Floor Statements

Ms. Kaptur, you've gone too far. Thank you so very, very much for picking up.

Tonight is a very special night for California. We lit the holiday tree in front of the Capitol. It was a tree that came from a community very close to where I was raised in California. I was out there with the choir from Summerville High School in Tuolumne County, an area that I represented for some 20 years, and then others around the area. A beautiful, beautiful tree from the Stanislaus National Forest in California.

There really is much to celebrate and much to be concerned about in America. We are still a very great country. We're the strongest, wealthiest place on this Earth. We have incredible opportunity and potential. I saw it in those kids that were singing in front of the Nation's Capitol this evening. Yet there's so much pain, as was pointed out by you and our colleague from Houston earlier.

Americans care about each other. They deeply are concerned about what's going on in our communities, and they want solutions to the problem. That's our task. There's 435 of us here and over in the Senate another 100. And, of course, the President. It's our task to find the solutions. The President has put forth a very powerful program called the American Jobs Act. One piece of it has, fortunately, passed. It was passed just a few days after Veterans Day when I guess we were out at the parades, and we made promises to take care of the veterans. Fortunately, a piece of legislation did pass. Only one part of the American Jobs Act, though there's much more to do.

My colleagues, Ms. Kaptur, and the gentlelady from Houston, we're talking about a piece of it. The veterans piece provides employers a very powerful incentive to hire a veteran. A very, very powerful incentive. You can reduce your taxes by $2,600 to hire a veteran that's been unemployed; a long-term unemployed veteran, $5,600 reduction in your taxes; and in addition to that, the President proposed that if it is a veteran who is disabled as a result of their service, a $9,600 reduction in taxes.

That's right off the tax line. So we've got to get the message out to employers: Hire, put people back to work, the veterans. It's one of the elements the President has proposed in his American Jobs Act.

And you were so powerfully putting forward just a moment ago the issue of

the payroll tax deduction. It's going to end. There will be a tax increase for every American who is earning up to $106,000, a tax increase average of $1,500 across this Nation. We want to keep that tax reduction in place. We Democrats do not want a tax increase on the working middle class, no.

But again, as was pointed out just a moment ago, our Republican friends are saying, Well, that's a good idea, but where are you going to get the money? You can't get the money from those whose annual income is more than $1 million; $1 million a year annual income, you can't tax them. That's not fair to tax those people. They're the job creators.

Baloney. They're not the job creators any more than any other small business in the community who doesn't even come close to having an annual income of $1 million.

So let's be fair about this. They've had an enormous tax break over the last decade. It's time for them to come forward and to share in the burden of America and put Americans back to work. The American Jobs Act works.

Let me now turn to my colleague from New York.

Well, Ms. Kaptur, you're running this operation, so, please.

I thank my colleague from the great State of New York, picking up the east-west program once again.

If I might just interrupt you, Mr. Tonko.

You mentioned sound progressive policies. We've all been back home over Thanksgiving. I've talked to a couple of those people that are on that blue line way up there, and they're willing to pay a little more for fairness. But I also have heard from some who say, well, we can't do anything until you control Medicare. And what do they recommend in Medicare? They recommend extending the age from 65 to 67. And I'm going, What sense does that make?

When you consider that Medicare was started in 1964, 51 percent of those men and women over 65 had no health insurance. Today, virtually everyone over 65 has health insurance. It's Medicare. It is one of the solid bedrock programs that keeps people--seniors--from falling into poverty.

Back in 1964, 30 percent of the seniors were in poverty. Without Medicare, they would be in poverty again today. And yet our Republican colleagues want to terminate Medicare, literally turn Medicare over to the private insurance companies who I know, as a previous insurance commissioner, will not provide a reasonably priced policy or benefit to somebody who is 65 because those are the people that get sick.

Similarly, they have said repeatedly since the 1930s that they want to terminate Social Security. We hear that. We hear the background buzz around this building. They want to terminate Social Security. These are the programs that give American seniors the dignity and the opportunity not only to live a good life, but to even live, to stay alive.

Same tax rate, doesn't change at all.

Surcharge is only on the amount over $1 million.

Can I interrupt for just a second?

The American Jobs Act, which we're trying to push through this Congress to get men and women back to work, provides a tax reduction for the employer on wages less than $50 million. So for your childcare provider, for the small business person, the carpenter out there in the small business, they also get a 50 percent reduction in their payroll tax. So instead of 6.2, it goes to 3.1. So this isn't just for the wage earner. This is also for the business person.

So why don't they support this?

If I might, Ms. Kaptur, a fascinating piece of information came across my desk today, and it had to do with the Affordable Care Act, which our Republicans like to call ObamaCare. Hey guys, it's working. It's working.

You just talked about spendable income. Let's see here: 2.65 million seniors, because of the Affordable Care Act, had an average of $569 additional in their pocket as a result of the discount drug benefit program. Wow. It was incredible. It actually, the 50 percent discount on brand name drugs, saved $1.5 billion for 2,650,000 seniors. Saved $1.5 billion, an average of $569 per senior.

It's working. It's working. And also, very interesting, these kinds of statistics come across, and normally we ignore them. But the annual wellness program, 1,931,927 seniors were able to take advantage of the annual wellness program that is in the Affordable Care Act; 24,175,608 seniors took advantage of the free service program in the Affordable Care Act.

So when folks are out there and they're putting down ObamaCare, be careful. It's not a negative. It's a very, very strong positive.

And you'll like this one, Ms. Kaptur. Hang on a second. Ohio. One million, let's see here, 1,864,243 seniors took advantage of the affordable care and 50,178 seniors in Ohio took advantage of the discount, the drug discount. It's working. That's exciting.

This is legislation that we passed that's actually helping the seniors and the economy by putting money back in their pockets, rather than in the pockets of the pharmaceutical companies.

Excuse me for getting back into this, but Mr. Tonko gave me that look that says what about New York? 1,410,533 New York seniors were able to get free medical services, and 127,691 were able to take advantage of the 50 percent drug discount. Good for you. You voted for that act. I voted for that act, and I didn't even talk about California. Should I?

Yes. 1,962,809 seniors in California were able to get free medical services and 139,396 were able to take advantage of the 50 percent drug discount. $569 average savings for seniors. It's working. The Affordable Care program is working for seniors, and it's putting money back into our economy to grow this economy.

We also know that there are--I don't know the exact number--I think it's about 20-some million young men and women, age 21 to 26, are now back on to health insurance, their parents health insurance as a result of this law. We'll pick up that statistic as soon as I get my hands on it, but I think that's the number, over 20 million.

I thank you so very much.

Marcy Kaptur, thank you for grabbing the microphone early on. I was down with that Christmas tree and the lighting ceremony from California. I got here just in time to pick up a couple of these issues.

We know we can put men and women back to work. We have the tools. The question is whether this House has the will to do so and not increase our deficit. We can actually do this and not increase the deficit, take people that are not paying taxes now, put them back to work.

The Affordable Care Act is working. And we know that we can continue the

unemployment benefits, and there's a way of paying for it. You show it there on that. The super wealthy, it's time for them to pick up their fair share.

Thank you so very much for this wonderful evening and telling the story of the prosperous America that we can have once again. This is America. This is a great country. We have within our power to get back on our feet and to charge forward, and we really appreciate all that you're doing to make that happen in the great Midwest and in New York and in Houston.

It's for the 99 percent.

And 100 percent of Americans moving forward.

Mr. Speaker, it's good to be back, and I hope all of my colleagues had as enjoyable a Thanksgiving as I did with my family and with our constituents back in our districts.

We have much to be thankful for. After all, this is America, and this has always been the place of dreams. This is America. It's always been the place where people have found opportunity; where, whatever they wanted to do, they could achieve it; and it's still that America today.

But it's up to us, in the third year of this recession, to restore the American Dream, and there are ways that we can do it. And tonight, together with my colleagues who will soon be joining me, we will talk about various ways in which the Democrats in this House will and have made numerous proposals to restore the American Dream.

I was out in the district for five of the days that we were gone, talking to people. In fact, one fellow who has a book binding company-- a man who's 85 years old and is about to retire and turn that company over to his employees--was talking about the enormous strength of this Nation, and he was sharing the story of himself and his employees and the way in which they came here. And many struggled from very bad situations in other countries, but they came here with optimism. They came here with a true belief that in America you can make it, that if you follow the rules, if you work hard, you can make it. You can have a good life. You can take care of your family.

Unfortunately, for all too many Americans, that's not the case today. So restoring the American Dream is our task, and we can do it.

The President, more than 2 months ago, proposed the American Jobs Act, a proposal that would put 2 to 3 million Americans back to work immediately. And tonight, on the other side of this Nation's Capitol, the U.S. Senate is debating a portion of that American Jobs Act, a portion of it that is a very, very significant tax cut for men and women that are working. Their Social Security payments would be reduced by 50 percent. No longer would they pay 6.2 percent of their wages into the Social Security fund. They would pay 3.1 percent--and for their employers, the same reduction--providing a very powerful incentive for individuals to have money in their pockets, about $1,500 a year, money in their pockets so that they could participate in buying gifts for their children. As we look to Christmas, we know there are many, many Americans that are not going to be able to do that.

Mr. Speaker, it's time for us in this House to follow the lead of the President and to give every American worker, 98 percent of Americans, a very significant tax reduction, $1,500, by reducing that Social Security tax. And for their employers, the same. If their employers are up to $50 million of payroll, they can reduce, by 50 percent, their Social Security tax so that that employer has more money to hire people. That debate is going on in the U.S. Senate today. Unfortunately, here in this House, we've not been able to even take up that issue. We should, because it's part of what we must do to put Americans back to work, to give them a break.

Joining me in this discussion tonight as we talk about restoring the American Dream and about the things that we can do to make that happen is my colleague from the great State of New York (Mr. Tonko). We have often been here. We call ourselves the East-West Team.

It is good to see you back. I hope you had as good a Thanksgiving as I did, and I'm sure you worked as hard in your district as I did during those days. Please share with us, and welcome back.

Thank you so much.

The experiences that we have as we return to our districts and talk to our constituents and share with our families, these are the stories of life. These are the stories of real Americans that are out there. Not that we're not real. We've got a very special task as their Representatives to represent them here, and they do want jobs. They want to go back to work. We know that many of them are unable to find jobs.

In American Jobs Act, in addition to the tax issues I just talked about--and I must say we actually got something done just before the Thanksgiving recess--there was another provision, and that was for the veterans. This was part of the President's proposal that actually did become law. What he wanted to do--and we agreed with him--was to give veterans, those men and women that are out there fighting for this country in Iraq and in Afghanistan and even way back into the Vietnam War and the first Gulf War, a chance for a job. There's a very special tax provision that's totally paid for, not borrowed, that we actually voted out of here so that employers got a tax credit, which is a reduction in their taxes, for every veteran they hired--$5,600 for an unemployed veteran or $9,600 for a disabled veteran. I'm very, very pleased that we were able to do that for the veterans.

That's one very important slice of the American public that is facing unemployment; but there are many, many more. And if I can just pick up for a second on a couple of words you said; you talked about investment. In the American Jobs Act, there is a very, very important investment, and you mentioned it. It's the education investment. The President proposed that we spend about $30 billion to keep teachers in the classroom now so that our kids would be able to continue to learn. That's the future; and if they miss a year of learning, they're going to be behind the rest of their lives. And so he proposed that. It's still out there. It's open, and it hasn't had a chance to come forward yet. We'll see, maybe we can get that one done. That's a critical investment in our children. What's more important than our children.

Mr. Tonko, you were talking about the need for investment; and, indeed, in the area of education and research, critical functions, I do want to stay with that subject for a while.

Our colleague from the great State of Ohio, Ms. Betty Sutton, has joined us. Thank you very much for being with us this evening. I know you, too, had a family and a constituency to work with this last week, so please share with us your thoughts.

Well, indeed, you are carrying many pieces of legislation. I like your one--what was it, don't flush America down the drain--having to do with rebuilding our sanitation systems here in the United States.

I appreciate your correction of my characterization of the bill. Nonetheless, it's a great piece of legislation; and it's part of the Make It In America agenda, using our tax money, in this case to build the sanitation systems, the water systems, and requiring that that money be used to buy American-made equipment.

I have a bill that would do the same thing for solar and wind programs--wind turbines and solar, as well as for trains, buses and the like. It's our tax money; use it to buy American-made equipment. That's part of the Democratic agenda. And it works. I can give some examples a little later. I do want to thank you because there is nobody working harder in this entire Capitol building--Democrat, Republican, or the Senate--than you are in rebuilding the

manufacturing center of America, the great State of Ohio.

Now, Texas is a little far from Ohio, but you've got a few things going for you in Texas. Let me introduce Sheila Jackson Lee. Thank you for joining us once again.

Thank you very much. You are always on top of the issues and you're always so very, very correct. Sheila Jackson Lee, thank you for the enormous amount of work you have done for your constituents in the city of Houston.

You mentioned the supercommittee. We ought to spend at least a few moments on that. Everybody says it was a failure and they did not achieve the goal that was set out; however, the public needs to know that the legislation that set up the supercommittee actually reduced the deficit of the United States by $2.1 trillion. A $2.1

trillion reduction in the deficit in the legislation that established the supercommittee. One trillion of that is already going into place. The other $1.1 trillion, it was the specific task of the supercommittee to try to find out if there was a better way to make the cuts, or adding revenue. They were unable to put the revenue together, but the cuts remain, and those are going to go forward.

You're quite correct, Ms. Jackson Lee, that we do have the next 13 months, almost 14 months, to figure out a better way. Maybe it's revenue or less cuts. Maybe it's different cuts that are currently across the board in the Defense Department as well as in the discretionary funding. But we have a chance to do that. We have time to do that. It's not all lost. The deficit has been reduced. Now we need to do it in a smarter way, one that actually promotes American jobs, puts people to work, and creates more jobs and manufacturing in America.

Mr. Tonko, you come from a State that really started the great American Industrial Revolution and an area in which it actually began, the Hudson River Valley, so why don't we carry on our conversation here. You were talking about research, or take it wherever you would like to go.

Ms. Jackson Lee, you've talked about the investments; you've talked about the international aspects of our economy. Mr. Tonko, you were so correct when you talk about what happens when those infrastructures are not there.

Now, in the American Jobs Act, which we ought to be working on and passing, there is $50 billion over and above the ongoing money. This is new money, additional money, that would be immediately available to restore the coastal areas of the United States, to rebuild the infrastructure and those areas that have been hard hit by the floods of this year, to improve the 100-year-old-plus bridges in America. Those are all things that we need to move our economy.

Ms. Sutton from Ohio talked earlier about the sanitation and water systems. Each and every one of these should be framed in such a way as to create American jobs, not just the construction jobs but the rest of the story, which is the concrete, the steel, the bolts, the pumps. All of those things that go into the infrastructure can and should be American made if we have a policy.

Now, on the floor here 3 weeks ago, we were talking about this; and our colleague from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky) brought something to the floor that just blew me away. She brought a document that was prepared in 1788 by George Washington, and it was a manufacturing policy for America. He told Hamilton, who was then the Secretary of the Treasury, to go out and to develop eight steps for an American manufacturing policy.

So this is not new in America, folks. We need a manufacturing policy in America. We call it Make It in America. It's a tax policy, an educational policy, an infrastructure policy, and it is an international trade policy where we don't give it away, but we require fair trade--not free trade--fair trade. These are American manufacturing policies of today. Thank you, George Washington, for setting us on the course. We need to continue it.

If I might interrupt you for just a moment. Every hour we're here we're joined by men and women who are working hard on behalf of the American people. The stenographers taking down our words here deserve a praise of thanksgiving; not that our words are so worthwhile to put into the American Record, but they do it, nonetheless, and I want to thank them for their good work, and for the staff behind us as we go through this hour.

If I might take up, after interrupting you, some of the things that you were talking about. Down through the years, from the very earliest days of this country, there has been a joining of the government and the private sector to accomplish, really, the building of America. And it's been done in many, many ways.

I was startled and surprised and frankly, very, very happy when Ms. Schakowsky brought that document in from George Washington's administration about the establishment of industrial policy that placed the American government in synchronization with the then-new manufacturing program industries in America.

You talked about the mill towns. They didn't just happen. They happened because there was a government policy working with them, those entrepreneurs, to create these new businesses, these new jobs. And down through the centuries, more than 2\1/2\, almost 2\1/2\ now, we have been able to use this synergy, this government working with the American public, the private sector, to create this incredible country we call America and really, to create the American Dream that all of us possess or have participated in.

Today, we're in a discussion, if you will, with the American public about whether to continue that coordination of the public governments-- State, local, Federal governments--working to achieve a goal in the private sector. There's a different vision out there that basically says, get out of the way. Get government away and things will go well. Eliminate all regulation, eliminate all of the programs, and let the free market do it.

It's never worked, and the proof of it is found in the first decade of this century. In the first decade of this century, that philosophy of push government aside, deregulate, reduce taxes, and get government out of the way actually created a situation of the Great Recession and no jobs; in fact, 8 million American jobs lost.

We need to go back to the policies that actually created growth in America, the policies of Franklin Roosevelt, carried out by Truman and Eisenhower. Even Ronald Reagan and Lyndon Johnson carried out the very basic policies that, working together, we can build a great country.

Before I turn to my colleague from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) who has just joined us, I want to pull up this chart. If only you had had this next to you while you just made this statement about the change in the nature of America's wealth. This chart has become, I think, rather famous--or infamous, I think, is a better word.

The blue line here is a chart that shows the growth in the wealth, the income of the top 1 percent of Americans. And down here is what the rest of Americans have had over the last 20 years or so. What we've seen is basically a flat-lining for the middle class, and certainly for the poor--no improvement, or very, very little improvement, in their situation. This is the 99 percent here. This is the 1 percent.

This is the anger that you now see on the streets of America, and it's exactly what you were talking about, Mr. Tonko, with a few, 1 percent of the American public, getting an ever increasing share of the American income and wealth, creating a bifurcated society, one with very few that are extremely wealthy, and the rest that are actually growing poorer.

With that, I'd like to turn to a woman from the great Midwest, the State of Ohio that is enduring this exact hollowing out of the American middle class.

Marcy Kaptur, thank you so much for joining us, and thank you for years of work representing your part of what was once the great industrial strength of America. I know that you want to share with us tonight some thoughts that you shared with me earlier this day, as you went home, as you talked to the men and women in Cleveland. Please.

We have maybe 10 more minutes here.

You talked about the purchasing power of Americans. On January 1, unless we act, American workers will lose about $1,500 of purchasing power. We must renew and continue the reduction in the Social Security tax that American workers are paying and businesses are paying. And by the way, it's totally paid for by those superwealthy--a 3.5 percent increase on their taxes over a million dollars a year. So it's totally paid for. It's part of the American Jobs Act.

I was just talking to the gentleman from New York, and it came about because of what you said about those men and women that have spent their lifetime working here in America. And I want to end on this between the three of us.

We Democrats have made a promise to America. It's not a contract. It is a promise. It's a pledge. And that pledge is to protect Social Security and Medicare, two of the most fundamental American programs, both of which are at risk of being significantly modified or, in the case of Medicare, destroyed by our Republican colleagues.

I want to make it very, very clear and get the comments from my two colleagues here about our commitment to these programs.

Social Security is the bedrock foundation for every American's retirement; and given the way the stock market gyrates because of those financial institutions and the games they play, you can't count on your 401(k).

But here's the promise to America from the Democrats: you will always be able to count on Social Security. If they want to fight about it, then this is the fight we will have and we will win.

On Medicare, millions of seniors are not in poverty today and alive today because they have Medicare insurance, a fundamental American program.

Mr. Tonko.

Mr. Tonko, you are absolutely correct. This is where we stand. This is where we fight.

Ms. Kaptur.

And then carried on in the 1960s with Medicare.

We have much to be thankful for as Americans, don't we?

We have much to be thankful for. We are thankful for those men and women that served here in this House over the years that brought us to where we are--the world's strongest, greatest country with the greatest opportunity. Even with all of the troubles we have today, it's still a country with great opportunity.

It's a country in which the American Dream lives, and we have the obligation to make sure that it's there for future generations.

Mr. Tonko, we're going to do a rapid 30 seconds around.

Ms. Kaptur.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back with great thanks to my colleagues and for the opportunity to be a Member of Congress.

I suspect we're about to enter into a west coast debate here. My good friend from Oregon brings a perspective a little north of California, and I would like to bring to this discussion a perspective of California.

For more than 30 years, California has lived under a constitutional amendment much like this constitutional amendment--a constitutional amendment that in the State of California requires a supermajority vote for raising taxes and for the budget itself. It's very similar to what is required here. The only difference is, in California, it was two- thirds; here it's 60 percent.

One only need look at the extraordinary dysfunction that California has endured in the intervening 30 years since that constitutional amendment went into effect. It has become a situation in California where we went from the very best--the very, very best--education system in this Nation, both K-12 and higher education; the best infrastructure in this Nation; and the most robust economy in this Nation to one in which we've had perpetual political gridlock because of the supermajority requirement.

So I bring to this House my own 35 years of experience with a constitution that does impose a supermajority but that has simply not worked to the benefit of the State of California. To visit such a thing upon the United States, in my view, in my experience of 35 years in public life in California, would be a great disaster for the United States, one in which we would have perpetual gridlock.

Already in this House this year, my Republican colleagues are very upset about the United States Senate not being able to do anything because of the 60-vote requirement. The Republicans keep talking about the 19 jobs bills that are over there that are tied up. It's the 60- vote requirement that has tied them up in the Senate. Last year it was the Democrats who were complaining about the Senate not being able to move because of the 60-vote requirement in the Senate.

Do we want that also here in the House? I would hope not.

I would ask us to back away from what is politically expedient. We all understand this. We've all been in this a long time. We understand the political expedience about the sound bite, about the way in which it appears. We are taking action to solve the deficit. Please, look at California. Look at what has happened to California over the last 35 years.

I would also ask you to take a look at the fact that, even with that supermajority vote, California has perpetually run a deficit because it could not bring into balance the revenues and the outlays because the outlays were required by the reality of the economy, by the reality of the people.

This is a very, very important vote, and I bring to this House my experience of what a supermajority vote has meant to the State of California.

Mr. Speaker, we are going to spend the next hour talking about what's on the minds of most every American: jobs. How do we get a job? What's it going to take to finally go back to work? There's a lot of pain out there, and there's a lot of suffering. And people really wonder what this Congress is going to do to help alleviate this crisis of unemployment.

I want to just share a couple of stories and then ask my colleague from New York (Mr. Tonko) to join me. I was at a meeting that was set up in Berkeley, California, at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, one of the premiere laboratories in the United States. And the director of the lab was talking about technology transfer; that is, research, the product of that research coming out of the laboratories,

and then jobs being created from that, and new businesses, the entrepreneurial spirit. As he went through his story, I suddenly was so upset, not by the research, not by the technology transfer, but rather by the fact that his final statement was, ``And this company is moving to China to manufacture the product of this research.'' And I thought to myself, How can that be, that the investment of the American people in the research, the education of the engineers and scientists, and then this research coming out of the laboratory and all of the development work, but finally we find that the whole thing winds up in China?

So what we want to talk about today, at least in part, is this: making it in America. What are the governmental policies that will, once again, create a situation where we will be making it in America, and the director of the laboratory won't be telling me in a meeting that, Gee, this great idea is moving offshore so that the manufacturing will take place in China? The reason he said that the manufacturing was going overseas is that there was no capital formation, no capital available. So I'm going to spend just a few moments on this before I turn it over to my colleagues.

Here is what's important. This is where innovation is, and this is where innovation fits into our economy. If you take a look, over the last decade, the enormous growth in the sales of the innovation companies, it's grown from about $1.5 trillion to $3.1 trillion. And all of this is in an innovation economy. So this is exceedingly important in the job growth of this country.

Another thing to keep in mind is this: The innovative companies create the jobs, and they grow quickly. Just looking at the total GDP-- the innovation companies that I showed in the previous chart, the total volume, over 21 percent of the American GDP is in these innovation companies. So why is it that this new company can't find the capital to build a manufacturing facility in the United States? Well, one of the reasons is Wall Street and all the games that are going on on Wall Street. But there's also another one. And this is particularly important to California. That is venture capital and IPOs, the initial public offerings.

If you take a look at this, you will notice that a decade ago, we had a lot of public offerings. And over the last several years, we've seen a decline in the public offerings. What the public offerings do is to free up capital by going out to the public, offering stock. That money then comes back to the venture capital firms, and this whole process goes round and round and over and over again, creating jobs in innovation. This is something we're going to have to address, and legislation is going to be introduced in the weeks ahead to address this part of making it in America.

So with that as an introduction to one piece of this larger picture of making it in America, I would like to yield to Mr. John Larson of the great State of Connecticut, who is our caucus leader.

Mr. Larson, thank you so very much. You speak well of Connecticut and you speak well for Connecticut.

I guess we are going to do our East-West show here. I would just point out before we go there that America has lost about 40 percent of its manufacturing jobs in the last 20 years. We can rebuild it. Most of the economic indicators are that America can be competitive in manufacturing. We need to have a level playing field, so China currency is an issue.

Mr. Tonko, you've been involved in this innovation economy for a long time. As I recall, you ran the State of New York's innovation efforts before you became a Member of Congress. So please share with us today your thoughts, and we'll begin once again the East-West show.

Mr. Tonko, thank you very much. The view from New York is very similar to the view from California. We've lost 40 percent of our manufacturing jobs. We can get them back. We need a level playing field. China currency issues are very much on the mind of the Democrats. We want to make sure that China currency is no longer used to the advantage.

But there is also something here, and I will take just a couple of seconds before I turn to my friend from Texas, American manufacturing does exist. It's the great middle class. I want to give you one example where public policy makes all the difference. Near Sacramento, there is a very large and very new heavy manufacturing facility in place. It stretches about a quarter mile, maybe almost a half mile. It is thousands of square feet of buildings, and in those buildings they're manufacturing trolley cars, streetcars, light rail, and they're also manufacturing locomotives. The company is a German company. In fact, it's one of the largest manufacturers in the world--it's Siemens--and they have moved to Sacramento to manufacture these pieces of equipment, transportation equipment, because Federal law said that the money from the Federal Government must be used to buy American made equipment--buy American-made equipment so that we will, once again, make it in America.

Now I happen to have two bills that do that, that extend that stimulus bill law into the future not only for transportation but also for solar systems, wind, and renewed green energy system. Our tax money supports it. Let's use our tax money to rebuild the manufacturing base by buying it in America.

I know the view from Texas is also similar. I've heard Sheila Jackson Lee, the honorable Representative from the area of Houston, speak on this issue. She's joining us here today on the floor.

Mr. Tonko, thank you very much for carrying on; and, Mr. Ryan, thank you for your insight into what is so obvious. The American people do not want their rights taken away from them. They have the right of collective bargaining; you're quite correct about that.

Excuse me for having to step out. My constituents from California were here in town, and interestingly enough, they were talking about one of the jobs programs that we really need to do.

I represent the central valley of California, the great California Delta, the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the largest estuary on the west coast of the Western Hemisphere, and there's always been severe flooding problems in that area. So they were asking about how are we going to fund the necessary flood projects.

It's been a long, long history of the Federal Government through the Corps of Engineers supporting the construction of levees and other flood protection devices. But all of that seems to be ramping down as this mania of cut, slash, and burn the budget occurs around here.

Now, the President offered the American Jobs Act; and in the American Jobs Act, there's $50 billion for infrastructure, part of which is water systems, sanitation systems, road transportation systems, but also flood control systems--desperately needed in our area. We could probably employ a couple hundred thousand construction workers immediately if somehow this House were to pass the American Jobs Act.

So I'm just thinking about the relationship of what we're talking about here on the floor and what my constituents were talking about, the necessity of developing water projects as well as flood control. We really ought to do that, because we can take these unemployed construction workers, several hundred thousand of them who are now receiving unemployment checks--they're tax takers. We can put them to work building the infrastructure, the foundation for tomorrow's economy, and they become taxpayers.

You started off this conversation with something that is so very, very true--I guess Mr. Larson did--and that is the best way to deal with the deficit is put Americans back to work. It was an interesting side bar to our work here on the floor; but it fits so well with what we're talking about here, which is jobs, putting people back to work, using our collective powers of citizens of this great country to employ people by building the foundation for future economic growth. And you mentioned education as one of those pieces. There's so much to do.

If you would kind of wrap us up. I think we've got 3 or 4 minutes, and we can go from there.

It's been a good afternoon sharing our thoughts about how we can create

jobs, get Americans back to work, get our economy back to work. And the President's laid out a good, bold program.

Incidentally, it's paid for. We're not going to borrow money to put these construction workers back to work. It's paid for. The way it's paid for is that those 1 percent of Americans, the superwealthy who've had an income of more than a million dollars a year after all of the deductions--that's after adjusted gross income, a million dollars or more--they have enjoyed enormous tax reductions over the last 11 years, what we would ask is some basic fairness, that they contribute to putting Americans back to work with a small increase in their taxes over and above a million dollars. No increase below.

The gentleman from New York says it so eloquently.

Long ago, I did a study of the California economy. We decided there were basically five things that needed to be done, and now, from the Federal level, I'd add a sixth. They are the things that you've been talking about:

Education, the best education in the world, so that our workers are capable of carrying on the new tasks.

Research, as I discussed earlier, from our laboratories and our universities of the new products.

We need to make sure the research is there and then take the research out of the laboratories and create the new products--making it in America because manufacturing matters.

The fourth thing is the infrastructure, which I was discussing and that I know you discussed while I was gone here, and laying the foundation upon which the economy will grow--transportation, communication, sanitation, water-flood protection--all of those infrastructure items.

Then we need to always think in this context about our Nation's security and use our money wisely to provide the kind of defense and security that we need. That's also an energy issue, which we didn't bring up today but that we will the next time we talk.

Finally, the sixth thing is one that I think is so very, very important, which is the willingness to change. What we did yesterday will probably not work today or tomorrow, so we must always be willing to change and not be stuck back in the 1790s, but rather deal with the reality of the world in which we live today and change our systems and be willing to adapt and change.

And I thank you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What does it take?

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

I thought I heard you correctly.

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

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

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

I yield to the gentlewoman.

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

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

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

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

I bet some of those are in Ohio.

You're quite correct about smoke and mirrors.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I yield to the gentlewoman from Ohio.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Exactly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I offer my highest congratulations today to Mr. Phil Blazer of California on the 5th anniversary of his founding of Jewish Life Television (JLTV).

In 2006, Mr. Blazer initiated America's first full-time Jewish television network, which is now seen in all 50 states through DIRECTV, along with cable distribution on Comcast, Time Warner and other systems.

Jewish Life Television (JLTV) originates from its headquarters in Encino, California and reaches over 36 million households in America and over 80 million households across Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. The network's ratings show an audience of 3-4 million different households during any given month. Over 160,000 homes watched the Kol Nidre-Yom Kippur Service on JLTV.

Jewish Life Television programming features news, talk shows, cooking, comedy, and entertainment. JLTV also broadcasts live events including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Policy Conference, the Jewish Federation's General Assembly, the March of the Living, and the Maccabiah Games in Israel.

Mr. Blazer's award-winning weekly television program, Jewish Life, was established in 1977, and has featured interviews with prominent figures from all walks of life including Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Weisel, Yitzak Rabin, Elizabeth Taylor, and Sandy Koufax. Blazer is the editor and publisher of the National Jewish News, which he founded in 1973. His radio program, Jewish Soul, began broadcasting in 1965 and continues to be heard weekly around the world and on the internet.

During his 46 years of working in Jewish media, Mr. Blazer has played a valuable role in numerous projects for the Jewish community and for America. He was a key catalyst in the rescue of nearly 1,000 Ethiopian Jews through U.S. Government Operation Joshua. Mr. Blazer championed California's Holocaust

Education bill, led a counter-rally against Neo-Nazis in Skokie, Illinois, and started dialogue between Jews and Gentiles in post-war Berlin.

Mr. Blazer helps Israelis, the Jewish Diaspora, and America maintain strong ties. In addition to the aforementioned activities, he has led Hollywood celebrities and other leaders on trips to Israel. He attended the 1979 White House Peace Signing Ceremony between Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat, and U.S. President Jimmy Carter. Prime Minister Begin stated Blazer knows ``Israel better than any American'' the Israeli Prime Minister had ever met and was ``rare'' as a ``true leader'' of the Jewish people.

Thank you, Mr. Grijalva, and thank you very much for our friends from Arizona.

Let me just tell you, my family has been in mining since the 1860s, gold mining, which isn't working too well in California right now. And I am not at all opposed to mining copper in Arizona, although there are issues, local, to be dealt with; and I will let that go to another individual. I was deputy Secretary of the Department of the Interior and had the opportunity to deal with appraisals and land transfers.

This bill, as structured, is a bad deal for American taxpayers and for Americans. It basically is an enormous giveaway of extraordinary value to these two companies. As has been mentioned by our colleagues from Arizona who are in support of the bill, this is one of the biggest deposits of copper and other minerals in the United States and quite possibly among the biggest in the world.

What is its value? The mechanism that's used to determine the value of the trade is called a capitalization appraisal, which has to assume the cost, has to make assumptions on the extraction, the cost of extraction, and the amount of ore to be obtained.

There is no way in the appraisal process that that can be done with any accuracy at all.

In the language of the bill, there are certain provisions that make it impossible for the United States Government to go back and do a reappraisal, so we're left with a bad financial deal.

I'm all for the copper mining. It has to be done properly, and environmental views and all that. That's not the issue for me. The issue for me is let's make sure the American public gets the right value out of this, and there's only one way to do it. That is as the ore is extracted. It then has a known quantity and a known value, and a royalty on the ore extracted, that is the material--copper, gold, and other materials--is then known. And if you simply put a royalty on it, then the American people will get its fair share of its property.

This property doesn't belong to Rio Tinto or BHP Billiton; this property belongs to us, Americans.

It belongs to us, Americans, and we ought to be getting our full value.

This is not an obscure or new provision. This is the standard procedure. We actually use it for oil extraction, except in deep water. It is something that really will give us the value.

Secondly, and I'll make this very, very short, the equipment used ought to be American made. There's going to be a lot of equipment, a lot of different equipment and material used; let's make that American- made. That's an amendment that will come later. But right now, deal with the royalty issues so that us Americans, all of us, 300 million, will get our share of the extraordinary value that this mine will produce.

Our worthy chairman has put up a dozen canards, none of which really address the underlying issue here. This amendment is a very simple one that would locate in Arizona the headquarters for this mine. Is there something wrong with that? We are not moving this off to Finland. Come on.

This amendment would also provide that the copper--and it's been stated by the proponents of the bill that 25 percent of the copper needs in the United States would come from this mine, so why not use this copper in the United States? It seems to me to be perfectly reasonable, despite all the canards that we just tossed around here a few moments ago.

The other part of this has to do with the equipment. Is the worthy gentleman from Washington opposed to using American-made equipment in American mines? Is that what this is all about?

Yes, there may be some definitional problems. I'd be delighted to work with you on the definitional problems, but the underlying point is why would we set up all of this so that we could import the equipment from China or Japan or some other place. Why not simply require that this mine, which under the bill itself is an enormous giveaway of American property, of property owned by the American people and the enormous unparalleled giveaway of our value, why not simply require that at least if they're going to be given all of this, they be required to buy American-made equipment for the mine operation?

What's wrong with that? Why not make it in America? If this mine is in America, why not use American-made equipment and hire Americans and, in this case, Arizonans? You got a problem with hiring Arizonans? You got a problem with locating in Arizona the headquarters of this mine, or would you prefer London or maybe somewhere in Australia?

Come on. These are very simple amendments so that Americans can go to work. These are very simple amendments so that this company will buy American-made equipment to mine our copper which, under your proposal, is given away.

Mr. Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to present here on the floor the solution to the question that was just raised by my colleague from the Republican side of the aisle.

A month ago, the President laid out a plan that would create millions of jobs here in the United States. It was the American Jobs Act. We are going to talk about this tonight. Before I get into the details of it, last week, in fact 1 week ago, I held a town hall meeting in Fairfield, California.

At that town hall meeting the question of jobs was on everybody's mind. What are you doing about jobs? What is Congress doing about jobs? It just seems as though nothing is happening, and all we're seeing from Congress is talk of the deficit and cuts.

Every time there's a cut, we have another job loss here in our area. Maybe it's a school teacher that's laid off or some highway project that's not going forward. So what's happening with the jobs?

And I then began to explain the American Jobs Act, and we're going to spend some time this evening talking just about that issue, the American Jobs Act.

As proposed by the President, it does address a variety of ways in which American jobs will be created, and not increasing the deficit at all, but rather fully paid for.

I would like to start off this evening by asking my colleague from the great State of New York (Mrs. Maloney) if she would like to express the view from the East Coast, and then I'll move to the West Coast.

I thank you very much for bringing us the overall view of this. You are quite correct about the small businesses. Let me just put this pie chart up here.

Small business is where 64 percent of all new jobs have been created over the last 15 years. Big businesses actually lost many, many jobs as they have offshored jobs. In fact, it was just last December that the Democratic-controlled House passed a tax bill that terminated tax breaks for big businesses sending jobs offshore. That was about $12 billion of tax breaks that were terminated so that American businesses would not get a tax break to send jobs offshore. I would just like to point out that not one Republican voted to end that tax break that sent those jobs offshore.

But the point here is that small businesses really do create 64 percent of the jobs. Now, in the American Jobs Act, as my colleague from New York said, there are some very, very important provisions that deal directly with small businesses, encouraging them to hire. For example, we've got some 6 million people that are unemployed more than 6 months, so those are the long-term unemployed. If a small business were to hire one of the long-term unemployed, they would receive an immediate $4,000 tax credit. That is off the bottom line of their taxes, providing a very powerful incentive to hire the long-term unemployed.

Now, I think the entire Nation is sick and tired of our wars, but the wars are real. Those wars have created a situation where a very, very high percentage of the veterans that come back are unable to get a job. These may be those veterans that have been off in Afghanistan or Iraq. There's a tax credit again for a veteran returning from the wars, a $5,600 tax credit for hiring an unemployed veteran. Now if that veteran happens to have a service-connected disability, and we've seen the terrible tragedies of those disabilities, arms, legs, and other problems that have befallen the veterans as they serve our country, there's a $9,600 tax credit in the American Jobs Act for those small businesses that hire the veterans. So by hiring new people, small businesses will be able to receive a very, very significant benefit as a result of this American Jobs Act.

If the gentlelady would like to continue on with some of the reasons why this is important to New York, please, Mrs. Maloney, if you would take care and have at it.

I can go through each one of those numbers that my colleague from the wonderful State of New York talked about. California, similarly, would receive very, very significant benefits.

However, we need to look at the reality of what is happening here in this Chamber where the Speaker of the House refuses to even allow a vote on the President's proposal. All of the things you talked about that would benefit New York will come to nothing unless the Speaker of the House will allow these proposals to come to a vote.

Certainly.

Over on the Senate side, the leader of the Senate, Mr. Reid, brought the issue to the Senate floor and was unable to even get a vote on the Senate floor because of the Republican threat of a filibuster and the 60-vote requirement to end that filibuster. And so even though on the Senate side they almost came to a vote, they were stopped short by a filibuster. And the reason, apparently, was that the Republicans did not want to raise a one-half of 1 percent tax on those very small number--the top 1 percent of Americans that are earning more than a million dollars of adjusted gross income a year. And so with that small tax increase, they refused to go along.

So here we are in this House without a vote and on the other side because of the threat of a filibuster, and 280,000 teachers are not going to be hired unless we're able to break through. The only way to break through is for the American public to rise up, the 99ers out there, and say: Enough. Give us our jobs. Give us the opportunity to go back to work.

I yield to my colleague.

Thank you very much for joining us this evening.

Before I turn to my colleague from California, I want to just emphasize the point that the President's American Jobs program is balanced, fully paid for. It's paid for with a fair tax.

We know that over the last 12 years now the upper income, that top 1 or 2 percent, has enjoyed an enormous tax break that was put in place during the George W. Bush first and third year. They've had it good. They've really seen their share of income in America grow extraordinarily fast while the great middle class of America has had basically a flat situation. They've seen no improvement in their income. And then in the last couple of years, they've seen a very precipitous decline.

The President has also proposed--and I know I agree very strongly with this--end the tax breaks for the oil companies. Why does the oil industry need another $5 billion or $6 billion a year of tax breaks when in fact over the last decade they've earned more than a trillion dollars in profit?

Our colleague from California is ready to go. This is Maxine Waters, representing Los Angeles, a colleague of mine dating back to our years in the California Legislature, which was just a few years back.

If you would care to share with us your thoughts on how we're going to get Americans back to work.

I'd be fascinated to hear. I know that your constituents have been very, very active, and I know that over the years you have been superactive. Please share those tweets with us.

I thank the gentlelady from California so very much for sharing with us the words that she has received from her constituents. I know that for me, and I suspect for many of our colleagues, there are similar words, similar comments to us. It's time for us to get with it. Let's pass a jobs bill. Let's really work for the people out there, not only the unemployed, but for the great middle class that has been pushed down over the last decade. It's time for them to have their say. Thank you so very, very much for being with us this afternoon.

You said something that came to my mind--I'm going to do this quickly before I turn to my colleague from--Rhode Island? You mentioned student loans. Now, the President has been out in California, in Los Angeles and in San Francisco, near my district, and he's been saying something that really caught my attention, and that is: we can't wait. Speaking for the American people, we can't wait for Congress to act. We can't wait.

And he did something that is really, really close to home. My daughter and son-in-law just finished medical school. They have huge loans that they took out to go through medical school. But across this Nation, about $1 trillion of loans have been taken out by young men and women--and older--who have gone back to school to improve themselves, to get an education, to learn a skill, $1 trillion out there. And many of those loans are at a very high interest rate, and they may be from different sectors.

And the President says, we can't wait to help these people. These young men and women and others who have these loans, they need help today. And so he put together a new program based upon a law that we passed last year--the Democrats passed last year--that said we're going to do some consolidation. So he's taken that step. He's going to allow for the consolidation of these loans into one loan package and allow the interest rate to be reduced, on the average, at least a half percent interest rate and stretched out--and a small percentage of the income. And many of these young men and women--I'm just going to say men and women, they're not all young--aren't able to get a job other than just a minimum wage, and so they can't pay. So he's giving them a break.

And that's what we want our President to do. We want our President to go out there and say we can't wait for Congress--even though I'm ready to go and I know my colleagues are--and giving them a break. This is really important that he has done this.

We can't wait to get a bill out of this House, and hopefully the Speaker will allow us to bring it to the floor. And I can't wait to hear from Mr. Courtney of Connecticut.

Mr. Courtney, please join us.

Excuse me. May I interrupt? You and three of your colleagues or four of your colleagues have undertaken a program to try to live on the unemployment insurance?

I thank the gentleman from Connecticut. My apologies, Rhode Island being not too far away. Thank you very much. And thank you for pointing out that it's very, very difficult in America if you're poor. One out of six Americans now live in poverty and are dependent upon food stamps and other kinds of subsistence in order simply to stay alive.

And we cannot forget that, although we ought to remember that here on this floor very recently there was an effort to reduce the food stamps. So I don't quite understand why anybody would want to do that, given the poverty rate.

You also spoke to the issue of fairness in taxes. Eighty-four percent of all of the wealth in this Nation is now controlled by the top 20 percent, and the bottom have become more and more poor.

Now, one of the States that is struggling to get back into the American Dream is the State of Ohio, and there's a lot of conflict going on there about labor and politics and the like.

But I know, Mr. Ryan, that you're focused solely on trying to get people back to work in your community. If you would please join us. If I recall correctly, you're from the eastern part of Ohio.

Explain to us what the Chinese currency bill is all about.

And we can't wait. We cannot wait.

I'm just going to toss out two more statistics here. The top 1 percent of Americans in 1974 had about 9 percent of income of all sorts--capital gains, interest, dividends, as well as earned income, about 9 percent. In 2007--that was 4 years ago--they had 23\1/2\ percent. So you've seen the income of the very few at the top grow extraordinarily from 9 to 23. It's probably up to 25 or 27 percent this year. The top one-tenth of 1 percent--this is 15,000 families in America--have raked in more than $1 trillion of income in 2009; just 15,000 families, $1 trillion of income.

Yet, when the Senate took up the bill to provide about 2 million jobs for America to be paid for by these men, women, and families that have had this extraordinary growth in their income, just a small percentage of a surcharge, 5 percent surcharge on that additional income, the Republicans in the Senate refused to pass that bill. So 280,000 teachers are not going to get a job, 100,000 police and firemen will not be back on our streets protecting us, and $50 billion of construction programs will not be built, 35,000 schools will not be renovated, and all across this Nation the pain of the middle class will continue.

It's time for us to have a better deal for America. The American Jobs Act can do that. And I think it can help Ohio in the central part.

Ms. Kaptur, if you would care to join us, thank you so very much. I yield to a terrific Representative who I know has fought fiercely for years and years here to bring back to middle America the manufacturing base and the middle-income jobs that are so important.

We certainly can rebuild the American manufacturing industry, and there are ways of doing it. That was done in part when the President stepped up using the stimulus money to rebuild General Motors and Chrysler. They're now back, and millions of jobs have been saved and, simultaneously, the entire small business supply chain is in order.

Mr. Ryan, I know that you have other thoughts that you'd like to add, so please share with us.

Well over $100 billion.

Let me tell you how that could be done. It's in the President's American Jobs Act.

He has suggested that we establish an infrastructure bank. Every one of the projects that you just described is a cash flow project. There is a fee for sewage and there is a fee for water. There are fees that come traditionally with each of these services. If we had an infrastructure bank--and the President has suggested we put $10 billion into it--we know that we could get the various public pension funds around to invest in it and that we could probably have $100 billion within several months that could be invested in each one of the projects that you talked about, and those projects over time are able to repay. Do keep in mind that the Federal Government is now able to borrow that money at about 2 percent for 10 years. So this is an investment opportunity to build for the future.

We've got about 5 minutes. So, Ms. Kaptur, if you'd like to take it, then we're going to wrap this thing up.

Indeed, we can.

This piece of legislation, H.R. 613, is one that I've introduced. It simply says that this money that we want to invest in our sanitation systems--high-speed rail and energy systems, whether those are the wind turbines or similar systems--is American taxpayer money. This bill says, if you're going to use American taxpayer money, then you're going to spend that money on American-made equipment. Make it in America. It's our money. Use it here in America.

The Chinese currency bill ought to be passed. I know that our Republican colleagues are going to be following me here in a few minutes, and they're probably going to say the solution is to end regulation. They had a bill on the floor that would end the regulation that would prevent the despoiling of our air with such things as mercury and arsenic and dioxins and other kinds of poisons. We can't build America by ending the regulations that protect America: the food safety regulations, the environmental safety regulations, the clean water regulations. That's not how we're going to build America. That's how we'll destroy this country.

We will build America through the kinds of programs that the President has proposed with the American Jobs Act, which is fully paid for with a fair tax system, one in which those at the top end of this economy, who have

prospered so well over the last 15 years, will now pay just a little bit more so that Americans can go back to work and so that those unnecessary tax breaks that have been given to the oil industry for a century--that 5, 6, $7 billion a year that they've received on top of their trillion dollars of profit over the last decades--will go back into America's Treasury so that we can build America once again. We will make it in America.

The President is quite right: we can't wait. Americans can't wait. It's time for Americans to go back to work. The American Jobs Act will put Americans back to work without increasing the deficit and, in fact, by creating tax revenues for the American Treasury.

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

I thank you very much, Representative Sutton and Mr. Tonko.

It's good to be back on the floor and to talk to you and to be talking about basic fairness, about the basic fairness of: How is America going to get back on track? How are we going to create the jobs?

I did a town hall in my district on Wednesday this last week, and the subject matter on everybody's mind was the jobs: How are we going to get a job? How am I going to stay in my home?

There is a way to do it. The American Jobs Act that the President has proposed--I suppose had that actually been proposed by anybody else it may very well have passed the Senate. But the American Jobs Act actually has the ingredients to get Americans back to work.

Just this week, I guess it was actually last week now, the Senate took up a couple of pieces of the American Jobs Act, a bill that would put 200,000, almost 300,000 teachers back in the classroom and about 100,000 police and firemen back on the streets to protect us with a one-half of one--one-half a percent increase in taxes on those who have an adjusted gross income over $1 million. And the Senate Republicans killed the bill with the filibuster, didn't even allow it to come to a vote. So with the filibuster, they were able to kill a bill that would have put 400,000 Americans back to work in the classroom, on the streets for policing, and protecting us with firemen. I wonder what they are thinking.

There's a basic gross unfairness in that, that middle class teachers lost their jobs because of the recession; lack of tax revenue at the county or State level, they've lost their job, and because the Republicans in the Senate and in this House refused to put a little teeny, tiny tax on millionaires' income, those people can't go to work. Where do you stand in fairness?

And this Wall Street business. OMG--text this, folks. The Wall Street bonuses--you have 2009 on your chart there, Ms. Sutton, but the Wall Street bonuses in 2010 and 2011 are even bigger. Extraordinary income for Wall Street while teachers cannot get a job, while police and firemen are out of work, where protection in our community is not available. And the Wall Street barons are continuing to make money, and they're not making loans. They're doing this by simply gambling in computerized trading. And it's got to stop. This basic unfairness has got to stop.

Thank you so very much for bringing this to our attention. And you wonder what this Occupy Wall Street, occupy cities across the Nation, that's what it's about. People in their gut know something is wrong and it's just not right.

What we have is the Republican agenda. The Republicans have now been in control of the House of Representatives since January--over 10 months now--and they have not produced one jobs bill.

You were talking about the issue of shipping jobs overseas, and it is true. The American tax system, prior to December of last year, gave a tax break of some $15 billion a year to American corporations for every job they shipped overseas. The Democrats, by a democratic vote, passed a law that eliminated that tax break. Not one Republican voted to eliminate the tax break that American corporations had when they shipped jobs offshore. Just so you know where people are in this House, the Republicans refuse to end the tax break that American corporations had when they offshored jobs.

The Republican agenda: no jobs. That's their agenda. They talk about cuts. Every time there has been a cut--and there's been numerous cuts. We've been through this for the last 10 months. Everybody's cut is somebody's job. They've lost that job.

What we need is a different agenda. What we need is a Democratic agenda. What we need is a better deal for America.

And it's this: We'll Make It in America. We will build, we will rebuild those parts of the American economy that create jobs, solid jobs.

You mentioned the China currency bill. Yes, it is true, and they say American businesses can't compete. That was directly from our Republican colleagues. That's not true. Economists say over and over again the American industries can compete on a fair level playing field.

But when China has its currency 25 to 30 percent cheaper, there's no way we can compete. It is unfair; it's unrealistic. It has got to end. The Senate passed that bill. The Speaker of this House has refused to allow the Chinese currency bill to come to the floor for a vote.

We passed it last year when the Democrats ran the House. This year, with the Republicans, apparently they want to make sure China succeeds and America fails.

Bring the bill to the floor, Mr. Speaker. Bring the bill to the floor so that we can vote here in this House on the Chinese currency bill and end the unfairness. And if they want to continue, China wants to continue to undervalue its currency, then we'll put a tariff on their goods coming in here, and we will have a level playing field.

We need a better deal for America. Here's the Republican deal: no jobs, no jobs. That's what they are about.

We are about building jobs in America. We're about Make It in America once again, helping our manufacturing sector, creating those middle class jobs; and we can do it with fair tax policy, as Mr. Tonko has so eloquently explained, and for the manufacturing policies that you have, Ms. Sutton.

Thank you so very much for the opportunity to be on the floor with you and to talk about making it in America, rebuilding the American middle class. We can do it. This is a great country.

And how about the President's proposal, $50 billion?

Mr. Speaker, Representatives George Miller and I rise today in honor of Travis Credit Union, who has served Solano County and its surrounding communities for 60 years. Originally opening as the Travis Air Force Base Federal Credit Union in the autumn of 1951, Travis Credit Union has grown to be the 13th largest credit union in California, and with $1.8 billion in assets, among the top 100 in the country.

To the charter members of Travis Air Force Base Federal Credit Union, the cost of living in 1951 was likely a major reason they decided to create their own financial alternative to banks that made it easier for them to borrow and save money. When the credit union first opened, it was in a makeshift base office and served only military and civilian personnel at the base.

In December of 1951, Travis Air Force Base Federal Credit Union had 68 members and $2,015 in deposits. In 1954, the credit union made its first house trailer loan and then moved into the Passenger Terminal Building in April of 1955. At the end of 1961 TAFB FCU had 5,0432 members and $1.39 million in deposits. Membership was expanded to include military and U.S.-sponsored civilian personnel stationed overseas in 1964 and in 1965 the Executive Committee was created establishing a president, vice president, treasurer and secretary.

The Travis Air Force Base Federal Credit Union changed its name to Travis Federal Credit Union in 1974 and in 1977 construction of the first off-base branch in Fairfield was completed. Today, the credit union has 22 branches located throughout the region in the cities of Fairfield, Vacaville, Dixon, Suisun City, Benicia, Vallejo, Davis, Woodland, Napa, Concord, Antioch, Clayton, Merced and

Atwater; and is known as Travis Credit Union after a board approved switch to a state-chartered credit union took place in 2000.

Travis Credit Union serves 180,000 members in the communities of northern California and has $1,020,037,614 in loans to these communities. Travis Credit Union provides a critical service to our community by offering higher rates on deposits, lower rates on loans, lower fees on services, convenient access and friendly service, and all while working to ensure their long-term viability as a not-for-profit banking alternative.

Mr. Speaker, we are truly honored to pay tribute this important community institution as it celebrates 60 years of service. We ask our colleagues to join with us in thanking Travis Credit Union for its long and dedicated service to the citizens of Solano County and northern California, and in offering our best wishes for its continued success in the years ahead.

I thank my friend from Massachusetts.

I don't understand. This is a very, very important issue. This is an issue about dealing with fly ash and how we're going to contain it and process it and protect the citizens. It's also an opportunity for us to deal with one of the fundamental economic problems we have in the United States, which is the loss of manufacturing. There's going to be a lot of different kinds of equipment, material, steel, cement, other kinds of materials that are going to be part of the process that this bill calls for, that is, adequately dealing with fly ash. Why wouldn't you want to put into this piece of legislation that those materials, those pieces of equipment, be manufactured in the United States?

We need to rebuild our manufacturing base in this Nation. We've lost more than 50 percent of it over the last 25 years. We need to once again make it in America. And I tell you, you put this amendment into this bill and we'll see one more piece of American manufacturing coming back into place. It actually works.

In the Recovery Act, which you like to call the stimulus bill, there was a paragraph put in that says if you're going to use the transportation funds in this bill, then you must buy equipment made in America. In Sacramento, California, Siemens has built and is continuing to expand a manufacturing plant because of that provision. Hundreds of people in California are employed because Congress wrote into the bill money spent on trains and buses and light rail will have to be spent on equipment manufactured in America. So Siemens is doing it.

Write into this piece of legislation, and there will be new manufacturing plants in America making the equipment to deal with the fly ash. It is eminently sensible, so why be unsensible? Why block this amendment?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We talked about tax policy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

A couple of more things.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 8 o'clock and 16 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, October 13, 2011, at 9:30 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Thank you, Madam Speaker.

On October 7, 2001, the United States officially began Operation Enduring Freedom, and the war in Afghanistan was underway. The last decade of wars has cost thousands of U.S. lives and hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars.

As a member of the House Armed Services Committee and as a representative of thousands of servicemembers, military families, and veterans, I'm entrusted with weighing the decision on what the profound effect on our Nation's security this war has brought and on the men and women that risk their lives every day to ensure that security. As we mark the 10th anniversary of the longest war in America's history, we believe it's time for Congress to ask some very serious questions about our military engagement in Afghanistan.

Whom are we fighting in Afghanistan? We entered this war because of the threat posed by the international terrorist organization al Qaeda. While al Qaeda expands its operations around the globe, our military is tied up in a ground war against the Taliban, an Afghan rebel group with domestic ambitions. Senior intelligence officials have estimated fewer than 100 al Qaeda members remain in Afghanistan, yet we plan to have 68,000 U.S. troops there in that country through the next year. If we are to defeat terrorism, we must stick to our original strategic mission, maintaining a laser-like focus on al Qaeda and capitalizing on our technological and intelligence advantages to cut off their financing, intercept their operations, and take out their leaders. The successful operation against Osama bin Laden epitomizes this targeted approach.

Where's our money going? Afghanistan is widely considered to be one of the most corrupt countries in the world, behind only Somalia, and news reports of new corruption emerge every day. Billions of U.S. dollars are siphoned off by crooked officials and contractors, carried out of the Kabul airport in bags of cash, and even funneled to warlords and the very Taliban that we often oppose. To date, the U.S. has spent nearly half a trillion dollars in Afghanistan, and that pricetag increases by $10 billion every month that we stay there. Meanwhile, we are forced to cut critical services at home in the face of our rising deficit and financial instability. We continue to hemorrhage finite U.S. resources in Afghanistan, and it makes us less, not more safe.

When will this war end? While the current timeline commits 68,000 troops through 2013, there are reports, backed up by some facts, that in the ongoing talks with the Afghan government about the future of the U.S.-Afghanistan relationship, the U.S. is considering having 35,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan until 2025 at an expected cost of over $50 billion a year.

The human cost of this war is immeasurable. The dedication and the commitment of American men and women in uniform is absolute. Our troops in Afghanistan execute their orders that put them at risk because they trust the mission in which they are deployed. That is absolutely essential to our Nation's security. This steadfast loyalty is our Nation's most sacred resource, and thus, it is our most solemn responsibility to ensure that it is never squandered.

There is no U.S. military solution in Afghanistan. A political reconciliation is essential. Afghanistan's future depends upon Afghans, not American soldiers. By ending this war, America can focus on rebuilding the foundations of America's strength and security by paying down our Federal deficit, growing our economy, and putting Americans back to work.

Offered By: Mr. Garamendi

Amendment No. 22: Strike all after the enacting clause and

insert the following: