Floor Statements

Mr. Chair, may I inquire how much time is remaining?

Mr. Chair, I rise in support of the amendment.

I also want to compliment my colleagues on the other side of this argument: the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee; I see our friend from Colorado and others here. All of us have the same goal, and that is to assure that the United States, and indeed the world, is safe from a nuclear war. We use deterrence as the way of accomplishing that.

Every President since Ronald Reagan has strived to achieve a safer world by reducing the number of nuclear weapons. However, in recent years, beginning with President Obama and being carried on today, we are now involved in a new nuclear arms race.

Not only are we going to build new nuclear weapons--bombs, if you will--such as this 762, presumed to be low-yield, which is still extraordinarily devastating, we are also creating new delivery systems, new land-based missiles in the Upper Midwest, new submarines and new rockets and new stealth bombers--all of that costing more than $1 trillion.

At the same time, we are developing new sensing devices and new ways in which we might protect those sensing devices and communications.

All of this is creating an extremely dangerous world for our future, not a safer world. We are going in the absolutely wrong direction of increasing the likelihood of a mistake.

I don't think anybody on any side would ever want to initiate, but this particular bomb presents the opportunity for an escalation, a tit for tat. Russia escalates to deescalate, we escalate to deescalate, and they escalate, and we escalate, and pretty soon it is all gone.

I would just ask all of us to step back and ponder for a moment why it was that Reagan and George H.W. Bush and Clinton and George W. Bush and Obama all went the other direction, to reduce the number of nuclear weapons.

But here we are in the midst of a new nuclear arms race--$1.7 trillion. And all of us know that there are numerous needs that we have.

So I would ask us just to pause for a second and to accept this amendment.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize and honor Mr. Jay Roberts, who is retiring after thirty years of dedicated service in music education and as a community leader.

Mr. Roberts began his career in 1988 as a part-time elementary music education teacher while working at home repairing musical instruments. He began teaching full-time at Brentwood Union School District in 1990. In 1995, he entered the Elk Grove School District system, teaching music education at Harriet Eddy Middle School, and will retire as the music director for the award-winning Toby Johnson Middle School Band in Elk Grove, where he's taught since 2001.

Mr. Roberts has served admirably as an outstanding and accomplished music educator and leader in our community. He can be credited with the recognition of Toby Johnson's Middle School Jaguar Marching Band and Color Guard, an award-winning marching and jazz band. As a music education teacher, Mr. Roberts has impacted the lives of hundreds of students, giving them a sense of confidence and accomplishment. He's challenged them in a way to make them realize their potential, and the results are an award-winning middle school music program--an incredible accomplishment. In the community, he founded the Elk Grove Community Concert band, the Jay Roberts Swingtime Orchestra and he also conducts for River City Theater Company.

Mr. Roberts holds a Bachelor of Arts in Music Education from California State University, Fullerton and completed his graduate work at California State University, Hayward.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Roberts has served our student community with admirable leadership, passion and dedication. He leaves a remarkable legacy. It is my honor to thank him for the positive impacts he's had on his students and wish him the very best for an enjoyable retirement.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in memory of an extraordinary group of people.

Yesterday was National Maritime Day, and I rise to bring attention to the House legislation that I recently introduced, H.R. 5879, the World War II Merchant Marine Congressional Gold Medal. I hear the cheers from all of my colleagues here on the floor as they line up to support this piece of legislation.

Last year, my colleague, Susan Brooks, my good Republican friend, introduced this legislation. I am grateful to her and to Congressman Don Young of Alaska for their support of this legislation this year. This bill has obvious bipartisan support and bicameral support. Senator Murkowski of Alaska is leading this bill in what some call the upper Chamber; we simply call it the Senate.

During World War II, our Armed Forces relied upon the Merchant Marine to ferry supplies, cargo, manpower and womanpower into both theaters of operation: the Pacific and the Atlantic. They paid a heavy price for their service.

The Merchant Marine casualty rate was the highest among all branches of the U.S. Armed Forces. An estimated 8,300 merchant mariners lost their life during the war, and around 12,000 were wounded. But these brave men and women, who put their lives on the line to sustain our Armed Forces, were not even given veteran status until 1988, much less public recognition for their invaluable service.

Today, I am going to meet with a group of World War II Merchant Marine veterans: Charles Mills from Texas, age 97; Eugene Barner from Kansas, age 92; and Robert Weagant from Illinois, age 92. I will also be meeting with families of other veterans who are no longer with us. I am meeting them to hear firsthand their stories of bravery and peril in the service of our Armed Forces. They deserve the recognition of a Congressional Gold Medal, and that is precisely what this legislation will do.

I urge all of the Members of this House and the Senate to give our Merchant Marine veterans and their families the honor they deserve.

I will also be discussing with these gentlemen and their families a piece of legislation that we introduced the day before yesterday, we call it the Energizing the American Shipbuilding Industry--taking a small percentage of the oil and natural gas that we are now exporting and requiring that that be on American-built ships with American mariners, so that we can maintain the extraordinary tradition of bravery and service that the World War II mariners showed this Nation.

If we are successful in passing this legislation, we will be building some 50 ships, or more, in our shipyards all across America, providing jobs in the upper Midwest, where they build the great engines for these ships: the pumps, the pipes, and the electronic systems. We would also be providing some 1,800 jobs for the next generation of mariners.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues not only to support the Congressional Gold Medal for the World War II mariners, but support our effort to create mariners for the next generation, which, hopefully, will not be a war but, if it is, we know that we can rely on them, just as we did in World War II.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New Mexico (Ms. Michelle Lujan Grisham).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Suozzi).

Mr. Chairman, my congratulations to the chairman of our committee, Mr. Thornberry, and the ranking member, Mr. Smith, for helping us put together an extremely important bill that does many, many good things for our military and our national security. You have heard speakers before me talk about those issues ranging from the additional pay for our military personnel, both civil and enlisted. All that is good.

However, I do want to raise an issue here, and that is, this bill also pushes even further and faster down the path towards a new nuclear arms race. I said before, we are well into the first quarter of it. Well, when this bill goes into law, we will be well into the second quarter, an extraordinarily expensive proposition, costing this country well over $1.2 trillion to $1.5 trillion over the next 20 years.

It also puts us in a position where I believe we are not going to be more safe. Many of the weapons that are being developed--the bombs, the delivery systems--are designed not to be observed. So much of what we have learned over the years about how to keep ourselves and our enemies at bay on the mutually assured destruction track will not apply as we go into this.

A couple of things immediately on my mind. A low-yield nuclear weapon, there is no such thing as ``low.'' It happens to be a whole lot, much larger than the bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima. So where are we going to go here? Does it make us safer to have a low- yield nuclear weapon on one of our submarines? Probably not, because now that submarine has become not a strategic but, rather, a tactical weapon and puts it in an entirely different class.

Also, there is a lot of money being spent on the National Nuclear Security Administration, way over budget, $198 million--$115 million. It goes on and on. Is that a smart thing to spend $115 million for the mixed oxide facility? I think not.

So there are questions that could be raised, and hopefully, as this bill progresses through the Congress, those questions will lead to a better resolution.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk as the designee of the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer).

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

Mr. Chairman, this amendment deals with the new low-yield D5 or W76-2 nuclear warhead.

In the NDAA, there is the establishment of this new low-yield nuclear warhead. This amendment would fence 50 percent of the funding for the warhead until such time as the Secretary of Defense submits a report on the program's impacts on strategic stability and options to reduce the risk of miscalculation associated with the inability of adversaries to be able to distinguish between an SSBN missile carrying a single low- yield warhead and a missile carrying several high-yield nuclear warheads, and to preserve the survivability of the second-strike capability of the SSBNs. It also strikes the unnecessary provision in the mark.

People who have looked at these issues--for example, former Secretary of State George Shultz and Senator Lugar, recently wrote: ``The justification for new Trident warheads fails on many levels. It is unlikely that there is such a thing as a limited nuclear war; preparing for one is folly.''

Back in January, 2018, former Secretary of State George Shultz wrote in Congressional testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee: ``One of the alarming things to me is this notion that we can have something called a small nuclear weapon, which I understand the Russians are doing, and that somehow that's usable,'' he told the panel.

He went on to say: ``Your mind goes to the idea that, yes, nuclear weapons become usable. And then we're really in trouble, because a big nuclear exchange can wipe out the world.''

Senator Nunn and former Secretary Moniz talked about this, saying: ``The most immediate priority should be to structure and posture U.S. and Russian nuclear forces to deter nuclear use and reduce the risk of an accidental, mistaken or unauthorized launch. Against this backdrop, the current Russian concept of `escalate to de-escalate'--i.e., limited nuclear use designed to create a pause in the conflict and open a pathway for a negotiated settlement on Moscow's terms--and U.S. calls for more `usable' nuclear weapons taken together make the world a vastly more dangerous place.''

So what we would like to do here is simply have a report, again, from the Secretary of Defense to lay out exactly what this is all about, why it is important, and what it means for our principal deterrent force: nuclear-armed submarines. That is what it is.

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

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

Mr. Chair, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Smith), the ranking member of the full committee.

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

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that I may be permitted to revise my remarks, made during general debate in the Committee of the Whole earlier today, beyond technical, grammatical, and typographical corrections.

Mr. Speaker, I thank you for the opportunity to take a few minutes here on the floor to discuss, really, something that follows along from the last couple of hours where we have been discussing national defense issues.

The $708 billion that is going to be spent in the National Defense Authorization Act by the Department of Defense is extremely important, and there are many parts of that National Defense Authorization Act that are worthy of discussion.

One thing that was not discussed here on the floor but was taken up in committee over the last several hearings was the ability of the military to actually be able to deliver materiel, supplies, in the case of a major conflict. Do we have the ability to deliver the follow-on equipment necessary should a major conflict break out somewhere in the world?

The answer is, no, we don't. And the reason is that the American maritime industry has dwindled over the last several decades.

In the 1980s, we had about 240 American-built and American flagships with mariners, captains, engineers and seamen and -women on those ships capable of providing the necessary support for the military sealift command. Today, we have about 80 American-flagged ships with American seamen on those ships.

The mariners are in short supply. TRANSCOM, responsible for moving the personnel as well as the equipment that the military needs somewhere in the world, estimates--as well as the MARAD indicate that we are some 1,800 mariners short of the minimum necessary to man and personnel the ships to move the equipment somewhere in the world.

This is a major national defense issue not really taken up and discussed in the NDAA.

So what are we going to do about it? Can our shipyards actually produce the necessary ships for the American military? The answer is: not now, but they need to.

In the National Defense Authorization Act, there is a section that calls for the construction of the ships--actually, construction by foreign shipyards.

It seems strange that we would find what was once one of the great maritime nations, the United States, in such a quandary that we do not have the personnel or the ships to be able to move our national defense.

There is something we can do about this, and it is not directly in the area of the Department of Defense, although it is tangential and, therefore, important to our national defense.

It seems that over the last decade we have become an energy-producing Nation. With the fracking and other techniques, we are now actually an exporter of oil and natural gas. This is part of the energy revolution that is taking place in the United States.

That oil and natural gas is a strategic national asset, as is the United States Department of Defense--the Navy, the Army, the Air Force, the Marines, and the Coast Guard.

If we are to maintain our ability to defend this Nation and to conduct military operations anywhere in the world, we have to have a strong maritime industry.

If we consider for a moment the combination of that strategic necessity of the maritime industry, the strategic benefit that comes from the production of natural gas and oil, and the economic value of exporting natural gas and oil, we can come to what we call a solution.

The solution is to take a very small percentage of the production or the export of natural gas, LNG, and oil and require that it be exported, transported, on American-built ships, American flagged, with American mariners.

We call this the Energizing American Shipbuilding Act. It was introduced yesterday, and we announced it in a press conference earlier today.

Joining me at that press conference was Senator Roger Wicker, who will be carrying the bill on the Senate side; the chairman of the Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Duncan Hunter; a member of the Committee on Armed Services, Donald Norcross; and a member of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure's Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation, Alan Lowenthal; together with members of the industry: the Shipbuilders Council, VT Halter Marine out of Mississippi, the representatives of the maritime unions that work on the ships and unions that work in the shipyards.

We are prepared to move this bill. Let me tell you what it will do if we are successful in passing the Energizing American Shipbuilding Act.

What we will do and what America will do is build ships once again. It is anticipated that, if we start with 1 percent of the LNG that is exported, over the next 15 to 20 years we will build some 23 LNG ships. If we ramp that up to a full 15 percent, we will be building those LNG carriers.

Similarly, if we begin at a very small percentage of the oil that is exported, we will build another 30 LNG tankers.

In the course of some 15 to 20 years, we will be able to build some 50 ships in American shipyards, providing thousands of jobs not only in the shipyards but in the supply of engines, pumps, pipes, electronic equipment, and fittings of all kinds.

And, of course, the steel industry that would be providing the steel for

these ships would also be playing a major part.

Now, do keep in mind that this is a very, very small part of the total number of LNG vessels that are going to be needed. It is anticipated that just to supply the necessary transport for American LNG some 225 LNG vessels would be built. We would be looking at a very small percentage of those that would be built here in the United States. Nonetheless, that would represent a major part and a major opportunity for the American shipbuilding industry.

Similarly, for the export of oil, that would similarly build ships here throughout the shipyards of the United States. Exactly how many? Well, we will have to figure that out as it goes on. If we really ramp up the amount of oil and natural gas that we export, perhaps we will build more than 50.

But it also means that the mariners will be able to work on these ships. As they work on these particular ships, the LNG and the oil tankers will be developing the skills necessary to transfer over to provide the personnel necessary for the military on the cargo ships, the roll-on and roll-offs, as well as the oil tankers that the military will need as it transports the personnel and the equipment around the world.

So this is what we are trying to do. We are trying to energize the American shipbuilding industry by requiring that a small percentage of the LNG that will be exported from the United States and the oil that will be exported will be on American-built ships with American mariners. That is our goal.

I believe that we will be able to accomplish this in the days ahead, as we move this thing through the process and get it under way. We have very strong, bipartisan support, both Democrats and Republicans supporting the bill.

We also have very strong bicameral support, with the bill being introduced in the Senate by Senator Roger Wicker and here in the House by myself and by Chairman Duncan Hunter.

So I bring this to the attention of the Congress and the American public, that it is our goal to make it in America, that there is a better deal for America if we pass a law that requires that this strategic national asset, oil and natural gas, be on an equally strategic important asset, American ships, and that those ships be manned by American sailors and officers. That is our goal.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Lundberg Family Farms on the celebration of its 80th anniversary.

Since its founding in 1937 by Albert and Frances Lundberg, the rice- growing company has expanded substantially, now producing 18 different varieties of rice and many other rice products. Lundberg has become a national leader in the marketplace, and is growing quickly internationally.

This third-generation family business has strengthened our region's vibrant agricultural sector and created jobs throughout the Sacramento Valley. Even through substantial growth, Lundberg has continued using sustainable practices, ensuring that generations to come can further its rich farming tradition.

On behalf of the people of California's Third District, I congratulate Lundberg Family Farms on its 80th anniversary, and I know that our entire region joins me in wishing them continued success in the years ahead.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the month of May as GBS/CIDP Awareness Month. Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS) is an inflammatory disorder of the peripheral nerves outside the brain and spinal cord and is characterized by the rapid onset of numbness, weakness, and often paralysis of the legs, arms, breathing muscles, and face. Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropathy (CIDP) is a rare disorder of the peripheral nerves characterized by gradually increasing sensory loss and weakness associated with loss of reflexes. The number of new cases per year of CIDP is about 1-2 per 100,000 people, but can be as high as 9 per 100,000 in some areas.

Founded by Estelle Benson, the GBS/CIDP Foundation International is the preeminent global non-profit organization supporting individuals and their families affected by Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS), chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP), and related syndromes such as multifocal motor neuropathy (MMN) through a commitment to, education, research, and advocacy. I know first-hand the importance of the foundation's work; two of my daughters and a granddaughter have contracted Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS). The foundation provided us, as it does with all patients, a critical community of medical specialists and survivors and their families to ensure that all three were given the best treatment and could recover as quickly as possible.

Tonight, Estelle is being honored by The National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD) with the Abbey S. Meyers Leadership Award on behalf of the Foundation for their continued dedication to supporting patients with GBS, CIDP and related conditions. I call on my colleagues to join me in congratulating Estelle Benson and recognizing the work of the GBS/CIDP Foundation International on behalf of patients and their families

Mr. Speaker, thank you very much for this opportunity. I am particularly pleased to have the opportunity to follow my colleagues on the Republican side as they were talking about the tax bill that passed the House of Representatives, the Senate, and was signed into law last December.

I always like to start my discussions here on the floor by some sense of purpose, some sense of what, at least, I, and I think many of my Democratic colleagues are trying to accomplish and the many different ways that this might be accomplished. But this is a statement of values. It comes from Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the Great Depression. It could easily apply to the Great Recession in 2008 and `09, and it even applies today, and certainly applies to the tax cut that took place in December.

Let me read this to you. He said, Franklin Delano Roosevelt: ``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.'' A statement of value. A statement of purpose.

Having listened to my colleagues talk about the great tax cut, I think we need to understand exactly what it was all about and the implications of that tax cut and what it means to America, not just to the working men and women that was so well discussed by our colleagues. And indeed, they did get a benefit from the tax cut.

However, I think we need to understand the size of that tax cut. It is estimated that that tax cut will reduce the revenues to the Federal Treasury; that is, to the American Government and all of the programs that it does--funding the military; funding Social Security and Medicare, Medicaid--keeping in mind that about 60-some percent of the Medicaid money across this Nation goes to seniors who are in nursing homes and care facilities; keeping in mind that that money is used to subsidize farmers out there, to provide conservation programs, to educate our kids, to train our workers.

So the tax cut really drained from the Treasury about $1.6 trillion, $1.8 trillion over the next decade. That is a pretty good sum of money. Where did it go? Who benefited from it? Did the working men and women, the people who, it was so eloquently stated, are sitting around the kitchen table trying to figure out what to do at the end of the month? Certainly there is a benefit there, but do keep in mind that that benefit ends in just five years, six years from now. So it is not a permanent benefit, but it is a benefit that is of importance.

But where did the money really go? We sometimes call this the great scam, because it is sold one way but the reality is different. The top 1 percent and American corporations received 87 percent of that $1.6 trillion. The top 1 percent and America's great corporations.

Presumably, the corporations were going to bring jobs to America. Let me give you two examples. But first, where did the remaining 17 percent go? Well, it went to all the other Americans. It went to those small businessmen and women who were discussed a moment ago, mom and pop sitting around the table. They got 17 percent of the $1.6 trillion.

The top 1 percent of Americans and American corporations took the rest of the pie, 83 percent of it. So what are we to make of this? Well, we can make that, wow, this wasn't how it was sold.

And what did the corporations do with it? Well, out in California-- and I am from California--there is a company called Apple. Keep in mind that they do research in the United States. They develop the various software and apps and so forth. The manufacturing is done over in China, for the most part. Some of the assembly comes back to America.

They were able to repatriate from their overseas earnings, as a result of this, over $100 billion. That $100 billion is going to be used over the next several months and probably year or so to create jobs in America? No. No. That money is going to be used to buy back stock, which will have the very nice event of enriching those who own Apple stock.

Do any of you out there own Apple stock? Well, if you do, it is good. You are going to get some cash. If you do own Apple stock and you don't choose to sell your stock, guess what? The stock price is going to go up because there are fewer shares around and the earnings per share can remain the same.

It is a great scam. And, oh, by the way, the executives benefit by the stock price going up. So maybe there is something to be said for that.

Another company, Pfizer, big American pharmaceutical company, got about $5 billion to $6 billion of reduced taxes as a result of this tax scam. Did they create jobs with it? No.

The day that they announced that their taxes were going to be reduced by that much, they eliminated their Alzheimer's research program, saying that they would rather spend their money on buying back stock than engaging in pharmaceutical research to deal with the most expensive element of the Medicare program, Alzheimer's, and similarly, Medicare.

Oh, and, by the way, every family in America is affected by dementia and Alzheimer's either directly or indirectly.

So, there you go, the great tax scam.

Now, let me talk about another thing. You may not have known this, but this is infrastructure week in America. Now, the President is off tweeting, as he did on Sunday, which is the beginning of the week, that he was concerned about China. He was concerned about a company called ZTE, which is a big Chinese telecom company that manufactures smartphones or not-so-smart phones.

It seems as though those phones can be used for espionage, and that is why our military will not allow military members to own phones manufactured by this company and not allow these phones to be sold on military bases around the world, because, guess what, China is able to use them, we believe, for espionage purposes, that is, to gather all the information that comes off the smartphone.

So this is infrastructure week, but, apparently, the President, in his tweet, said he is concerned about the lost jobs in China; and, therefore, he has ordered the Commerce Department to end the restrictions on this Chinese telecom company so that that company can buy some things from the United States and can then have a lot of jobs in China. Gee, Mr. President, I thought it was about making America great again, not making China great again.

But I digress. Do you recognize this picture? This is a picture of the Interstate 5 bridge just north of Seattle, and

on the other side of this river is Vancouver, British Columbia. American infrastructure, this is infrastructure week in America, the President is off worrying about jobs in China.

I am worried about infrastructure in America. We have some 56,000 bridges in America that are deficient, subject to collapse. Oh, Interstate 5, that is just a little road out on the West Coast that goes from Canada to Mexico, through Washington, Oregon, and California. It is the artery of commerce on the West Coast, and it has an infrastructure problem.

A little closer to my home is this. This is the largest waterfall in America, and, I would dare say, would rival the great falls on the Zambezi River in Africa. This is one big waterfall, or is this a spillway on the largest dam in America? Well, it is both.

It is the spillway at the Oroville Dam that failed a winter ago-- actually two winters ago now. An infrastructure problem just down river from this massive waterfall is a place called Marysville and Yuba City and Live Oak, communities that I represent--200,000 people had maybe an hour to evacuate. Had it not stopped raining, an emergency spillway over here, which was being overtopped, would have failed, and a 30-foot wall of water would have descended upon the town of Oroville in about 30 minutes and downriver in about 2 hours.

Infrastructure in America: 56,000 bridges, tens of thousands of dams, and we have $1.6 trillion taken out of the Treasury, and we wonder why we cannot repair our roads, our water systems, our sanitation systems. It is about that--what was it?--a movie. I forget the name of it now: ``Show Me the Money.'' Well, here is where the money went, to the top 1 percent.

And the President decides that he ought to have an infrastructure plan and he ought to have an infrastructure week, so he develops an infrastructure plan. Here it is, the President's infrastructure plan. It actually was said to be a $1.2 trillion infrastructure plan, and then, you know, we do what we kind of do around here, we read the details, and it was one of those ``OMG'' moments.

The details are: Wait a minute, Mr. President, I know you are worried about jobs in China, but if you are worried about jobs in the United States, your infrastructure plan doesn't measure up. What it actually does, it cuts some--this is over 10 years--$122 billion out of highway safety.

The TIGER grants, which are grants for special projects, some in my district, to repair a two-lane road, which is known as Death Valley, those are gone. Amtrak--anybody travel on Amtrak? Well, they are going to take a--what is that?--$7.5 billion cut; Rural Air Services, half a billion; Army Corps of Engineers, we are talking floods here, we are talking floods in Houston. Well, what do we do there? Oh, yeah. Well, we are going to cut that, too.

The infrastructure plan was a paper tiger. There is no money. In fact, when you added up the money, it was actually less than what we spend today.

We need a real plan. We need A Better Deal for America, and it is the determination of my party, the Democratic Party here, that we can and we must provide A Better Deal for America. Not just in infrastructure, which I will talk about in a moment, but in education, in the environment, in jobs, job training, wages, business opportunities, trade policy. All of these things are part of our program, which we like to call it A Better Deal for America.

It is not the phony-baloney infrastructure program that the President proposed. It is a program that has the potential, if we could enact the laws, to really build a proper infrastructure.

And as we do that, an issue that my team has been talking about for the better part of 8 or 9 years now--this little placard is getting worn out--we call it ``Make it in America.''

We are pleased that the President has taken up that subject. In his speeches during the campaign, in his programs that he put forth, he talks about Making it in America, and I suppose that is why he tweeted out that he was concerned about Chinese jobs and making China great again.

But the Making it in America agenda is based on several things. First of all, a real infrastructure program. There are several that we have proposed, one of which was, unfortunately, made difficult to put in place because of the tax program that the President and the Republicans put forth.

What we wanted to do--remember that money I talked about Apple bringing home? We wanted to take that money that Apple and other corporations had stashed overseas and bring that money back to America, put it into an infrastructure bank, giving the corporations an opportunity to earn a good interest on that and maybe even a profit over time, and use that infrastructure bank to finance infrastructure programs of all kinds: highways, rail projects, upgrading Amtrak, looking at the water systems, the sanitation systems of America.

It could have worked. It has been talked about for years. But with the tax scam having gone into place, that money just came back from overseas and now winds its way to people that already have a lot of money and is used for buying back stock, not used for research and development, which we would have had in the tax plan that we put together.

The gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Delaney) had put together this piece of legislation--bipartisan, could have, should have, would have if the Republicans had cared to work with the Democrats on a real tax plan that would be used to build the infrastructure.

There was a better deal, A Better Deal for America, and a good deal for the corporations and for the wealthy, because as you grow the American economy, we know that people go to work. We know that that then grows the economy, and the entire ship is lifted up by the tide that we would have put in place with that tax program that, unfortunately, was not even heard in committee, not even given a 5- second review.

But, anyway, we need to move on. The ranking member is a top Democrat on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Mr. DeFazio, has proposed a piece of legislation for the highway system and transit that he calls a ``Penny for Progress.'' It would have increased the Federal excise tax by a percent--by 1 cent. Not a percent, by 1 cent.

And then over the next 20 to 30 years, allow that to increase with inflation and use that to pay back about $400 billion of bonds that would be issued--not much different than the infrastructure bank proposal in which we would use the revenue flow from the excise tax to pay off these bonds so that in the next decade we would not only have the money we presently have, which is about $500 billion or $600 billion over a 10-year period, plus this $450 billion, maybe $500 billion of new money from the Penny for Progress program, and then we can really get things going.

We figure that if we could have done that--and we are not giving up-- we could probably employ 16 million Americans building the infrastructure of America. That is our goal. We are looking forward to A Better Deal for Americans, one in which there is a real infrastructure program, not a phony-baloney, pie-in-the-sky paper talk but not real talk, an infrastructure program that can really develop this Nation.

We are not just looking at the transportation highway system and transit systems. We are also looking at broadband. I represent a large rural community. You can't get internet service out there, let alone broadband service. How can you grow a rural community if you are disconnected from the modern economy? And, unfortunately, too many of my people are.

We need research. I talked about Pfizer taking their tax cut, billions, not investing it in research, not investing it in Alzheimer's, but rather investing it in their stock price. We need that kind of research because from the research comes tomorrow's businesses, comes the next opportunities that are out there.

We need to make sure the wages across America are good. That is why we stand with those organizations that are able to bargain collectively and raise the wage rate of Americans in whatever business, in whatever sector of the economy they may be in.

Another proposal that I will soon be talking about is a much better deal for our maritime industry. It wasn't more than three decades ago that we had about 500 ships that were built in America, they were flagged by American laws, and they had American

mariners on it. Today, we have less than 80.

We need to rebuild our commercial shipbuilding opportunities. We need to be able to build ships in America for the export of oil and natural gas, a strategic national asset, because our military, while it may fly here and there, it depends upon shipments across the ocean.

I can tell you one thing: We cannot depend upon China, or someone other than our own ships, to deliver our military, wherever they may need to be.

We are going to introduce a bill in the coming weeks that we would call ``Energizing the American Maritime Industry.'' Thousands upon thousands of jobs in the shipyards of America; and, when those ships come online, thousands of jobs for American mariners and American security.

A better deal for America includes a lot of different elements: Better education system, better wages, better infrastructure, better research, and better family opportunities across this Nation.

I draw the attention of my colleagues--on both the Democratic and Republican side--to where my Republican colleagues had taken the previous hour. They wanted to talk about the tax cut.

Well, I am going to end up with this, some real news headlines a couple of weeks ago: ``Republican Tax Cuts to Fuel Historic U.S. Deficits: CBO''--the Congressional Budget Office--as reported April 9, 2018, by Reuters; ``Deficit to Top $1 Trillion Per Year by 2020, CBO Says''--the Congressional Budget Office--reported in The Washington Post on April 9, 2018; ``CBO: GOP Policies Add Nearly $1.6 Trillion to Deficit,'' reported by Axios; and ``wider than previously expected deficits and a mostly temporary spurt in economic growth,'' reported by the Wall Street Journal.

If you are looking for a better deal for America, take a look at what our Democrats are proposing. It is a good program. It covers all of the elements that are necessary to see this country remain the wealthiest, remain the strongest, the most vibrant, the most entrepreneurial, and the most opportunity for every American, no matter where they may start in their life. We want all of them to end up with a better life, and we intend to put before them a better deal.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the memory of Janice Corbett, a fixture of the UC Davis community who will truly be missed.

Janice was the living embodiment of Aggie Pride. She graduated from UC Davis in 1994, having been an active member of the campus community from the moment she arrived as a freshman. From serving on the Picnic Day Board and the Dean's Student Advisory Committee to working for the student government,

ASUCD, she was truly committed to her fellow students.

Janice's commitment did not end there, however. In 2003, she began working for the Cal Aggie Alumni Association, helping to connect alumni of her beloved alma mater across the country and the world. In 2013, she got her dream job: ASUCD Business Officer. It was a role that she saw as the center of everything UC Davis, and she was a champion for students in that role, bringing her incredible passion for mentoring students to the heart of her work.

Across campus and the entire Davis community, she was seen as a great colleague, but an even better friend, affectionately known as ``Mama Warrior'' during her battle with cancer. Her Aggie spirit was always evident, but perhaps more important was the example she set, inspiring countless others to live a life in service others.

Janice loved her family, including her husband, Larry, and sons, Anthony and Dominic, as well as her many dear friends. I know that they, along with the entire UC Davis community, join me in celebrating her memory.

Mr. Speaker, it is good to be back here on the floor to talk about a good deal, a better deal, and a raw deal. But before I get into a discussion about how we can move this Nation forward and how our colleagues on the other side are really taking us in the wrong direction, I want to put this up for us to take a look at.

I suspect I caught your attention having it upside down. I did that on purpose.

I often start these discussions with this. It is from FDR, one of his great speeches. 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 keep coming to this because it is a statement of values. It is a statement of direction. It is a statement of what I believe we should be doing as Members of Congress and as leaders of this Nation.

``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.''

My Democratic colleagues and I take this to heart, and we try to structure our policies, our programs, and the direction in which we want our country to go along this line, to make sure that those in our Nation, those in our community, those in our States, and even within our families, that they have enough--enough of the wealth of this Nation so that they can enjoy the fruits of their work, so that as they labor that 8 hours or 10 hours or 12 hours a day that they put in, it provides them with enough income so that they can have what we learned from our Founding Fathers: happiness.

That is not where we are today. That is not what is happening today. Yes, the economy is moving. Yes, the unemployment rate is down. But this Congress has just passed a monumental tax scam back in December, presumably to grow the economy, and when you look at that, it is not a better deal, which is what we Democrats want for America. We want a better deal, one in which healthcare costs come under control, where prescription drugs can be available, where we have a real infrastructure program that actually will build the sanitation systems, the water systems, dealing with those communities like those in Michigan that have contaminated water and those in my State of California where the wells go dry--and if they are not dry, those wells are contaminated.

We want a better deal for America so that the minimum wage actually provides sufficient income so that a family cannot only survive, but be able to pay the rent, be able to educate their kids, be able to put food on the table, and maybe even have a vacation.

We want a better deal for America. We want a country that is internationally competitive. We want a better deal for America's mariners, not where the maritime industry continues to decline as it has for the last 20, 30 years, but rather where it is built up.

Legislation such as I proposed that would require that a certain percentage, a small percentage, of the natural gas, one of our vital natural resources; and our oil, another vital natural resource, that it be shipped overseas on American ships with American sailors, who can continue to provide the necessary support for our military so that our shipyards can build those LNG container ships as well as the oil ships.

We want a better deal for America. That is what we are here for. There are so many things. How about an education? Why should it be that here in America the Federal Government provides student loans, not at the lowest possible interest rate, which would be the borrowing rate for the Federal Government plus maybe one-half of a percent for administrative purposes, but oh, no, our Federal Government charges maybe twice as much as what the Federal Government could actually borrow money for. So the markup is like 100 percent.

That is a raw deal for America. And we tried to change that with policy changes that would allow for the refinancing of student loans. We want a better deal for those students as they come out of school, not burdened by heavy debt, but, rather, able to start a family, buy a car, buy a home, start a small business. But oh, no, somehow our Republican colleagues won't consider refinancing student loans. Americans are able to refinance their homes, but not their student loans. Something is wrong here. We want a better deal for America. There are so many policies.

We want a strong, capable military, but we also want a smart military. We want a government that will protect us from cyber hacking. Look what has happened to America. We basically have allowed the Russians to hack into our energy systems, into our power grids. That is not a good deal for America. So where is the Federal Government stopping that? What action has the President taken to protect our electorate, to protect our policies?

There is one raw deal after another--when we offer a better deal, an active Federal Government that will protect us in cybersecurity. That is what we want. We can't get it. We can't do that now because our Republican colleagues are controlling the House. What they offered us was a tax scam that is leading to one raw deal after another raw deal.

Let's understand exactly what has happened here with this tax policy. Perhaps we could see it best here. In the tax scam, the GOP gives to the rich and makes every other American pay for it. They do it in just three easy steps.

First of all, they cut taxes for the rich. I don't know what you have heard about this tax deal that passed with great fanfare just before Christmas and the President went down to Mar-a-Lago just after he signed it. He talked to all of his rich buddies and said: I have made you so much more wealthy. Indeed, he did--$1.5 trillion-plus, plus more than that. Tax cuts, who got them? Eighty-three percent of all of that money went to American corporations and to the top 1 percent--$1 trillion and more. It is a raw deal for Americans--a tax scam of unprecedented proportions, foisted upon the American public as though somehow it would be good for them. That is step one.

They said this tax bill will pay for itself. The essence of trickle- down economics is what it was. And so what is the next thing that happens? Well, when they passed this bill, there wasn't a deficit hawk to be found on the Republican side of this House. Not one word did I hear from the deficit hawks as they ramped through this tax scam without one public hearing here in the House of Representatives. No accountant came in, no tax lawyer came in on a public hearing. Slam, bang, done. It was done--done in for Americans.

Oh, the deficit hawks weren't exterminated. They are not an endangered species. They just simply migrated out of town. Guess what? They are back. The deficit hawks are back, and they are back with a vengeance. They are back with a plan that will rip the guts out of programs that Americans depend upon: Social Security,

Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps. Oh, yes, they are back, because they exploded the deficit.

They exploded the deficit. We will have close to a $1 trillion deficit this year. It started at $440 billion before the great tax scam and now added on to it. Next year--let's just take a look.

People say: Oh, you are just a politician. You are just up here talking. Here is some real news, not fake news. Real news. And this comes from--well, let's see, ``Republican tax cuts to fuel historic deficits: CBO,'' reported by Reuters, April, 2018.

``Deficit to top $1 trillion per year by 2020, CBO says,'' reported in The Washington Post, April 9, 2018.

``CBO: GOP policies add nearly $1.6 trillion to deficit,'' Axios, April 9, 2018.

Here is one in The Wall Street Journal: ``. . . wider than previously expected budget deficits and a mostly temporary spurt in economic growth.'' Real news, not fake news.

So the deficit has exploded and so the deficit hawks return to town, and what do they want? Well, now they demand big cuts--big, beautiful cuts to: Medicare, nearly $1 trillion; Social Security, half a trillion; education; Medicaid. That is what the deficit hawks want because they have come to understand that their big, beautiful tax scam really is sending this country into a huge deficit for years to come.

So here is what they propose to do: Republicans will cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid to pay for their tax scam. Says who? Says the Speaker of the House. ``Ryan says Republicans to target welfare, Medicare, Medicaid spending in 2018,'' his words reported in The Washington Post, December 6, 2017.

``Top Republicans are already talking about cutting Medicare and Social Security next,'' reported by Vox news, December 20, 2017.

``House GOP Budget Plan Cuts Medicare and Social Security,'' The Atlantic.

``Trump Proposes to Cut Medicare and Spend Big on Wall, Defense''-- his budget. You heard some of my colleagues talk about this earlier.

So what did the tax scam bring us? A raw deal--a raw deal for millions upon millions of Americans.

We want to do it better. We want a better deal for Americans. We can control prescription drugs if we had the votes. We could allow the Federal Government to negotiate prices for drugs given to or provided for Medicare recipients, Medicaid recipients, and others. We could do it. It is a simple law.

We can do an expansion. We can maintain the expansion of the Affordable Care Act so that some 16 million, 18 million Americans could stay on Medicaid around the country. In California, 3.5 million Americans are potentially going to lose their healthcare insurance if the Republicans have their way with Medicaid cuts.

That is a lot of people. That is a lot of families that are not going to have insurance. The majority of children now born in California and in many other States are on Medicaid. We call it Medi-Cal in California. So what of them? What of those children? What kind of a healthy start will they have?

Speaking of Healthy Start, it was one of the programs that the President proposed be cut. What sense does that make? All so that the tax scam can give $1.5 trillion to American corporations and to the 1 percent. Trickle-down economics--oh, they said it works. Really? They say it works. Does it really work?

Well, let's take an example. I talked a moment ago about drugs. The most expensive illnesses in this Nation are dementia and Alzheimer's. One dollar out of every $5 spent by Medicare today is spent for that. And as the baby boomer population grows and a percentage of our population grows into their later years, Alzheimer's is going to bust the bank.

One of the great American drug companies, Pfizer, had a major Alzheimer's research program underway to look for that miracle drug to understand what Alzheimer's is all about, how the brain works or doesn't work. So they received a $3 billion or $4 billion tax reduction in the GOP tax scam. They immediately turned around, terminated the Alzheimer's research program that they were conducting, and spent the money on stock buybacks and increased dividends.

Do you know what that does? A stock buyback will increase the price per share because there are fewer shares outstanding. Do you know who benefits? You got it: the corporation executives, because their pay is based upon an increase in the value of the stock--not in more and better drugs, not in hiring more people, not in more research, but only by manipulating the price of the stock earnings per share.

That is what the tax scam did, and it is repeated all across this country. Oh, I know, they promised a one-time bonus, not an increase over the years in the salaries and the wages paid to workers, but a one-time bonus. Less than 13 percent of the reduced tax benefit to corporations has gone to pay for salaries and wages.

That is what the tax scam did. It is the ultimate trickle down. The Democrats want a better deal for America. We have had enough raw deals. We know that there is a possibility should our proposals on infrastructure be taken seriously by our Republican majority: programs such as Peter DeFazio's A Penny for Progress, with serious infrastructure, over time putting 16 million people to work; programs such as I proposed dealing with the export of natural gas and oil and that it be on American ships--not all of it, just a small percentage of it. We could build 50 to 100 ships and put mariners to work and, at the same time, provide the necessary ocean transport for our military.

We need real Make It In America policies, not something soft and fluffy, but real, strong Make It In America policies, so if we are going to spend your taxpayer dollars, those taxpayer dollars would be spent on goods and services made in America.

How many years have I been talking about Make It In America policies?

Through our efforts, we were able to increase, a little bit, the percentage of made in America for the highway dollars. We are not where we ought to be. We ought to bump that up to 80, 90, 100 percent so that we can really manufacture once again in America.

All the talk of the President doesn't deal with this unless you write a law that says your tax dollars will be spent on American-made equipment and services, not on stuff imported from China. No.

We are going to continue to push the Make It In America policy as one of the elements of a better deal, a real deal, and not a raw deal. You are going to hear a lot about this in the days to come. You will hear a lot about this in the days to come because we believe Franklin Delano Roosevelt when he said the test of our progress is not when we add more to the abundance of those who have much.

The test of progress is an F grade given to the President and to the GOP, to my Republican colleagues, when they passed the great tax scam of 2017 and gave a trillion dollars-plus to the superwealthy, to the Wall Street bankers, and to America's big, wealthy corporations that had so much gas they didn't know what to do with it before there was a tax cut. So they give it back to Wall Street.

The test of our progress is not when we add more to the abundance of those who have much--and here is where we are as Democrats--it is whether we provide enough. It is for those young mothers out there who need maternity care and who will deliver a baby on the Medicaid programs across this Nation. Those are the people we care about.

We want young men and women to have a good education. I am sure the superwealthy can take care of themselves. They don't need a Pell grant. They don't need more. But I will tell you that a child who, let's say, is 16, 17, ready to go to college and his father is earning a minimum wage, there is no way that family can support that kid in college. He will take out a loan and the Federal Government will rip him off with an interest rate twice what the Federal Government can borrow money for.

The test of our progress is what we do for those who have too little. That is our mantra. That is how we see a better deal for Americans. FDR was right. We will work to see that it happens in America.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the memory of Leonard Stefanelli, a native Californian who embodied the American spirit of hard work and determination.

Leonard was the son of immigrants in San Francisco, and after graduating high school he took a job as a garbage collector for the Sunset Scavenger company. Through his hard work, he quickly rose up the ranks, and just 12 years after he started out on the back of a truck, he became president of the company.

Not content with his personal success however, Leonard used his role as president to begin implementing changes that would improve the entire industry. He reformed the way trash was collected in San Francisco, doing away with the old time-intensive practices that often resulted in backbreaking work for collectors. He continued modernizing both the company and the industry throughout his career.

Leonard was also proud of his service in the U.S. Navy aboard submarines, and of course, his family, including his wife, Virginia, and his children, Joseph and Gina. I know that they, along with the rest of his family and friends, join me in celebrating his life and his memory.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the memory of Dann Spear, a 40-year resident of Yuba County, who passed away unexpectedly on February 22, 2018.

Dann was born to William C. ``Doc'' and Margie Spear in Ventura, California in 1954. He grew up around horses and livestock, and worked at the family business at the Ojai Valley Inn Riding Stables and Matalija Ranch in his youth. He graduated from Nordhoff High School in 1972, and while attending Cal Poly S.L.O., he competed in college rodeo and went on to compete successfully in professional rodeo in the team roping event.

He married the love of his life, Roberta Eskew Spear, in 1974. After attending Cal Poly, they moved back to Ojai, where Dann began working in the construction industry. After two years, they realized their dream of owning a small ranch and moved to Marysville, California, where Dann continued to compete in professional rodeo and continued his construction career. Dann worked in the Public Works Department of Sutter County for 30 years, where he loved helping the people of Sutter County. Dann also had a strong faith and love for the Lord in a quiet way and always treated people like family.

Dann and Roberta had two sons, Carson and Brandon. They were involved in 4-H, little league, and high school rodeo, and they never

missed a game of Wheatland Pirates football. Dann's boys grew up to become a Captain in the Army and Iraq War Veteran and a Sergeant in the Yuba County Sheriffs Department. Dann dearly loved his daughters-in- law, Erin, who is an estate planning attorney at Guth & Changaris, and Cotie, who is the Nursing Administrator for Yuba County Corrections.

While raising his family, Dann founded the Museum of the Forgotten Warriors in 1983. Dann had always been interested in military history, and after meeting several World War Two Flying Tigers Veterans, it inspired the start of his military memorabilia collecting. Dann's collection and passion for telling veterans' stories continued to grow and shape the museum.

Dann enjoyed every minute of life and I know that his spirit and his memory will be cherished by his family, friends, and many others throughout the community.

Mr. Speaker, I see my colleagues from the great South

are here, and they should be listening very carefully as we discuss infrastructure. I might like to draw the attention of the House to this, if I might, a fellow that we know etched in marble at the FDR Memorial: ``The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much''--keep in mind the tax bill that passed here and was signed by the President in January. ``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.''

These are words to legislate by, wouldn't you say?

So I ask my colleagues to please keep this in mind and not leave right in the middle of a good discussion. If we are to pay attention to what is important here, keep in mind those who have little.

It turns out that the great tax cut was probably best described by the President. Shortly after he signed the bill, he went down to his Mar-a-Lago club and told his friends who had gathered there, all of whom were the great beneficiaries of that tax cut: I have made you so much more wealthy.

Indeed, that is exactly what the tax cut did. It made the wealthy in America even more wealthy to the tune of several hundred billion dollars. The American corporations saw their tax rate fall from 35 to 20 percent, and the top income earners in America saw their tax rate go down by 2\1/2\ percent. It was marvelous if you have a great deal of money, because 80 percent-plus of the $1.5 trillion--perhaps more--of the benefits went to the top 10 percent: American corporations and the superwealthy.

Is there such a thing as trickle-down economics? Is there really a probability that the superwealthy are going to buy more cars and build new homes--palatial palaces--in America with all of the new money that they received? The answer is probably not in America but probably on some island somewhere where they can use the new tax breaks for foreign investment that are in this tax bill.

Oh, they were going to close the loopholes for corporations and individuals who wanted to go offshore. No, it didn't happen. Instead, new offshore tax advantages are created for American corporations.

Were inversions eliminated? No. Corporate inversions are not eliminated. They are, in fact, continued and increased.

How did this come to pass? It probably came to pass because there was not one substantive hearing in the Ways and Means Committee and in the Senate Finance Committee on the most important tax bill that has passed out of Congress in the last 25 years.

So now we live with this. Now we live with the situation where the Treasury Department announced a couple of weeks ago that the tax revenues for the 2018 fiscal year--that is now--are down by a couple of hundred billion dollars.

So what is going to happen? When the tax bill was moving along, all of the deficit hawks--and there used to be, I don't know, a couple hundred of them over here on my Republican colleagues' side--left town in December. There was not one word about the new $1.5 trillion addition to the deficit. But like most migratory birds, they are going to come back when the weather warms up in Washington, and they are going to go after the deficit with a vengeance. I will bet they are not going to propose that we go back and clean up the tax mess that was created.

My guess is what they are going to do is go after programs. I think we know what programs they are, because the Speaker of this esteemed House has very clearly laid out in previous budgets that he wrote when he was head of the Budget Committee that he is going to go after Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid--the programs of the social safety net.

I had a phone call just a few moments ago from a constituent in my district, saying:

You have got to understand that more and more of your

constituents are getting elderly. They are getting

Alzheimer's, and they need care. Their husband or their wife

needs respite care. What about the programs for that?

I had the answer. It doesn't look good, because we know what the Speaker said he wanted when he was chairman of the Budget Committee, and unless he is having an epiphany, he is likely to want it again. In fact, I believe he already said they are looking at cutting Medicare and Medicaid.

So what does that mean for the working men and women who are taking care of their parents? It means there are tough times ahead. It means that the proposed discussion about the reduction in Medicaid is $1,400,000,000,000 over the next decade. It means that $500 billion will be cut from Medicare.

So, if you are a senior, you should worry. If you are among the working men and women of America whose father or mother is now a senior, you should worry.

The most expensive illness now and in the future is Alzheimer's. So what of Alzheimer's research? It is going to get reduced.

Oh, and that corporate tax cut for Pfizer? Do you remember how happy they were to have the extra $12 billion? Are they going to spend it on Alzheimer's research? No, they are not. They stopped their Alzheimer's research. Instead, guess what they are going to do with the money that they were investing in Alzheimer's research. They are going to use it, together with their tax cut money, to buy back their stock which has the marvelous result of increasing the value of their stock because there are fewer shares out there.

It is brilliant for the managers and for the corporate officers because their pay is based on the stock price. What a marvelous way to use the tax cut: end research on the most expensive illness in America, Alzheimer's and dementia, and instead use that money to buy back stock so that you can increase your pay as the corporate president.

Now, there is a good, American, capitalistic idea. That is where we are.

So today we had a hearing on infrastructure in the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, a great opportunity to understand the President's infrastructure plan. Wow. It is big and it is beautiful, he says, and it is going to provide a gazillion jobs.

We took a look at it, and we said: Where is the beef? Where is the money? $200 billion over a 10-year period, $20 billion a year, said to be new money.

And then you look at the President's budget proposal and you tee it up with the infrastructure proposal, and you say: Wait a minute. What kind of shell game are you playing here? Your budget removes over $200 billion from infrastructure, and you come over here on your infrastructure plan and you say you have $200 billion of new money.

No, you don't. You really don't have $200 billion of new money. You have $200 billion of repurposed money in programs that actually devolve the Nation's infrastructure back to the States and the counties so that we will have a disconnect between an interstate in one State and an interstate in another State that connect at the State lines, and one is repaired and the other is not.

So infrastructure and transportation is a national network. But in this case, what happens is that the States are said to be given the responsibility and the Federal Government will simply pick and choose among those programs that the administration happens to like.

I represent a rural area. Sure, it is nice to have an extra $50 billion for rural infrastructure. That would be great.

But what is the definition of rural?

It is 55,000 people.

How much territory? Is it an entire State?

Well, there is no State that is rural, then.

In a county? In a multitude of counties? In a metropolitan statistical area?

We don't know.

But I will tell you that I do have a rural area. I have got two cities, Yuba City and Marysville together, with 100,000 people. Rural is 10 miles down the road.

So where is the line around this rural area?

I am concerned, particularly because the Federal Government will maintain control of that money. It doesn't go out by formula, at least as we now look at the language.

So it is a grand, a glorious, a wonderful, spectacular infrastructure plan. Incidentally, there is a small problem for

cities and counties. Presently, if the Federal Government is involved in a levee project to prevent floods, an interstate highway or one of the federally designated highways, or an airport, they will usually come up with somewhere between 70 and 80 percent of the money. That is all well.

Well, let's see. It is 70 to 80 percent Federal and another 20 to 30 percent local money. In the President's proposal, that flips. The State and the local government come up with 70 to 80 percent and the Federal Government comes up with 20 to 30 percent. The role of the Federal Government is diminished. It becomes the minor partner, and the State or local community becomes the major partner.

I had a meeting today with Hamilton City, a community of about 1,600 people right on the Sacramento River with a levee that is maybe good for a 10-year high water, but not for any extended amount of flood beyond what normally occurs. They have been trying for 30 years to raise the money locally to match the 80 percent by the Federal Government. They did it.

Are they going to be able, going into the future, to complete that flood project if this program goes into effect and they have got to come up with 80 percent of the money?

It won't happen.

I would dare say, all across this Nation, with the possible exception of Houston, Texas, no community is going to be able to come up with 70 to 80 percent of the money for a flood control project.

This is a role that has traditionally been the Army Corps of Engineers and the Federal Government. But, no. In their infrastructure proposal, this administration flips it over so that now the great burden lies with the local government.

``Oh, that is fine,'' you say. Well, I think not. All across this Nation, small communities, rural communities, and even urban communities do not have the resources.

So here we are. Here we are in a situation where we had a massive tax cut that benefits the superwealthy and American corporations. The American corporations clearly indicate--not from me; go look at the Wall Street folks that have done the analysis--clearly indicate that that tax reduction, which is now in the pockets of the corporations, is not being used for higher wages, is not being used for the plant and equipment and new jobs above the 16 percent. The rest of the money is used for acquisitions and buying back stock. So much for trickle down.

Of course, how much can the superwealthy possibly spend? How much can you possibly spend on your McMansion? How much can you possibly spend on a fleet of Mercedes?

The bottom line of it is, when it comes to infrastructure, there is no money. It is gone. It disappeared with the tax cut.

Think about what could have been done if that tax bill had actually had hearings in which the Democrats could have put forth proposals that we have introduced in bills--proposals to repatriate the offshore earnings of corporations with a lower tax and then use that money for infrastructure. We would have real dollars for an infrastructure program to the tune of maybe $50 billion to $100 billion over a period of time.

But, no. No hearings, no amendments from Democrats. No, not at all.

We could have used that tax bill to create infrastructure banks so that there would be a financing mechanism for those small communities around the Nation that needed to build a road, needed to build a levee, needed to build broadband infrastructure for their community.

But no, that didn't happen either. Not one hearing. Not one Democratic amendment to that tax bill. Therefore, we go into the great infrastructure program where we really need to do some things.

What do we need to do?

Some of you may have noticed just 12, 13 months ago the man-made creation of the biggest waterfall in the world, Oroville Dam, and the breakdown of the spillway. And 200,000 of my constituents had to evacuate within hours because that spillway, the emergency spillway next to it, was being overtopped by the river and eroded at the base and a 30-foot wall of water almost descended upon those 200,000 people. The number of deaths would be unknown, but it would have been in the thousands because they couldn't get out of town fast enough.

Thankfully, the rain stopped and the reservoir receded. Had it not, had it continued and the water continued to spill over the emergency spillway here, it would have been an unmitigated disaster.

Why did this fail?

This failed for lack of repair, for lack of maintenance. It is just one example of the thousands of dams in America that could fail. We saw this potential failure in Puerto Rico with one of the major reservoirs there. Fortunately, a third hurricane didn't occur.

Or maybe you are interested in bridges. This isn't a picture of a bridge to nowhere. This happens to be one of the main bridges on Interstate 5, an interstate highway system that goes from Vancouver to Tijuana, Mexico. It goes down through Oregon, Washington, and California. It is the major trade route on the West Coast. This is about 7 years ago. The bridge fell down.

I could put a picture up here showing another bridge that failed on the Mississippi River, in the Twin Cities area. We could put thousands of pictures up here of bridges that could fail and have failed.

This is an infrastructure structure issue. Where is the money to rebuild this?

Well, it is in the hands of the corporations who are spending it to buy back their stock and to increase the stock price so that the corporate officers can have a higher paycheck.

Oh, did I forget to mention how generous they were in bonuses?

We are talking about one-time bonuses here. We are not talking about increasing the paycheck over time. We are talking about one-time bonuses.

I do like my San Francisco-based Wells Fargo, that so generously said: ``We are going to increase the pay for the minimum wage workers.''

Good for you. You are obeying the State laws that require minimum wage increases. Good for you, obeying the law. Take credit, if you will, but it is not out of the generosity.

Where is the money for all this?

It is gone.

What if we had a chance in that tax bill to talk about a program the Democrats have been putting forth for the last year?

It is A Better Deal for America, a tax policy that actually provides benefits to the working men and women of America and the families that are on the edge of poverty. It actually provides an infrastructure program that has real money--money that can be used to build the foundation for economic growth, money that can be used for employing people in high-paying construction jobs.

By the way, it is not at all clear--in fact, there are those of us who think this may actually be in the present infrastructure plan--all of the talk about Buy American, Build America. It appears that language in that infrastructure plan would do away with the Buy American provisions in highway infrastructure.

We can't let that happen. A Better Deal for America would be tax policy. It would be a program that would provide the education and training for the men and women who we need in our manufacturing sector.

Every 6 months, I do a manufacturing advisory organization meeting of manufacturers. Every time over the last 8 years we have met, they have come back with the very same concern. And that concern is: We need highly skilled workers.

How do you get highly skilled workers?

You train them. You provide the job training for those who have lost their jobs, for those who want to improve themselves.

Whatever happened in our high schools to technical training, vocational training?

It is critically important. The programs that are out there need this support. The programs where American unions have apprenticeship training are a critical way of building our economy. They are highly skilled men and women that earn a good, solid living as welders, plumbers, and technicians of all kinds. That is what we want. It takes money to do those things.

So what are we going to do?

I don't know how we are going to come back from this tax cut. It is not

going to be done anytime soon. But I know this: we are going to be really, really short of money. It has been estimated that in this current budget year, the deficit will reach $1 trillion.

I know that we are just weeks away from the return of the deficit hawks on this floor who are going to say: ``Oh, my goodness, the money is gone. We are going to have to make cuts. We can't have these kinds of deficits.''

I can hear them already. I hear the voices of the past and I hear the voices of the future. I know they are going to come back. They are going to go after programs that are absolutely essential.

We have got work to do. We have got things we need to do in America.

The American Society of Civil Engineers points out where we need work.

Aviation. We got a D for how good our aviation system is.

Bridges, C; dams, D; drinking water, D.

Is anybody here from Michigan?

Is anybody here from the Central Valley of California?

Shall we talk about water supplies?

I remember when I was in college, you would never go outside the United States and drink the water from the tap. Now you don't go to the United States and drink water from a tap, because there is a high probability that it is contaminated. We have seen this story. We have seen this story in Flint, Michigan. We have seen this up and down the Central Valley of California.

So what are we spending our money on?

Not on drinking water, not on energy systems, hazardous waste, or inland waterways.

Oh, this is a good one. If you are on the Mississippi and the Ohio River and you have got your tugboat and a fleet of barges, you depend upon the Federal Government lock system so that you can travel up and down the river.

If you are out there in the maritime and you are an international shipper and you want to go into one of the harbors on the East Coast, where is the money for dredging?

Well, it disappeared with the tax cuts. It is not there.

So is your ship going to run aground?

No, you won't let that happen. What you do is you will go to some other port.

Cuba. We love to talk about Cuba, so let's talk about Cuba. At Mariel, they are building an international port for the purpose of taking the new ships that are able to go through the Panama Canal, bring them to Cuba, offload them, and put them on a smaller ship so they can get into American harbors. Now, there is an American success story. We don't have the money to dredge our harbors, but we have the money for a new Mercedes for the superwealthy.

Parks and recreation. Ports. Rail systems.

Rails are doing pretty good, but not Amtrak. The President's budget proposes to cut Amtrak--to basically defund Amtrak. If you want to go on the East corridor here, if you want to go from Washington to Boston, if you want to take a plane, well, we know we have an aviation problem. If you want to take the train, I guess you are going to hop a freight train, because Amtrak isn't going to be around to run. That is the President's budget proposal.

Schools, D-plus.

Solid waste. Transit. Wastewater.

The American Society of Civil Engineers rate America in the D range. We should be so proud of the most advanced Nation in the world. No, I think not. I certainly wouldn't take pride in our infrastructure. But it takes money.

Where did the money go?

Well, it just happens I like charts.

The Trump infrastructure scam cuts more than $168 billion from existing transportation and infrastructure programs.

I haven't talked about this one.

Do you remember I told you about the flip--80 percent Federal, 20 percent local flipped to 20 percent Federal, 80 percent local, unless you happen to be a private investor. Do you want to buy Dulles International Airport or maybe Reagan National--excuse me, I promise not to do that. Whatever the name of that airport here is. Okay, I will say Reagan. The Reagan National Airport. Do you want to buy it? It is up for sale, according to the Trump administration. And, by the way, the Federal Government will come up with 80 percent of the money. Not a bad deal.

Slashes Federal investments and passes the buck back to the local governments. We just talked about that.

We haven't talked about the environmental programs, the environmental protection programs that are significantly harmed, reduced, gutted in the proposal. The Senate is going to speed up projects. Hello? Does anybody around here know that over the last two transportation programs this Congress, with Democrat and Republican support, significantly reduced the time for an infrastructure program to be done? It is not 14 years.

The laws that have been in place now for the last almost decade significantly reduced the processing time for infrastructure projects in which the Federal Government is involved in, without harming the vital environmental protections that are out there: clean water, clean air, all of those things. Anyway, they are gone.

We have a task before us. I see my Republican colleagues anxious to get up and engage me in a debate. If they want to, I could yield to them, and we could debate the wisdom of what has happened here, but that is not happening.

What is happening is there is an alternative, an alternative that we put forth from our side that, unfortunately, was not considered in the tax legislation.

We are going to be working on the infrastructure bill. I dare say that the President's infrastructure program is going nowhere in Congress. At least it shouldn't.

We are going to have to find the money as best we can. And I have an idea. Over the next 15 years, we are going to spend $1 trillion rebuilding our entire nuclear armaments. All of the delivery system, all of the bombs, all of the satellites, all rebuilt. So will Russia and so will China, and we are in the midst of a nuclear arms race--well into the second quarter of a new nuclear arms race, exceedingly expensive and exceedingly dangerous, because the delivery systems are stealthy, designed not to be observed. That is a problem because that increases the risk.

Maybe we can use some of that money to build the infrastructure to educate our kids, to provide for seniors who have Alzheimer's, to care for the caregivers that are taking care of their parents, to build an infrastructure program that really gives America a solid foundation for economic growth, one in which the research facilities are the most modern and in which the most advantageous research is conducted. Maybe we could find, amongst our choices here, money to build a highway system that is worthy of this Nation, one in which there are not potholes every 100 yards, one in which bridges don't collapse; that we can build water systems in which you can take tap water from every fountain in this Nation and drink it, without a concern about contamination of lead or something else. We could do that. We could make some choices.

We can go back and revisit the tax scam in which there are specific inducements for offshoring American jobs. Maybe we can do that.

Maybe we can look at some of the military spending and say: Why does it cost $1 billion to launch a satellite with one system and $90 million with another system to do the same thing? There are things we can do.

And, most of all, it is time for a better deal for America: a better deal for the working men and women, a better deal for the elderly, and a better deal for the children. That is what we need to do.

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