Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Tejinder Kaur as a woman of the year. She has dedicated her career to promoting literacy in her community. Through her work at the Sutter County Library Literacy Services Department she has helped a large immigrant population learn to speak, read, and write in English. Most impressively, Ms. Kaur played a pivotal role in building Sutter County Library's Literacy Services Citizenship Preparation class which has helped students pursuing United States Citizenship. The program has assisted students in the completion of 6,386 applications for Naturalization, 740 applications for Certificates of Citizenship, and 4,000 fee waiver requests. Thanks to Ms. Kaur's work, her students had a guide through the overwhelming process of applying for citizenship and were able to achieve a smooth transition into American culture. Her service to her community goes above and beyond the requirements of her profession. For the past 14 years she has organized the Multicultural Women's Dance which draws women from all different cultures in the Yuba-Sutter area. She coordinated with the Sutter County Public Health Department to ensure the event would be a healthy learning experience as well as a valuable cultural exchange. Her work has played an important role in bringing her community together to build relationships across cultural barriers. Ms. Kaur's devotion to her work and dedication to her community has had an immense positive impact throughout Sutter County.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Sue Heitman as a woman of the year. She has been a dedicated volunteer for over 20 years. Her commitment to serving her community is evident by her participation on a multitude of non-profit boards of directors. She has continuously dedicated her time to lifting up communities and improving the lives of others. In her 19 years at Yolo First 5, she helped grant over 30 million dollars to worthy causes benefitting children under 5 in Yolo County. She helped found and has spent 18 years working with Capay Valley Vision, an organization dedicated to preserving the heritage and community of Capay Valley as the region grows and changes in pursuit of a better future. For 10 years she has served as a board member of the New Seasons Community Development Corporation helping to revitalize downtown Esparto through community development projects. Ms. Heitman has excelled in all of her volunteer roles, earning awards from the Yolo Community Foundation, Sacramento Area Council of Governments, and Sacramento Positive Options Family Services. She has also been generous with her time in a way that few people are by serving as a foster parent for special needs children for over 10 years. She has fostered 27 special needs children and continues to do so to this day. The impact of Ms. Heitman's volunteer work can be seen throughout her community, and the personal impact she has had on the lives of her foster children will last for years to come.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Sheila Tucker as a woman of the year. She is committed to improving her community both through her career and volunteerism. Ms. Tucker has served The Leaven organization faithfully as Vice President since 2014. Through her leadership the Leaven has become a national award-winning program providing after-school and summer tutoring for children living in underprivileged communities. The Leaven began with one center and has grown under Ms. Tucker's leadership to nineteen centers serving eight cities and will expand to twenty-five centers by the end of this

year. Her work helps the Leaven to further its mission of supporting communities and inspiring neighborhoods to take on their challenges together. Ms. Tucker dedicates her time, talent, and expertise to an organization working to provide children with early education intervention and make a positive impact on their family and community for years to come. Outside of her work, she donates her time to such organizations as the Fairfield-Suisun Chamber of Commerce, the Soroptimists of Central Solano, the Napa/Solano Girl Scouts, and the Solano County Library Foundation. She is continuously generous with her time in service to her community and the positive difference she has made cannot be overstated.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Sylvia Gomez Garcia, better known as La Maestra, as a woman of the year. She is a dedicated teacher at Beamer Elementary School and lifelong resident of Woodland, California. Ms. Gomez Garcia's exceptional passion for teaching has created a positive setting for learning and growth for each one of the students she teaches. Ms. Gomez Garcia teaches children in both English and Spanish at a dual immersion school where her positive teaching methods create an environment of equity where students feel safe to learn. Many of her students are recent immigrants, some children are from families with established residences in Woodland, and many are from families who are underserved. Ms. Gomez Garcia's bilingual teaching methods place all children on an equal footing where each come out with bilingual proficiency in reading, writing, and speaking. Beyond her skills and acumen, Ms. Gomez Garcia is an exceptional mother and dedicated wife, a humanitarian and active community member. The positive impact she has had on the lives of her students cannot be overstated.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Suzanne Lawry-Hall as a woman of the year. She is passionate about the work she does and the communities she serves. For 11 years she has worked with the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources program in nutrition education. As the Community Education Supervisor II for the Butte County University of California Cooperative Extension she oversees the UC CalFresh Nutrition Education Program in five counties. This demanding work helps UC CalFresh to advance its goals of improving the diet, nutrition, self-sufficiency, and overall health of CalFresh recipients and their families. Under her supervision the UC CalFresh Nutrition Education Program has made significant gains in its outreach and education to low-income families, increasing youth participation by 10,104 and adult participation by 1,872. These impressive results demonstrate Ms. Lawry-Hall's commitment and dedication to her work. She also helped improve outreach through community events, newsletters, and social media, ensuring that individuals throughout her community know about the valuable resources available to them. Ms. Lawry-Hall consistently goes above and beyond the expectations of her position, often delivering presentations at statewide conferences and workshops to share her knowledge and expertise with professionals throughout the state. She plays an integral role in the important work of CalFresh, helping the organization in improving the health and nutrition of low- income families through outreach and education. She is generous with her time, passionate about her work, and dedicated to the communities she serves; she is an inspirational example of public service.

Madam Chair, who doesn't want to export natural gas? I suspect we all do. We like to do it in the proper manner, and this is the debate to be had over whether it should be done with or without this exemption from the normal process.

But there is another issue at hand. Clearly, natural gas is a strategic national asset. Both sides would agree to that. I don't think there is any debate whatsoever--a strategic national asset. And it is certainly going to be to the benefit of certain parts of this Nation that happen to have shale gas available. It is also going to be a benefit to the petroleum industry and those that are able to extract the natural gas--all good.

But why don't we use this strategic national asset to support another strategic national asset, our maritime industry?

It used to be when the north slope of Alaska opened up that all of that oil that was exported from Alaska had to be on American ships with American sailors. Over the years, that disappeared. But we have an opportunity right here with this piece of legislation to really enhance the benefit that comes from this strategic national asset.

I am all for the Caribbean. Good for them. Good for us. But what if that was shipped on American ships, built in American shipyards by American workers, and the steel was American steel?

What if we made it in America? What if we used this natural gas export, LNG, for the benefit of the broad American economy, not just for a few places that are fortunate enough to have the gas in the ground and those that extract it?

Why not require that a small percentage--1, 2, 5, 10 percent--of that gas be on American-built ships with American mariners?

Spread the benefit of this extraordinary natural resource, this strategic national asset to the broad width of America, the shipyards of America located on our coasts, the steel mills of America, the engine manufacturers. Americans throughout could benefit.

Well, let me wrap this up very, very quickly in the next 60 seconds.

A strategic national asset, natural gas, coupled with another strategic natural national asset, our mariners, our shipyards, our steel industry, our manufacturers of pumps and motors, take a small percentage.

By the way, we have a bill to do this, bipartisan, bicameral, Senator Wicker, Senator Casey, good men and women in California, in the legislature here on this side, all of us supporting this. So why don't we amend this bill in the process?

In the meantime, I will vote it out of here, but let's remember, this asset

could be for the benefit of all America, not just a narrow portion of it.

Mr. Speaker, before I launch into the major subject matter of this evening, I want to call attention to the horrific fires that have occurred in California over the last month. It is extremely early in the fire season. Normally, fires of the size that we have seen in California during the month of August occur in late October/ November.

Climate change is real, and what we are seeing is a 365-day-a-year fire season in California. In my own district of Lake County, the largest fire ever in California's history is still burning, mostly under control, but it will probably burn for another month until the rains come.

Just to the north, in the Redding, California, area, more than 1,000 homes were lost and 4 people lost their lives. We saw last year the huge fire that occurred in southern California, in the Santa Barbara- Ventura County area, followed by horrific mudslides that, again, claimed the lives of dozens of people.

My heart goes out to all the victims of the fire, and my gratitude, along with the gratitude of the communities of California, goes out to the brave firefighters and first responders who met the challenge of these very fast moving, very, very dangerous fires.

It should bring to the attention of all Americans the need for us to address

the new issues that confront our Nation as a result of the ever-warming climate and, also, the need for this Congress to carry on what is now in place in law, and that is to allow the U.S. Forest Service to have two accounts: one account for fighting fires and a separate account for managing the forests.

The health of our forests is in doubt. As one of my colleagues often says, we can take the trees out in an orderly way and remove some of the vegetation, providing the necessary firebreaks and forest thinnings, or it will come out in a fire.

Now, if I might, Mr. Speaker, go to the other subject matter that I would like to spend a few minutes on.

I often start my Special Order hours with some words from a very well-known American, a fellow who had four terms as President of the United States. If you haven't figured it out already, it would be FDR.

In the past, as I have used this to set the tone and to set the value of my conversation, or the values of my conversation, I didn't really appreciate how pertinent these words would be here in September, the day after Labor Day, of 2018.

So I want to draw your attention to what FDR said in the 1930s. He said: ``The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.''

I want to say that again, because this really should be our goal. It should be the principle value of our legislative process here.

``The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.''

So, what to make of this. Yesterday was Labor Day, a tradition that goes back to the 1880s, when there was a real crisis, when there was child labor, where there were no workplace safety laws, where there was the advent of what became known as the robber barons and the era of the golden few.

Yesterday, Richard Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO, wrote an op- ed laying down some thoughts that all of us ought to pay attention to. He said that working people are crying out for change that would bring about a political system that lifts up our voices, an economy that treats us fairly, and a society that values labor.

He also said a few other things. He said: ``For decades, corporate interests have been hell-bent on chipping away at our most fundamental rights and freedoms. They have corrupted our public institutions and rigged the economy to work for the few at the expense of the many.''

Well, it seems as though he may have been channeling FDR, and it wouldn't surprise me that he would.

In December, Congress passed and the President signed the largest tax scam in America's history. Our friends on the Republican side sold the tax bill to the American public as relief for middle-income families. President Trump went further to say that working families could expect a $4,000 to $7,000 raise due to the lowering of tax burdens on companies.

I should repeat that: President Trump said that working families could expect a $4,000 to $7,000 raise due to the lowering tax burden on companies and corporations. Hmm.

Let's test those words. Let's test those words against what has happened since December of 2017 when the largest tax scam in the Nation's history actually passed. So, what have the workers of America found? The Bureau of Labor Statistics in the Department of Labor has shown that workers' real wages, accounting for inflation, have decreased slightly since the signing of the tax bill.

This means that the average worker's salary buys less today than it did before December 2017. By the way, that tax bill cost the Federal Treasury, that is, reduced the tax receipts to the Federal Treasury, by nearly $2 trillion over the next decade. Well, not the next decade. We are now 9\1/4\ years ahead. Two trillion dollars.

All that sold on the premise that the wages for working Americans would increase. No. Didn't happen. Not likely to happen. There were some modest increases in wages, but they have been negated, wiped out, by rising inflation.

Since the great recession of 2009 and '10, there really was real wage growth, adjusted for inflation, every year until the current year. Now, undoubtedly, there are some here in Congress--and perhaps the President--who would point out that some corporations have actually used their windfall for employee bonuses.

Let's just take a look at what that windfall is. Yes. Here it is. Well, I'm afraid this number is wrong. We now know it is actually going to be close to a $2 trillion reduction in taxes.

So where is it going? Well, let's see. Mr. Speaker, 83 percent of all of that near $2 trillion winds up in the hands of the top 1 percent and American corporations. Everyone else can share 17 percent of that number, $2 trillion.

So, how many Americans saw a windfall as a result of the tax cut, as promised by the President, the $4,000 to $7,000 bonus coming to you as a result of the tax bill? Well, there are 155 million employees in America, doing every conceivable kind of work, including some of the folks here in the dais behind me.

Only 6.8 million of the 155 million actually received wage increases or bonuses since the passage of the tax scam. Their 5.9 million employers, a very generous 411 of the 5.9 million employers, provided their employees with a bonus or a significant wage increase.

Publicly traded companies across America are spending 101 times more money on stock buybacks, $712 billion in the first 8 months of 2018, than employee raises or bonuses, which are $7.1 billion. Shall I say that again? Probably ought to. Publicly traded companies have spent $712 billion on stock buybacks and $7.1 billion on bonuses and raises. Interesting.

The New York Times reported on this on July 13, and the headlines read, ``Paychecks Lag as Profits Soar, and Prices Erode Wage Gains. Corporate profits have rarely swept up a bigger share of the Nation's wealth, and workers have rarely shared a smaller one.''

I suppose, if I wanted to play economist, I would put up something like this: How is corporate America spending their tax cut, the Trump tax cut? Well, here you have--oh, this was April. This blue line, that was April.

In April, corporate stock buybacks were $238 billion, in April of 2018. We are now in September. That was April. Mr. Speaker, $238 billion in stock buybacks, $6.5 billion for bonuses and wage increases. We are now in September, 4 months later, and stock buybacks are $712 billion, a number that I said just a moment ago; and wages and bonuses have increased $7.1 billion. Half a trillion dollars. A half a trillion dollars of the stock of the tax cut has been spent, increased, from April to September.

No doubt in everybody's mind why the stock market is roaring ahead. There has been $712 billion spent on buying back stocks since January 1, 2018. That is three-quarters of a trillion dollars. No wonder the stock market is roaring ahead. Unfortunately, the wages of Americans have actually, in real dollars, declined.

A few other things for those of you who like to play economist. You have to love these graphs. The employee pay as a share of the national income, in 1970, it was about, I don't know, 66\1/2\ percent of the total wealth of the total national income that was for wages. Here we are in 2018, and it has fallen to 62 percent.

Well, how about corporate profits as a share of national income? Well, in 1970, it was down here around 9 percent of the total national income that was corporate profits. Here we are in 2018, and it is 13 percent.

We would say that would be wonderful for corporations, if somehow that corporate wealth would actually be shared with employees.

Now you can kind of understand why Mr. Trump was so agitated on Labor Day yesterday when he was talking about income inequality.

There is one other way to see this, and let me put this up. This is corporate tax rate, individual and corporate income taxes as a percentage of all the Federal revenue. That is all the tax revenue the Federal Government collects.

Well, let's see, way back in 1934, about 10 percent. Both corporate and individuals paid about the same

amount, and that went on until 1939, 1940, and then it began to shift. In that period of time, since the 1940s, early 1940s, until today, corporate taxes, as a share of the burden of taxes paid in America, has declined from 40 percent in 1939--that was the build up to World War II--to, well, somewhere down around 7.8 percent today. Pretty good for corporations. Pretty good for people who own stock.

Who does own stock? Eighty-four percent of U.S.-traded stock is owned by the top 10 percent of Americans. Whoa, now that is an interesting statistic.

So the stock market roars as more and more of the tax cut is poured into stock buybacks, and the benefit goes to the top 10 percent of Americans.

We ought to pay attention to that. Oh, by the way, individuals have continued to pay more and more of the total burden of funding our Federal Government. All of this is a result of tax policy over time.

So what are we going to do about this? Before I go to what we are going to do about it, let me just pick up one more thing. Do you remember all the talk about bringing American corporations back to America, end the offshoring? Surely, you remember that. Well, I remember the talk here on the floor. The great tax bill is going to end the offshoring of American jobs. We are going to Make America Great Again. We are going to bring American corporations back home.

Well, it didn't happen. Why didn't it happen? Well, because the way the law was written, there is actually greater incentive today to offshore jobs than there was prior to the great tax scam of December 2017. American corporations can actually have a lower tax rate by offshoring, by investing offshore.

I am sure you remember the great ballyhoo about Harley-Davidson. They were concerned about the President's tariffs and said that they were going to manufacture their motorcycles in Europe as a result of the tariff on steel and aluminum. Well, there is another known issue about Harley-Davidson. They utilized the tax break given to American corporations for offshoring jobs to open a facility in Thailand after the tax bill was passed.

They laid off 800 workers in their Kansas City facility and opened a new facility in Thailand. They not only did that, but what did they do for the remaining workers in America? Well, if those workers happened to own Harley-Davidson stock, I suppose they did okay, because Harley- Davidson decided to spend $700 million to buy back 15 million shares.

Interesting the way in which tax policy actually works, to the benefit of whom? Hardworking American families? No. The top wealthy Americans? Yes.

What did FDR have to say about all this? This isn't ancient history. This is America today. This is America today, and we ought to pay attention to what FDR has said when he said American progress is not whether the wealthy do better, but, rather, whether the working men and women of America, the poor, the people who are struggling to put food on their table, the people who are trying to get their kids an education, trying to deal with the ever-increasing cost of higher education, FDR said it very clearly when he said it is our test, that we are judged by what we do for those who have little.

So here we are today. Here we are just days ahead of a new election in which this issue is going to address every American. This election is going to be about whether the policies so starkly laid out here in the tax legislation, the policies of adjusting the American wealth so that those who have much get more versus those who are working day in and day out are struggling just to stay ahead and failing to do so.

There is a stark difference here in policy. Let there be no doubt that, for us, as we go into this election, we go into this election keeping firmly in mind that our task is to provide A Better Deal for the people, A Better Deal for the people of America.

The wealthy have done fine. The top 10 percent are doing terrific. We are not against them, but we are for the people. We are for the working men and women of America who are trying to put food on their table, pay rent as housing prices soar, as rental rates go through the roof, working men and women in the families of America who are struggling every day just to keep up with inflation, and far too many not able to do so.

Yes, there is no doubt that, in America today, the unemployment rate has dropped. Yet, there are still millions of Americans who have not been able to get into the labor market, who have not been able to adjust to the changing economy of America, who are unable to have the skills to fit into that new economy, who are on the outside.

But I will tell you this: We care about them. We think it is our responsibility to care about every American, not just the wealthy, as some do in this hall, but every working man and woman and for those not able to work.

So we offer A Better Deal for the people, and I am just going to lay out four specific issues in the next remaining minutes.

First of all, it is about healthcare. I came to this Congress in 2009 with the determination to work for a healthcare system that provided quality insurance for every American. We made a major step toward that, not because I arrived but because the American public was crying out for a quality health insurance program.

Too many Americans were on the outside. Too many people were excluded because they had a preexisting condition. Too many Americans couldn't afford it, and more and more American companies were eliminating healthcare insurance as part of the benefits.

So we, the Democrats, without one Republican vote, put forward the Affordable Care Act. And guess what? More than 20 million Americans within 3 years had insurance that wasn't previously available to them, and it was a good insurance policy.

All the while, from January 2011 to this moment, our Republican colleagues have been trying to reverse that progress. More than 60 different bills passed the House of Representatives in those years that would eliminate the basic health insurance for 27 million Americans.

That was their policy. That is not ours.

Our policy is to provide universal health insurance for every American. We have not given it up. We have seen erosion in the years with the new President who rails against insurance for everybody. And we see specific programs put forward by our Republican colleagues to carve away protections for those Americans who have preexisting conditions.

How cruel is that? How wrong is that, that this Nation would set up a system that would remove the protection that has been in the law since 2010, the protection that insurance companies cannot discriminate in the provision of insurance because of preexisting conditions?

What is a preexisting condition? For a young female, it is that she might get pregnant. Yes, they consider that a preexisting condition, being a female. You have high blood pressure? That is a preexisting condition. You had measles or chickenpox in the past? That is a preexisting condition. It goes on and on and on.

I know this issue. I was an insurance commissioner elected in California to protect Californians from the abuses of insurance companies, and I saw time after time after time insurance companies discriminating, harming individuals, terminating their health insurance because they forgot to write down that they had chickenpox as a child.

Now here we are in this era of Trump, this era where, once again, the majority and the President would impose upon Americans, once again, insurance discrimination. You have a preexisting condition? Good luck. We are going to fight that.

As we have seen the wages of Americans stagnate under the pressure of insurance and the pressure of the tax scam, as we have seen that, we have also seen the inevitable increase in the cost of prescription drugs. Who does that hurt? The super wealthy? The 10 percenters who have done so well in the last year? Or does it hurt everyday working Americans?

I will tell you this, it is our plan to put in place policies that would give the Federal Government the opportunity to negotiate prices for prescription drugs so that Medicare and Medicaid recipients don't have to endure

the enormous out-of-pocket costs associated with that and to give other Americans who are not yet of that age the opportunity to be able to get their prescription drugs at a reasonable price just as the rest of the world, or at least that part of the world that has advanced economies, is able to get.

What about education?

I was back home in my district, as were all the rest of us over this last month. How many times did I hear from parents whose children are about to graduate from high school, saying they can't afford it, that they can't afford to go to college. And if they do, they will be saddled with such student debt that they will never be able to buy a home. They will spend the first 10, 15 years of their postgraduate life paying off the student loans.

This is not a small matter for Californians. This is not a small matter for citizens of every other State. It is an epidemic in America, the cost of higher education, the burden that is placed upon young men and women who are struggling to get an education, having to go out and get a student loan just to be able to continue, and then paying that off in the years ahead.

It occurred to me somewhere along the way that, as I received the inevitable mail about refinancing my home mortgage, maybe students ought to be able to refinance their student loan. But, oh, no, not in America. You can refinance your home mortgage, but you can't refinance your student loan at a lower rate? That is wrong.

So I, and others, have introduced legislation that would at least allow for a refinancing of student loans at a lower rate. But that is not enough. That is just one piece of a solution to a problem that is endemic and an epidemic in America.

We are going to spend $1 trillion in the next decade rebuilding every one of our nuclear bombs and our basic mechanisms to deliver those bombs. What if we spent like one-tenth of that on allowing American children to get an education without being saddled with a student loan for the first 10 to 15 years of their postgraduate life, to be able to have a free community college education the first 2 years? Some States are trying to do that, New York among them. Why not the Federal Government?

But, oh, no. The Secretary of Education is going exactly the other direction, trying to eliminate the protections that were put in place by the Obama administration to protect students from loan scams, from bogus education programs, such as the Trump real estate education program. Did I mention that loudly enough? Such as the Trump real estate program.

So his Secretary of Education wants to allow him, when he terminates his career as President, to go back and rebuild the scam that harmed thousands of Americans and, along with that, maybe many, many more.

American families need to be concerned about what is going on here. For the people, are our policies for the people?

I was traveling across California in my district, 200 miles one side to the other, the great Sacramento River Valley, more levees than anywhere in America, including Louisiana. The roads are filled with potholes. The levees are in need of repair. The airports are crowded. We just heard a lot about that in the previous session.

The bridges are collapsing, not just in Italy, here in America. I think we have some 60,000 bridges that are in need of serious repair. I noticed one of them across the river here in Washington, D.C., under repair, and that is good for Washington, D.C. But what about, I don't know, Missouri? What about our infrastructure?

We have lead contamination in the communities of Michigan and other contamination in the water of cities in California. We have shore lines that are collapsing. We have water lines that are not working properly.

American infrastructure was built decades ago and has not been repaired in the intervening years, and we have a $1 trillion backlog just to keep pace.

Travel to Europe, travel to China, travel to other countries, Japan, and others, and you will see modern infrastructure, but not in America, not in America.

So what are we going to do about it? I will tell you what we want to do about it on our side of the aisle. We want a real infrastructure program, not a bogus one like ones proposed earlier this year by our President, but a real, solid infrastructure program that has real money, that has the real opportunity to be able to rebuild our existing infrastructure to bring about what we have called for, for more than a decade: good repair of all of it, whether it is a water system, sanitation system, a levee, a highway, or an airport.

That is what we want to do, and we want to build the infrastructure for tomorrow.

We know that international trade is going to increase. Well, maybe not. Maybe I have to change that, given the trade war that is now underway, brought to us by the President. So we will see how it turns out.

But right now, maybe we are not going to see an increase in international trade as tariffs are imposed. But maybe that will pass, and we will get back to fair trade, real opportunity to grow our economy by trading internationally. To do that, we are going to need better ports. We are going to need better infrastructure to move goods into and out of the ports. We need to have deeper ports. All of these are infrastructure projects.

How are we going to do it? Well, I suggest that we are going to do it with a real infrastructure program that has real money. If we were to go back to one of those charts I had there that showed the share of American corporations, their share of the total tax revenues is declining, decade by decade, to the lowest level since the imposition of a corporate tax rate.

We are going to try to retrieve some of the mistake that was made in the tax bill of December 2017, retrieve some of those incentives that were in the bill, replace those incentives with real legislation that encourages American corporations to bring those profits back into America.

I bring to your attention a bill that Mr. Lloyd Doggett of Texas has put forth, a bill that would terminate the unfair, unjustified provisions of the 2017 tax bill that encourages further investment by American corporations overseas. Reverse that. Bring that money back home.

If we were to pair that with another bill by Mr. Delaney, we would see the opportunity for a rea infrastructure program, setting up an infrastructure bond and banking program where we can use that money coming back into America from the kind of tax reform that Mr. Doggett has put forth and Mr. Delaney has put forth to build our infrastructure, having American corporations that enjoy the benefits of this Nation pay their fair share and not hide their profits overseas, as so many have done and will do even more because of the tax program.

A final point about our program, which we call A Better Deal for the People, America knows the level of corruption that is taking place here in our Nation. They hear it; they see it on television. There has never--well, ``never'' is a long time. In the memory of living Americans, there has never been such a corrupt administration as we have today: EPA Director; questions raised about the Commerce Secretary; people resigning left, right, and center, just ahead of the cops; and, of course, the President.

We need to pay attention to this. It erodes the foundation of our democracy. Campaign financing, Citizens United, is allowing secret, dark money to invade our election process.

We don't know the full extent of Russian involvement. We know hacking. We know that they are out there using social media. We don't know the full extent of foreign money coming into our election. We are not ever likely to know, under the current laws, because there is secret money allowed in our democratic process, eroding the very nature of our democracy. Maybe some of it is foreign. There is evidence that it is. Maybe--no, not maybe. We know about millions coming into the campaign.

There is not a Member in this House of 435, less those who have left for various issues of corruption, not one of us wakes up in the morning without concern that secret money, millions, will be dumped into their campaign in the 65 days, 62 days until the next election.

We don't know. We can't know. It is out there. It is wandering around out

there, millions upon millions of dark money, secret money. It could land on any of us. Given what I have been saying about the President, it may land on me. Fine, we will deal with that.

This is a problem. It is a problem for America when that kind of money buys elections, buys candidates, buys Members of Congress and more.

Citizens United and all the rest needs to go. We need to know who is financing me, financing my colleagues here. We need to be able to report that so that the people can make up their minds what they want to do.

I will give you one example, and then I think I have said enough for the night. There was an election in California a few years ago that had Pacific Gas and Electric, one of the major corporations, utilities-- well, the largest in the Nation, trying to carve a special favor for itself, eliminating all competition. They got it on the ballot. They collected signatures, got it on the ballot.

They were required, under California law, to disclose where the money came from in support of their campaign and all of the ads, all the television, all the written mailers and so forth paid for by PG&E.

The opposition to this, which was basic citizen groups, said that this is wrong. There were editorials written. Maybe $20,000, $30,000 was spent opposing PG&E's effort. It went down 2-1 for one simple reason: PG&E was required to disclose that they were paying for the ads, and people go, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. So disclosure works.

Unfortunately, Citizens United and a couple of other decisions have made it impossible for the American people to know who is financing Members of Congress, Senate, President, so forth.

So, here we are. A better deal for the people, healthcare, infrastructure, jobs, wages, corruption. You are going to hear a lot about this.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur), who is joining me this evening.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman so very much.

124 Labor Days for the working men and women of America. We should keep that in mind, and certainly I know the gentlewoman will and I, and I am sure my colleagues, at least on the Democratic side of the aisle, will also.

Mr. Speaker, I want to end once again with FDR:

``The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.''

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, first, let me thank Chairman Hunter for his work on this bill and on the other work we have been able to do with the Coast Guard and the legislation. It has been a great pleasure to work with him.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of S. 756, the Save Our Seas Act of 2018, as amended, to include other important bills addressing maritime safety and ocean technologies.

As explained by the majority's manager of the bill, marine debris, especially plastics, is a persistent and growing threat to the global marine environment. Many countries, including the United States, contribute to the plastic pollution, and it does add up.

For example, in 2010 alone, according to a University of Georgia study, a total of 8 million metric tons of plastic entered the world's oceans. Worse yet, the study predicts that number will grow 10 times-- tenfold--as large by 2025.

Not only are floating plastic bags, straws, Styrofoam cups, and plastic bottles harmful to the health and welfare of marine life, but marine debris also threatens the food supply of millions of people around the world who rely on seafood as their primary source of protein.

The impacts affect people everywhere, and the problem is not going to go away and won't be solved by itself. The legislation we put forth today is an important step in the right direction.

Title I would authorize existing funding levels in the Marine Debris Act to enable the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the United States Coast Guard to identify and remove sources of marine debris and to coordinate response activities on the national and regional levels to assess and reduce the volume of the debris entering our oceans.

The title also contains important amendments, including new authority to allow the Federal Government to provide assistance to mitigate severe marine debris events, such as the recurrence of the flood of debris that drifted from Japan across the Pacific Ocean in the aftermath of the 2011 Fukushima earthquake and tsunami.

I also want to express my strong support for two other bills recently passed and reported by the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee that were added as separate titles to S. 756: First, H.R. 6175, the Maritime Safety Act of 2018, as title II; and my legislation, H.R. 6206, the Coast Guard Blue Technology Center of Expertise Act, as title

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

That should be enough for Mr. DeFazio, the ranking member of the committee, to share his views on this legislation.

I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the honorable gentlewoman from the State of Oregon (Ms. Bonamici).

Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close. I will take my few seconds that remain then and simply say this is a good piece of legislation. I want to thank the chair of the Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Subcommittee for his work on this, and for working across the aisle to solve problems, some very real, serious problems in this legislation.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself as much time as I might consume, but I will try to be brief.

Mr. Speaker, we are in total support of this piece of legislation. We think this is a very, very good thing to do, to adequately fund all of our military, whether it is SOCOM or any other part of it. It is essential for our national security.

However, I would like to note that, having served on the Armed Services Committee for the last several years and endured unending discussions about the horrible sequestration issues, which were totally under the control of the majority party to change should they decide to do so, that it is a little incongruous to put forth a resolution that would call for adequate funding for SOCOM, and we should do so.

At the same time, when we have created a trillion-dollar deficit with a piece of legislation that passed last December with no Democratic votes--because we like to think of ourselves as deficit hawks, and we think it is difficult to put this Congress into a situation where we have to choose between the health of seniors who are on Medicare or young children who depend upon the Medicaid program or maybe the education systems.

So this resolution, it is a good thing. It is something we ought to do. Certainly, we ought to support SOCOM. Certainly, we ought to pass appropriations bills on time. Let me commend the House for having done so, and we can always blame the enemy on the other side of the building, the Senate, but the reality is that the Treasury was gutted by a tax bill of which more than 80 percent of the benefit went to the top income earners of America and corporations. And a deficit has been created that will be a trillion dollars next year. That is the period of time in which this resolution calls for full funding for our Special Operations Forces.

So my discussion today is really about the very difficult choices that are going to have to be made because this Congress, without Democratic support, decided that the first choice was the superwealthy and the corporations of America, not the children, not the sick, not those in need of education, not the infrastructure, but rather those who have much already.

Now, I notice that I don't have many colleagues here on our side, although I would assure all the Congress that we are 100 percent in support of our Special Operations Forces, and we look forward to a continuing debate on the choices that must be made.

Mr. Speaker, I urge an ``aye'' vote, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume, as long as it does not exceed 20 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Texas spoke boldly and correctly. If I could get a copy of his speech, as I will, I think I will use it myself.

He covered all the issues that I would want to cover in talking about the United States Air Force as a representative of two very important Air Force bases, Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield-Vacaville, California, and Beale Air Force Base just outside of Marysville, California.

I found myself not only in sympathy and empathy, but also marching right alongside the gentleman from Texas as he eloquently spoke about the role of the Air Force and the necessity of Congress to provide the adequate funding for not only repairing and maintaining the existing aircraft and bases, but also to expand and improve.

Certainly, I am looking forward to the arrival of the KC-46s to Travis Air Force Base. If Boeing will get that done, we will get on with it.

However, I want to remind my colleagues on the other side of the aisle that funding for the military is ultimately dependent upon the revenues of the Federal Government, which are dependent upon the health of the economy. Those things go together.

My esteemed colleague from Wyoming, in her remarks on the previous bill, addressed the issue of how we tax and who we tax or whether we tax. An interesting point was raised about this and whether it is possible to tax too low.

A situation has arisen in the State of Oklahoma, where they thought they could cut taxes continually and everything would grow, and there would be great opportunities. Well, the opportunity turned out for the highway patrolmen to buy their own gas, and for schools to go to 4- and even 3-day sessions, because there was no money.

So my point is this, that we have to balance things here. I raise this issue in the context of the appropriate desire of my colleagues to adequately fund the military, because I read in the newspaper yesterday and again today that my colleagues intend to go to tax cut 2.0. Very interesting.

In the face of a trillion-dollar deficit in the 2018-2019 fiscal year, we would do another massive tax cut in hopes that the situation would be such for the revenues of the Federal Government that we could fund everything that the military wants and whatever other needs we decide must be funded.

Well, let's see. We just borrowed, or are about to borrow, $12 billion from China to pay American farmers for their losses resulting from a trade war with China in which China was supposed to somehow grow our economy by not shipping as much to America.

That is convoluted, but it is what we are going to have to do if we cut taxes again. We are going to have to grow the Chinese economy, so we can borrow money from China, and then import from them.

I guess this makes sense to some, but I think we best be very careful here.

Mr. Speaker, I guess some people would say that I am off subject matter here, because we are really talking about fully funding the needs, in this piece of legislation, of the United States Air Force, and we should do so. However, at the same time, we must consider the revenue sources for the Federal Government, and we did.

In December 2017, the 435 of us who are selected by the 350 million Americans to represent them, a decision was made amongst us to slash the revenue of the Federal Government by more than $1.5 trillion over the next decade.

Now, my colleagues on the Democratic side didn't vote for that, but, apparently, the deficit hawks migrate out of Washington, D.C., in the winter. I suspect they are coming back--not ``suspect,'' they are actually back. The Speaker of the House tells us that we must cut Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security in order to deal with the deficit that was created by the tax bill. Well, we shall see.

How are we going to adequately fund the military in the face of last December's tax cut, which I will remind folks, if they care to be reminded, that the beneficiaries were principally the great American corporations that were doing quite well, profitably, prior to the tax cut, and that somehow promised that they would bring jobs home, which they have not. Well, we shall see.

It takes $1.5 trillion out of the Treasury, and my esteemed colleague from Wyoming said: Look how successful Oklahoma was.

Well, I don't think she said that. But as she was talking about tax cuts, it came to mind that we ought to think about Oklahoma and what happens when the government doesn't have the revenue it needs to do the things that it must do.

Now, maybe you want to argue that the government must not provide funding for Social Security. Maybe you would want to argue that the government must not provide money for Medicaid, of which some 60 to 70 percent of the recipients are elderly people in nursing homes. Maybe we ought not do that. Or maybe you would want to argue that the Medicare program for seniors should be slashed and cut.

Those are all suggestions that the Speaker of the House of Representatives has made. I disagree.

How do we fund the programs that Americans need? Surely, they want a strong Air Force, as I do. And I suspect they would also want to see that those seniors in nursing homes are cared for, and those who are on Medicare are able to get their drugs and their care, and that the Social Security checks not be slashed and reduced. We shall see.

In any case, I support the resolution, and I think we ought to fully fund the Air Force.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time I have remaining.

Mr. Speaker, if you are a person who wants to cut taxes and borrow money from China, then you can keep the economy going. In fact, the job growth has been basically steady for the last 8 years. It has been in the last year, also, and most of this year, and we are thankful for that.

Nonetheless, we have a very serious deficit. The CBO estimate that was quoted a moment ago actually took place prior to the tax cut. More recent estimates indicate that the deficit is larger than anticipated and that the growth rate has not expanded to the point that was anticipated and that the deficits that are going to be there are very real. All of that is true.

While there have been increases in wages, some 2 percent over the last year, almost 18 months now--and we are grateful for that--those wages are less than the inflation rate; and, therefore, for those working men and women across the Nation who have received an average of 2 percent or so of wage growth, it has been eaten up by inflation.

The point here is one of this resolution reminding us that we have a very important obligation to adequately fund, in this case, the Air Force; in the previous piece of legislation, special operations. Indeed, we do have that obligation. But at the same time, we need to have a fiscally sound government.

Unfortunately, what happened last December was to pull the foundation of fiscal soundness out from beneath the government's revenue stream.

Now, there is a necessity for some adjustment in the taxes, and you will get no debate on our side of the aisle about the necessity to do that. It would have been our choice, had we the majority, to reduce taxes far more than the tax bill did for the working men and women and for the smaller businesses in America, and not for the wealthy corporations that were doing quite well, and certainly not to create an international Tax Code that continues to encourage the offshoring of American jobs.

That simply happened because the reduction in the corporate tax rate for America went to 20 percent, while those American corporations operating offshore could get a 10 percent tax, providing a very significant benefit to corporations to offshore jobs. I don't think we would have done that. Maybe that is why many of us voted against the legislation.

There is much more to be said about it, but the fundamental point at this moment is this resolution that says fully fund the Air Force. We are 100 percent for that.

The question we ask is: How are we to do that in the face of the massive deficit and, to hear from our Republican leadership, tax cut 2.0? What does that mean, on tax cut 1.0? We don't know. But I would draw the attention of all of us to what happens when you do not have the revenues necessary to fund the government--Oklahoma.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I want to thank the gentleman from Oklahoma for making me aware of the current financial situation, and I will remind him that California is running a very significant budget surplus at the present time. Both of our economies are presently growing, and we are thankful for that.

I also want to thank the gentleman for being a voice of knowledge on the Armed Services Committee, for his many years of service in the United States Army, and for bringing us this resolution today calling for the full and timely funding of the United States Army.

My father, who served in the Army and ended that service as a major, would have been very pleased to hear that there was adequate and timely funding.

I know I have said quite enough on the issue of how we are going to fund the government, and I am sure my colleagues across the aisle probably think I have said too much. If they feel that way, so be it. But I do think that we need to understand the need to be balanced as we move forward.

I announce my support for this resolution, along with the two previous resolutions, and look forward to its immediate passage.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank you very much for the opportunity to address the House.

As I often do in these evenings in the Special Order hour, I try to first lay out what it is: what is the purpose, what is the goal, and what is the value in what we are trying to accomplish.

I find myself always harkening back to a quote that I saw many years ago, and then more recently found etched into the marble at the FDR Memorial here in Washington, D.C. It comes from Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and he talked about what he was trying to accomplish and what he thought America ought to accomplish during the Great Depression. His words are equally important during the Great Recession and the years thereafter.

He said: ``The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.''

It is kind of what we are all about as Democrats, and that is why we found the tax cut, the Republican tax cut which no Democrat voted for last December, so profoundly troubling. That tax cut, on top of the 2001 and the 2003 Republican tax cuts, added $2 trillion to the wealth of the top 1 percent of Americans.

Let me say that once again. FDR was quite clear in his test of policy. He said: ``The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.''

The 2001 and the 2003 Republican tax cuts, together with the December 2017 Republican tax cuts, which no Democrat in the House of Representatives voted for, added $2 trillion to the wealth of the top 1 percent of Americans.

I suppose that would be okay if the 99 percent had somehow seen their wealth grow. It didn't happen. In fact, what we have seen in the last decade since the Great Recession is that the great middle class of America and the poor have seen no real income growth.

In the last couple of years, yes, there has been a wage increase, about 2 percent, totally consumed by inflation, which was slightly more than 2 percent--no real income growth.

So what is happening here is that we Democrats are proposing a better deal for Americans. Yes, those words are similar to what FDR used. But we are proposing a better deal for Americans, not one that makes the rich richer, although that would be fine if the rest of America could also become richer.

But that is going to take a change in public policy, and that is what we are proposing to do, because our public policy going forward is going to be about a better deal for the American people.

We are proposing, as we go into this election year, that we push aside the Republican proposal, which is essentially a better deal for the superrich, and we want to bring about a better deal for the people.

Here are the three major elements of that deal:

We want to lower our healthcare costs and prescription drugs for the American people. We can do this. Unfortunately, our colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle are going in exactly the other direction. As they have ripped the guts out of the Affordable Care Act, we have seen the cost of healthcare in America skyrocket.

We have seen the cost of drugs skyrocket. We want to end that. One of the things we most definitely want to end is what the Republicans are now proposing and that is that we go back in America to the bad old days when, if you had a preexisting condition, you could not get healthcare; or, you would have to pay a small fortune just to get an insurance policy.

No, we don't want that, but that is what our Republican colleagues are trying to give us all across this Nation--a return to the insurance discrimination where, if you have a preexisting condition, you cannot get healthcare at an affordable price and quite probably couldn't get it at all.

Issue one, the cost of drugs. The 2003 improvement to Medicare part D provided prescription drugs at a reduced cost for seniors. All good. A clause was written into that which prohibited the

Federal Government from negotiating drug prices for the tens of millions of Americans on Medicare.

So we have seen the cost of prescription drugs soar. We have seen the stories about a drug that was acquired by some rip-off person who then took the cost of that drug from a few dollars per pill to several hundred or several thousand dollars per pill.

So that is point one. I am going to go down to point three, because I am going to spend time on point two.

What we want to do is clean up the corruption of politics in Washington and across this Nation. Just recently, the Treasury Department said that the NRA didn't have to reveal who its contributors were to its dark money program. Similarly, no other dark money PAC across the State had to reveal who their contributors were.

Citizens United opened the floodgates to hidden money, secret money. Millions upon millions of dollars pour into campaigns to influence the effect of those campaigns. So we want to deal with Citizens United. We want to deal with this problem of corruption in our political system. There are many ways we can do it, but until we can deal with it, we are going to continue to see more and more legislation that benefits the rich at the expense of the working men and women of America.

Now, let me go to this second one here. We want to increase and grow our economy and jobs through an infrastructure program rebuilding America. That will be the central focus of what I want to spend this evening on.

So, as we talk a better deal for the American people, we will be talking about healthcare issues, we will be talking about corruption and ending the dark money. We will also talk about rebuilding the infrastructure for America and creating jobs.

As we go into this, why is it important? Why is infrastructure important?

I suspect many of you remember just more than a year ago that the greatest waterfall in all the world was created at the Oroville Dam in California, just a few miles upstream from my district on the Feather River. Yes, an infrastructure failure. The Oroville Dam spillway was about to give way, just to the side of this, creating a 30-foot wall of water, because the main spillway had collapsed.

I suppose if you are interested in waterfalls, this was quite an event. But it was dangerous. Two hundred thousand of my constituents had to immediately evacuate in the cities of Marysville, Yuba City, and Live Oak, and other small communities in that area, for fear that that infrastructure project would fail. Well, it did, but not totally.

For the folks in Seattle, Washington, or anybody who was traveling on Interstate 5 from Washington State to British Columbia, it turned out it was a tough day to get there. This is the Interstate 5 bridge. Well, I suppose if you had pontoons or maybe water wings, you could stay on Interstate 5.

This is just one example of the tens of thousands of bridges across America that are considered to be unsafe and structurally unsound. This one proved it.

A similar bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in the Twin Cities area, resulted in deaths as that bridge collapsed.

Infrastructure. American infrastructure, according to Duke University and the study they published a couple of years ago, ranks in the Ds. I do think we have one C. This is going to require glasses to try to find the one C in our infrastructure system.

Our ports are a C-plus. The rail systems, the private rail systems are a B. The rest of them are Ds and Fs. Roads, bridges, dams, on and on, sanitation systems, water systems.

All of us have heard about the problem in Michigan with the water system there. Well, it is repeated in California up and down the Central Valley of California with water systems that are contaminated in multiple ways, as they are in Michigan.

So, what are we going to do about it?

Well, we have the good fortune of an opportunity presented to us by Democratic leaders. Let me start with a couple of examples of what can be done if we were to Make It In America.

Take, for example, an American success story of Make It In America. The Tappan Zee Bridge in New York, they did it right. They did it with U.S.-manufactured steel. It was a $3.9 billion project and 7,728 American jobs created.

Out in California, we do things a little differently and not always better. You have heard of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. Well, they decided that the Chinese steel would be cheaper. It turned out it wasn't, and there were thousands of American jobs that didn't happen. It was $3.9 billion over budget, as that Chinese steel was used. There were 3,000 jobs created in China, and the most modern steel mill in the world to produce steel that was badly welded and flawed in many ways.

So, we have a choice: We can make it in America, as New York did with the Tappan Zee Bridge, or you can have it made in China, as California did with the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, not our proudest moment.

For you who are not aware, I am a Californian. I was the Lieutenant Governor when this disaster was going on. I screamed and yelled and jumped up and down and said, What in the world are you doing? Oh, but it is cheaper. It is supposed to be by 10 percent. Cheap is not always better--an example of what could be done if we were to make it in America.

Now, this idea of Make It In America actually started with Steny Hoyer, our minority whip. I am going to put up a couple of things. He has renewed his program that he and I worked on beginning in 2010.

Over the years we have talked about Make It In America. We have talked about various ways it can be done, policies and the like. This Monday, Minority Whip Steny Hoyer re-energized Make It In America. I think it is Make It In America 4.0.

So we have encouraged entrepreneurship by assuring access to workplace benefits like healthcare and retirement security, and providing more and stronger boosts to businesses with ideas and successful businesses.

I just came across one of these earlier today. I was talking to a friend out in California, Phil Wyatt, a Ph.D. guy who worked out of the University of California, Santa Barbara for some time. He came across a way of using a machine to analyze what is in something--a chemical analysis, an analysis of biological components, and the like. He started a company called Wyatt Technology.

It is an analytical machine that is used all around the world. It is used in healthcare. It is used in biology. It is used in chemical analysis and the like. The company is an American company, an entrepreneurship that was developed in this country. There are 88 straight quarters of profitability, and no way in hell is he going to allow the Chinese to steal it from him, even though his equipment is broadly used throughout the world. A great success story, Wyatt Technology.

So, where did it come from?

Well, it was an entrepreneurial program. We need more entrepreneurs. We need more entrepreneurs who are out there developing new businesses like Phil did several years back. They can do it. They are going to need support from their government. They need sound tax policy. They need the education and research that is going on in our universities.

They need to be able to accept the risk of starting a new business, whether it is a high-tech business or maybe it is somebody that wants to go out and work at a taco stand. But they ought to be able to have their healthcare and they ought to have their retirement security available to them as they go through that time.

So, that is one of the things that Mr. Hoyer has talked about as he renews the Make It In America plan. We are going to hold infrastructure for a few moments and pick up the third element in his plan, which is education, which ties directly to what I talked about with Mr. Wyatt.

Wyatt's business, almost more than a decade old, actually came out of the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he was a professor and he was doing research. And so it is the educational system, not only at the high level, but also all the way down the line, promoting pathways for career opportunities.

A lot of this is something you might find in the career technical education field, where a man or woman learns to be a welder and then says, Well, I can start my own welding shop. I can become my own boss. So they do.

Or, maybe it is somebody that has learned hairstyling or cosmetics and decides they want to open their own shop. If they are able to have portable healthcare, if they have their retirement benefits, they can run the risk of starting their own business.

The training programs and education and the research all fit into this focus on education. So Mr. Hoyer has outlined that as the second element.

The third element in the renewal of the Make It In America plan that he and I worked on in the beginning of 2010, and continued working on these many years, is a focus on infrastructure.

As I said earlier, as I talked about the failure of our basic infrastructure systems--water, sanitation, bridges, highways, reservoirs and dams--is this problem, also this opportunity. As I said, with this report coming out of Duke University, where they rated the infrastructure systems--as did the Society of Civil Engineers--it is a fact that if we are building our infrastructure system, for every dollar we invest in the infrastructure, we will be able to create 21,671 jobs. And for every billion dollars we invest, we will create those jobs. For every dollar we invest, we will improve the economy by $3.54.

So the return on that $1 investment is 3.5 to 1, so it makes a lot of sense to do that. Besides that, the bridges won't fall down and the dams won't crumble.

This one is extremely important: repairing and rebuilding our aging infrastructure. It also gives us the opportunity to innovate in the infrastructure of the future.

Well, as Mr. Hoyer wants to talk about the infrastructure of the future, I want to talk about, for my remaining time here, the infrastructure of the past.

You may be aware that America is now a nation that exports a strategic national asset. It is our petroleum products. For fracking and other reasons, we are now an export nation when it comes to crude oil, gasoline, diesel, and, above all, natural gas. We have succeeded in turning this around from an importing nation to an exporting nation.

Some of these statistics lead me to an opportunity that we could rebuild, reenergize, a critical national infrastructure.

We don't often think about our maritime industry as being infrastructure, but it really is. It supports, to be sure. And we often talk about ports. We talk about intermodal, from the ship to the port, to the trail, to the train and rail, and then on to the highways. All true, but we often ignore the ship itself.

So here we are. The future of American shipbuilding actually resides in the export of oil and natural gas. By 2020, the U.S. is expected to be the world's third largest exporter of LNG, liquified natural gas.

Mr. Speaker, 225 LNG vessels are expected to be added to the world fleet by 2020. Those are big ships. There is a little picture there of one.

Due to the eroded capacity of American shipyards, not one--none, nada, none--of those 225 LNG ships, vessels, will be built in American shipyards unless there is a law that requires that just a small part of that export of LNG be on American-built ships.

Similarly, oil, I don't have that up here, but none of the oil that will be exported from the United States will be on American-built ships unless there is a law.

So, are you surprised that we are proposing a law called the Energizing American Shipbuilding? It is a piece of legislation that I have introduced to deal with a critical infrastructure, the ships that America once had.

So, of 225 new LNG vessels, currently 70 percent of those orders are going to Korea and the rest to China, maybe a few to Japan, and none to the United States.

So, the legislation called Energizing American Shipbuilding Act, introduced by myself, H.R. 5893, was introduced a few weeks ago. It requires that a certain percentage of the liquified natural gas and crude oil exports be transported on United States-built ships and American-flag vessels, crewed by American mariners, from the captains to the engineers to the seamen, American men and women on these American-built vessels.

A similar bill was introduced in the Senate by Senator Wicker, and that bill also does exactly the same thing. Senator Casey, Mr. Hunter, Mr. Courtney, and Mr. Wittman--two Democrats, two Republicans-- introduced the legislation. In the Senate, one Republican and one Democrat have introduced the very same legislation, bipartisan, bicameral, and, by God, we ought to do it.

What happens if we were to do it? Well, let's look at some of the very simple opportunities that exist.

Instead of China and Korea and Japan building the ships for the export of this strategic national asset, let's do it in America. Let's make them in America.

The Energizing American Shipbuilding Act, introduced in the House and the Senate this year, if we were to pass this legislation, we are talking at least 50 new ships built in America. Let's see. That is 3, 6, 9, 12--about 15 of them, LNG ships, would be built here in the United States. And when they are commissioned and they are on the oceans, they would have American mariners on board providing a strategic advantage to our American defense policy. I will talk about that a little later.

There would be many, many more on the crude oil side, perhaps more than 30. Probably closer to 35 ships would be built in the next decade and a half to two decades, providing, oh, I don't know, maybe more than 1,500 jobs for American mariners.

And we haven't yet been able to calculate all the jobs in the shipyards of America, but we know that, for San Diego, at the shipyards in San Diego, they would be building these ships. We know that they would be building these ships in the shipyards of the Gulf Coast and in the shipyards on the East Coast, particularly in Philadelphia. These jobs would be spread around at the shipyards on the West Coast, the Gulf of Mexico, and the East Coast.

And, just as important, the bill would require that the engines, the hydraulic systems, the pumps, the pipes, the electronics, that those, too, also be built in America.

We are talking about a major opportunity to make it in America, to make it in America once again so that America can continue to be a major place for the construction of American-built ships, whether those are naval ships, as they are today, required to be built in the United States, or whether they are commercial ships requiring that a small percentage of the export of oil and natural gas be on American-built ships with American sailors. Bottom line: manufacturing matters.

So, when Mr. Hoyer, our minority whip, talks about renewing the Make It In America agenda and he talks about the necessity for that to be focusing on infrastructure, we put forward that a critical piece of that infrastructure is the American maritime industry--just as important as the trucks that travel our highways, another piece of infrastructure; just as important as the trains that travel the rails, another critical piece of infrastructure; just as important as the barges that move up and down the Mississippi River system on the Ohio, the Missouri, or the Mississippi itself. All of that is infrastructure, as are the airports and the airlines.

We ought to start and always think about the fact that we are a maritime nation and that in our infrastructure we consider the American maritime, we consider the ships and the men and the women who are on those ships.

Now, this is a national security issue. TRANSCOM, responsible for moving American military supplies around the world, has stated categorically that, unless we revive our American maritime industry, unless we have sailors and captains and engineers on ships who are able to transport our military wherever they need to go around the world, we are going to be in a world of hurt.

Earlier today, I was talking to one of the officers of Liberty Maritime, one of the American shipping companies, owners of ships that will soon be transporting a brigade of Reserve men and women from the United States to Europe as part of our European defense issues.

So it becomes important that we deal with the infrastructure of the United States and that we do so keeping in mind that these are American jobs that fulfill this important policy position. This is the value that, as we go about our legislative work here, we keep in

mind that the test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide for those who have too little.

Among those who have too little are the working men and women of America. And if we carry out this infrastructure challenge, if we make it in America, if the steel is American made, if the locomotives are American made--and there is a marvelous example of what can be done with public policy that says, if we are going to build locomotives for the Amtrak system on the Northeast corridor from Washington, D.C., to Boston, that those locomotives will be American made, with 100 percent American-made equipment.

Interestingly, when this was part of the American Recovery Act back in 2010, a bill put forward by Democrats and President Obama, there was a requirement for $700 million or $800 million to be spent on American- built locomotives, 100 percent American made. A German company said: Whoa, $700 million? $800 million? Locomotives? American made? We could do that.

So, in Sacramento, California, Siemens, one of the great manufacturing companies in the world, said: Well, let's see. We make not locomotives, but we do make cars for the transit systems. We can do locomotives.

And they did. Just this last week, I got off one of the Amtrak trains from New York City, walked past a gleaming locomotive, brand-new, and on the side it said ``Siemens.'' I am going: That locomotive was made in Sacramento, California, just outside my district, by a German company with American workers, American steel, American wheels, American engines--made in America.

How did it happen? Because Congress, with Democrats in control and a Democratic President, said: We are not going to talk about making America great again; we are going to actually pass a law that says this money will be spent on American-made locomotives.

And so it was. And now that plant is continuing to expand as they produce cars for transit systems all across this Nation.

FDR had it right, and we are going to follow. We are going to make sure that the laws of this Nation actually provide for the working men and women; for those who don't have a job, an educational program, job training programs, career development programs in community colleges and high schools, apprenticeship programs, so that the men and women of America can participate in the revitalization of the American infrastructure system.

Whether that is a highway, an interstate freeway, an airport, a dock, or a port, we are going to make sure that the American workers have a chance not only in building the infrastructure, but in using the steel and the concrete and the other elements that go into these infrastructure projects. Those should also be made in America so that that infrastructure program flows way beyond just those who are pouring the concrete to those who are making the cement and making the manufacturing plant that will develop the cement.

This is where we are. And by the way, we want to make sure that tax policy does not do what the Republicans have repeatedly done--2001, 2003 tax cuts and again in the 2017 tax cuts that have transferred $2 trillion of American wealth to the top 1 percent. That is shameful, but that has actually happened. And all the while the rest of Americans have seen virtually no improvement in their economic situation.

Tax policy--critically important. Policy that requires that when we spend your tax dollar, that your tax dollar is spent on American jobs in American factories, putting Americans to work in what we call a ``Make It In America'' agenda.

And so keep this in mind, Mr. Trump, this is how you make America great again, by making it in America. So we can work with our Republican colleagues, as we are with our shipbuilding program, the Energizing American Shipbuilding Act. Democrats and Republicans understand, together, that it is public policy. It is the laws that we write that set the pace for economic growth and spread that growth out across the great American population so that everyone--everyone can participate in the rebuilding of America's infrastructure, whether it is a ship at sea, a port that is being developed, an airport, a highway or a railway, water system, sanitation system, we must write into all of those laws that when American taxpayer money is used, it is spent on American manufacturing and American workers.

So we will make it in America, and America will make it when we follow these kinds of wise public policies, keeping in mind that our task is to make sure that we always focus not on those who have much, but, rather, on those that have too little.

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

Mr. Speaker, well, the latest tweets from the President:

``So many people at the higher ends of intelligence loved my press conference performance in Helsinki.''

Obviously, he is referring to Putin, because there are not many people in the United States who saw that press conference as a success. In fact, it was an unmitigated disaster.

Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said, ``The red lights are blinking.'' Our election process, our critical infrastructure, is being attacked by Russia, and what is the House of Representatives doing today? Eliminating funding to protect our election process.

Obviously, those who vote for this reduction in funding are not at the higher levels of intelligence.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Rick Gonzales, Sr. and his family for their selfless service to their community.

As a young child, Rick Gonzales, Sr. made it to the fifth grade before it became evident that he needed to work on the family farm to help provide for the family, but his desire to learn and have a good education never wavered. As a young adult, Rick Sr. was drafted and proudly served our country during the WWII Pacific campaign in Okinawa. Upon his honorable discharge he enrolled in barber school, where he met his wife, Angela. Together, they raised four sons, Laverne, Rick Jr., Garry and Jerry. Barber school would soon prove to be far more than a career decision; it was a move that would begin Rick's lifelong journey as an agent for change.

In 1953, Rick Sr. opened Rick's Top Hat barbershop, and the business soon became the central hub of information on political and social issues. Soon after, Rick and Angela knew that women in the community would also be an important component, and Angela opened Velvet Touch Beauty Salon. Rick Sr. had a passion to make a difference. He wanted to give a voice to the voiceless and restore hope to those who couldn't. Rick and Angela relished in these ``teaching moments,'' of listening, guiding and helping their community.

In 1970, Rick became co-founder of the Mexican-American Concilio of Yolo County, which operated with five employees serving the Latino community. Rick Gonzales, Sr. has been recognized by his community for his outstanding accomplishments and activism. The Yolo County Department of Social Services has named their building the Rick Gonzales Building and in 2018, the city of Woodland honored him by naming their newest park after him.

Rick Gonzales, Sr. valued education and instilled the importance in his children as they were growing up. All four pursued and received higher education degrees with three receiving their Masters degrees. Continuing his father's legacy and under his mentorship until 2004, Rick Gonzales, Jr. joined the Concilio and currently serves as their President. In 1998, under his leadership, Rick Jr. created the Annual Concilio Recognition Dinner & Scholarship Fundraiser, which awarded two scholarships the first year. Rick has devoted the past twenty years raising awareness for the scholarship dinners and this year reached a milestone of raising $400,000 for 1000 scholarships awarded. His passion and service to the community is admirable.

Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join me in honoring Rick Gonzales, Sr. and his family for their incredible dedication, selfless service and contributions to the Yolo County community.

Mr. Speaker, America, my colleagues, Democrat and Republican, this young girl needs our help. She is crying out for her parents. She needs our help. She needs our help now. She is crying for her mother and her father, who have been taken from her.

This is the picture of America today. This is a picture of our values as Americans. 350 million of us are responsible for this young girl crying for her mother and her father, who have been taken from her.

They came to America, her mother came to America because she feared that in her home country, they would be harmed. They came to America seeking life. This young girl is crying out for our help, and she is not alone.

She is joined by this young girl, who has been separated from her parents, and she is alone in a building foreign to her. She is crying out to America for our basic humanity, for our basic morality, and she is not alone.

She is not alone, and neither are these young children in a cage in America.

What have we become? What has America become that we would take children and their parents who have come here seeking refuge, we take the parents away and we put the children in a cage? What has America become that we would allow this to happen?

Whatever the reason is for their arrival at our border, we know this about them: they came here seeking the very best of America, the promise of this country, and we put them in a cage.

What has America become that we would allow this to happen, that the man in the highest office of this Nation would make it the policy of America to cage children; that the man who occupies the highest office in this land would make it the policy of this Nation, a Nation whose reputation was one of humanity, of concern, and fundamental morality, that the man who occupies the highest office in this land would put in place policies that would make this young girl cry for her parents?

Is this the America that we want? Is this the America that we have come to be? Is this the America who has lost its moral compass, who believes that you could take this young girl or these young men and women, these children, and hold them hostage?

The ransom is a border wall. Is that where we are as Americans that the

price for a border wall is this? Is that where we are as Americans? Is that what we have become?

We can't debate here on the justice or the value of a policy without taking a young child away from its parents and putting them in a cage so that we could somehow use them as ransom for a public policy.

This is not America. This is not what we should expect from the man who occupies the highest office in this land.

Have no doubt about it: this is not about a law. This is about a policy directed from the White House that says a person crossing into this country, whatever their reason; asylum seekers trying to get away from the horrors of the country from which they came, coming to America seeking the benefit of this great country, that they are a criminal and therefore must be separated from their children. Something is terribly, terribly wrong here.

In America, we need to cry out, just as these children are crying out, just as this young girl is crying out. We need to cry out in moral outrage and say to the President, Stop it. Stop it now. It is wrong. It is immoral. And it is un-American. Stop it.

One phone call is all it takes. Change the policy.

There is much to be said. We could talk about the laws, we could talk about how we could change it, we could talk about border control, we could talk about walls, we could talk about new judges, we could talk about lawyers, but at the bottom of this issue is a common issue of morality.

Back away for a moment. Think about your childhood. Think about that moment when you had your mother's hand and you were 4 years old and you were walking in the mall. Think back to your childhood and think of that moment, and there is probably not a one of us who hasn't experienced this, when that hand wasn't there, and we looked around in panic, and we had lost our mother and we were alone and we were in a strange place. Is there one of us anywhere that at some moment in our early life reached out and mother's hand was not there?

Mr. President, your policies did that to this young woman and 2,300 others, crying out for their mother.

This is not American. This is not right. It is immoral and it is un- American at its very heart and its very foundation.

Mr. Speaker, joining me tonight are some of my colleagues who share the same concern. My colleague from the district next to me has joined me.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. McNerney).

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Castro).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments and would ask him a question. The gentleman said he visited one of the shelters, and there were babies, babies a few months old.

So any age, literally, 4-, 5-, 6-month-old babies taken from their mothers?

There is something incredibly immoral. I thank the gentleman for traveling to bring the reality back to the House of Representatives. It is really important, and I thank him very much for doing that.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey for joining us this evening. I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Payne).

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman speaks about the laws and about the potential, and every member of the Democratic Caucus has now signed on to be a coauthor of the legislation, Keep the Families Together Act. It would end immediately the separation of families that has now taken 2,300 children away from their parents.

Mr. Speaker, joining us tonight is the Representative from the city of Las Vegas, Nevada. I thank him for joining us and yield to the gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Kihuen).

Mr. Kihuen, I don't want you to stop. I want you to stay strong. I want your voice to be heard. I want your experiences to be known.

Eight years old, coming to America with your parents. In this room, there are very few who would share such an experience, who could understand first the excitement of being in America, and then the potential terror of being taken from your parents.

I want you to make your voice heard because it is the voice of experience. It is the voice of a recent family coming to America.

So as we go through these days, please come to the floor, tell the experience again, not only of your family, but also what you saw in those shelters, in those cages.

Will the gentleman do that?

I am quite certain that across this country, every one of the 430-some Members of Congress saw this photo. Probably most have heard the audio recording of young children just like this calling out for their mommy or daddy, papa.

I suspect many of us have seen the pictures of young children, 3, 4, 5 with a Sharpie telephone number on their chest so that if somehow they were separated, there would be someone to contact.

I am certain that every Member, 430-plus of us, plus the Senate, that was a child, that at some point in their life, when they were young, 3, 4, 5 years of age, they were separated from their parent. And I am absolutely certain that each one of us knows the terror of that moment.

And most of us are now parents. Most of us are now parents, and we know the terror of a child who has disappeared, wandered off.

I don't believe there is one of us that knows the terror of this mother whose child was taken away by American police; the awesome power of this government imposed upon that young woman, a mother, taken from her child.

Is there one of us? Is there one of us that has endured that police power?

Okay. I get emotional about this because I am a parent.

No. I don't know the terror of the police state taking my child away. I don't know that. But I know the terror of that child who has wandered off.

This is a policy that has been imposed upon parents and their children by the President. This is not a law that requires this kind of cruelty. There is no such law that requires this kind of cruelty. There is no law that requires the American government to cage children. There is no law that requires this. This is the policy of the President of the United States. This is his policy. Zero tolerance. His policy that cages children as though they were animals. His policy that puts the fear into a child.

It is the President's policy, not the law, that caused this young child to cry out for her mother and for the police to stand over her.

The Attorney General says it is the law. It is not the law. It is his policy, together with the President's policy, that has created this humanitarian crisis in the United States of America. It must end.

Martin Luther King--who was killed, murdered, assassinated 50 years ago--from the Birmingham jail spoke about justice and the law in his letter from the Birmingham jail.

So, Mr. Attorney General Beauregard Sessions, listen to what he had to say. He said: ``A just law is a manmade code that squares with the moral law or the law of God.''

He went on to argue: ``An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.''

And how should justice be defined? He answered this way: ``Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.''

Mr. Attorney General, by the words of Martin Luther King, your defense of what you say is the law is unjust, it is immoral, and it is not the law of God.

My wife, Patty, has what she calls cradle songs, songs that she sung to our children as they were young and growing.

One of those was written by Bobby Dylan, Blowin' in the Wind:

Yes, and how many times can a man turn his head

Pretending that he just doesn't see?

Yes, and how many ears must one man have

Before he can hear people cry?

And, Mr. President and Mr. Attorney General, the opening line of that song is this:

How many roads must a man walk down

Before you call him a man?

Mr. Speaker, I yield back.