Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, later today we're going to vote on Don't Ask, Don't Tell. This is a personal thing. I know a young gentleman who was in the Army, a graduate of West Point, extraordinary young African American. He's had two tours in Iraq, brought his company back safely from both tours without loss or injury to any member of his company.

But he also honored the commitment of the military not to lie and to be honest and straightforward. He was gay, and he was drummed out of the military. It is an enormous loss to America. I have no doubt that this gentleman would be a general and could probably rise to the highest ranks of the military.

We have to change the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. Later today, we'll have a chance to do that, and I'm sure that our colleagues, in recognition of the need of this Nation for well-qualified men and women in the military, will do away with this policy and set in place an opportunity for every American to serve this country, wherever and whatever their circumstances might be.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I thank you for the privilege of the floor and the opportunity to share some thoughts with my colleagues on the Democratic side.

I was going to go to the tax issue which is before the American public. The President has cut a deal with the Republicans. And I know that on our side, we have some concerns about this, but I really think we need to spend just maybe a couple of minutes about what we just heard. We just heard the gutting of the health care reform program. Have no doubt about this, general public and the people out there: The program that was put together last year on health care is an effort that will be successful to provide health insurance for the 40 million to 50 million Americans that don't have health insurance and for the thousands each and every day that lose their job and lose their health insurance.

The Republican Party is committed to gutting the health care program, and it's stage one. When they come into power in this House next January, they are going to begin a concerted effort of moving more and more wealth to the highest and the richest men and women in America that have already seen a quintupling of their wealth in the last 20 years.

So let's have a very clear understanding of this. By gutting the health reform program, you will see stage one of the Republican effort to shift money away from the working men and women to those who are already fabulously wealthy. Not in the last 70, 80 years has America seen such an accumulation of wealth among the very, very few and a disproportionate holding down of the great middle class in America. The health reform program was an effort to provide one of the most critical things that every person and every family needs, and that is access to health care. We'll put that aside. We'll come back to that.

But the issue of the day today on everybody's mind, the President doing his press conference, saying he's cut a great deal with Republicans. We don't think it is. Last week, this House passed a very, very important piece of legislation that laid out a significant tax cut for the working men and women in America, those people who get on a bus in the morning, get in their car, commute to work, spend their 8, 9, 10 hours working, come home and take care of their family. That tax package that this Democratic House passed last week is a good, solid tax package in it provides a reduction in taxes for the working men and women, the middle class of America, and it is simultaneously one of the most important stimuli that we can provide to get this economy up and moving. When coupled with the unemployment insurance, it is a very, very strong package.

What's been negotiated with Republicans is a real serious problem for America. If you care about the deficit, then you'd better be paying attention, because the proposal that's before us, as negotiated by the President and the Republicans, is going to significantly increase the deficit. The program that we put forward will stimulate the economy and, in the out-years, significantly reduce the deficit.

Let's just take a look at the difference. I put this one up last week when I was talking about this issue and we laid out the Obama tax proposal, which no longer is the case. Obama and the Bush tax cuts have come together. But on the Obama tax proposal, every working family in America that earns an after-adjustment--that is, the adjusted gross income--of less than $250,000 will receive a significant tax reduction in the range of some $6,000 for those at the top end and downward for those who are earning just $10,000, a very small tax cut, but nonetheless, a very significant one at 53.

So this is what we voted on last week, one that put the working men and women, the middle class, to an advantage. Now, what's been cut, the deal that's been cut is one that puts this one aside and instead substitutes the Bush tax cuts. In other words, the Republicans have won the day with their supporters. We're talking about the filthy rich in America. We're talking about the billionaires who are going to receive an enormous benefit for the next 2 years. Average, for those who have an adjusted gross income over $1 million, the average tax cut for them is over $100,000 a year. So what are they going to do with it? Well, I guess they can go out and buy a Mercedes-Benz E-Class, one each year under the proposal that's made.

But what is the cost to the economy? The cost to the economy is $150 billion, $150 billion that will have to be borrowed--probably from China--to finance a tax cut so the very, very wealthy in America can go out and buy two Mercedes-Benz in the next 2 years, or maybe they want a new villa in the South of France. Is this going to stimulate our economy? We think not. We think this proposal's a bad deal for America.

Now let me just show you one other piece of this, and that is that this tax cut also will cause America to go further in debt. The deficit is a very serious problem, but this tax cut proposal has already been proved to not work, and the proof is in the decade 2001 to 2010. During the Clinton period, with taxes higher--these cuts were not in effect-- 22.7 million jobs were created. The proposal to give to the wealthy $150 billion additional tax relief generated 1 million jobs in the decade 2000 to 2010. So right there is historic proof that these tax cuts don't necessarily create economic growth. And the only economists that will say they do are the Republicans, who happen to have used the money from these very same corporations and individuals to finance the most scurrilous, secretive campaigns ever in America's history. That was the Citizens United case that

opened the doors to secret money financing campaigns. What do you think they're going to do? Maybe they'll buy a Mercedes or maybe they'll use these tax cuts to come back to further undermine the working men and women of this Nation with the kind of proposal you just heard on repealing the health care reforms.

Okay, enough from me right now. We'll come back at this issue. But I'm joined today by two of my colleagues, Congressman Paul Tonko, from the great State of New York, and Mr. McDermott, from the equally great State of Washington.

Mr. Tonko, would you please join us.

Mr. Tonko, thank you so very much. I just was taking one little piece, and I want to then turn to Mr. McDermott. The proposal that was announced today, the Republican-Obama tax cut proposal, would send $70 billion a year to the wealthiest billionaires and millionaires in America. What could that $70 billion be used for?

Now, a teacher, let's just say a teacher gets $50,000 a year. If you took $50 billion of the $75 billion, you could hire a million teachers in the classroom beginning January 1, 2011. A million teachers. Choices are being made here. Do you want $70 billion to go to the wealthiest people in America, the top 2 percent, or would you like to use that $70 billion to build schools? Let's take $20 billion of the 70 billion, we will build schools, we will improve the classrooms, we will bring technology to the classrooms, and use the remaining $50 billion to hire a million teachers in our classrooms. Now, there's an investment that will last. That's the kind of thing we can do.

Now, that's just an option. Mr. McDermott, could you please join us here and share with us your perspectives on this?

Thank you very much, Mr. McDermott.

I notice that our colleague from the great northeast, New Hampshire, has arrived. I think you have had a lot to say about this issue in your tenure here. If you would please join us and share with us your thoughts.

Thank you very much, Ms. Carol Shea-Porter from the great State of New Hampshire. You have always been right on the issues.

I think we need to really understand what is in this proposal that this House passed just last week, which was a

very, very significant tax cut for the working men and women of America, the people that are out there every day, going to work, putting in their 8, 10 hours a day, bringing home the paycheck at the end of the week. The tax proposal that we put together takes care of children, providing the child care tax credit.

It becomes permanent in our piece of legislation. In the one that has been proposed, it expires in 2 years. Then what happens to taking care of children?

If you happen to be a student, in our proposal, the student loan interest deduction, it stays permanent. It stays there for the next generation. For those kids that want to go to school, their families can get this, not for just 2 years but permanently.

So what was negotiated by the Republicans? A 2-year proposal in which this particular tax reduction for the working men and women and their children ceases.

You want to get married? Well, you are married. Good for you. Our proposal would make permanent the extension of the marriage tax deduction. Right now there would be a new penalty imposed on married people unless we extend it.

So we said, no; married people, married couples and those who file as couples would get a permanent reduction in their taxes.

So you are a small business person. You have a company. You have a farm. You have a ranch, and you have the opportunity under our proposal to permanently, into the future, receive a lower capital gains tax rate if you were to sell your company.

So for small businesses, this is what we propose for the small businesses and other people who might have investments. Now, that's not for the wealthy. It phases out at $200,000 of income for an individual and at 250,000 for a couple.

In our proposal, not what the President negotiated with the Republicans, but rather in our proposal, there is a tax cut for those couples who file an adjusted gross income of $250,000 or less, and the alternative minimum tax would be focused to avoid the penalty that would exist in the alternative minimum tax. So what we did was to very carefully construct a tax reduction proposal that focuses on the working men and women, the great middle class, the middle income of America, so that they would have the benefits, not the very, very wealthy in America.

Unfortunately, what's been negotiated is exactly the opposite. What's been negotiated is, instead of a permanent reduction that benefits the working men and women, the middle income of America, a proposal has been put in place that terminates in 2 years and provides an extraordinary benefit to the very, very wealthy top 2 percent, the billionaires, those who have an adjusted gross income over $250,000, literally the billionaires in America and the millionaires in America.

How much is in it for them? Well, by a calculation that my staff and I made earlier today we said $70 billion a year that, as you said, Ms. Shea-Porter, would have to be borrowed.

And who is going to pay for it? The working men and women in the years ahead. What would that $70 billion be used for? What's the alternative?

The most critical investment any, any society can make is an investment in education. We know from the reports that just came out today that the American education system is not producing students who are capable of competing in tomorrow's economy. We are in the bottom half of student ability in math and science, where the future lies.

What if we took that $70 billion that the billionaires don't need and instead invested it in education?

I said earlier, average teacher pay, $50,000. Is that about what it is in your area? It is in ours. Senior teachers would get somewhat more. Junior teachers would get significantly less. But let's just say it's $50,000. If we took $50 billion of the $70 billion, or maybe it's $80 billion, that the extremely wealthy get and instead say, no, no, you're not going to get it, we're going to invest that money in our children, in their education. One million teachers. Do the math. One million teachers. Fifty billion dollars could buy 1 million teachers in the classroom beginning in January. Those that have been laid off could come back. Classroom size could be reduced. Isn't that better for America than giving the rich, the richest of the rich, $70 billion? I think so. Use the remaining 20 to improve our classrooms, buy the technology, put the computers in place. Twenty billion dollars would do it. And that's in year one. It could be repeated in year two.

Mr. President, Mr. Republicans, you cut a bad deal for America. It's a bad deal for America. A better deal, instead of giving the rich more, give our children something.

Let me turn to my fellow representative from the great State of New York (Mr. Tonko).

The gentleman from New York could not be more correct, that the policies of the Bush administration, their tax policies, created a huge deficit, two wars that were not paid for but rather money borrowed, most of it again from China, and a total backing away from the regulation of the financial industry led to an extraordinary crash of the American and indeed the world economy. What is being asked of us now is to put back in place the tax policy that was part of that great decline. And a point that you made, if I might just bring it out one more time here, is that that tax policy that was started in 2001 and is now being proposed by our Republican colleagues and our President is a continuation of the drift--excuse me, it's not a drift-- a cascade of wealth from the middle class, from the working men and women, to the wealthiest Americans. Is that wise policy? It certainly doesn't create jobs. There are very few economists except some very right-wing Republican economists who would argue that by giving more money, in this case $150 billion minimum, maybe $180 billion, to the wealthiest is going to somehow create jobs. Nobody would rationally argue that. However, on the other hand, it's been argued very clearly that one of the most stimulus, job-creating, encouragements to the economy is unemployment insurance. But our friends on the Republican side have said very clearly that they're going to put their foot right on the neck of the most unfortunate Americans, the unemployed, and hold them down until they're able to get their buddies, the wealthiest of Americans, an additional tax break.

That is what is going on here. They are using the most harmed Americans in this economy, an economy that collapsed under the Republican administration, holding those unemployed down, putting their foot on their neck and saying, You cannot have anything until our wealthy backers have more. Shame on them. Shame on them. That is not good American policy. That is not even humanitarian. And we are up against the Christmas holidays. They are using this as a lever. It is dead wrong, it is inhumane, it is cruel, and it shows not one iota of compassion. Until they get their wealthy taken care of, those people who don't need more, they are going to hold 2.5 million Americans on the ground without food, without gifts for their families, without even a Christmas meal. That is what the Republicans have said. That is the deal which has been cut, and it is one we should oppose. Do I feel strongly about this? Yes, I do.

Ms. Shea-Porter, thank you so much. You were talking about the many options available to us, the choices we are making. In this tax policy, we are making a choice to invest in America's future, that is, the working men and women of America, or investing in the very wealthy. All of it with borrowed money. If America is going to make it, then we are going to have to rebuild America's industrial strength. These are choices.

There are ways that we can rebuild America's industrial strength. One of them is to stop exporting jobs. Now, the American Tax Code until just a month ago provided a $12 billion annual tax break to American corporations who sent jobs offshore. Yes, that's right. How could that be? Well, it was in the Tax Code. The Democrats

said that's wrong, and we passed a tax bill that ended that nefarious, useless, job-harming tax proposal. We brought $12 billion back into the Treasury, put a stop to the incentive for American corporations to ship those jobs offshore.

Did the Republicans support that job-creating program? They did not. Only a handful. I mean, one handful actually voted with the Democrats to end a tax break that encouraged the off-shoring of jobs. An example of how we can bring jobs back to America is to set our tax policy in place so we don't encourage the off-shoring of jobs.

Another piece of this is to use our tax money to build jobs in America. Very quickly, and then I want to turn to my colleagues in the final 15 minutes of this hour. We spend a lot of money. Our gasoline tax, our diesel fuel tax is used to maintain our highways and to buy buses and trains and light rail systems and things that move people. It is all well and good. But much of that tax money is used to purchase buses, light rail, trains that are made in foreign countries. My proposal is, hey, that is our tax money; let's spend it on equipment that is made in America. You want to build a bridge, use American steel. You want to buy a bus, our tax money, buy an American-made bus. You want to build a light rail system with our tax money, buy an American made light rail system.

If we just use our tax dollars in a way that promotes American industry, we can grow America. I think of Walt Whitman and his beautiful poetry about the great industrial strength of America, the way America would get up in the morning and build. I don't think Walt Whitman would be very enthusiastic about American industry today given our policies. But if we institute policies that are make it in America so that America can make it, once again these are choices about where we are going.

Manufacturing matters. Walt Whitman understood that the strength of America was in its industries. We have forgotten that, and apparently our Republican colleagues are perfectly willing to give American industries a tax break to ship jobs offshore. The Democrats are not. We ended that.

Mr. Tonko, you and I have talked about this. You were there for the vote to end that tax break.

Mr. Tonko, once again, you speak with great wisdom and with a sense of history. It is about choices.

Apparently, the Republicans and the President want us to take $140 billion, $150 billion, $160 billion and give it to the wealthiest of Americans, to the top 2 percent, as if they need help.

What if we took that money and invested it in--oh, I don't know-- green technology? in wind turbines? in solar or in buses and transportation? $150 billion, what would it buy?

I would suggest, with the first $70 billion, in year one, invest in teachers and in schools. With the next $70 billion or $80 billion, invest in--well, let's build the great manufacturing sector once again in the great Northeast; 160 years ago, my great, great grandparents left the textile mills in your territory, Ms. Shea-Porter, and moved to California. It was good for them, but it left the great Northeast without the textile industry. You are trying to rebuild your industries--health care technologies and other kinds of advanced technologies--which could use the incentive of $70 billion.

Ms. Shea-Porter, we've got another 5 minutes. Why don't you take four of those, and then we'll wrap in the last minute.

Ms. Shea-Porter, thank you so very, very much.

We have just a minute left. As you were speaking from your heart about the status of Americans today, I was thinking about last fall when I took my family down to the Roosevelt Memorial. On one of the placards carved in the stone is his statement: The test of America's progress is not that those who have much should have more but that those who have little should have enough.

Isn't that where we are today? Isn't that what FDR was saying in the 1930s during the Great Depression?

Mr. Speaker, thank you very much. We appreciate the hour to discuss this very, very important issue.

Mr. Speaker, I am struck by the comments of my colleague from California and his desire to build jobs here in America. My comments today are really directed towards the chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Mr. Oberstar, who will be leaving this House at the end of this year, an extraordinary individual who over his 40 years in this House has led the way for good American union jobs in the construction industry.

Unfortunately, when it came time in the stimulus bill, not one Republican voted for the stimulus bill that created 1.5 million union jobs in the construction industry. Unfortunately, that was the case. You can't have it both ways, I suppose. Mr. Oberstar has led the way time and time again for worker safety, to make sure that Americans had the transportation, the infrastructure that they needed.

I have had the great pleasure of working with him and learning from him. I am sure I join with every colleague in this House, Democrat and Republican, to say that we will miss him deeply, and his leadership will be lost upon us.

It was 13 months ago that I was given the great privilege of becoming a Member of the Congress. And it was 7 months ago that I was given another privilege of becoming a member of the Armed Services Committee. For the last hour and 10 minutes, we have heard from Chairman Skelton and from his colleagues that have expressed their appreciation based upon their knowledge and their experiences of working with an extraordinary man.

I feel cheated that I don't have all of those years that my other colleagues have had to learn and to share time with Chairman Skelton. My 7 months have been just too short; but in those 7 months, I have found the opportunity for friendship, brotherhood, and the opportunity to work and to be mentored by an incredible individual.

What you have seen here tonight is the outpouring of emotion and respect for a gentleman that has served this Nation and the armed services for 34 years in the capacity of a Member of Congress. That's an incredible record. Seven months of that I have had a personal experience of, and I value those moments intensely.

I have had my hours on the floor talking about policy. I have not had such an important hour as this hour listening to the Members of this Congress speak of one of their colleagues. It has been a very good hour.

Chairman Skelton, you are loved, beloved, for a very good reason. You are a unique individual.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 1585) honoring and recognizing the exemplary service and sacrifice of the 60th Air Mobility Wing, the 349th Air Mobility Wing, the 15th Expeditionary Mobility Task Force, and the 615th Contingency Response Wing civilians and families serving at Travis Air Force Base, California, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on the resolution under consideration.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of House Resolution 1585, a resolution expressing appreciation of the House of Representatives for the service and sacrifice of the members of the 60th Air Mobility Wing, 349th Air Reserve Wing, 15th Expeditionary Mobility Task Force, 615th Contingency Response Wing, and Travis Air Force Base.

Affectionately known as ``Team Travis,'' the team includes 13,900 active duty reservists and civilians of the wings. Travis was established in 1942, originally named the Fairfield-Suisun Army Air Base. In 1951, it was renamed Travis Air Force Base, and its vital missions have continued.

Travis Air Force Base has been called the ``Gateway to the Pacific,'' and brave men and women who have served at Travis know a thing or two about their neighbors, particularly those across the Pacific and in every corner of the globe. Brave men and women of the Travis Air Force Base have fought in World War II, the Korean War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, and the Persian Gulf War. More recently, Team Travis has played a major role in providing airlift, air refueling, and aero-medical evacuation in support of combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, flying 102,581 hours for Operation Iraqi Freedom and 70,940 hours for Operation Enduring Freedom. That's a lot of flight time.

They have carried out vital humanitarian missions in Berlin, Darfur, Rwanda, and Haiti. Indeed, after a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti on January 12, 2010, Team Travis conducted the first humanitarian airlift mission, provided search and rescue personnel, medical experts, and supplies, and facilitated delivery of more than 1 million pounds of cargo during the duration of the Haitian relief effort. They also set up the logistics at the airport, which was destroyed.

After the tragic 2004 tsunami that devastated much of South Asia, Travis delivered more than 2 million pounds of supplies, providing a full third of the entire U.S. relief effort. Given their broad contribution to humanitarian causes around the world, it's clear that the 60th Air Mobility Wing and Team Travis valiantly fulfill their motto of being ``America's First Choice.''

Not only is Travis a vital and valued base furthering American missions and humanitarianism abroad, it is also a very, very important part of the Solano County economy. Travis spends roughly $300 million a year in Solano County. They are the largest sector of the economy, and at least 5,600 jobs outside of the air base are included.

For the past 12 years, our good friend, Ike Skelton, has been a consistent supporter of Travis, and I want to thank him for the honor of presenting this bill today and for his support in making it possible for this bill to move beyond this committee. He has been an extraordinary leader.

Today, let's honor the Travis Air Force Base entire family while offering our condolences to the families of the bravest of the brave servicemembers of Team Travis and all of those who have lost their lives in the defense of the United States. Travis is home to thousands of heroes, and it is my privilege and honor to represent them here in Congress.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support House Resolution 1585.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 1740) recognizing and honoring the National Guard on the occasion of its 374th anniversary.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on the resolution under consideration.

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

I rise in support of House Resolution 1740 introduced by our colleague from Ohio (Mr. Latta) which recognizes the 374th birthday of the Nation's military first responder, our National Guard. I looked at that, too, and I said, ``374? How could that be?''

Well, on December 13, 2010, we will celebrate the enormous contributions that our Nation's citizen soldiers and airmen have contributed to our national defense for over 300 years. Our forefathers relied on its citizen soldiers to protect this young Nation. Today we continue to rely on our citizen soldiers to protect the values and inalienable rights that Americans enjoy today.

Our men and women in the National Guard not only volunteer to serve overseas in our national defense, they are also an integral part of our local communities, providing assistance, support, and protection to their neighbors and loved ones in cases of natural and manmade disasters within the United States.

The history of the National Guard began back during the very earliest days of our Nation. The colonists adopted the English militia system which required all males between the ages of 16 and 60 to bear arms and contribute to the defense of their communities. In those early days, the militia provided the first line of defense in our Nation and it continues to do so to this very day.

Throughout our Nation's conflicts, the National Guard has been an integral part of our country's national defense. During World War I, the National Guard made up 40 percent of America's combat divisions. The National Defense Act of 1933 established the National Guard as a reserve component of the Army. And in 1947 the National Security Act established the air

component of the National Guard as a reserve component of the Air Force.

More than 300,000 members of the National Guard participated in World War II. And over 180,000 members of the National Guard participated in the Korean War, and nearly 23,000 deployed in support of the Vietnam War. More than 50,000 members of the National Guard were deployed in the Gulf States in support of Hurricane Katrina. Today, almost a quarter of a million members of the National Guard have mobilized in support of Operation Noble Eagle, Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and Operation New Dawn.

Today we are here to express our appreciation to those who served in the National Guard and their families, who are also making a contribution in defense of this Nation. We are here to express our gratitude and respect for those in the National Guard who have given their lives in defense of our Nation. Our sympathy and prayers are with their families and loved ones. Their sacrifice is noted and will not be forgotten.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support House Resolution 1740 and join us as we wish America's National Guard a happy 374th birthday.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

I want to thank the gentleman from Ohio for offering this resolution.

I think every Member on this floor understands the critical importance of the National Guard in their own communities and in their State, and it's certainly appropriate that we recognize the 374th birthday of the National Guard. You had me on that one. I didn't know it was 374 until this moment. But I do know the history of my own State of California and the critical importance of the National Guard not only in all of the traumas that occur in my State, but also overseas and the wars.

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

Well, Mr. Ellison, I was in my office. Of course this floor is constantly on the TV screen, so I looked up, and I said, Hey, there's my man. There's the guy who is from the great upper Midwest, who has seen the incredible downturn of the American economy. I know that you've worked hard for your district to try to bring in those jobs and to try to create the legislation that would bring the jobs into that district. As you were talking, I said, I'm going to go over and say just a couple of things in support of the message that you're giving today, a message that over the last 2 years has been one of a consistent effort by the Democratic House to stabilize the American economy. We did that with the Wall Street bank bailout, which a lot of people didn't like.

I had problems with it, too. I think those Wall Street barons should have paid a heavy price, but the price that they could not pay and should not pay is the total collapse of the financial industry of the world because we would wind up, mom and pop at home, whether you have a 401(k), which unfortunately became a 201(k), whatever, we did that and it worked.

Then you came right back, the Democrats in this House and the President came back with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, 3 million jobs out of that, stabilizing once again the situation where the jobs were in free-fall the last months actually of the Bush administration in 2008, 800,000 jobs lost. But that began to turn around, and so in 2009 we began to see a turnaround, a lessening of the lost jobs. They continued to lose jobs, but nonetheless, each month that went by there was fewer and fewer jobs lost, and then in 2010 we've actually seen the growth of jobs in America once again, not only as a result of those two

pieces of legislation, but dozens and dozens of other bills that I was fortunate enough to work on when I came here just over a year ago in a special election.

It's been hard work. We've not had much help, and this is one of the things that I find so disappointing having come here just a year ago, and on all of those bills, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the stimulus bill, the HIRE act that gave incentives to employers to go hire people, the saving of the American automobile industry. The Republicans voted against these bills.

On unemployment insurance, the Republicans voted against it. I mean it's easy enough I suppose if you have a job not to worry about the uninsured, but if you don't have a job, what are you going to do? How do you keep a roof over your family's head? How do you provide the food? Well, you do it by getting an unemployment insurance check, which, actually--workers in America and employers in America have paid into an insurance program year after year after year and that uninsurance program provides the insurance when a person loses their job.

I couldn't believe it today on the floor. We have more than 2 million Americans whose unemployment check is going to run out during these holidays. Between the end of Thanksgiving and New Year's, 2 million Americans will lose their unemployment check. Now, the economy not's running the way we want it to run, and hopefully you and I will have a chance to talk about making it in America, making this economy once again, but today, on this floor, not more than 3 hours ago, we were unable to muster a two-thirds vote to pass an uninsurance check extension so that people would have food, shelter, clothing, maybe even a small gift for their children at Christmastime.

What are we doing here? If we are such--we, not we, the Democrats voted en masse for this, but 143 Republicans, more than the one-third to block, voted against this. We're talking about the ultimate Scrooge. This would make Charles Dickens right up there on top with Scrooge on Christmas, on the holiday season, when we ought to be generous. 143 Republicans this day voted to deny 2 million Americans enough money to buy a gift for their child, to put a holiday meal on the table.

Okay, fine, I understand where they're coming from--no, I don't understand where they're coming from. I don't get it but we need to move forward. We need to move forward. I know you have been talking about that. And we can do it. We can rebuild the American manufacturing industry. It's there for us to do it if we use wise public policy, and I know you have been talking about this, and I'd love to engage in a dialogue with you and see if we can share some thoughts here.

It is a local store. If you have no money, you are not going to do one thing for this economy except be an additional burden to it. And so if you have an unemployment check--and let's keep in mind, that's something that the workers and employers have paid into so that when you lose your job, you have a continuation of income and you use that money to go down and buy some clothing for your kid, stimulate the economy, give the retailer--you buy bread, you buy food, you're able to pay your rent, you're not going to have to face that foreclosure and help drive down the prices of homes in your neighborhood. It's all there. It makes so much sense on the economic level.

But on the human, moral level, about where we are as Americans, it's not the fault of that worker out there that lost his job that he doesn't have a job. Many, many reasons for it. Wall Street, greed on Wall Street, all of those things. We can talk about that later, but it's not that worker's fault. It's not his kid's fault. Can't we just muster enough compassion to give those families an opportunity during this holiday season and on into the new year enough money to stay in their home?

What are they are going to do, go out and live in their car? They can't afford to buy the gas, I guess they can become the homeless. 143 Republicans this day said go homeless, go live in your car, don't worry about the holiday gifts, don't worry about your children because they will have no food, they'll have no place to live. What are they thinking in this House? 143 Republicans said ``no.'' They blocked, 7 days before Thanksgiving, they blocked an opportunity for 2 million American families to have enough money to put a holiday meal on their table, to put shelter over their family.

Well, apparently those people that say that haven't been looking for a job.

It's easy enough to say, but when you're out hunting for a job, you know these are difficult times. And we're going to make efforts to turn that around, and we've talked about that a little already, but the jobs are not there. We need to move this economy forward, and then as we do so, those jobs will come back. And let's understand, this is not a bunch of welfare. A lot of people are against welfare. We understand that, but these are middle class Americans----

Who had a good paying job 2 years ago, a year and a half ago, 6 months ago. These are men and women who over the years have been the backbone of this Nation, middle class America, and yet 143 of our colleagues on the Republican side didn't see it that way. I guess they thought, well, if they don't have any money they will go to work.

I would ask any one of those 143 to leave here today and go out and see if they could find a job, and if I were an employer and somebody had that amount of compassion, I know where I would send them. I'd send them out the door and good-bye.

Go out, let's see if you can pay the building--let's see if you can go out and run a backhoe, dig a ditch, or operate a bus or train or whatever. No, no, no, and when they lose their job here, as they should for this vote alone--they should for this vote alone lose their job here--no, they will go down to K Street, and they will get one of those high-powered office building jobs and they'll come back and lobby us and try to tell us what we should do. I will tell them what they should do--they should take a hike right out of this building because they're the super Scrooges of this session.

Well, this is another issue that's going to be before the Congress in the next couple of weeks, and that is, what are we going to do about the 2001, 2003 tax reductions that expire on December 31?

Those tax reductions were pushed forward by George W. Bush and the Republicans, who then controlled both this House and the Senate. And they wrote the tax law so that the middle-income got a little bit. It was worthwhile. It was a good reduction. But the real reduction went to those with the big bucks, those who had more than $250,000, $500,000, $1 million, $1 billion annual incomes. They got the big bucks.

And what happened was, we saw, once again, the widening of the gap between the working men and women of the middle class and the high and the mighty, the top 1 percent of this Nation who now control 70, 80 percent of all the wealth of the Nation. They certainly have the big salaries. And do they need a tax break at the expense of an unemployed worker from a factory in your district, an unemployed worker from a factory or from a school in my district? I don't think so.

Let's talk about what it is. For those making $1 million a year, the tax cut is worth $83,000 a year. Now, you tell me how many out there in middle America are making $83,000 a year. Well, we know that there are 2 million that are unemployed that certainly aren't. But if you took that money, that $83,000 for all those millionaires, you could create 3 million jobs that would pay $30,000 a year. Not a great deal, but a living wage for 3 million Americans.

So we've got choices here. We've got choices. You are going to give the wealthy even more, $83,000 a year--that's just for millionaires. And there are billionaires out there who will make even more out of this tax cut. What are they going to do with it? Well, I guess they could buy a Mercedes-Benz E-Class which does cost about $82,000. Maybe we would like to think of them with a nice big, fat cigar. They could buy 2,000 of those cigars every year for the next decade, and they could light each one of those cigars with a $100 bill. Now that's a worthy way to do it. Or would you rather have 3 million Americans earning $30,000 a year or, in this case, even an unemployment insurance check?

And one of the things, Mr. Ellison, some days I want to stand up here on the floor and just scream and say, What are you guys thinking? Deficit reduction. Oh, my goodness, we just finished an election. And deficit reduction was on every advertisement. We have got to deal with the deficit. We have got to deal with the deficit. Well, what the Republicans are proposing is a tax break for those who earn more than $250,000 a year.

Let me back up here. Every American taxpayer, every American taxpayer will receive a tax reduction up to $250,000. If they are making more than that, the tax break that they have had for the last decade would end.

Now, my Republican colleagues want to extend that tax cut for the wealthy. What it means is an additional $700 billion of deficit over the next decade, $700 billion. So you can't talk out of both sides of your mouth here. Either you are a deficit hawk and you vote against a tax cut for the wealthy, or you are a hypocrite and you vote for a tax cut for the wealthy and increase the deficit by $700 billion.

Well, because tax cuts, particularly at the upper income levels, don't equate to economic growth. You are quite correct, the George W. Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 helped create the extraordinary deficit that we currently have. There were a couple of other things, two wars, Iraq and Afghanistan, that were not paid for by American money but rather by borrowed Chinese money and the tax cuts and the ultimate near collapse of the economy in 2007 and 2008. Those all added to the huge deficit.

But it's also, just as you have pointed out, clear by the employment statistics that following the tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 that the number of people employed actually reduced by nearly 600,000 people over the period of the next 5 years. So, you know, it doesn't equate.

Now, we need to provide the current tax cuts for those in the middle class that are earning less than $250,000. And, really, for every American earning $250,000 or less--if they make more, they're going to pay a little more--it's very, very clear that if we continue to provide the tax cuts for the very wealthy, it's not going to create more jobs. For those who need the money, they're going to pay their mortgage, they're going to make that car payment, they're going to buy food, they're going to buy clothing, they're going to invest that tax money into the economy, stimulating the economy. For those that are wealthy, I guess they will go buy another Mercedes-Benz, which I think is manufactured overseas.

Mr. Ellison, thank you so very, very much. And I really want to congratulate you on the success of your reelection. And I know why you were reelected--because you have a heart. You've got a moral center that's focused clearly upon the needs of the men and women in your district who struggle every day to put food on their table, to take care of their children, make sure they have a good upbringing, the clothes, the education, and a roof over their head. I mean, that's really where we ought to be going. That should be our moral compass, and it certainly is yours, and I know it is yours also, Mr. Cohen. Because of that, you're back here.

But there's some real serious issues that divide us here in this Congress. We saw one today--the issue of the unemployment insurance. You know, 143 of our Republican colleagues blocked that payment that would give men and women an opportunity to have enough money to take care of the holidays that are ahead of us, put food on the table, maybe buy a few gifts.

There is another thing that we need to do, and we've been working at that for more than 2 years, in almost every case without any help whatsoever from our Republican colleagues, and that is to get America back to work. The Recovery Act, 3 million jobs, no Republican votes. The HIRE Act, another few couple of hundred thousand jobs, no Republican votes.

Even when it came down to putting teachers in schools, to keep them there--in my own State, 16,600 teachers are in the classroom because we put some more money on the table to help the States and local communities--police and firemen the same, not one Republican vote.

Talk about the deficit forever. Yeah, you can talk about the deficit, but it comes down to a point, are you willing to take action to deal with the deficit, and our Republican colleagues have said a resounding ``no'' thus far. They want a $700 billion increase in the deficit to finance a tax break for the wealthiest part of America's society. This is hypocritical. This is wrong.

And it's time for us to go. Mr. Ellison, thank you so very much. Mr. Cohen, delighted to have the opportunity to talk to you about these fundamental American issues.

Mr. Cohen.

Mr. Speaker, I thank you for this opportunity.

Coming off the elections, everyone wants to know what the voters had on their minds. I'll share with you a few things that I heard from my voters in my district and throughout California--perhaps experiences similar from around America.

They want jobs. They want to work.

I think all of us in one way or another understands and feels within us the need to work. It's part of our lives. There are a few, undoubtedly, around who don't ever want to work--and okay for them--but for most Americans, they want a job. They want the opportunity to bring home a paycheck, to support their families--to provide for their food, their shelter, their opportunities for education, and to go on a vacation every now and then. That basic instinct--that basic desire to care for your family, to help build a community--I think is part of America. Americans want jobs. If there were ever a message from this year's elections, it's that.

Now, this isn't new to those of us who are here in the Chamber. It's not

new to the Democrats, and I'm sure it's not new to my Republican colleagues also; but who actually over the last 2 years amongst all of us in this Chamber and in government have actually been working to create those jobs? I think it's the Democrats. We are going to make that point here today, not only about the past actions that have been taken over the last 2 years, but about what's coming in the future.

Early in 2010, many of us on the Democratic side began to formalize and to formulate a strategy, and we call that ``Make It In America.'' If America is going to make it, then we must, once again, make it in America. We must rebuild our manufacturing industry, which is where we make things.

As a child, I remember looking at the pictures of America, of the great poetry of America's birth of industry, when the robust strength of this Nation was seen in the manufacturing sector. It was heavy industry at the time. It was the steel industry and the auto industry. That enormous strength of America carried us through World War II when we literally built the armaments to take on Nazi Germany and Japan. It was done here in the industries of America. The manufacturing base of this Nation needs to be rebuilt, and it is the Democratic Party and the programs that my colleagues and I will be talking about today which will cause that to happen. America will make it when we make it in America.

Joining me tonight are two of my fellow colleagues--Paul Tonko, from the once and future great industrial part of New York, and Mr. Ellison, from the great Midwest.

So I would like to turn to them for a few moments for introductory comments, and then we'll turn back, and we'll begin to hit not only what was done over the last 2 years but, also, where we are going in the future.

Mr. Tonko.

Thank you very much, Mr. Tonko, and I know that you are going to have to leave us in a few moments, but you just reminded me of one of those little charts that I often have here, and this one really does show what you just talked about. It displays that the gold here are the Bush years. You can see the enormous number of losses of jobs, and right down here, right here at the bottom, that's the start of the Obama administration in January of 2009, and each month thereafter, each quarter, we saw an improvement. We didn't see the jobs really coming back in the private sector until the last several months, but clearly, in the last several months, those jobs are there. Interestingly, the unemployment rate has not dropped because it is the government jobs that are now being lost but, nonetheless, a net gain in the jobs in the private sector.

You also raised the very, very important part is that the industrial strength of America has almost always occurred as a result of the research and innovation that has been the hallmark of America. You mentioned the COMPETES Act which deals with energy research in the United States. It deals with scientific research. It's an extremely important one, and unfortunately, our Republican colleagues refused to support that bill when it was here on the House floor. We had enough Democrats at that time to move the bill out.

Also, as I recall, I wasn't here and my two colleagues were here at the time--it was the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, otherwise known as the stimulus bill, that created the largest increase in scientific research ever in America's history. Now, the public may not appreciate that, but that research is finding its way into every part of our industrial future, and from that, the billions of additional dollars that were spent, two things happened: scientists, technicians, lab techs, engineers were employed. They had jobs, and they were developing the future industries of America.

Enough from me. Let me turn to my compatriot from the Midwest. Mr. Ellison, you have a very, very important part of the country. It wasn't particularly friendly to us Democrats but friendly to you because of your outstanding leadership. So please share with us your experience there in the upper Midwest.

Well, Mr. Ellison, thank you so very, very much, and it's a busy night for all of us. We've just come back to reorganize ourselves and to go forward.

Earlier today we selected a minority leader for the next year. It is our current Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and as she left the caucus today she very clearly laid out an agenda for the Democratic Party. That agenda was Make It in America: Manufacturing Matters, and Take Care of the Middle Class. These two things go together. If we are going to have a robust economy, if we are going to be able to move up the employment and reduce the unemployment in America, then we must make it in America. As we do that, we will recreate those very, very important, critical, middle class jobs. There's a whole strategy that's underway here.

I used to play football when I was back at the University of California a few years back and did fairly well at it. But there is an analogy that I think we need to keep in mind here to the current economic situation in America.

Let's envision for a moment that the first quarter was the 8 years of the Bush administration. What happened? Well, I had a little chart up here a few moments ago, and maybe I ought to put it back up. The first 8 years of the Bush administration--be with me for a moment here--were the years of the first quarter. What happened? It was a wipe-out. It was horrible. The American team was decimated. We were on our backs. We were losing 800,000 jobs a month in the last year of the Bush administration. It was 8 million jobs lost.

The second quarter, we brought in the Obama team. It didn't start off too good. The first few minutes of that quarter were rough, but it was an improvement. Each minute that went by, each quarter that went by, we saw an improvement; and by the end of that second quarter, we were building jobs. We were building jobs in the private sector.

Now, we're into the second half of the Obama administration. What's going to happen? The Obama team is still on the field. The President's in place. We have a strong minority position going forward in the Democratic Caucus. Our Republican colleagues will take over the management of the House, and we'll see how that goes. On the Senate side, the Democrats are still there. So let's continue the second half as the Democratic half.

Here's our plan: we are going to develop strategies--many of them are already in place--to make it in America so that America can make it, and it is based on this: manufacturing matters. That was the Speaker's message. The minority message going forward in this House next year will be ``make it in America so that Americans can make it.'' It's important to be able to take that paycheck home.

My oldest daughter, now a little bit older--well, I should say more than a little. I'll never forget the day she came back from her first summer job. She came back, and she showed us her check. She held it up like that; and she said, Dad, I've got my first paycheck. She was proud. She was so proud that she was a working American.

And I know for those millions of Americans out there today that can't find a job, they want to be able to come back to their home with that check in hand and tell their children, I'm back at work. I'm working again. I can take care of you. I can provide for your education. I can put the food on the table. That's what they want. And we have a strategy in mind on the Democratic side that will do that.

This first quarter that I was talking about, the strategy was basically to increase the wealth of the wealthy, to start two wars and never pay for them, and to take the referees off the playing field and just let it rip. And we were ripped to a fare thee well. Wall Street just went crazy with ultimate greed. And the result--we should have expected it--you take the referees off the field, take the rule book, throw it off into the shower; and what do you think's going to happen in an NFL

football game? Well, that's what happened when Wall Street was allowed to run amok during the George W. Bush years.

It was the Democrats in this House, in the Senate that laid out a structure to stabilize the financial industry. We got most of that money back, and we'll probably get it all back in the years ahead. It was stabilized, not as good as we would want; but it was stabilized.

And then the next piece was brought forward, which was the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. By all accounts, by learned economists, 3 million jobs were created or saved as a result of that. And that wasn't the only piece of legislation. There was in that piece of legislation reinvestment in science and technology and research, reinvestment in our roads and streets and bridges, building the foundation for the future of America.

Followed up later in this session by Democrats with legislation called the HIRE Act, to put people back to work, to give businesses the financial incentive to hire people, to bring people back onto the payroll, subsidizing those rehires so that people can take that paycheck home and say, Dear, I'm back at work. I've got a job again. That's what Americans want. And the Democrats were delivering that.

The last piece of legislation before we went into the election was a piece of legislation to help the governments of America, the cities, the counties, the States, keep people employed in the essential jobs that are the public sector jobs: police, fire, teachers. In California alone, 16,000 teachers are in the classroom this year as a result of that piece of legislation. We want people to work. We put those bills on the floor. Some were actually passed by the Senate, much to our delight; but many, many were not. There were many pieces of legislation that passed here without Republican support, but nonetheless were an effort on our part to put people back to work. We're going to take this thing further in the year ahead and up through the next session of Congress.

Let me put this up here for you to see. My colleague, Mr. Ellison, was talking about wind turbines and photovoltaic. Interesting, but not many of these are made in America nowadays. Most of these are imported: wind turbines from Europe and China; photovoltaic cells now mostly from China; buses from Europe and other places. We can make these things in America. We can make these things in America because we once made them in America. In my own district, in the Fairfield/Solano Counties area of California, we used to make a lot of solar panels. And in the Bay Area, there still is a bus manufacturer, one of the few left in America that actually produces buses, the GILLIG Corporation.

I will never forget the day that I went out to visit the wind farm in Solano County and talked to the companies that were putting those wind turbines up. I asked them, Boy, that's quite a tower. It's 400 feet high, a lot of steel. Oh, yeah, yeah. We bring that in from Korea. That's interesting. And those blades stretching out the length of a football field, 300 feet? Oh, yeah, those are brought in from Europe right now, but maybe we can begin to manufacture those once again in Colorado. And all the gear boxes and all of the electronics, all of it is imported.

And I told them, I said, You want me to continue to support American tax money, subsidizing your wind turbines and your business, and you want those things made overseas? Well, they don't make it in America anymore. And I said, Well, let me put it to you this way: if you want my help, if you want American taxpayer money for subsidies, then you damn well better make it in America; otherwise, our tax money ought not be used to support industries overseas. If it's private money, do what you want to do. If you want to buy a turbine from Europe, fine. If you want to buy a turbine from Japan or China, fine. But use your own money. Don't you use American taxpayer money. But unfortunately, far too much of that has gone on in the years of the past.

I have introduced legislation and others are following along so that our tax money is going no longer overseas for buses, for bridge steel, for photovoltaic systems, for wind turbines. Our tax money, when these Democratic bills pass this House and the Senate and signed by President Obama, our tax money will be used to support American industry.

Think of what that means. We spend $4 billion a year buying buses with our tax money, our gas tax money. Where is it going now? A lot of it is going overseas for foreign-made buses and trains and equipment. We don't want that anymore.

In the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, some $12 billion was set aside for a high-speed rail, and a sentence was added to that particular piece of the bill that said that when high-speed rail is built in America, it will be built in America by American manufacturers.

There are some companies overseas that build these high-speed rail systems. Some of them whined, and others of them--Siemens, in particular--said, Well, if that is where the money is and that is the requirement, then we will build the Siemens high-speed rail system in America.

It makes a difference in how you write laws, and the laws that we should write that use our gasoline and our diesel tax money to buy buses, trains, other kinds of rolling stock, and to build bridges and to build highways, that is our gas tax money, that is our diesel tax money, then spend that money on American-made equipment, whether it is a bus, a high-speed rail, a train, or whatever. Again, if you want to use your private money, if you want to buy a Mercedes-Benz, go for it, but not with our tax money.

It also applies in the area of energy policy, the same thing. In the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, there were substantial subsidies for wind and solar and green technologies of all kinds, nuclear and the rest. Good. We need to change our energy policy. We have to move away from our dependence on coal and oil into new, renewable technologies that do not contaminate our atmosphere with carbon dioxide.

Are we going to do that successfully? If we allow our tax money, our subsidies to be spent on equipment made overseas, I don't think so. I don't think so at all. That is our money. We should spend it in the future on American-made equipment of all kinds. That should be our policy. That is legislation that I have introduced. That is legislation that is strongly supported. And, I dare say, it is legislation that will be a major part of Make It In America, the Democratic agenda to rebuild the manufacturing sector of this Nation.

There is another piece of this puzzle that we need to keep in mind, and that is tax policy. There was a lot of discussion during the campaigns, and a lot of Democrats lost their jobs on this issue. It is the big ``D.'' It is the deficit. A lot of our Republican colleagues, rightfully, said the deficit is a problem.

Well, you can go into economics. You can talk about Keynesian countercyclical economic policy and all the rest. And I happen to believe that when the economy is going in the tank, countercyclical measures, Keynesian, using the government purchasing to encourage the growth of the economy, to stabilize the economy, unemployment insurance and other benefits that provide a foundation are extremely important. And, we will soon, on this floor and over in the Senate, take up the extension of the unemployment insurance.

I know our Republican colleagues are opposed to this. They think that by ending the unemployment insurance, people will go out and find a job. I think not. And even a few Republicans lost their jobs in this election, and we will see if they get unemployment insurance. They may very well apply for it, and maybe some of my Democratic colleagues will also. But that unemployment insurance keeps food on the table, keeps families together, and provides the shelter that is necessary, because the jobs are not yet there, because these policies are just now going into legislation and eventually into the law and into place.

The deficit, what are we going to do about the deficit? We are going to have to get the economy going. That, all economists say, is the most critical part of dealing with the deficit. If the economy doesn't grow, the deficit cannot be dealt with. So we grow the economy. Policies such as we have talked about here are a way of doing it.

There is another thing about the deficit that needs to be taken into account, and that is: Where did it come from? Here is a fact. The day that George W. Bush took office in January of 2001, he was handed a $230 billion surplus. The day that President Barack Obama took office, he was handed a $1.3 trillion deficit. Why did it occur? Collapse of the economy, clearly a big piece of it. And the policies of the government just letting Wall Street run amuck, the housing industry run amuck without any rules, all of that was part of it. But there was more to it.

The Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 added billions and, over time, trillions to the deficit. And the Iraq war and the Afghanistan war, two wars that were financed by borrowing money from China, added to the deficit.

Those are the realities. The deficit is part of the economy now; it is part of our fiscal situation. It started, grew, and manifested itself during the George W. Bush years, and now we need to work our way out of it.

So how are we going to do that? How do we work our way out of this deficit? Well, with policies like Make It In America, clearly important. The countercyclical measures, providing unemployment insurance, using the power of government to bring jobs into reality, all of those are important. Tax policy, also.

A big debate will occur in this Chamber in the days ahead. Before December 31, a debate will occur as to what will be the tax policy of the United States. The George W. Bush tax cuts, which I talked about a moment ago that created a large part of that deficit, are up for debate because they expire on December 31, 2010. The expiration of those tax cuts, most of which went to the wealthy, are going to be up for debate.

Our Republican colleagues want to extend all of the tax breaks. The Democrats, President Obama and the rest of us, have a different idea. We think the deficit is really important. We believe that we have to address the deficit. The extension of all of the Bush tax cuts will significantly increase the deficit.

Now, on the Democratic side, we believe that the tax cuts to the middle class are extremely important, because they give the middle class the opportunity to have a larger paycheck, less taxes taken out, so that homeowners can pay the mortgage, put food on the table, provide for their families, give kids the books, the backpack, the things they need to go to school. That is our view. The tax cuts should be extended for the middle class.

Let's look at what happens in a very, very important policy discussion between the Democrats and the Republicans about taxes. There are a lot of bubbles on this page, but these bubbles represent real money. The George W. Bush tax cuts, if extended, have this effect:

For those people that are earning $10,000 or more, they will get $52 in reduced taxes. And so it goes. Let's say a person is earning $75,000 a year. They will get $1,800 of tax cuts. And then it continues to grow. The more income you have, the more wealth you have, the greater the break, the greater the tax cut for you, so that by the time you are a millionaire, your average tax reduction is $17,000.

Under the George W. Bush, that is average. That is between $500,000 and $1 million. But if you are a millionaire and you have $1 million adjustable tax, you will receive an enormous benefit. And then, if you get up to the gazillionaires, here is where you are.

The Democrats have a different idea. Our idea is that every taxpayer, every taxpayer, the very wealthy and those who are making just $10,000 a year, should receive a tax break on the first $200,000 that an individual makes and $250,000 for a couple filing joint tax returns. Let me make that clear: Every taxpayer gets a tax break, up to $200,000 for an individual and $250,000 for a couple filing a joint tax return.

What is wrong with that? Millionaires get a tax reduction, billionaires get a tax reduction, every taxpayer gets a tax reduction. And this is our plan. But for those who are very, very wealthy, those who are making over $250,000, $500,000, $1 million, $1 billion a year, we think they have an obligation to America, and they should not receive a continuation of the tax break that they have had for the last several years, this kind of a tax break.

So we would suggest that their tax break go back to what it was before 2001. In the case of those earning up to $1 million, it would go from 33 percent to 36 percent. Oh, my goodness, a 3 percent increase. How horrible.

I think not. What does that amount to for somebody making $1 million a year? Three percent, $30,000. That is not going to bust their checking account. But it is certainly going to be important if you are concerned about the deficit. If you care one iota about the deficit, you better be caring about this, because here is where the real money is, right here.

For the tax breaks to continue, for those above $250,000 we are talking about over $700 billion of increased deficit. You can't have it both ways here. You cannot have it both ways. If you are concerned about the deficit, then why in the world would you want those people who are not hungry, who are not homeless, who are not working in our manufacturing plants, why would you want them to be responsible for increasing the deficit? Well, perhaps because that is your constituency.

That is not our constituency. The Democratic constituency is the hard-working middle class that will get a tax break, a continuation of what they have had for the last 7 years.

This is important. This is about the deficit. Remember, every taxpayer in America gets a tax break up to $200,000 or $250,000. They get a break. But you get more money above that, and your adjusted gross income is greater than $250,000, then for that amount, up to $1 million, you are going to pay 3 percent more. For a millionaire, $30,000. For a billionaire, okay, it will be more dollars, but the increase is only going to be 4-plus percent. This is not going to bust their bank, and it is not going to hurt small business.

Let's be clear about this: Small business is not impacted, except for just 3 percent of the small businesses in America, meaning this proposal that the Democrats are going to put forward will provide a tax break for 97 percent of small businesses. It will not increase their taxes for 97 percent of small businesses.

For 3 percent, and here is the definition of small businesses, the world's largest construction company, Bechtel, in California, is by the definition that the Republicans use a small business. Billions of dollars of annual income. It is a small business. I think not, but that is the Republican definition.

Now, one of my colleagues earlier tonight did a little thing that I just have to do again, because it is very illuminating, so let me do that. I will take down our principal message for the two years ahead: Make it in America. Manufacturing matters. If America is going to make it, we must make it in America.

I was talking a moment ago about the Bush tax cut. Here is what it means. The Republican plan, if the Bush tax cuts are extended, will cut taxes for the rich an average of $83,347 a year. $83,347 a year is the average tax reduction for the 1 percent wealthiest Americans, the 1 percent wealthiest Americans.

Well, what does that mean? Well, it means that for the next decade, they will be able to buy an $83,000 Mercedes Benz E-class every year for the next decade. Or maybe they want to buy their wife, girlfriend, whatever, a modest purse, a Hermes, just a handbag, $64,000, every year. That is a lot of purses for the next 10 years.

Now, if that is not sufficient, we like to characterize some of these fat cats with their cigar. Well, they won't have trouble buying cigars. These are top-line cigars. They can buy 800 cigars every year. And that is not all. They can light those cigars with a $100 bill. Every single cigar, that is 800 a year, and 800 $100 bills used to light them.

I could go on and on, but I see my colleague Paul Tonko has returned.

Here is the alternative, Americans. Here is the alternative to the Republican plan. Instead of giving $83,000 a year to the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans, you can take that same amount of money and give a $30,000-a-year job to 3 million Americans.

Our work is about choices, our work is about values, and, frankly, our work is about morality. Tell me what is the morality of allowing the richest 1 percent of Americans to buy 800 cigars a

year and light those cigars with $100 bills, $83,347 in tax reductions, versus 3 million Americans, 3 million unemployed Americans who have a family, who are losing their home, who cannot provide food if the Republicans are able to block the extension of the unemployment insurance.

This is a moral question. This is a question of what is right and wrong in America. This tax cut shows the dividing line about where you stand in America.

Where do you stand? Are you with the richest 1 percent, so they can go out and buy a Mercedes E class $80,000 vehicle every year for the next decade, or do you stand with families and want to put a paycheck on the table? I think it is pretty clear.

Mr. Tonko, thank you for rejoining us.

That was in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, wasn't it?

Thank you, Mr. Tonko. If you or anyone really cares about the deficit, you need to really pay very close attention to this debate that is going to happen here in this chamber and here in Washington, D.C., in the days and weeks ahead. And that is, do we give an enormous tax break to the wealthiest of America, and in doing so increase the deficit by over $700 billion, or do we limit that tax break to all taxpayers up to $200,000 or $250,000? An extremely important debate that will take place.

For me, it is time to think about the deficit. It's time to get real about the deficit. And if you really care about the deficit, if you really care about growing the economy, the point that you just made, then limit the tax reduction so that all Americans receive a tax deduction up to $200,000 or $250,000 of adjusted gross income. And keep in mind it's adjusted gross income, not gross income. Adjusted gross income. That's after all the deductions.

By PAYGO, you mean that the Congress and the Senate in enacting tax cuts balance those tax cuts off against reductions of program or vice versa. If you have a new program, the way you get the revenue to pay for it.

The PAYGO, meaning as applied to us in the Congress.

Excuse me for interrupting. That was the policy during the Clinton period, and it led to the surplus because it put fiscal discipline into this building and over on the other side in the Senate. Similarly, it has now been reinstituted by the Democrats a year and a half ago.

I want to just wrap up here. I want to go back to ``Make It In America'' and wrap with this. Our time has almost expired here.

With this ``Make It In America'' agenda, as Speaker Pelosi and soon to be Minority Leader Pelosi said as she exited the Organizational Caucus of the Democratic Party today, there are two principles that the Democratic Caucus will follow: One, we will make it in America so that America can make it. Two, we will do this on behalf of the middle class so that those jobs are there.

Interestingly, while the President hasn't used this term very often of ``make it in America,'' President Obama has nonetheless proposed policies that are directly in line with this--specifically, that every business in America be given the opportunity to immediately write off any capital investments they make. Now, it's already in the law. In the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, there is in the law an automatic write-off of a capital investment made by a small business. That was increased in a subsequent bill that we voted out, without any Republican support, that allows small businesses to write off immediately.

The President would go further. I've introduced a bill that would do that--other members of the Democratic Caucus have also--so that businesses would be incentivized to invest now in the capital equipment that will provide the foundation for future jobs. Invest now.

This is part of our strategy. It is an overarching Democratic strategy, one that we have been working on for some time, beginning with, among the first bills passed by Congress and signed by the President way back in 2009, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Would you like to wrap this up here?

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

Madam Speaker, I, along with my colleagues Congressman George Miller and Congressman Jerry McNerney, rise to recognize Anne Cain, Contra Costa County Librarian, to congratulate her and wish her well as she approaches her retirement.

Anne has dedicated 35 years of commitment and service to public libraries. Having achieved a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Denver, Colorado, and upon completion of her Master's in Library Service from Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts, Anne began her career as the Branch Assistant and Social Service Librarian at Newton Free Library in Massachusetts. In 1975, Anne relocated to California and served as the Principal Librarian for Pasadena Public Library, where she provided reference services, service to the business community, children, teens, and adults.

In 1989, Anne moved north to the San Francisco Bay Area and joined the Contra Costa County Library system as Head of the Central Library responsible for service to the public but also for centralized countywide services. She was named Assistant County Librarian just 1 year later, responsible for the day-to-day operations of all Contra Costa County Libraries, services, and programs.

In 1998, Anne was named County Librarian responsible for library service at 25 locations in 18 cities and unincorporated areas across Contra Costa County. Anne worked closely with the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors, city governments, Friends of Libraries and numerous other community groups and concerned citizens to plan, evaluate, and deliver library service tailored to the needs of the communities it serves.

Anne is a leader in the fight to adequately fund public libraries. Nearly two decades ago when the State of California cut Special District Augmentation Funding to counties, Contra Costa County libraries lost nearly a third of their funding. The system was nearly decimated. Anne has worked with cities throughout the county to build trust, local engagement, and support for libraries.

In recent years, Anne has been actively involved in statewide legislative activities and served as Chair of the California Library Association's Legislative Committee. In 2006, she was selected by the California Library Association as its member of the year.

Madam Speaker, we invite our colleagues to join us in honoring Anne for her tireless and dedicated service to the people of Contra Costa County. We also join her family, colleagues and friends in congratulating Anne on a successful and fulfilling career, and a very well-deserved retirement.

Mr. Speaker, I intended to speak to the 49th anniversary of the Peace Corps. On this day, 49 years ago, Congress passed and the President signed the authorization for the Peace Corps. Over those 49 years, tens of thousands, indeed hundreds of thousands, of Americans have served this country in what is known as the most difficult job you will ever love, and my wife and I did, indeed, love it.

However, the tax proposal that's before us is that every American taxpayer will receive a lower tax rate on the first $250,000 that they have in adjusted gross income, whether they are a small business or an individual taxpayer. Those that have greater would pay somewhat higher tax. The other alternative is to run up the deficit another $700 billion, which I think is a particularly bad idea.

But back to the Peace Corps. It's a great institution, and it's been supported by both Democrats and Republicans, and we think that's a good thing.

And that's the rest of the story.

Madam Speaker, today, I joined Congressional colleagues at a bipartisan ceremony in commemoration of the victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Nine years ago, our great country experienced the tragedy of a generation. Nearly 3,000 people were taken from this world too soon when violent extremist terrorists in Al Qaeda hijacked four planes and attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Among those who died that fateful day were hundreds of brave first responders who risked everything to save others.

I join my fellow Americans today in remembrance. As our battle with Al Qaeda continues, on this day, it is our responsibility as proud Americans to honor those who have perished by recommitting ourselves to the values of our great Republic.

On 9/11, we lost thousands of men and women across ethnicities, national origins, religious perspectives, and ideologies. Our country includes the rich tapestry of the world, and our success has always depended on our willingness to embrace everyone who is willing to work hard and play by the rules.

We cannot allow cruel acts of terror to divide us. We are the United States of America, but Al Qaeda wants us to be the Divided States of America. There is no more appropriate day to demonstrate to the world that we refuse to back down from our shared civic values. Today, let's stand together, united as Americans, in somber mourning for those we've lost and in hopeful yearning for the bright future we can forge together.

Mr. Speaker, I will engage in a colloquy here, with the permission of the Chair, with my colleagues to discuss an extremely important issue for America--that is, manufacturing. If America is going to make it, we're going to have to make it in America.

But before I go into the subject of how we can restart and rebuild the American manufacturing sector and make it in America, I'd like to do a little review of history first.

Years and years ago, I played football at the University of California. And it's football season, and my friends have often accused me of using football analogies, and, well, it happens to be true. So, okay, it's football season.

Let's consider for a moment that it's not football that we're dealing with but, rather, it's the economy. And if we were to consider the first quarter, we would have to look at the George W. Bush and the Republican first quarter. What happened?

Beginning in 2007, we began to see the extraordinary crash of the American economy. It just bled jobs. Eight million jobs were lost, peaking in December of 2008, just before the onset of the Obama administration. Nearly 800,000 jobs were lost that month alone, totaling 8 million during that period of time. So you see this incredible decline in the American job market, and this is just the private employment sector. This was replicated in the public sector also.

So that was the first quarter. How did it happen? Why did it happen?

Well, crazy tax policy for starts. Tax policies that gave extraordinary breaks to the very wealthy; modest breaks to the middle class; two wars that were not paid for, the money was borrowed; the Medicare drug benefit, not paid for, creating an enormous deficit and the regulators stepped back. The period of no regulation occurred during that first quarter. Wall Street went crazy. It collateralized debt obligations. The meltdown of the housing industry, subprime loans. All of those things led to this extraordinary decline.

In January of 2009, President Obama came in and we began the second quarter. Tough situation going into that second quarter, but we began to see immediate action taken. The Wall Street stabilization programs went into effect, and the way in which that was administered began to stabilize Wall Street. We had the stimulus program, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. It went into effect. And we saw numerous other pieces of legislation go into effect during the Obama second quarter.

I'm going to go through some of these very, very quickly.

The stimulus program, 3 million jobs as a direct result of that since it went into effect in February of 2009.

We saw also the Worker, Homeownership, and Business Assistance Act dealing with the foreclosures, trying to keep people in their homes and to provide tax relief for small businesses.

We saw the Student Aid and Financial Responsibility Act, the biggest effort since the GI Bill in the 1940s and 1950s, to give people an opportunity to get job training and to get new skills when they got back into the job market.

Cash for Clunkers, stabilizing the automobile industry.

And we also saw the American Government stepping in to save two great icons of the American industry and the hundreds, in fact, thousands of small businesses that depended upon the auto industry with the bailout of General Motors and Chrysler--to good effect. We were able to maintain those small business jobs that were directly impacted there.

We also saw the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights. How many of us have reached into our pockets for our credit cards and we go, ``I just know those banks are going to screw me one more time.'' But no more, because we passed the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights.

Other legislation is now pending. All of those are laws.

And one that passed just 3 weeks ago, which was the teachers and the medical legislation, that went into effect fully paid for; 160,000 teachers across the United States will stay in the classrooms providing that education that our students need, and paid for by ending an extraordinarily bad piece of policy that's been in effect for many years that gave a tax break to American corporations that off-shored American jobs.

So what do you mean? Do you mean to tell me that American corporations were able to get a tax break every time they sent a job offshore? Yes. That's exactly what is over today as a result of action taken.

On every one of these bills, every single effort made by this Congress to bring jobs back, to stabilize the economy, we found virtually no Republican support. In the stimulus, none at all. In the credit card, only a handful of Republicans. Republican opposition was uniform for every single effort made by this House, by the Democrats.

The result of our work without Republican support has been a steady improvement, so that for the last 8 months we have seen private sector jobs actually increase--not as much as we need, not as much as we want, but we have seen a clear differentiation between the first quarter with the Bush debacle and the rebuilding of the American economy in the second quarter.

Where are we today? We're at halftime. We're in the locker room here in Washington, D.C. We're in Congress. We're working to complete our plan for the second half--the resurgence and the rebuilding of the American economy. And in this half, we have a series of bills that we put forward--some already law; others that will go into effect in the months ahead--hopefully passed. We'd love to have the support of our Republican colleagues, but, as in this moment, their seats are empty. But when they're filled, they still vote ``no'' on every effort to rebuild the American economy.

So it's halftime. The question for the American public is: Which team's going to go back on the field for the second half, for 2011 and 2012? Which team's going back on the field? The team that brought us this great debacle, the great crash of the American economy, or the team that has slowly, but every month, brought progress back to the American economy? We're talking now about making it in America.

Joining me today for this discussion is my colleague from the great State of Wisconsin, Dr. Kagen, an extraordinary individual, an entrepreneur in his own right, who is going to talk about some of the efforts that he's

made and some of the issues that face his district in making it in America and the things that we need to do.

Dr. Kagen from Wisconsin.

Excuse me, if you might yield for a moment, Dr. Kagen. The stimulus bill was actually a tax cut bill?

If I might, you and I were talking earlier about a program that you have been doing in your district for the last couple of weeks, and you have been going to communities. And along the way you've reached out and said we need to make it in America. And you were talking about the paper industry. I suppose you have a paper industry in your district?

Excuse me for a moment, gentlemen, but part of our agenda as Democrats then is to make sure that we have fair trade, that we have a fair balance between our Nation, our manufacturers, and those in other countries who may be--not may be, but are--subsidizing their exports, such as China and the currency thing.

Dr. Kagen? And this is a colloquy, so we will go back and forth here. So please.

Let's continue on. I notice that another colleague has joined us from the great State of New York, but let me turn back to our colleague that was raising the point about the Chinese currency.

Let me take a moment here and bring it back to something you were talking about. You mentioned the wind turbines and the solar systems. We developed the technology here in the United States, and, in fact, the stimulus bill that provided the largest increase ever in research is going to once again put the United States in a position where we can dominate these green industries.

That research is there. Incidentally, not one Republican voted for that enormous research program and tax cut and jobs program and infrastructure program. Not one Republican voted for the program that created 3 million jobs.

But there is something going on here that we need to pay attention to, and this is a piece of legislation that I have introduced. We are spending billions of dollars to promote the wind industry, the solar industry. These are tax credits that we give to companies for a production tax credit or for someone that's putting a solar cell on their house.

We need to make sure that that tax money is spent on American-made wind turbines and American-made solar panels, biofuels, and other kinds of green technologies. If it's our tax money, then Buy America. Buy American.

A little later here, I suspect, I want one of our colleagues, Marcy Kaptur, to come and talk to us about a bill that passed out of this House just hours ago that would require that you and I, not just talk the talk, but that we walk the walk and that in the equipment that we purchase for our offices, it be made in America, once again, American tax money used to buy American-made products.

It's a piece of legislation I have introduced. I like it. I like it because it's going to create in my industry wind turbines that are actually going to not only be on the hills but actually made in America.

Enough for me for a few minutes. I notice my colleague from New York, Mr. Paul Tonko, has joined us. You have been at this a long time. You were in one of the original manufacturing sectors of America. Please tell us.

Before you go to the next one, could you share with us where the ARPA-E money came into the system?

Most people don't know what the Recovery Act is. They think of the stimulus program. They are one and the same, the stimulus program and the Recovery Act.

That is, the Democrats supported and passed the stimulus program, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

``No.'' ``No.'' ``No.''

So for research-specific programs, for energy research and small businesses, they got grants and loans to develop. The Democrats know that we have to improve the private sector to make jobs.

Well, we know that the central New York area along the Erie Canal was one of the birthplaces of the American Industrial Revolution. I think there was something in the Midwest, too. My colleagues here from the Midwest may have something to add to it. Ohio, I believe? Do you still make things in Ohio?

You said something a moment ago when you were talking about the multinational corporations and whether we're willing to stand up to the multinational corporations and bring jobs back to America. Two and a half weeks ago, we came

back from our session working out in our districts to pick up a piece of legislation called the Education Jobs and Medical Assistance Act. As a result of that, 160,000 teachers are employed across the Nation, and police and firemen, public safety officials and medical services are being provided in the communities.

A major piece of that legislation dealt precisely with the issue you discussed a moment ago about multinationals. Under the previous law, multinational companies that took jobs from America and shipped them to China or somewhere else in the world actually got a tax break. We closed that loophole. We closed that tax loophole, bringing $10 billion back to the Treasury and discouraging American corporations, ending their incentive.

Mr. Tonko, if you would like to jump into this one.

Let's turn to our colleague from the manufacturing center of America.

Wait, you mean to tell me that the Republican Party actually has, as one of their policy planks, to phase out Social Security?

We have talked about various ways we can make it in America, certainly the fair trade dealing with China's currency and the

whole idea of competition. We have talked about the way in which we have to make sure that our tax laws support programs of hiring in the United States rather than off-shoring. In all of these things I would hope our Republican colleagues would come along with us to make it in America. But on maybe 20 different bills that we have moved out of this House, there has been virtually no Republican support.

There are other opportunities, and we offer these opportunities to our Republican colleagues to come along with us on some other programs. A piece of legislation that I am working on deals with these buses that were once made in the Midwest, in Ohio, and are still made in California. Right now we spend about $6 billion of our gasoline tax money to buy buses, light rail trains, intercity rail systems for Amtrak and the like. In the law, there are four waivers that allow the Department of Transportation to ignore the Buy American rules, and so what has happened over the last 20 years or so is that those waivers are routinely used and transit districts simply buy buses that are made overseas. Our tax money flows out of the country, our jobs disappear, and our industry, the transportation industry, is almost gone.

My legislation tells the Department of Transportation, no, no, those waivers are finished. Three of the four waivers are gone. If there is an extraordinary cost difference, okay. But we want that money spent on American jobs so that when in the San Francisco Bay area, the Bay Area Rapid Transit system, BART, goes out, as they will, to buy $300 million of train sets for the BART system, where will those trains be made? Will they be made in China? Given the monetary advantage that China has, quite possibly they could win the bid. Given the issues of worker safety and environmental issues that China ignores, they may win the bid. But my legislation says no, we are going to make these trains in America, $300 million there, $6 billion to $7 billion a year across the Nation for transit districts everywhere, we can make it in America if we bring our tax money back. So whether it is wind turbines or solar or buses and trains, it is our tax money. Let's spend it in America, rebuild the American manufacturing system, and make it in America.

Would that be a good thing for Ohio?

You talked about the investment.

A week ago, President Obama spoke to this issue of making it in America and of rebuilding the American industries. He spoke about the need to give significant tax breaks to businesses that want to invest capital to expand their businesses, to expand their manufacturing bases. Here is a very, very powerful notion.

I was meeting with three of my friends who are in the business community. They are manufacturers--one in the food industry, another in the high-tech industry. I was talking to them about this notion of would you increase your business, would you increase your capital investment on your production lines if you could write off in 1 year the cost of that capital. They said, Absolutely. You put that into law, and I'm investing tomorrow. I'm going to put people to work building my manufacturing base.

So the President has now spoken to this. It's one of the proposals that he has put forward. Today, I introduced a piece of legislation that would do exactly that. Any business that wants to increase its capital investment in that business--broadband, production lines, machine tools, whatever it is--they could write it off in year one. We can restart the American manufacturing system if we are committed to making it in America, which is a whole series of legislation: ending tax breaks for offshoring, ending tax breaks for businesses that are routinely killing the American economy by sending jobs offshore, using our tax money to build a green economy here in America rather than buying it from manufacturers overseas, making sure our buses, our trains, our planes are made in America.

Dr. Kagen, you've been in the high-tech industry, in the medical industry. You understand these issues.

It affects your kinds of businesses. Share with us your perspective as we begin to wrap this up in the next 6 minutes.

Dr. Kagen, thank you so very much for joining us.

As I started this discussion, I used an analogy of a football game. We're talking about the most important game of all. It's not even a game. The most important thing of all is the American economy and how to keep it going and growing.

To go back over it, during the Bush years, these are all of the reasons we've stated: Two wars for which money was borrowed, creating an enormous deficit; the deregulation of Wall Street, anything goes; the collapse of Wall Street; the issues of tax policy where the wealthy were rewarded for their wealth, not for their work, which led to the largest decline in the American economy since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

It was plain to see that when President Obama came in. That was the first quarter. In the second quarter, we began to see policies that were put forth by the Democratic Party and the Democratic administration, policies that began to restore the American economy--a steady upward climb. It's not where we need to be, but we are on the road, and we did all of that with almost no Republican help at all. If you go back through all of those votes, the Republican Party was standing over there, saying no, no to the programs that actually brought us back, and we continue on today. We are in the locker room, ready for the second half, which begins in January 2011. The question is:

Which team are you going to put back on the field? Where do you stand?

Well, we know pretty clearly where the Republican Party stands. It stands with the old failed policies of the George W. Bush administration. It stands for ending Social Security and for ending Medicare. It stands for anything goes and no regulation; let it rip and it's ripped us off. It stands for tax breaks for the wealthy and the heck with the middle class. That's where the Republican Party stands.

The Democratic Party wants to make it in America, to rebuild the American manufacturing base and the American manufacturing industry.

If you would, Dr. Kagen, put the picture back up of the family, of the family in your district in the paper industry. This family is losing its job because of unfair competition. If we were to use the Capital Investment Program together with the program that you talked about of restoring fairness and trade, perhaps that company, that family and families in my district would be able to have well-paid, middle class American jobs.

Dr. Kagen, would you like to close us off here and bring us back to real America.

Dr. Kagen, thank you so very much and my colleagues for joining us, and thank you to my colleagues in the Democratic Party, who are committed to manufacturing matters and to making it in America. We have put forth many, many policies and programs. We ask our Republican colleagues to join us in making it in America.

I yield back my time, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, before I start, I would like to ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the subject of Manufacturing in America. This is the subject of my Special Order tonight.

Mr. Speaker, if I might just review with you and others what's happened since 2007 here in the United States. As this diagram indicates, beginning in 2007, the Great Recession during the George W. Bush administration, reaching its lowest point

in December of 2008 and January of 2009 where 750,000 jobs were lost. The Barack Obama administration came in in January of 2009 and within 2 months passed the first stimulus bill which leveled off the decline and slowly began the recovery of the American economy. And most every month since January of 2009 we've seen an improvement, so that in this year, in 2010, we are now seeing small, but important, gains in the employment in America. Some 600,000 jobs have been created over the last several months. This is the result of policies that were enacted by the Democratic Congress, the Senate, and signed by the President.

Those policies we need to understand. They began with the stimulus bill and carried on through several other pieces of legislation. In each and every one of those pieces of legislation, there was no help from our Republican colleagues. They were absent. They voted ``no'' on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act; they voted ``no'' on the Workers, Homeownership, and Business Assistance Act--93 percent of them voted ``no.'' One hundred percent voted ``no'' on the stimulus even though, as you can see from the charts here, it stabilized the economy and then led to 2.8 million people keeping their jobs and getting a job here in the United States.

The Student Aid and Financial Responsibility Act, 100 percent of Republicans voted ``no,'' denying students larger loans, greater Pell Grants, and it goes on and on. The Cash for Clunkers--and we will hear from Ohio in a few moments--a majority of the Republicans voted ``no.'' The Democrats had to carry the day. The hiring incentives to restore employment, the HIRE Act, creating 300,000 jobs, again, it was the Democrats; the Republicans voted ``no.''

So after this 18 months of concerted effort to create jobs in America through the various stimulus programs, such as the Cash for Clunkers, the homeowners assistance programs, all of those, we're seeing an improvement. But this was the first 18 months. We are now moving on to the second half of the Democratic agenda. If I might just reach over here, this is the second half of the Democratic agenda, Make It in America; Make It in America so that America can make it.

Manufacturing matters, and that's the subject of our discussion. The first 18 months, get people back to work, stimulate the economy, set a solid foundation. We are now on the road to permanent improvement in the American economy through manufacturing.

Joining me here tonight are my colleagues from Wisconsin and from the great State of Ohio to talk about manufacturing in the Heartland--some of it a little cool, or cold, depending on the time of the year, and some of it, the central part of America's manufacturing sector.

I would like to ask the gentlewoman from Ohio, Betty Sutton, to join us and share with us her experiences about the great State of Ohio and ``making it in America.''

Would the gentlelady yield for a moment?

Do I understand you to say that, presently, our tax dollars that are used for water projects and sanitation projects purchase steel, pumps and other material which are manufactured overseas?

So we will use our tax dollars to create manufacturing jobs in America.

We will make it in America.

If the gentlelady would yield, I would like to turn to our colleague, Dr. Kagen from Wisconsin. He and I were chatting earlier, and he was in a rage about what happens on the international scene.

Would you like to share that with us, Dr. Kagen?

Excuse me.

Are you telling us that banks own more homes than individual families do?

Those would be Wall Street banks?

If the gentleman would yield, the Wall Street Reform Act goes to the heart of both of those issues.

There was significant reform of the mortgage industry with the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, and there was also a provision--well, it wasn't in the Wall Street Reform Act, but there is a debate going on now here in Congress and in the Senate about what to do with this executive pay, with this 300-1 ratio. That is the question of:

Do we continue the middle class tax cuts, and do we let the tax cuts expire that the Bush administration put in for the high and the mighty and the wealthy?

Please.

Before you go to the next issue, I recall a piece of legislation that we had on the floor more than a month ago. That piece of legislation dealt with corporate tax breaks. It ended corporate tax breaks for corporations that ship jobs offshore. When a corporation under the present Tax Code sends a job offshore, it gets a tax break. It amounts to $14.5 billion a year.

Would you put that previous one back up?

The 82 or the 22 cents an hour. Either way.

So, if a corporation were to be making shirts, ties, or suits here in America, it could ship those jobs to China or to Cambodia and get a tax break. Now, this House voted to end that tax break. We voted to end that tax break.

Again, whose side are you on?

Every Republican voted to continue that corporate tax break, giving those corporations tax advantages, literally giving them our tax money so that they could offshore that garment worker's job.

Of course.

Ms. Sutton, would you like to pick it up from there?

Let me, if I might, just bring that to the West Coast. The San Francisco Bay Bridge, from Oakland to San Francisco, major artery, had a problem with the Loma Prieta earthquake and had to be rebuilt. It's been a long process to rebuild. It's going to be a magnificent new bridge.

The CalTrans, California Transportation Authority went out to bid. An American contractor proposed two bids. One bid was the steel would be manufactured and fabricated here in the United States; the other bid was the steel would be manufactured and fabricated in China. There was a 10 percent difference. The State of California chose to save 10 percent, and all of the steel winds up being imported from China.

We lost jobs. This is an example of where our tax money, and that's exactly what it is, was not used to support American jobs but, rather, used to support jobs in China. For what, 10 percent?

It turns out it actually turned out to be more expensive because the Chinese welds in the fabrication were not satisfactory, were purposely hidden, and it was only because an inspector finally arrived from California, looked at it and said, Oh, my. This will not work. So they had to go back and do the whole thing over.

One example. I'll give you more examples as we go down here, but I'm telling you this: We can make it in America.

Wind turbines. We led in the development of wind turbines. We're spending billions of dollars a year to subsidize the wind turbine industry.

China said, Oh, we've got wind in China. Let's build wind turbines. They have excluded every international company except a Chinese company in the manufacturing of turbines, and now they are exporting those turbines to America.

The same way with solar panels, photovoltaic panels. And I'll come to buses a little later. But this is something that I find extraordinarily wrong, and we're going to change it. And before this conversation is over, we're going to talk about how it can change.

Mr. Kagen--excuse me. Dr. Kagen.

At the beginning of this discussion, the gentlewoman from Ohio talked about the wise use of our tax money, in this case in the water systems and the sanitation systems, to use that tax money for materials and products and machines that are built in America. That's but one example. It's a very good example, because we desperately need that infrastructure. It's the foundation for quality life, for healthy life, as well as for building our economy.

There's another one that came to me in this process. Actually, today I had a telephone town hall, and a fellow said, you know, in Vallejo, California, the old shipyard at Vallejo, Mare Island Shipyard, has this huge building, and one of the European train companies is setting up a shop there. They don't know what they are going to do with it, but is there some way that you could help that company bring to Vallejo, California, and Mare Island jobs to refurbish trains? And my answer was, yes, absolutely.

We have had a buy American provision in your tax money for years and years. There has also been in the law four waivers that Secretaries of Transportation have used repeatedly for more than 20 years now to waive off, forget about, ignore the buy America clause. So about $5 billion a year of our gasoline tax money is used not to buy buses and trains and light rail cars made in America, but rather made overseas.

So my answer to this gentleman was a piece of legislation that I have introduced, a lot of support among my Democratic colleagues to simply tell the Secretary of Transportation you don't have four waivers; we're eliminating three of those discretionary waivers. If the cost is more than 25 percent, then maybe you can have a waiver. But the other three waivers, they're gone. We're bringing those manufacturing jobs, those manufacturing jobs that build the buses, that build the trains, that build the BART cars, the MARTA cars, the transit cars here in Washington, DC, we are going to make those in America because, by golly, that's our tax money, and we're going to use it in America just as we're going to use our tax dollars to make those sanitation systems and water systems from American-made goods. That's our promise, and we can do it.

I talked to Secretary LaHood, the Secretary of the Department of Transportation, yesterday. I said, Mr. Secretary, I know that you have been working hard not to give waivers, but I want to give you--in fact, I want to take away three of the tools that your predecessors have used to ship jobs overseas. And he said, I'm not giving waivers. And I said, if my bill passes, you won't be able to. We're going to spend that money in America. One more example of what we can do not just for jobs today, but for tomorrow and for generations in the future using our tax money to make it in America.

Manufacturing matters. It's the heart and soul of the middle class. It is the strength of the economy. And we're going to reestablish in America the manufacturing industries of yesterday and today, whether it's buses or trains or light rail.

Mr. Kagen, you were kind of getting agitated there. Maybe you want to add to this.

Well, the answer is halfway home. This House passed legislation more than a month ago, and tomorrow I believe we will have that same legislation back for another vote. Our Republican colleagues universally voted ``no'' on ending the tax loophole that gives corporations $14.5 billion of our tax money to offshore American jobs. We're going to end it. We're going to put the issue back on the floor tomorrow.

The problem is the United States Senate and the Republican Party, where in the Senate one Republican Senator stands up and objects and says I'm going to filibuster, and everything stops. They got to round up 60 votes. The Republican Party controls that 60 votes, and they have repeatedly, time after time said ``no'' to jobs for American workers in the first 18 months of this Congress, where we have put 2.8 million people back to work. The Republicans in this House and in the Senate say ``no.''

I have got a solution for it. The next Senator that says, I object and I'm going to filibuster ought to be paraded down to the well of the Senate, the microphones turned on, and start talking, Mr. Senator. Let's see how long you are going to talk with the C-SPAN cameras on you. My guess is within an hour you'll make a fool of yourself. The filibuster will be over. The votes will be there to put Americans back to work.

I yield.

Yesterday, Dr. Kagen and I were in the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee hearing, and Dr. Kagen was in the chair, and we heard from a panel of contractors and bus manufacturers that the stimulus bill actually created jobs.

Dr. Kagen, I know you have personal experience in this. You had told me about it earlier. Why don't you share that experience where Republicans say no jobs are created, yet the contractors, the voters are saying thank goodness for the stimulus bill because it kept me in business, it kept my employees employed. Dr. Kagen.

That was the stimulus bill.

Let me give another example of where we can set the stage for future manufacturing jobs in America. It was America that really created the photovoltaic cells. We've lost this industry in America. This is in China. Some of it is in Europe. But it's no longer really much of a manufacturing industry in America.

We talked earlier about the wind turbines and the way in which that industry has gone offshore. We talked about the buses. It turns out that many, many economists, and certainly I would join with them, say that the future industries are green technology industries. We have to shift away from coal and oil. We needed to be energy independent. The green technologies of solar, wind, all of those biofuels and algae fuels, all of those are the industries of the future.

Yet, our tax money is not used to support those industries. All too often here's what happens: Just as in buses, our tax money is used to buy wind turbines from China or Korea. I will give you another example on the wind turbine. Let me get that wind turbine back up here so I can get excited about this.

I represent some of the biggest wind resource areas in the Nation: the Altamont Pass and the Solano wind resource area. I was out there touring it one day with one of the three companies that operate in the area. I looked at this thing. It's 400 feet tall. The blades are wider than the length of a football field. It's going round and round and generating electricity, and I said, where is it made? And the executive looks at me and said, well--I said, no, no, where is it made? He said, well, the tower is made in Korea. Oh, how about the blades? Well, the blades are coming from Europe. And I said what about the generator and all of the electronics? Well, it's not made here. It's either made in China or it's made in Europe. And I told him, I said, what's wrong with that story? And he said, well, that's where it's made. And I said you're receiving serious taxpayer subsidies to build those, to put those towers in place, and you are subsidizing China. Do you think that's right?

He goes, well--and I said, I'm going to promise you this. I'm going to go back to Washington and I'm going to introduce legislation that says in the green technology, all of those subsidies, all of those tax subsidies for putting the photovoltaic system on top of your roof, for building a huge, giant solar thermal system or biofuels of all kinds, and of course the wind turbines, if you want that tax subsidy, it's going to be made in America or else you will get no tax subsidy. Those are our tax dollars. Those tax dollars are going to be spent on American-made equipment. And he said, Well, I don't think we can do it. I said, Your choice; you don't want the subsidy, then you can buy it from China, but by golly, if you want a subsidy, you're going to buy American-made equipment.

That bill is introduced. It is going to move because Democrats understand American taxpayer money, whether it's building a sanitation system or a water system or paying for a wind turbine or a photovoltaic system on top of your house, those are going to be made in America.

Dr. Kagen.

Well, we have about 10 minutes left, and I would like to bring us back really to where we started, or where I started this discussion, and that is, for the first 18 months, the strategy of the Democratic Party in this House, in the Senate, and with President Obama has been to stabilize the American economy. Let me go back to this. Let's review what was happening.

Beginning in December of 2007, the last 2 years of the George W. Bush administration, the American economy slid into a recession. It became the greatest recession in America's recent history, since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

By December of 2008, in January of 2009, the last months of the Bush administration, we were losing over 700,000 jobs, 750,000 jobs a month. President Obama came in and my two colleagues here--I was not yet in Congress, having just joined last November--you put through the stimulus bill, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. It stabilized. It stopped the slide, and people began to go back to work, with the largest, middle class tax cut in America's history, the largest middle class tax cut ever in American history. There were major investments in infrastructure. The result, after 18 months, was 2.8 million Americans working that otherwise would have been out of work or had gone back to work; 2.8 million Americans.

We see that here. We see the improvement, the monthly reduction in the number of people losing jobs. So that by this year, 2010, after 1 year of the stimulus program and other programs that were all voted on by Democrats with virtually no Republican support, we began to see job growth; not enough, not nearly enough.

We are now shifting gears. We are into the second half. We have stabilized the first half. We have reached some improvement, and now, now it is the second half.

In the second half, manufacturing matters. This is the heart, the soul, the strength of the American economy, and it is where the middle class makes it. It happens to be, as you so eloquently pointed out, Dr. Kagen, it is where the middle class lost. When those manufacturing jobs were shipped overseas, middle class lost. We will make it in America when we manufacture once again in America.

Both of my colleagues here have laid out some very important elements. One is the international competition, and I would like, Dr. Kagen, if you could review with us the international competition and the disadvantage of one--both hands tied behind the American manufacturer's back.

Dr. Kagen.

Before I turn to the gentlewoman from Ohio, I want to pick up that tax policy. American tax policy, probably set by both Democrats and Republicans in the past decades, gave an advantage to United States corporations that would offshore American jobs with a tax credit, $14.5 billion a year.

The end of those credits came to the floor a month ago on a piece of legislation that would end those tax breaks that American corporations have for offshoring jobs. The Democrats voted to move that to the Senate. Not one Republican voted for ending those despicable tax breaks that the corporations have.

There is a difference here. Where do you stand? For whom do you fight?

Now, the gentlewoman from Ohio started us off talking about how we might use our tax money more wisely. Would you please bring us back to the reality of what's going on in your district and how this would benefit your district.

How correct you are. And we would reach out to our Republican colleagues and ask them to join us on Making It in America.

We've had enough of our tax dollars shipped overseas to buy buses that are manufactured overseas, to buy trains and ferries. Our tax dollars need to be spent at home. If it's a water system, a sanitation system, a bus, if it's our tax dollars, make it in America. If it's our tax dollars, then let's use it to make our future energy supplies--wind turbines, solar systems--make it in America. It's our mission, in the second half of this session, to make it in America.

Mr. Speaker, thank you very much.

I want to spend this evening talking about manufacturing. Manufacturing matters. It is the foundation of any solid economy. It is the one part of the American economy that is seriously hurting, and with the great recession, the manufacturing sector in America has even further weakened.

I would like to start this discussion with just a quick review of what has happened with regard to jobs over the last 3 years.

If you will look here on this diagram, you will notice that, beginning in 2007, jobs in America slowed down and began to decline, so much so that, between 2007 and November of 2009, some 700,000 jobs a month were being lost in the fall and into the early winter of 2009.

When the Obama administration came in, it was at the lowest possible point of some nearly 800,000 jobs lost in December and January. As the administration came in, very strong action was taken--the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in February, which was an effort to move the economy and to put people back to work.

It was a major tax cut in that. The largest middle class tax cut ever was part of that. There was an effort to build roads and streets and infrastructure, and money was sent to school districts to continue to employ teachers and to stabilize the American economy. It worked. It worked, and slowly we saw a decline in the number of jobs that were lost. We didn't see an immediate growth in jobs. It didn't happen.

It takes a long time to recover from a very serious recession, in fact, the worst recession since the 1930s. But over the months that followed, each month, improvement, improvement, improvement, so that this year we're beginning to see the effects of the efforts of the Democratic Congress, some Senate help, and the President in turning around the economy, so that in 2010, in the most recent months, we're beginning to see job growth. In fact, we've added nearly 600,000 jobs this year. No longer a decline; stabilization and now job growth.

So with this background, we can begin to understand the efforts that are being made here in Congress by the Democratic Party and by the President.

An historic piece of legislation was signed today that deals with the underlying collapse and the reasons for the collapse of the American economy and, indeed, the economy of the entire world. Today, around 11:30 today, President Obama signed the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, a very important law--clearly, the most important financial regulation law since the 1930s--designed specifically to deal with the underlying problems that led to the collapse of Wall Street. Many parts of it, the kinds of excesses and gambling with our money that took place are going to be history. They're not going to be allowed under the new law. A consumer protection agency has been put in place to provide consumers with a place to go with their complaint and to protect them.

Now, I know about this. I did this for two terms as the insurance commissioner in California. I know the importance of a consumer protection agency. We will soon have such an agency in the United States to help us, as consumers, to make sure that those mortgages are no longer subprime and hidden costs with hidden resets. All of that is in law now, as a result of what this Democratic Caucus did, and with the help of just three Republicans over in the Senate passing the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

Now, what has been done is good, and I'll talk about some other bills as we go through this afternoon, but I want also to make it clear that it is not enough.

Manufacturing matters. We need to rebuild the manufacturing base of America. We need to make it in America, and we can. I don't think there's a person on this floor that doesn't want to walk into a Target store and find ``Made in America'' labels on everything. We're not going to get there immediately, but we can sure get there much, much faster if we pass the correct laws.

Joining me today in this discussion are several of my colleagues from around the Nation who are going to tell their story and what's happening in their community. I'd like to start on the far east coast. Now, I'm a west coast person. I'm from California, but there is another side to the continent. They'd like to say it's the right side, and sometimes they call California the left side.

But my colleague from the great State of Pennsylvania would like to inform us about what's going on in Pennsylvania and, more specifically, in the Philadelphia area.

I yield to the gentleman.