5,600 tax credit. Or if that veteran happens to be one of the wounded warriors, one of America's true heroes, it's $9,600.

So it's time for us to act. It's time for the American public to tell Congress we can't wait. We can't wait. We can't take any more of this unemployment. Pass a real jobs program.

I know my colleague here, a few moments ago, was talking about the 15 bills that went over to the Senate. If you take a look at those bills, not one of them was a real jobs bill. What they did was basically gut the environmental regulations of this Nation so that our children can have a little more arsenic, a little more mercury, a little more pollution, and a little more polluted water. That's not a jobs bill. There is no economist in this Nation that will tell you that by gutting the environmental regulations you're going to produce jobs. What you're going to produce is sickness, ill health, cancer, and the rest. So those are not real jobs bills at all. The real jobs bill is the American Jobs Act, and we're going to be talking about that with my colleague from Ohio in just a few moments.

I want to share with you a piece of legislation that I've introduced. All of us are paying taxes--or at least I think most every American pays some sort of tax, a payroll tax or perhaps an income tax. That tax money is used for a variety of things. It's used for our military; it's used for our Social Security and Medicare and the like. It's also used to subsidize a variety of programs. Today at a press conference, we talked about the $12 billion a year of subsidies that we pay to the oil companies. That's right, you and I pay our tax money to the oil companies so they can have a little more. Keep in mind that this year their profits are up 100 percent. In the last decade, they've had $1 trillion of profit. They don't need our tax money. But there is a program for clean solar and wind. Those kind of programs are our tax money being used to subsidize green energy.

We also use our tax money to build highways, bridges, trains, light rail systems. This bill, H.R. 613, simply says that if our tax money-- in this case, the gasoline tax money--is going to be used, it must be used to buy American-made equipment, so that that Amtrak train out there is made in America. We're paying for it. It's our tax money; it ought to be American made. This is part of the Make It In America agenda. If you want to put a solar panel on your roof and you want the Federal tax credit, terrific, buy American-made solar panels. If you don't like American-made solar panels, use your own money, buy whatever you want; but don't use our tax money to buy a Chinese panel. Help American jobs; make it in America.

The same way with these wind turbines we're seeing all around the United States. It's our tax money that's subsidizing that, and that's good. What's not good is if that wind turbine is made in China or Europe. American made. You want the tax credit, buy American made credit.

Now joining us from the great State of Ohio is Congresswoman Betty Sutton. I know that you've been involved in this for a long time, the Make It In America agenda.

I yield to the gentlewoman to share with us her thoughts.

How correct you are. Thank you very much, Ms. Sutton, and thank you for bringing up the issue of infrastructure. Infrastructure's a problem all across this Nation.

I spoke earlier about the use of our tax dollars to support infrastructure so that we buy American, so that we can make it in America. And those are middle class jobs. Once we start making things in America, we start making middle class jobs.

The American Jobs Act has the potential of putting 2 million Americans back to work, many of them construction. Those are not just temporary things that are going to be built. Those are permanent foundations upon which the economy will grow in the future. So it's a sanitation system; it's a water system; it's a highway. That is a solid investment that gives the American economy a foundation upon which it can build, and immediate jobs.

What does it take?

Reclaiming my time, you have a bill that does what?

I thought I heard you correctly.

I want to come back to your Don't Let American Jobs Go Down the Drain Act. I love that title. But even more so, I like what it tries to accomplish. I'm going to come back to it.

Our colleague from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky) has also joined us here today.

If you could share with us your thoughts. You're not too far from Ohio. You must have similar issues in that great Midwest.

I yield to the gentlewoman.

I'm absolutely fascinated. I'd heard some of this before, but I'm so happy you brought that to our attention. So since the very first day of this country, we've had a policy in the United States of encouraging manufacturing, making it in America.

George Washington's inaugural suit, I'm going to use that. That is a wonderful, wonderful story.

I understand the canal system, that was a way of transportation. Infrastructure also came about at that time. I know here in the Potomac River canal, George Washington started that at about the same time, and then the Erie Canal. All of these were transportation systems that were right back at the very beginning of our country.

As I recall, there are 35,000 schools that could be renovated--classrooms, playgrounds, roofs, painting, bathrooms, laboratories--35,000 schools across this Nation.

I bet some of those are in Ohio.

You're quite correct about smoke and mirrors.

When you brought up education, in the American Jobs Act, the President has proposed a better deal for America. And part of it is this education piece. It's right here.

In the American Jobs Act--fully paid for; we're not adding a nickel to the deficit--fully paid for is a huge and important education piece. We talked about the renovation of schools. Just the environment in which kids will learn. If you have a good learning environment, it's clean, it's healthy, well lit, the electrical system is working, you have air conditioning and the rest, kids are going to learn much, much faster in a better situation.

But you also need a teacher. Now, I know in California, I know from my daughter and son-in-law, both of whom are teachers, the layoffs that have occurred in their school and the increase in their class size. My daughter went from 22 or 23 to 32 or 33 students in her class because of layoffs. The President in his American Jobs Act has proposed that 280,000 teachers across this Nation go back into the classroom, that they don't have a pink slip, that they're not unemployed. That they're actually teaching our kids.

And as you said, the most important investment a society makes is in the education of their children. Infrastructure, critically important. Security, national security, military, critically important. But if you don't have a well-educated workforce, all the rest will fail.

So let's put those teachers back in the classroom. Let's use a fair tax policy: Those that have done so extraordinarily well in the last two decades, the top 1 percent, let them help the rest of the 99 percent by paying 5\1/2\ percent more on income over and above a million dollars. It works. It's fair. And 280,000 teachers will be back in the classroom in my own State. Some 30,000 teachers will be back in the classroom. And there will be police and firemen in the street to help protect us. What's wrong with that? Why are we not doing it?

In the Senate last week and again this week, a Republican filibuster was used to stop the progress of the American Jobs Act, and here in the House of Representatives, it's not even heard before committee. The Republican leadership will not even allow it to be heard.

So let's get on with it. Let's put Americans back to work.

I yield to the gentlewoman from Ohio.

I am so proud of what you and others are doing in Ohio, fighting back against an extraordinarily unfair law that takes away the ability of people to come together and collectively voice their concerns. That's what it's all about.

You can say it's unions, and yes, but it's also the ability of people to say, Wait a minute--we're all working here at this school. We're the workers. We're the teachers, and we should have a voice in what is going on here. Not just in our pay and in our benefits, but also in the way this is working.

So you're fighting back, and you're making progress. Hopefully, that proposition will pass, and we'll begin to set a new model.

We need to also understand where the power has shifted. The power has shifted here.

This is the average pay of the CEOs of the five biggest oil companies--$14.5 million. That's 307 times the pay of a firefighter, 273 times the pay of a teacher, 263 times the pay of an average police officer, and 218 times the average pay of a nurse.

So what we have seen--and part of this has to do with collective bargaining--is that the power has shifted to the CEOs, to the extraordinary wealthy, and that it has resulted in this situation: where the middle class and the poor in America have seen virtually no change in their incomes over the last 20, 25 years. They've been flatlined--basically the same level of income. They're just making it.

This particular line is the next highest 20 percent. The only reason they've seen their incomes grow is that both husband and wife are now working. Back there, back in the seventies, mostly just one or the other was working; but now both are working.

But look here: this is the top 1 percent. Here are the 99ers. Here is the 99 percent down here at the bottom and the 1 percent up here. What we're saying is let's put Americans back to work with the American Jobs Act, and let's have a Fair Tax, not the George W. Bush tax cuts that gave this group even greater wealth, a greater annual income by cutting their taxes, but rather to restore that tax rate and allow that money to be used to hire the unemployed veteran.

There are 877,000 unemployed veterans. These are the men and women who fought for us in Iraq. These are the men and women who fought for us in Afghanistan. These are the men and women who came back without their legs, with their minds jumbled because of an IED--877,000 of them. Give them a chance by this group that has been so extraordinarily successful, in part, because of their own work and, in part, because of the tax cuts that they've enjoyed for the last 11 years.

Exactly.

As we begin to wrap up our hour here, Veterans Day is one week away. There are 435 of us here in this House who are representing the American people, and we have an opportunity. All of us will be out there on November 11. We'll be doing our parades, and we'll be giving our speeches about how wonderful the veterans have been in America; 877,000 of them have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan and have served this country in an extraordinary way. They're unemployed. They need a job.

The American Jobs Act will provide every employer in the United States with a $5,600 tax reduction, not a tax credit, that is, their taxes will be reduced by $5,600 for every unemployed veteran they hire. If they hire a veteran who has been wounded, one of the returning American heroes, it's a $9,600 reduction in that employer's tax.

Why are we not doing this? It's fully paid for. It's paid for with a small tax increase by those who have been so extraordinarily successful in the last decade. Why are we not helping our veterans find a job?

Because, in this House, the Speaker and the Republican Party refuse to address this issue. No hearings have taken place on the American Jobs Act that the President has put before this Congress. You can talk the talk. You can talk the talk forever. You can go home and you can talk the talk; or you can be here this week, and you can give our veterans a real opportunity. It's not just those who have returned from the war. There are veterans out there who fought in the previous wars, who served this country in Vietnam and in the first gulf war. They're unemployed or they are retired and they're receiving Social Security.

So, here on this floor, proposals have been put forth; and in the supercommittee, again proposals have been put forth to reduce the Social Security benefits, to reduce the foundation for retirement in this Nation so that the 1 percent don't have to pay their fair share of the taxes. Something is desperately wrong. Those seniors and those veterans are dependent upon Medicare for their health when we consider that it was Medicare that took more than 50 percent of the seniors out of poverty in the 1960s and gave them the health care that they needed to stay alive. Yet the proposal put forth on this floor that was voted on three times by our Republican colleagues would destroy Medicare and put every senior at risk, and those who are 55 and younger would never receive Medicare. They'd be thrown to the mercy of the private insurance companies.

Why would we ever allow that to happen? Because apparently some want to continue the tax breaks for the superwealthy.

But here we are one week away from Veterans Day--and a lot of talk. I want some action. America can't wait. These 877,000 veterans can't wait for a job. In Ohio and in California and in every other State in this Nation, this is the reality faced by veterans. This House has an obligation, this Speaker has an obligation to put the legislation before this House and to let us speak, to let us represent the people who elected us.

Ms. Sutton, thank you so very much for joining us. You've been a wonderful

Representative of Ohio. I've watched you fight day after day to put legislation in place so that your men and women in your district can go back to work. Please wrap it up. Share with us your thoughts.

And thank you so very much for so ably representing Ohio and your constituents.

We've got work to do. We've got veterans to care for, and they need help. Americans want jobs, and the American Jobs Act is there. If we were to bring that up today or tomorrow instead of the foolish little bills that have been going on around here for the last month and a half, Americans could go back to work, and it would be fully paid for with a fair tax. We have work to do.

I ask the Speaker of the House and my Republican colleagues to give Americans a chance to go back to work. Put the American Jobs Act up for a vote; put that tax up for a vote, and let's pass it. I think we'd vote it out of here in half a moment if we had a chance. But right now we don't even have that chance.

With that and hope for the future and thanksgiving for those men and women that have been out there protecting this Nation, the veterans, young and old, able and disabled, we thank them.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, thank you for the opportunity this evening. I'm joined by my colleague from Ohio, Marcy Kaptur.

I want to thank our colleague from Texas for the explanation he gave about the tragedy at Fort Hood. It was, indeed, an American tragedy, as were other acts of violence against this country, both within the country and around the world.

No doubt that there is radical Islam, no doubt that it is killing, not only Americans, but others around the world. And it is part of our task to find an appropriate way to deal with it. It's also part of our task to appropriately recognize the tremendous sacrifice made by our soldiers, both here, as in the Fort Hood incident, and certainly in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Today marks a very, very special day in American history. It is the end of one of the great American tragedies, and that is the war in Iraq. No matter how we may think of this today, I think we can be very confident that this war of choice was, indeed, a very bad choice. More than 4,000 Americans have been killed in this war, and perhaps several times that number injured.

Physical injuries, we often see them just off the floor as these men and women return from their medical treatment at the Bethesda hospital, and we mourn their physical loss.

The mental problems that our veterans have incurred after multiple deployments in Iraq will go on for years, as will the physical injuries. Post-traumatic stress syndrome is a major,

major problem among the thousands of veterans, hundreds of thousands of veterans that have returned. These are issues that we must deal with.

And as we mark, today, the final withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, our heart, our compassion, and indeed our actions go out to those veterans who have served this Nation in this war. Whatever we may think of the war, we must always think well and appropriately of these soldiers, men and women, multiple tours, National Guard, the Reserves, and the active Army and Navy and Air Force and Marines, all serving this country.

Many things have happened here on the floor to deal with those issues that they have incurred. Just 2 weeks ago we passed major pieces of legislation that are a followup to earlier pieces of legislation for the veterans. The Democratic Congress, in 2009 and `10, enacted the most far-reaching veterans benefits since the end of World War II. A new GI bill is in place. Job opportunities and training are in place. Enhancement of the medical services through the Veterans Administration and many other that were culminated last week--wrong word. Not culminated, but added to last week with the legislation that provides a very strong incentive for employers to hire unemployed veterans.

The unemployment rate for veterans is generally twice as high as the average American unemployment rate. Those benefits go to the employer, reducing their taxes by $2,600 for every veteran they hire. If they hire a long-term unemployed veteran, it'll be $5,600, and if it happens to be one of the disabled veterans, perhaps one that we often see outside this Chamber, then it's a $9,600 reduction in the taxes for that employer. We hope employers all across this Nation hear this and reach out to the veterans in their community and give them a job.

The rest of the time we have tonight I'd like to talk about jobs for Americans. As much as we may want to think about the wars, and today we did, we passed the Defense Authorization Act, we have to also think about Americans here at home that need a job. We've been working for some time on a program that we call ``Make It in America,'' a rebuilding of the strength of the American manufacturing industry.

Over the last 20 years, we have seen a rapid decline in the manufacturing base of America because that's where the middle class found its place. That's where the middle class found their opportunity to use the skills, whatever training they may have, whatever education they may have, and get a good, solid job that would support a family. Twenty million Americans were employed in manufacturing 20 years ago. Today, it is just over 11 million, almost a 50 percent decline.

We can't let this continue. We cannot allow the outsourcing of American jobs. We have to bring those jobs back home, and there are many ways that we can do that. And our ``Make It in America'' agenda by the Democratic Party here in Congress is taking root. And tonight we're going to talk about many parts of that.

Joining me is Marcy Kaptur from Ohio, which once and will be the heart of the American manufacturing sector. I know you have many pieces of legislation, and I know your intense passion on rebuilding the manufacturing sector in America. So let's talk about some of the things that are going on here in Congress and what we can do.

It really does, if I might take a moment here.

You raised one of the very important points. I know later in this discussion you're going to take this up in much more detail. But it's very, very clear that the financial sector, in their rush for profit, created the housing bubble. Didn't do it all by themselves. There was plenty of greed on the part of certain people that bought houses, and the real estate community was involved in that, the mortgage community.

But here we are after bailing out Wall Street. What is Wall Street doing to bail out Main Street? Not much.

I heard a discussion earlier today from a banker that said, Oh, we're making all kinds of SBA loans. Yes, that's guaranteed. Those are loans guaranteed by the Federal Government. But what risks are they taking?

We passed the Dodd-Frank language, which was designed to rein in Wall Street. Good. Very good. As strong as I would like? No. I would go back and put in place the Glass-Steagall Act. I was the insurance commissioner before the Glass-Steagall Act disappeared, and insurance was over here and banks were over there and investment banking was separate. So that the kind of problem that existed in 2000 where the banks went berserk and crazy in greed creating all of these CDOs and other kinds of really fake instruments, they couldn't do it. But nonetheless, the Dodd-Frank is there. Our Republican colleagues are refusing to fund the implementation of that program, putting all of us at risk once again.

I want to go back to the manufacturing sector and some of the issues that arise there, and particularly the unemployment rate in your communities.

Now, we have to reauthorize the unemployment insurance program; otherwise, is it 3.3 million Americans are going to lose their unemployment insurance in the first of the year? And when you have such high unemployment as you do in your communities, what are they going to do? How are they going to feed their families, pay their mortgages? And when you provide an unemployment check, it immediately goes into the economy and creates $1.6 for every dollar of the check.

And I know you see this in yours, and you've talked to me about the unemployment and the way in which the cessation of the unemployment insurance would just devastate people here

at holiday season. So share with us what you were sharing, just this, earlier in the week when we were talking about this issue.

I see it in my own district in California.

One of the things that we've been trying to do is to take up the President's call on this matter. The President, back in September, put forth the American Jobs Act. Many pieces of it. We'll talk about some of those pieces today.

But in the American Jobs Act, there was an extension of the unemployment insurance, which economists, left, right, and center, all say it's the best way to stimulate, to keep the economy moving. He suggested that we extend it for those who have been unemployed for 2 years or more. And I think it's the only humane and compassionate thing to do, particularly here at the holiday season.

He also made the suggestion that we continue the payroll tax reduction, which was 2 percent, that is from 5\1/2\ percent to 3\1/2\ percent. He suggested that the reduction be 3.1 percent.

Now, we are as concerned as our Republican colleagues about the deficit, and the President is, too. And he suggested that this needs to be paid for. We cannot borrow money from China to do the unemployment insurance or to do the payroll tax deduction.

Now, the payroll tax deduction, it's rather important. It's over $1,500 in the pocket of every working person in this Nation. That's an enormous amount of money for a person that's earning $10, $20 an hour. So he wanted to do that.

How is he going to pay for it?

He suggested that we pay for this in what is called tax fairness, that we take the upper income, those people that have earned a million dollars a year or more, and increase the tax that they pay over a million dollars by 3\1/2\ percent. A 3\1/2\ percent increase above a million dollars--not below but above. Now, that's fairness, because these folks have had an enormous tax reduction over the last decade, part of the Bush tax cuts.

Unfortunately, that didn't happen, and you and I have been here. And perhaps we ought to share with the public what happened yesterday when a bill came to the floor to provide unemployment insurance extension and a payroll tax deduction. It was really not a shining day for the House of Representatives.

We'll go into some detail here, but essentially what happened was that the legislation put forth by our Republican colleagues basically said, okay, we'll continue the payroll tax deduction, not at 3.1 percent but at a 2 percent reduction, which is about a thousand dollars for an average worker, and that's good, certainly better than not doing anything; and we will also do the unemployment insurance, but only for half the time that the President suggested.

And here's the kicker. All of that will not be paid by those who earn more than a million, the millionaires and billionaires. That will be paid for by the middle class. It was the 99 percenters that were going to have to pay for this. Not the 1 percenters, but the 99 percenters. It was the great shell game, and a very, very sad day. Fortunately, the President said, I will veto that if it ever gets to my desk; and the Senate has said, No way; this is not fair to the working men and women of America.

Now, we were here, and we heard some of the debate. Share with us your thoughts about all that went on yesterday in that rather sad piece of legislation.

Yes.

If I might interrupt for just a moment, you raised a very, very important point about the fate of the American middle class and of the extraordinary benefit that has grown for the top 1 percent. This is where the 99 percent comes in.

Let me just show you this chart. It has become one of my favorites. This chart is about the growth of income.

Down here on the bottom are the bottom 99 percent of Americans and the income that they have seen since 1979: virtually no real growth in the income of the working men and women, of the middle class of America. So, if you look at these lines, this is the top quartile; this is the middle quartile and the bottom quartile here: no growth or just a little tiny growth. Incidentally, most of that comes because now both the husband and wife are working, not because just one of the wage earners has seen it.

This top line, Marcy, is the 1 percenters. We can see, over the last 25, 30 years, the 1 percenters have done very, very nicely, and there are many reasons for this. One, they are very productive. They've been able to find good opportunities and to make the most of them. We wouldn't deny anybody that opportunity to become very, very wealthy in America if they play by the rules. I know, a little later,

you're going to talk about some who have not played by the rules and who have become extraordinarily wealthy. But if you play by the rules, you ought to be able to do very well in America.

Yet what we're talking about here is tax fairness. A lot of this growth right here in the last decade was as a direct result of tax policy. Now, the George W. Bush tax cuts for the super wealthy, which were supposed to create jobs, didn't create jobs. In fact, we had a loss of employment in the United States. Even if you discount and take out the great crash of 2007-8, in the George Bush era, the argument for reducing the high-income tax rate was that it would create jobs because these were the job creators. It didn't create jobs. It did not create jobs. So now we're talking about how do we keep this economy going, about how do we provide for those who don't have jobs. How do we put money back into the economy? As you say, it will be spent. We do it with tax fairness.

As the President suggested, for those people who earn more than $1 million a year after all the deductions, the amount of income above $1 million would be taxed an additional 3\1/2\ percent. That's fair. That's fair to the American workers, if they're unemployed or if they're looking for jobs, so that they'll have an opportunity.

Before we go back to Make It in America, which is our principal policy, at least among those of us who are talking about the Make It in America agenda, I want to just make it very clear that this debate over the payroll tax reduction and the unemployment insurance is not over. We've got a little bit of time to get this done before the end of the year when all of these opportunities for people to continue to survive terminate.

Right now, the Senate is going to take up the House bill, and it is our understanding that that bill is not going to move in the Senate. We need to get past this gamesmanship that we saw in the legislation that passed here just yesterday, and we need to get serious about finding a compromise that can deal with this problem.

Here is our wish list. This is the American wish list. We have Santa up here, but let's just say it's to the House of Representatives--all of us--and to the Senate. What we would like to have in the stocking is not a bad lump of coal but, rather, a payroll tax cut extension. We could probably settle for the present. If we were to compromise, we'd want 3 percent, but we could settle for the 2 percent reduction. That's $1,000 in the pockets of every working man and woman in the State. That's 160 million people. That's an enormous thing for us to do.

So this is one of the things that we would wish would happen, that we wish that we would do--your Representatives, Democrat and Republican alike, and the Senators--for the working men and women of America so that they can have food on their tables and roofs over their heads.

The other deals with the unemployment insurance--5.7 million people are going to be losing their unemployment insurance in the coming year. What in the world are they going to do? Their jobs are not there, as you so clearly pointed out, Ms. Kaptur. The jobs are not there, and they need help. That's where the unemployment insurance program will help them and will simultaneously help the economy, as Ms. Kaptur pointed out. We can pay for this. We can pay for this with a Fair Tax system in America.

We should work together. Excuse me for interrupting, but in my district, we have a ravioli company. We're talking out of this world. Now, maybe your sauce on top of their raviolis we could actually get on the shelf.

Obesity.

Black Friday, a week ago. It is all about the big retailers. But Small Saturday, now that was exciting. A lot of advertising out in California about, Go to your local shop. Buy local. Buy small. And it was just what you are talking about, and that is to find a way to provide opportunity, moving, in this case, customers to the local stores. Instead of the big box store, go down to Main Street. Stop at the local shop. Very, very powerful. And I suspect that many of us did that. We stopped at the local store, and we didn't go down to Home Depot. We went down to the Ace Hardware.

I don't think we're talking about a law or a new regulation here, but we're talking about something that we ought to do for our communities, and that is recognize that we're all part of a community.

You said something a few moments ago that caused me to come back to this issue. You talked about the trade deficit. And the way in which we are literally exporting our money, we're also exporting our jobs.

Last December--just a year ago--on this floor, we took up a piece of legislation that dealt with this issue. In the previous Tax Code, there were tax breaks given to American corporations for shipping jobs offshore. For offshoring American jobs, they got a tax reduction. And some of us said, Well, what in the world is that all about? So we scrambled and tried to find out where the codes were. And a bill came forth on the floor that eliminated about two-thirds of those tax breaks given to American corporations when they offshore jobs.

A very interesting division occurred here on the floor of this House. It was a straight-up bill. It wasn't complex. It was on that issue: Should American corporations continue to receive tax breaks for offshoring jobs? That was the bill. No riders. No hidden agendas. No extraneous sentences put in. This House divided right down the middle. The Democrats voted to end the tax cuts. The Republicans, not one Republican voted to end those tax breaks given to American corporations for offshoring jobs.

And I'm going, I don't get it, guys. You guys talk about jobs all the time. You talk about small businesses, and here you want to continue to subsidize the offshoring of American jobs? What's that all about? We never got an answer. But it speaks directly to the point that you were making earlier about policy choices. Our work is policy, policy choices: Are we going to do this, or are we going to do that? Are we going to continue to support American corporations for offshoring jobs, giving them our tax dollars? Are we going to continue to allow the oil companies to be subsidized?

The wealthiest industry in the world takes about $15 billion a year of your tax money, and we give it to them. The oil, the gas, and the coal industries, about $15 billion a year in tax subsidies. Why do we do that?

Wouldn't you love to go into Wal-Mart and find ``Made in America''? Wouldn't that be something?

A little bit of patriotism.

Let me give you another example of what we can do with policy. Right now we have a ``Buy American'' policy that really has not been enforced much. So I've introduced a piece of legislation, H.R. 613, that simply says that if it's our tax money--and every time we buy a gallon of gasoline or a gallon of diesel fuel, we pay either 18.5 cents for the gasoline or 26 cents for the diesel fuel in taxes, where's the money going? Some of it all too often, in fact, a lot of it all too often, winds up going offshore.

I will give you an example: the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge, a multibillion dollar project, $1 billion worth of steel going into that bridge. It will be a beautiful thing when it's completed. The bids for that came in for an American-made steel bridge or a Chinese-made steel bridge.

It was a 10 percent difference in cost. That's a lot of money. So the State of California Bridge Authority decided that they would take the 10 percent cheaper Chinese steel. The result is after years, the steel had problems. The welds had problems. The cost went well above 10 percent, and 3,000 jobs wound up in China, and zero jobs wound up in America.

So what this bill does, it simply says no more waivers. No more. If it is American tax dollars that are being used, it is going to be used to buy American-made equipment--buses, trains and the steel and concrete. It works.

In the stimulus bill, which all of our Republican friends want to dismiss, in the stimulus bill there was one line for the several billion dollars of money that went into transit that said that money can only be used to buy American-made light rail, transit trains, and locomotives for Amtrak.

Siemens opened a factory in Sacramento, California, to build those light-rail cars and the locomotives because the policy, drafted here on this floor, passed by the Senate and signed into law by President Obama, said that tax money can only be used to buy American-made equipment. And it created hundreds of American jobs in Sacramento, California.

This bill, and another one like it that has now been introduced by the ranking member Democrat in the Transportation Committee, will bring hundreds of thousands of jobs when our tax money is going to be used to buy American-made equipment.

Let me just add to this. This was a result of the stimulus bill that put the money there, if need be, to rebuild certain sectors of America. President Obama courageously, and with enormous opposition from Republicans, said, I will not let the American automotive industry die. This is a fundamental industry in the United States; I will not let it die.

And so he authorized the money that went to bail out General Motors and

Chrysler. Ford didn't take advantage of it because they had a different financial situation. But the result of that is precisely what you've described. It is precisely the saving of the American automotive industry and all of supply chain that goes with it. A very courageous action by the President, one that worked for the benefit of America so that we can once again make it in America.

I'm going to wrap this up very quickly because I know you have a couple of things you want to talk about with regard to Wall Street.

Why don't you go ahead, and then I will wrap up at the end.

Let me just give you another example. I thank you for raising that very, very important issue.

Last year, this House by an overwhelming bipartisan vote set out to address the China situation. It was a piece of legislation that simply said that when any government anywhere around the world unfairly subsidizes its business sector in a way or to the detriment of American businesses, then that country will face sanctions. And specifically, it had to do with the Chinese currency. The Chinese currency is significantly undervalued, perhaps giving as much as a 20 percent advantage to China in its exports. Bipartisan, it passed here. It did not pass in the Senate. However, this year my Republican colleagues would not even allow that to come up for a vote here, even though it has now passed in the Senate. So the Chinese currency bill passed the Senate; it is languishing in this House. I do not understand why our Republican colleagues want to continue to allow China to have an unfair advantage.

I was going to wrap up with this. China subsidizes to a fare-thee- well its solar and wind industries. So much so that they have taken over the market and have led to the bankruptcy of a couple of American solar manufacturers, Solyndra being one example that is much discussed around here. But it was really as a result of China driving down the price of solar panels.

This bill, again one that I have introduced, and it comes directly from my district because we have a major wind farm and solar system there, it says that our tax money that presently goes to subsidize the purchase of solar systems and wind turbines must only be used to buy American-made wind turbines and solar panels. In other words, buy American, make it in America, and rebuild our industry.

I am going to just wrap up quickly.

It's the holiday season. It's that time when we think about our families. It's that time when we think about our communities. We have a real obligation here in the House of Representatives to put forth really solid legislation to support those men and women and families in America that, through no fault of their own, are unemployed or are having a very difficult time in making it in the current economy as wages are driven down and as opportunities for advancement are diminished.

What we hope for, and literally pray for, is a consensus, a compromise, in the next couple of days here on the floor of this House and with the Senate so that we can pass legislation that would actually help the American workers, those that are unemployed and those that are seeking a job or have a job and are unable to make it, and with that payroll tax deduction put another $1,000 in their pocket. And I want us to keep in mind that in America today there are 1.4 million children-- 1.4 million children--that are homeless. Their parents have lost their job, they've lost their home, and they're sleeping in cars. They're homeless. They may be able to find an opportunity at a motel. We've seen some of this on television. But this is in all of our communities. Every community in America has this problem.

And it's up to us here in Congress to use what compassion and wisdom we possess to find ways of addressing it. We have such an opportunity with the payroll tax deduction, with the welfare. And, unfortunately, the bill that passed here yesterday basically would put money into the right pocket through a payroll tax deduction or an unemployment check, and then take it out of the left pocket with an increase in fees, a reduction in medical services, the closing of clinics or other ways in which that money would be extracted.

Yes, it would balance. It wouldn't increase the deficit except for the working men and women of America. We think that's wrong, and we've offered a different solution.

My colleague from New York has come for a couple of short comments. I promised Ms. Kaptur the last few moments of this. Welcome, Mr. Tonko. The East-West Show is back in session.

I thank you very much, Mr. Tonko, for bringing that up.

I'm going to ask Ms. Kaptur of Ohio to take the podium here and to tell us about Wall Street and some of the reforms that she is advocating.

I want to thank Congressman Garamendi for, again, bringing us together to discuss the most important issue on the minds of the American people, and that is healing the economy here at home and producing a sufficient number of jobs to employ all Americans who want to work.

And I join the Congressman's comments about our veterans, veterans who have served our country so bravely, a great sense of self-sacrifice and national sacrifice. We thank them, particularly during this holiday season, their families, their children, their relatives, their friends, their communities, all their employers, all of those who understand what this requires.

And I wanted to just mention that, in connecting our veterans coming home to the employment question, it's a very serious challenge that we face because, even in a State like Ohio, currently, of all those who remain unemployed in Ohio, and there are many, 52,000 are veterans, already. And it was correct, I think, for President Obama, in going to visit with our veterans and active military at this holiday season, that one of the issues that came up repeatedly was, well, with our veterans coming home, where are they going to work with so many unemployed already?

And to give an example, in Ohio and many other parts of the country, for every job that exists, 100 people apply or more. And even if we filled every job that exists, we would have millions of Americans still out of work.

And yet, we have huge, unmet national needs, and that's why making decisions here, both on the tax side and the spending side, to get our economic house in order and to rein in the abuses in the financial sector on Wall Street that have caused such damage here and abroad, is absolutely critical for us to deal with and to keep those at the top of our priority list.

I think Congressman Garamendi and I agree that some of the partisan wrangling here is really so nonproductive. And if you want to put the country back to work, that's what the debate should be about. We should have job thermometers here showing how well we're doing and how fast we are helping to grow this economy.

So as with Congressman Garamendi's support of the veterans tax credit for hiring, I obviously support that as well. But it's not sufficient because, as I understand it, the tax credit will yield about 40,000 openings around the country; 40,000 companies will hire maybe one worker, or however it will ultimately transpire, but we have a need to reinvest in America.

The most important factor in reinvestment is for our banks to have confidence and our people to have confidence that there's going to be stability for people in our economy. I think our party wrangling really works against that.

Wouldn't you agree, Congressman?

The problem is, when you have 100 people out there looking for a given job, it means 99 won't get it. And these are people who want to work. They have a record of working. They have actually collected their benefits. They've paid into the insurance fund for unemployment in their respective States. But when the economy doesn't recover as fast as it must, then what happens is, after they use up their first 26 weeks of unemployment, what are they supposed to do? Where are they going to work in order to provide for their families?

We've had to, at the Federal level, extend unemployment because of this massive recession that we are digging out of. We have had to extend people. These are people who want to work, who have worked, who have a working record. So they continue looking for jobs. And I can tell you, some of them have been looking for jobs for 3 and 4 years. It isn't that they don't want to work. How many have I talked to where they have sent out hundreds of resumes? They have gone door-to-door looking for work. They have tried, and yet the door keeps getting shut in their face.

At some point, any human being begins to think, There must be something wrong with me that I can't obtain work, when they have a very good record. Many of them are doing two and three jobs just to bring income in and then look to find a full-time job. It's very disruptive to family life. Many of them have moved in with their relatives now.

And they shouldn't feel like failures. I said to my audiences back home, It isn't your fault. You didn't do this to America. The biggest banks failed us. They failed our country. They've hurt us. They've created false money. Many of them became so rich that no normal person could even imagine what they're floating in.

But it isn't the fault of the ordinary worker. They shouldn't eat themselves up in self-agony. There's a lot of that out there.

Again, it's like a teeter-totter. It's like it's tipped in one direction.

I think everybody in our country knows that we all will have to sacrifice in order to pay down our long-term debt and that when we make public decisions that we help our economy grow.

In every business I go into, they say, Marcy, bring me customers, bring me customers.

Whether they're out of work and they receive unemployment benefits, which they have earned, or whether it's allowing an individual through a payroll tax holiday to have a few extra dollars of spending money, the advantage of helping the middle class is that it's going to go directly into our economy. It goes to every small business. Whether it's to buy vegetables at the corner stand, whether it's to buy gasoline for your car, whether it's to buy clothing for your children, when you think about where those dollars will go, it's going to go to essentials. It won't be wasted money.

All of history shows us, because their incomes have really not gone up, because buying power has gone down for the average family and prices are going up, that the middle class is guarding every penny so much more carefully.

I had to go out and buy some throw rugs the other day because of all the rain in the Midwest that had caused water to rise in our basement. I couldn't believe the price of throw rugs. I thought, oh, my goodness, and I went to two or three stores. I don't have time to do that, but I was reacting to the increase in prices. The average family has great difficulty in buying those kinds of items, so those few hundreds of dollars mean everything, and they will use it to improve their homes, for example.

Congressman Garamendi, as you were talking, I was thinking about that chart that shows the flatness of income growth in the middle class, and I was thinking about the last several years and about our U.S. trade deficits.

Most Americans probably don't realize it, but annually, we rack up about $500 billion more in imports coming into our country than exports going out, and it hits the working class--the middle class of people-- very, very hard because it substitutes for the income that they would normally earn if they were manufacturing in this country as many cars as they used to.

What we see happening is a tipping toward the top, but really all sectors are affected by the fact that our trade deficit lops off most of the gross domestic product growth every year. A half-trillion dollars bleeding out of our economy for purchases of everything from electronics to energy to automobiles, which are things that should be made inside this country, is a huge downdraft on every income quartile in our country. Thus, your efforts to promote American-made goods are right on target.

I wanted to just comment obliquely here based on what you've been talking about.

In looking at job creation in a given region, if I look at the regions that I've been privileged to represent, we have many small companies or medium-sized companies. I happened to be speaking with one of them the other day, Hirzel, which is a major producer of tomato products in our region.

And I said, you know, I was looking for your spaghetti sauce on the shelves of one of our major grocery chains, and I couldn't find it. And it's the best sauce I have ever eaten. I said, How can I help you expand your product placement on the shelves of stores across the country? The owner of the company, a family-owned company--and they are the most wonderful people--he said to me, Well, you don't really understand, Marcy. We really aren't allowed on those shelves because one of the big spaghetti sauce manufacturers--and I won't mention the name--pays the grocery store a fee to keep all new products off their shelves. And even though Hirzel's is not a new product, it's regionally bound; and they can't get on the shelves of supermarkets because of what's called ``slotting fees.''

You know what, these large outfits that control retail sales in our country hurt innovation because what they do is they make deals with some of the biggest companies. Ask yourself, why, when you go through a supermarket and you want to find soda pop--they call it soda pop in some places, and they call it--what do they call it in your part of the country?

Well, if you try to find different brands, you will see certain brands at eye level because they pay thousands of dollars to each grocery store to put it there. But if you want locally bottled soda, or pop, you are lucky if you can find it on the bottom shelf, and you probably can't.

So we have like gatekeepers. The public is largely unaware of this. Local meat. I represent a region that is both urban and rural. I love it. I am privileged to represent it. Try to get locally produced pork on the shelves of large supermarket chains. Good luck. You know, the same is true with vegetables. We could have so much more income growth and job growth in this country if we would have some consciousness by these big retailers and box stores to go local. We grow local. We make local. But then to try to move it to the shelf, it's almost impossible.

This year, again, I went to craft shows. I buy dozens and dozens of gifts. And I find locally made items because I know the money will go right in the pockets of local people. And why is it these craft shows, they hold them in churches, and they hold them in auditoriums, why don't some of these big shopping center complexes invite them in? What's the problem with trying to help local innovation, local development? We find so many restrictions that make it hard.

One of the reasons we can't grow jobs fast enough is because certain interests in our society have such a lock on who can get in the door. There ought to be a section for local. We shouldn't have

to pass a Federal law for that. People should be smart enough out there to do it. It creates more customers all ways around, and a lot of us want to support local.

You raise a very good point, Congressman. And I went into one of these dollar stores--I won't say which name it was--with one of my good friends the other day. I couldn't find a non-Chinese-made item on the shelf.

I'm a city planner by training. So I look at the space in these stores, and I thought, I could do this. I could clear one of these aisles. I could consolidate over there. I could provide a place for locally made items, and let the local entrepreneurs compete. But give them a place on the shelf, and don't make them pay these exorbitant fees. It doesn't take an act of Congress for some business innovation in these big box stories. And I am thinking, you know, maybe America in some ways is losing her edge. Because if the CEOs in charge of these retail stores can't be creative enough to figure out how to help us encourage innovation at the local level, what are they getting paid so much for?

I think of all the local food products, all the hand-made sweaters, all of the artwork, all of the pottery that's made locally, the food products that can't get to shelf because they keep them out. Come on, men and women out there in the retail world. Show a little creativity here. We have a lot of innovation at the local level.

Boy, it takes a little bit of patriotism.

I wanted to mention as you were talking, Congressman Garamendi, as a result of the refinancing of the U.S. automotive industry in northern Ohio--from Cleveland, Elyria, Lorain, Avon Lake, Sandusky, Toledo, Defiance, the whole corridor--what we are seeing is a reinvestment in the supplier chain. That includes steel such as Republic Steel. People don't realize how many jobs in America are connected to the automotive industry.

Your State of California, which manufactures a lot of semiconductors, half of the semiconductors procured in this country go into the automotive industry. If you think about carpeting, half of the carpeting sold in this country goes into automotive production. Plastics, glass--think about what is really in there. As a result of what we were able to do here, with a lot of flak from one side of the aisle, although there was some support, was to refinance the U.S. auto industry.

We just had an announcement in Avon Lake that the truck platform will be coming back to us from Mexico. So that is retention of jobs in Avon Lake. It is part of the rebirth of automotive and truck transportation across the north. We are producing vehicles like the Wrangler, one of the most popular vehicles in the country, obviously, and the new Cruze for General Motors.

But all the supplier chain, Republic Steel, they're putting in a new arc furnace. You're looking at the restoration of production. It's coming slowly, but it's coming. So we have to be proud of actions that were taken by the Government of the United States of America through the action of Congress and by the President to help save one of America's lodestar industries, which has now paid back its loans and is rehiring.

I would like to add one item, though.

Perfect. I just want to say a deep thanks to Congressman Garamendi for bringing us together tonight.

I wanted to say as a member of the China Commission, we had testimony yesterday from various witnesses on the economy, on the legal structure of China, on democracy and the lack thereof in that country. One of the points that we discussed was how closed the Chinese market is to products from around the world--much like Japan, much like Korea. You look at Singapore, many of the Asian nations keep our products out. And we're asking American companies to try to compete in a situation where our market is open and their market is closed. So we can't get access to those customers.

One of the points that was brought up by one of the top economists that testified before the China Commission was the fact that the Chinese Government backs those companies. Really, the government owns the companies, and they infuse billions of dollars. So think about this. The workers and companies of northern Ohio and the U.S. automotive industry are trying to compete in a global market where some of the major markets in the world, like Japan, are closed. And they've remained closed for decades. China does not welcome us in. We are literally competing against state-managed capitalism. It is not a free market. It is not a market economy we are dealing with. It is very controlled.

There was criticism by some that, oh gosh, look at Congress, they are helping the U.S. automotive industry. It showed a lack of understanding of what these companies face in the global marketplace. It is not a level playing field. It is simply not. And, unfortunately, we have never had a trade ambassador knowledgeable enough about the automotive industry--that came out again yesterday--who can really successfully bargain to give us a level playing field in one of the most important industries that we have.

I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time and rise this evening on the subject of MF Global and the clear need for oversight by the Congress.

Mr. Speaker, Congress isn't doing its job to investigate the fraud that has infected our entire financial system, fraud perpetrated by Wall Street, and it has hurt the global financial system as well. I think the reason is that too many people have forgotten that gambling with other people's money often entices very addictive personalities who are incapable of self-policing. They need rules, they need limits, and they need oversight. Otherwise they just keep getting into the same trouble again and again, harming innocent people in the process by looting their assets.

The American people know that corruption on Wall Street is pervasive, and millions upon millions of our fellow citizens have been harmed by it. The Republican leadership in this House have failed in their responsibility to aggressively investigate crime in the financial services sector.

Earlier this month, I spoke about Bloomberg's report on how President Bush's Secretary of the Treasury, Hank Paulson, in 2000, inappropriately and behind closed doors in a private meeting tipped off his former colleagues at Goldman Sachs and a handful of Wall Street insiders about how Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac might collapse and what steps the government intended to take. All of this occurred on the very same day that Secretary Paulson led The New York Times to believe that those two companies would give a signal of confidence to the markets.

You can imagine what those financial insiders did with their investments before the rest of America was even aware.

I also reminded my colleagues that the Securities and Exchange Commission was finally rebutted recently in a New York court for settling fraud cases with major Wall Street banks like Citigroup in a way that allowed the biggest banks to walk away by simply paying a few fines without so much as admitting any wrongdoing.

I ask, where is this Congress' oversight of these most crucial financial machinations that have so harmed our Nation and world since the market crashed in 2008?

Finally, after months and months of press coverage, Congress is taking a tad of action. Last week, the House's Agriculture Committee held one of the first hearings we have seen all year. That hearing, called by Chairman Frank Lucas of Oklahoma and Ranking Member Collin Peterson of Minnesota, began to shed some light on what is the eighth- largest bankruptcy in U.S. history at MF Global Holdings. Its misdeeds had been widely reported, but they deserve much closer scrutiny. We need to subpoena their full records and transactions that led to the collapse.

Even before last week's hearings, we knew that MF Global Holdings filed for Chapter 11 on October 30. Citizens in my district have been impacted and harmed as over $1 billion disappeared from customer accounts. The Washington Post and other press reported weeks ago that the firm's CEO, former Governor Jon Corzine, had essentially placed a $6.3 billion bet on the sovereign debt of several European Governments. After its most recent quarterly return showed almost $200 million in losses, MF Global stock lost 67 percent of its value.

But this is not just a case of an investment firm being lured by the higher returns of riskier bonds. As investigators continue to piece together what happened at MF Global, there is increasing evidence of criminal activity. This case has all the trappings of a massive case of fraud.

Now, CME Group Incorporated, which audited MF Global's accounts, reported weeks ago that Mr. Corzine's company violated key Federal requirements to keep its accounts separate from their customer accounts. At last week's Agriculture Committee hearing, the public was once again told that as much as $1.2 billion may still be missing from segregated customer accounts.

This isn't just a case of misplaced money. The financial press has been reporting a staggering amount of malfeasance in the days before MF Global filed for bankruptcy. In an apparent effort to buy themselves time, MF Global sent checks instead of wiring money. Many of those checks, we all know now, bounced. There are stories of requests to transfer funds being denied and even inaccurate account statements being issued. Even more egregious are accounts of people receiving bounced checks going back and finding their accounts were also altered inappropriately. May I ask, if this doesn't sound like fraud, what is it?

The American people must demand more congressional oversight. Congress needs to produce more information.

I attended last week's hearing in the House Agriculture Committee. While some important questions were asked of Mr. Corzine, Congress' responsibility has been far from met. Anyone who carefully followed the hearing watched as Mr. Corzine dodged questions and provided hollow responses.

The Wall Street Journal provided us with an interesting assessment of Mr. Corzine's testimony that is worth entering in the Record. According to the Journal, Governor Corzine ducked or deflected questions 15 times. On five occasions, he used a well known strategy for avoiding accountability by using some variant of the phrase, ``I did not intend to break any rules.'' He apologized or expressed regret six times for the damage his choices wrought on countless families and businesses. But the operative fact is $1.2 billion; that is the amount that is missing from MF Global's segregated client funds for which Mr. Corzine could provide no explanation. In fact, astoundingly, this seasoned trader pleaded ignorance of what was happening at his own company.

Let me mention that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Jill Sommers, a representative who testified at the hearing, was very invaluable to public understanding.

Mr. Speaker, I believe that I have a Special Order and time remaining, my own Special Order for 30 minutes.

For our hardworking stenographers, it's late into the evening, and we thank you for all the work that you do recording our words, many of which are worth listening to and having written down and some of which are probably not.

I want to thank my colleagues from across the aisle for bringing the issue

of securing our borders to our attention tonight and along with it the issue of immigration. I would just like to remind them that the current administration has done more in the last 2\1/2\ years to secure our borders than in the previous 8 years of the George W. Bush administration, putting more Border Patrol to work--significantly more--and also putting on the borders members of the National Guard. It remains a difficult and in very many places a very dangerous situation. Nonetheless, a great deal is being done.

I would also like to remind my colleagues from the Republican side that they control this House. When a certain piece of legislation came here with regard to appropriations, they actually proposed to cut the men and women that are there to protect the border. So I'm not quite sure I understood all of tonight's debate from their side. And also I would remind them that if immigration is such a big issue, they should bring a comprehensive immigration bill to this floor so that we have a rational immigration policy in the United States.

I guess it's easier to talk than it is to take action.

What I would like to spend tonight talking about is putting Americans back to work. Let's go back to work. This is one great country. We're America. We're the people that make things. We're the people that can do things. We're the people that want to go back to work. And this government wants to put people back to work.

About a month ago the President proposed the American Jobs Act, a very comprehensive program that would put Americans back to work. I want to spend this evening talking about the critical and the most important elements of that legislation that he has proposed. Unfortunately, our friends in the Senate--well, maybe they're not America's friends--they killed the American Jobs Act. When it came up for a vote this week, they chose to not allow it to come to a vote. They did one of their little filibuster routines over there, with every Republican voting against putting Americans back to work.

Now, I don't know exactly what they have in mind. I guess they would like the economy to stumble along with millions of Americans out of work. They couldn't possibly want that. They couldn't possibly want a situation where men and women are desperate for a job when there's an opportunity--and I'll explain in a few moments how many people will be able to go back to work if this American Jobs Act were actually to become law. But they voted not even to allow it to come to a vote. They did one of their little filibuster threats and every Republican lined up sufficient in number to block the bill from moving forward.

I must say two of my Democratic colleagues over there also voted on the wrong side of putting Americans back to work. But I'll let them explain that to their constituents.

So what is the American Jobs Act? Well, let's start with the foundation. The foundation of any economy is the infrastructure. It is that part of the structure of an economy that is the foundation. It is the transportation system. Infrastructure is the sanitation and the water systems and the modern communication systems.

In the President's American Jobs Act is $50 billion, in addition to what we're already spending, to build the bridges, to repair the roads, to add to the transportation systems--the light rail, the heavy rail, the Amtrak systems--to move Americans, and also to move modern communication systems. Fifty billion dollars.

What does that mean to my State of California? Well, it's $4 billion right off the top. It's 51,500 jobs that could begin the day after this House and the Senate sends to the President the American Jobs Act--$50 billion, 51,500 jobs for California, building the foundation of economic growth.

In addition to that, the President proposed a $10 billion capitalization of an infrastructure bank in which pension funds from around the Nation could then invest in that infrastructure bank--more money for those projects that are not earmarks, not political, but rather jobs and programs that are actually needed in communities, that have the ability to repay the loans that the infrastructure bank would make.

Let me just put up a couple of things here that really build an economy, and we will soon come to this issue of making it in America. But before I do, I just want to point out that these are the key elements in creating an economy.

We talked a moment ago about the infrastructure. It's down here at the bottom, not for any reason other than that's the foundation. So the infrastructure. The other thing that's in the American Jobs Act deals with this: education. Now, education is the most fundamental investment that any society must make if it's going to have future economic growth and social justice.

So what has the President proposed in the American Jobs Act for education? How about putting 280,000 teachers back to work the day after this bill passes this Congress and the Senate and is signed by the President; 280,000 teachers in the classrooms teaching our children, preparing them to compete in the world's economy; 280,000 teachers. For California, $3.6 billion and 37,000 teachers in the classroom immediately.

Now, my daughter is a teacher; my son-in-law is a teacher. Their class size went from 22 or 24 to 35, a very difficult situation for any teacher in the second grade to be able to adequately prepare those children. However, my daughter is a great teacher and she's hanging in there, but this is tough. This is a very, very difficult situation. What would it mean to her if there's one additional second grade teacher in her school? It would mean her classroom size would come down and her ability to bring those kids along faster would very, very much be in play. 280,000 teachers. So that's the education piece of it.

Let's talk for a moment about the classroom itself. We know here in Congress, all 435 of us, we go back to our districts and we see our schools. The parents out there, they know their schools need to be renovated. They know that many of the bathrooms aren't working. They know the playgrounds are in disrepair. They know the paint is peeling and the roofs are leaking. In the President's bill, 35,000 schools across this Nation are going to be renovated--35,000 schools. In California, that amounts to 2,800 schools being rehabilitated and 36,000 jobs.

This is a big deal. If a kid takes pride in his school, he's going to be a better student. If a kid sees his school and it's in disrepair, bathrooms are not working, he could just lose interest. So let's give them a good environment in which to learn. And so the President has proposed $25 billion, 35,000 schools across this Nation. This is a big deal for education: teachers, better schools, renovation.

And for community colleges, there's also money in here for community colleges, $5 billion to upgrade the plant, the laboratories, the science facilities for community colleges across this Nation.

Let's go back to work. Let's put America back to work. Let's pass the American Jobs Act. The Senate, you haven't helped. In this House, in the House of Representatives, the Republican leadership refuses to even bring this bill up for a vote, even bring it to a hearing in any of the committees. They simply say ``no.'' So what's their solution? What's their solution for putting Americans back to work? Well, thus far it's been to cut budgets, to lay people off all across this Nation.

How is this going to get paid for? It's fully paid for. This is not going to be borrowed money. This is not going out and borrowing money to create jobs here in the United States, fundamental investments that we need to grow the economy. This American Jobs Act, just under $500 billion, is fully paid for. It's paid for by fairness. Finally, some fairness in our tax policies. No longer are the superrich in this Nation going to be able to skip out of their share of carrying the burden of America. No longer are we going to see situations in which the top 1 percent of America continue to acquire more and more wealth at the expense of the rest of this Nation.

The President and the Senate Democrats--and I credit them with this, positively credit them with this--have said, let's allow the millionaires to share in putting Americans back to work. They certainly have benefited significantly over these years. They will have their opportunity to pay their fair share and put Americans back to work.

Now, on tax policy, there's another thing here. Some are going to pay more. Those millionaires who have more than $1 million of annual income, yes, they will pay more. However, the working men and women of America, the 160 million working men and women in America are going to get a tax break. They're going to see one half of their payroll tax reduced, about $1,500 per person. This is a big deal. To have an extra $1,500 in your pocket, you'll be able to pay your mortgage, buy food for your kids, be able to go out, and maybe replace that refrigerator that's broken. 160 million Americans are going to get a tax break when their payroll tax is reduced.

Now, what about the businesses in America? We hear a lot of talk from our Republican friends about protecting small business. The American Jobs Act provides 98 percent of the businesses of America with a 50 percent reduction in their payroll tax, a 50 percent reduction in their payroll tax. What's more, in California, 710,000 businesses will see a 50 percent reduction in their payroll tax. That's a big deal. That's money that those businesses can then use to hire new workers.

And if they hire a new worker, guess what? The President has proposed that if they hire a long-term unemployed worker, they will have a $4,000 tax credit, a tax credit. That is money right off the bottom line that they don't have to pay to the government, a reduction in their taxes. And if they go out and they hire an injured veteran coming home from the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq, they will get another tax credit. And if they hire a long-term unemployed person, similarly, very strong incentives in this legislation for employers to hire the unemployed, to hire our heroes who are returning from the wars--some injured--giving an additional incentive to hire those people. And let's understand that they do come back with skills, not just skills in war, but skills in communication, skills in repairing machinery. These are vital skills that most businesses in the United States need.

So when we look at the American Jobs Act that the President brought here to this House with the speech, standing right there, a speech to the joint session, he said, Pass this law.

Let's go back to work. Let's go back to work, America. We are a strong, vibrant Nation. We're a Nation of workers. We're not a Nation of slackers. We're a Nation that wants to work. And what we need is a government that's willing to help American go back to work. And that's what the President has proposed in the American Jobs Act.

So where is the American Jobs Act? It died in the Senate early this week.

Did it die? I don't think so. Americans are rising up across this Nation. They are in the streets. We often talked about the ``Arab Street'' and the ``Arab Spring.''

Well, this is the ``Autumn in America,'' and Americans are back in the street and they are demanding jobs. They're demanding fairness in their tax policy. They're demanding that Wall Street bankers get with the program of putting Americans back to work. Stop playing your games and all of your derivatives. Stop all of those computerized trading games and make the loans, make the loans to American businesses. That's what the people in the streets are saying. They want fairness in this system. They want a job. They want to be able to get an education, and they want this government to do the kinds of things that the President has proposed in the American Jobs Act: education, teachers in the classroom, renovating the schools, building the infrastructure, putting this Nation back on its feet. That's what we can do, and that's what we must do.

Let's take a look at the other things that are necessary if America is going to make it. If America's going to make it, we must, once again, make it in America. Make it in America. This Nation is still, even though we have lost more than half of our manufacturing jobs in the last 25 years--that's right. In this Nation of manufacturers, in this Nation where we once built the armaments of the world, where we once built the cars of the world, where we once built the great earthmovers, in this Nation that once was the strongest manufacturing Nation in the world, we have lost half of the manufacturing jobs.

How did that happen? It happened with tax laws that encouraged American corporations to go global, to offshore American jobs and get a tax break.

You heard me right. American tax policy, until last December, gave American corporations a tax break for every job they shipped offshore. Before the Democrats lost the House of Representatives in January of this year, we passed a law that repealed those tax benefits. More than $12 billion returned to the United States Treasury, taken out of the hands of American corporations that were shifting jobs overseas--$12 billion. Not one, not one Republican voted to end that tax break.

Let's understand. There's a very different way in which we look at how to make it in America. End the tax breaks that allow corporations to shift jobs offshore.

Trade policy. My view, today is a sad day in American trade policy. Today this House, and yesterday the Senate, passed three trade bills. They were called ``free trade.'' They were certainly not fair trade, in my estimation. Those trade bills are going to cause a loss of American jobs no matter how you look it, and I'll tell you what the proof is.

No sooner had those three trade bills passed out of this House than a fourth bill came up. You know what the fourth bill was? It's called the Trade Adjustment Act, providing a substantial amount of money, billions of dollars for those workers that lose their jobs as a result of the three trade bills that passed this House today.

Do you get it? What's going on here?

You're telling me these are going to create jobs, and then you turn around not more than 50 seconds later and pass a bill that provides unemployment benefits and educational benefits for the very same workers that lose their jobs as a result of those fair trade acts? Excuse me--free trade, not fair trade.

Anyway, trade's an important issue. This Nation has opened its doors to the world. You send your stuff here and we'll buy it. And the doors around the world only opened a little tiny bit. It's not fair.

Nonetheless, the President will sign it and we'll go on our way.

We talked about tax policy.

Let me talk about one more thing here that's really important. Here we go. I think I'll leave that up there. Again, it's tax policy. I suspect most of you have been offered an opportunity to buy photovoltaic solar systems for your roof, generate your own electricity. And I suspect many Americans have seen the big wind turbines and these wind farms going round and round generating electricity.

This is really important energy policy for this Nation. It is extremely important that we move to these renewable energy sources. However, it is part of the American energy policy to encourage investments in solar and wind and biofuels and other kinds of renewable energy, and we do that in a variety of ways. We do that by loan guarantees. We do that with direct subsidies. We do that with tax credits. All of those are our tax money being used to encourage the appropriate and correct energy policy.

However, there's one thing missing. Where are those pieces of equipment made? Where is our tax money going? Where is it going? Is it going to American-made solar panels, American-made wind turbines, or is it going to solar panels that are made in China or Germany, Korea? Where are those solar panels made, and where is that gigantic wind turbine made with blades that are 300 feet across? Are those made in America? Our tax money is being used to buy it.

This is my legislation, House Resolution 487. It says this: If you're going to use our American tax money, your tax money, my tax money, the American tax money, if you're going to use that tax money to subsidize the purchase of a solar panel, a wind turbine, a bio-electric system, then that tax money's going to be used to buy American-made equipment. We're going to make it in America when we use our tax money to buy American-made equipment. That's what this bill does. And I think we ought to be passing this, along with the American Jobs Act.

If we're going to go out and spend $50 billion on infrastructure, then it ought

to be American-made concrete. That ought to be American-made steel on those bridges. It ought to be American-made, and we can make it in America if we have the right policies in place.

A couple of more things.

Any of you buy gasoline? Any Americans out there buying diesel fuel for their trucks or their pickups or cars? When you do, you're paying a tax. It's the excise tax on fuel. A little over, what is it, about 16 cents, 18 cents for gasoline and 24.5 cents, 25 cents for diesel fuel. So every gallon you're paying a tax.

Where's that tax money go? It goes to build your highways, to repair your highways. It goes to build your bridges. It goes to buy trains, locomotives for Amtrak. It goes to buy light rails for San Diego, heavy rail or transit systems for Washington, DC.

That's where the money goes. And we need it. We need that money to be spent on our basic transportation systems, whether they are the rails, the concrete for the highways or the steel for the bridges, or for the buses and trains that we travel in. However, is that money being used to purchase American-made concrete and American-made steel for the bridges? Is it used to buy American-made buses, American-made trains, locomotives and light rail systems? Not always. But if my legislation, H.R. 613, becomes law, it will be American made; and, once again, we will make it in America because we're using our tax money to buy American-made equipment.

We can put Americans back to work, and we must put Americans back to work. We can do these things. We can use our government in coordination and cooperation with the private sector to build this Nation once again, to build the infrastructure of this Nation, to educate our children, to do the research that's necessary for tomorrow's innovation. We can do this. We can use our tax money wisely to buy American-made equipment, American-made buses and steel. We can do it.

But we need good laws to do it. We need wise laws to do it. We need to not just abandon the American worker and say there's nothing that can be done, government has to get out of the way, just back up and let it go. It doesn't happen that way. We wish it did, but it doesn't happen that way. There are no economists out there that are saying, continue to cut government spending and somehow there will be jobs created. If you cut that spending now, then you're going to lay people off.

Surely we have to deal with the deficit, and that's going to take 5 to 10 years to do that. So what we need to do now, in a balanced way, with the American Jobs Act, is to put people back to work, to let those who have prospered so much, those who have made out so well in this economy, the top 1 percent, those whose annual income is $1 million or more, in fairness, in equity, in what is right for this Nation, let them share the burden. Let them help the 99 percent that have been struggling these many, many years. Let them help with their taxes. They can afford it. They're not going to go belly up, they're not going to be hurting, and they're not going to be out in the street homeless. They're going to continue to do very, very well.

Fairness demands, as the President has proposed and as the Democrats in the Senate have proposed, that the millionaires, those whose annual adjusted gross income is more than $1 million, that they pay a little extra, that they contribute to the future of this Nation. And in doing so, the American Jobs Act that the President has proposed could become law, not increasing the deficit, but, in fact, reducing the deficit by giving Americans the work, by restarting the great engine of the American economy and by making it in America once again. That's where our future lies, and that's where we must go.

So, as we go about the debates this week, as we talk about those things that are before us, let us think about making it in America, let us find ways to use the wisdom of 535 Members of Congress and the Senate and the administration to reflect the wisdom of the American public. Use our tax money here at home. Put Americans back to work, educate, create a fair and equitable tax system. We can do it. We have no choice but to do it.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin our remarks today which will focus on our Make It in America agenda, the agenda that we put together to put the American people back to work to really support manufacturing, and we are going to have a good discussion about that.

I would like to yield first to the gentlewoman from Alabama (Ms. Sewell) who has some important remarks to share.

I thank the gentlewoman, and I know we all stand in strong support of the work that is under way in your district and all across this country and our hearts and prayers continue to go to the families who have suffered such tragic losses during those terrible, terrible incidents. We compliment the first responders and the mayors and all those you have recognized tonight.

I would like now, Mr. Speaker, to turn to the agenda that we announced several weeks ago that involves really comprehensive pieces of legislation to really support American manufacturing.

Our country has a proud tradition of making things. We built the world's strongest middle class because, in large part, so much of what the world needed, we made here in America. And for millions of Americans, our tradition of making things here has been a source of opportunity and great pride. Today, with millions of Americans still out of work and with an economy which is still struggling, it's time to draw from that tradition to build a positive, job-creating agenda.

The American Dream used to mean something, that if you put in a hard day's work you could expect good American wages, benefits, and a better life for your family. It meant that when products said ``Made in America,'' people knew that they were getting the highest quality manufactured goods money could buy. It's time working Americans used our strength in numbers to reclaim the American Dream. Working people deserve a voice at the table; and if we lose that voice, we will lose what our grandparents fought so hard to leave us.

We should start with manufacturing. The number of Americans involved in producing goods is still near its lowest point since World War II. Manufacturing is central to our economy. The National Association of Manufacturers tells us that manufacturing stimulates more economic activity than any other sector. It's time we started expanding opportunity and stopped shrinking the middle class.

So this effort is to really understand that we have to start making things again, that manufacturing matters. My friend, Mr. Garamendi, certainly our leader in this Make It in America agenda, is someone who has spoken so passionately and so forcefully about our ability again to lead the world in making goods so that we can start shipping goods that are made in this country all over the world. Instead of exporting jobs, let's export American-made goods.

I tell my constituents--I hear from them all the time--go into a store and try to find something made in America. It's almost impossible, and it doesn't have to be that way. We still have the best workers in the world, we still make the best products in the world, and what we need are good public policies that support American manufacturing, that support job growth in American manufacturing to give fair trade and tax policies that give American manufacturers a fighting chance to compete in a global economy and efforts to be sure that our trading partners like the Chinese stop cheating and play by the rules and are held accountable when they do.

So we put together an ambitious agenda to really make things again in this country. Because when we make things in America, families can make it in America.

We have a series of bills we want to talk about tonight, but think of those days when you would go into a store and you would pick up an item and it said ``Made in the USA'' and the kind of pride we felt because we knew that was a product that was made well, built well, that would stand the test of time, and we could sell it all over the world. We can do that again.

We are doing it. We have some great manufacturing in this country. We are seeing a real growth, particularly in new manufacturing, high-tech manufacturing, which requires innovation and entrepreneurship and the kinds of investments in technology that will help us lead the world in this new knowledge-based economy. So this effort is to really understand this is part of our history, it's part of the present day, and it is part of our future as a great economic power.

I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Garamendi) who has been such an important voice on the importance of rebuilding and strengthening manufacturing in this country.

I thank the gentleman.

I think one of the important investments that we need to make in supporting manufacturing that you just referenced is infrastructure. And one of the parts of the Make It in America agenda is the making of a national infrastructure bank which will create a public-private partnership to finance the construction of roads, bridges, transit, and the ability to move information, goods, and services in the 21st century.

If we're going to successfully compete in the manufacturing sector, we need to have an infrastructure that has the ability to move goods, services, and information to be competitive and succeed in the 21st century economy.

When you look at what other nations who are investing in manufacturing, are investing in their infrastructure to support manufacturing, in roads, in bridges, in transit, in information technology, and the ability to move goods and services competitively, they are racing by us, literally and figuratively. And what we need is an infrastructure that will support this growth in manufacturing, an infrastructure that will really allow American manufacturers to compete successfully in the 21st century.

Yes, I know she, I'm certain, is going to join the conversation.

I think the point you made, Mr. Garamendi, is an important one. These are not always pieces of legislation that require additional investments of resources. It's also about ensuring that the resources that we're expending are used in ways that support the growth of American jobs and American manufacturing, and your bill is an excellent example of that.

I think we also have, as part of this package, kind of as a beginning point, the development of a national manufacturing strategy, a legislation that would direct the President to convene the stakeholders in industry, in labor, and manufacturers to really develop a national manufacturing strategy with benchmarks and with ways to hold ourselves accountable to meeting those benchmarks; because, again, all of our competitors who are serious about growing manufacturing are doing it pursuant to a well-conceived and developed manufacturing strategy.

We need to put the same kind of thoughtful consideration in the development of that strategy and then really hold ourselves accountable with good benchmarks. And I think that's a great other piece. Of course, my favorite in the package is my very own Make It in America block grants.

I thank the gentleman for that excellent question. But this legislation really grew out of my visits to manufacturers in Rhode Island, some who have been very successful, some that are growing, some that have not been growing. And I said, What are the impediments? What would allow you to grow? What do you need as an American, as a Rhode Island manufacturer? And developed this idea

of the Make It in America block grant that would provide resources in a competitive process as you described, for manufacturers to retrofit their factories to make energy improvements in their plants, to train workers on new equipment, to buy new equipment, to engage in activities which will allow them to increase their exports, but really a shot in the arm to help manufacturers to compete successfully in the 21st century by identifying what they need.

And, look, we invest lots of resources in other areas of our economy. We don't do enough for American manufacturing. This would respond to many of the urgent issues that Rhode Island manufacturers, American manufacturers are facing, do it in a competitive way with real measurement of outcomes, but really invest again in making things in this country.

I know the gentlelady from Hawaii has now joined us, who has also been an important part of the Make It in America agenda.

I would like to yield to Congresswoman Hanabusa.

I thank the gentlelady.

I think the other very important part of that conversation has to be a continued investment in science and research and innovation. A lot of the things you are talking about, kind of new manufacturing, we are going to continue to rely on the knowledge economy and the brilliant new innovators and the great new scientists and the great new technologies and research. We need to be sure that even in these difficult budget times, we are making investments in science and research that will help protect those jobs of the 21st century so we can not only develop the ideas, but then manufacture the products. I think that is an additional important point.

I thank the gentleman from California.

I think that point cannot be stated often enough, that part of our ability to make it in America, not only manufacture but invent and create and make the new discoveries, is understanding that we need to maintain our investment in science and research to compete in this global economy. I thank you for raising it.

I am delighted that we are joined by our colleague from the great State of Texas, someone who has been a very forceful and strong advocate for manufacturing and making it in America.

I yield to the gentlelady from Texas.

I thank the gentlelady for her passion, and I am really hopeful that this is an issue on which we can really build some bipartisan support.

We put forth from the Democratic Caucus a very ambitious and detailed agenda on how we can make things again in this country and on how we can rebuild manufacturing and can really lead the world in the manufacturing sector again. I hope it's not a Republican or a Democratic issue. I hope people understand this is good for our country, is good for America, is good for American workers, is good for our economy; and I hope we will be able to find some support on the other side of the aisle for making it a reality.

I know a big piece of this is also supporting small businesses, which are an important part of the manufacturing sector. I would like to welcome the gentlelady from Alabama again and thank her for being part of this discussion.

I thank the gentlelady.

I think this is one of those issues where the American people are well ahead of the elected officials because I think most Americans recognize the importance of our making things again in this country. This agenda, this Make It in America agenda, is really about two things: one, rebuilding our manufacturing sector so that we can make products here in America and can sell them from here all over the world; and, second, creating good jobs so that more families are able to make it in America.

Americans inherently know that manufacturing is critical to our Nation. It is not just that manufacturing creates good-paying middle class jobs and fosters innovation but that we've also been incredibly proud as a country about the fact that we make things and that we make the best products in the world.

We need and want more success stories like General Motors' recent announcement that they will be adding and preserving over 4,000 jobs across the United States, or Ford's decision to move 2,000 jobs back to the United States from Japan, Mexico, and India. In fact, Ford is planning to add another 7,000 jobs here in the United States. We need more stories like that that recognize that we make the best products and we have the best workers in the world.

I yield to the gentleman from California.

One of the most frustrating parts of that is when you look at the technology that forms the basis of those products, they were developed in large part--sometimes exclusively--by the great scientists and researchers at our great universities, and then they are manufactured outside the United States, and we're using public money to make those purchases. So you're absolutely right, having that requirement that it be manufactured in the United States is a critical part of it.

I thank you for raising that point.

This is a very, very important question that we have to decide in this Congress: What are our priorities? What investments are we going to make both to rebuild our economy and get people back to work, but also to keep our commitment of promising aid to our seniors. This proposal that was made by the Republicans in this very Chamber to end Medicare to people 55 and under, end Medicare, and at the same time to reestablish the doughnut hole today so it would make prescription drugs more expensive for seniors, make nursing home care unavailable to many seniors, slash funding for Medicare, and really shift control to the private insurance companies to make health care decisions for our seniors--a terrible idea. And at the same time, as you pointed out, preserving tens of billions of dollars in subsidies to the Big Oil companies that have record profits, that don't need a check from the taxpayers that adds to our debt, and at the same time not making investments in the kinds of things we need to rebuild manufacturing and to make it in America.

It's the wrong priorities. We've got to protect our seniors, keep the promise we made to them, make the right investments here, and get rid of tax subsidies for Big Oil, get rid of the waste and fraud. Make cuts the right way, but make the right investments at the same time.

I thank the gentleman.

I yield to the gentlelady from Texas.

I thank the gentlelady, and I thank you for your passion on this issue and again for restating the urgency of job creation and getting the American people back to work as our number one priority.

The Make It in America agenda will help do that by restoring making things again and understanding it has to have a central place in rebuilding our economy, by building an environment in which American manufacturers can grow and create jobs and making sure our businesses are competitive all across the world.

Many of our Make It in America bills have won bipartisan support, and now we can win bipartisan support in the new Congress when we work for stronger job training partnerships, fight for a fair playing field for American exporters, and hold China and our other trading partners accountable for currency manipulation and unfair trade practices.

Make It in America also means recommitting ourselves to the future of America's middle class by ensuring that we are out-educating, out- innovating and out-building our competitors. We, of course, have to cut wasteful spending and restore fiscal responsibility by making priority investments that are necessary to keep our Nation competitive.

As the gentleman from California has just put forth, that board which really does describe the issues that are part of the Make It In America agenda: focusing on fair trade policies; tax policies which support job creation in American manufacturing, that give American manufacturing the tools they need to succeed; energy policies that will increase investments in renewable energy, clean energy to make American manufacturers more competitive; labor policies; educational investments, educational investments; protection of intellectual property; and investments in infrastructure. Those are really the outlines of what we know we have to do to really support making it in America, to support manufacturing, and to support rebuilding and strengthening the middle class of this country.

I yield to the gentleman from California.

I thank the gentleman from California for your leadership on this and your participation tonight. I thank the gentleladies from Alabama and from Hawaii and from Texas for joining us as well.

I'll just end by saying you're right. Rhode Island was really the birthplace of the industrial revolution. And when you look at the role manufacturing played in the early days of our country's economy of the industrial age, Rhode Island played a really important role; and from Woonsocket to Providence to Newport to Pawtucket, we have examples of great manufacturing facilities. And what we need to do is put in place the tools and the policies that can rebuild that strength--and not only in Rhode Island but all across this country--that takes advantage of the great American ingenuity, of the great American innovation and the great American entrepreneurship to make the best products to solve the new challenges of the 21st century, to build products and to sell them all over the world, to create jobs as we sell American-made products all across the world.

And we can do it. We have the best workers. We make the best products. What we need are policies at the national level that recognize this is a key part to rebuilding our economy, a key part to the American--the rebuilding of the American economy, and understanding that we can make things again in this country. And by doing so, we can make sure that American families make it again in America.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I yield back the balance of my time.