Floor Statements

Madam Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chair, first I want to thank my colleagues, Representative Bishop, Representative Hirono, and Representative Welch, for offering this amendment with me.

Madam Chair, the Tonko-Bishop-Hirono-Welch amendment is simple and straightforward. It increases funding for two important State energy efficiency programs in the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy accounts at the Department of Energy.

The amendment would increase spending for the Weatherization Assistance Program. Weatherization is the largest residential efficiency program in our Nation. Weatherization reduces energy costs for low-income families and the elderly and disabled. It creates jobs, invests in local businesses, and advances technology--state-of-the-art technology. Weatherizing homes under this program saves $437 in annual utility bills for the average homeowner. These energy savings insulate families from rising energy costs by permanently lowering household energy demand for both heating and cooling.

Our amendment also restores funding to the State Energy Program, or SEP. SEP is the only cost-shared program administered by the United States Department of Energy that provides resources directly to the States to support their efforts in energy efficiency. This includes 56 State and territory energy offices. And, according to a study by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, for every dollar in Federal SEP funds we have 1.03 million source Btus, along with the cost savings of $7.22, and a leveraging of $10.71 on that same very dollar.

Madam Chair, these programs traditionally have received strong bipartisan support. Saving money by saving energy is good--good for everyone.

The bill's deep cuts in weatherization programs from recent years' allocations is so-called ``justified'' in the report by the claim that there are large amounts of unspent funds from previous appropriations, including those from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, ARRA.

Well, the majority of these funds have, in fact, been allocated, and I understand they will be completely spent by April 1 of next year, the beginning of the Weatherization Program year for States. So that means there will be little to nothing available by the time that FY13 funds get to these States.

The ARRA money and the money from fiscal year 2011 has been obligated in contracts to subgrantees. In addition to the cuts in weatherization in this bill, the other source of Federal funds for this program, 10 percent of LIHEAP funds, is also reduced due to the reductions in funding for that program.

We're going in the wrong direction. If someone can make the case that we have fully exploited all of our opportunities in weatherization or can demonstrate that we have done all that we can to make citizens' homes and businesses energy efficient, then winding down the program would perhaps be reasonable. But we are a long way from achieving that goal.

Energy we do not have to use is, in fact, the cheapest energy available to us. We need to be doing much more in efficiency, not less. Efficiency should be our fuel of choice.

This bill is skewed to reinforce our existing energy use patterns. It continues outsized investments in the established energy industries that have received generous Federal support for nearly a century while renewable energy technologies are shortchanged.

We should be lending Federal assistance where it is most needed: to individual citizens and to developing industries that are struggling to bring new energy technologies forward, such as solar, wind, and geothermal. The petroleum industry has the means to support its own research.

Madam Chair, we are likely to be reliant on fossil fuels for quite some time, and we should use these fuels wisely. An all-of-the-above strategy must include energy efficiency, and we should support States' efforts to encourage the adoption of new energy technologies and increase energy efficiency.

Let's continue our history of bipartisan support for programs that save money, create jobs, and improve our energy security. Weatherization and SEP are such programs worthy of our support. I urge adoption of this amendment.

With that, Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I ask for a recorded vote.

Mr. Chair, on rollcall no. 288, I was absent for legislative business with constituents. Had I been present, I would have voted ``no.''

Mr. Speaker, yesterday I had the golden opportunity to travel with our President to the capital region of upstate New York to visit our nanotechnology center. This campus is poised for tremendous growth as we witness an investment in public and private partnership.

The President utilized that visit to showcase a very glowing example of the appropriateness of investing in advanced manufacturing. It's a great path toward job creation, job retention. The President underscored the value of investing in precision technology, in R&D, in efficiency, and in workforce development--workforce development, development that comes in many dimensions, training and retraining and apprenticeship programs, and, yes, the path to success via higher education.

Speaking to that, our higher education dreams need to be fostered with affordability and availability. The 3.4 percent cap on interest rates for student loans cannot grow to 6.8 percent. We will dumb down the dreams of our young adults who are looking to go onward with their careers through higher education. We need to pass legislation so as to hold that cap at 3.4 percent, and we cannot allow it to grow come July 1 because of inaction by this Congress. I ask us to pass that measure in this House.

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall Nos. 199, 200, and 201, I was absent. I had travelled to the 21st Cong. Dist. in New York with the President for his visit. Had I been present, I would have voted ``nay'' on No. 199, ``nay'' on No. 200, and ``yes'' on No. 201.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to sound a warning: college could become even more expensive.

While it's true that a recent report from the College Savings Plan Network put the value of a 4-year degree at $570,000 more than a high school education would provide over a lifetime of work, paying for loans to go to school is a ticking timebomb.

On July 1, federally subsidized student loan interest rates will double for low- and middle-income families from 3.4 percent to, yes, 6.8 percent. About 8 million students nationwide will be affected by this change. For a student that takes out $23,000 in loans over the course of a 4-year degree, this would mean paying back an additional $11,000 over a 20-year payback period.

But it doesn't have to be this way. This body can act. It can act before July 1 to stop interest rates from doubling.

I stand here today to urge action to stop student loan interest rates from doubling overnight. Our Nation's young people face enough hurdles that range from student debt to finding a job to starting a career. They shouldn't have to worry about this body adding to the list.

Thank you, Representative DeLauro, and thank you for leading us in what is a very important hour of discussion as we address some of the critical choices before this House. As my good friend and colleague, Rosa DeLauro, from Connecticut indicated, our budget, our budget outcomes are a sum total of our priorities, what has value in our society. What are those sensitivities that we express? What are those outright requirements, basic foundational requirements of our society?

I would suggest to you that one of those basic needs is to enable people to have the soundness of nutrition, to enable us to feed families that have stumbled across difficult times. What we have at risk as we speak here this evening on this House floor is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

The SNAP program touches one in seven Americans. That is a staggering statistic, and for every $5 in new SNAP benefits that we offer, they generate as much as $9 in economic activity, almost a two-time economic factor. In my home district in upstate New York, in the Capital Region, some 23,000 households are utilizing SNAP funds. One in four of those SNAP recipients are 60-years-old and older.

Then we also have situations where three and four have had at least one member of the family out of work in the past 12 months. We have many children; one in two on SNAP are under 18 years of age.

This tells us there's a growing need out there. We have had a tough economy, and people have stumbled across tough times. Why is this so important to discuss right now? Because before the end of this month there will be an effort made through this House--they are asking that the Ag Committee come up with cuts that are brutal.

They are asking for the Ag Committee to come up with a sum total of $33.2 billion. Put right onto the chopping block are SNAP funds. So we are affecting the weakest amongst us, the most hungry amongst us, and we're not recognizing that those dollars invested in these families will recirculate into our regional economies.

This is a sound program that ought to be continued. There needs to be sensitivity shown, there needs to be prioritization of a very important factor here. That is sound nutrition for our American families. I have seen it, I have witnessed it firsthand in our district. It works, it works well. We need to set this as a high priority, and I thank Representative DeLauro for allowing me a few moments of time to share concerns on behalf of the good people that I represent in the 21st District of upstate New York.

Mr. Speaker, here we go again. It's deja vu all over again.

Simply put, the Ryan-Romney Republican budget ends Medicare. AARP said: ``The proposal lacks balance and jeopardizes the health and economic security of older Americans.''

The budget we will consider this week fails the test of balance, fairness, and shared responsibility. It showers the few Americans that are the very wealthy with an average tax cut of at least $150,000, while preserving giveaways to Big Oil companies and Wall Street CEOs.

What's worse is that all these tax breaks would be paid for by ending Medicare and cutting education, basic research, and new sources of energy.

Obviously, this budget rejects all of our American values.

This is not the first time the other side has tried to end Medicare. They tried it last year, too. The American people rejected the Ryan proposal then and they will reject this latest attack on our middle class now.

Sure. Absolutely.

Representative Garamendi, thank you for bringing us together for an hour of thoughtful discussion, dialogue that needs to be exchanged here on the House floor so as to promote what I believe is a very progressive agenda.

And in my heart, I believe that the President has promoted a budget here that allows us to move forward in a progressive style to be able to talk about sustainable outcomes, to be able to talk about meaningful employment, cutting-edge ideas that will now take us, as a sophisticated society, embracing our intellectual capacity, to move forward with the soundness of job creation in the realm of high tech.

Now, we have been talking on the floor, a number of us for several weeks now, months perhaps, about the vision of reigniting the American Dream, reigniting that American Dream through the underpinnings of small business as the pulse of American enterprise and, certainly, entrepreneurs who are those dreamers and movers and shakers and builders that provide the soulfulness of the vision of how we can move ideas forward that translates into jobs and translates into product development.

Then finally, a thriving middle class, making certain that in any democracy the measurement of a resounding future comes through the measurement of how well that democracy's middle class is performing. And so we know that, through reforms out there, we can go forward with this budget and address small business, entrepreneur development, and thriving middle class dynamics in a way that will build the sustainable outcome.

We cannot, in my opinion, I totally believe that we cannot cut our way to prosperity, cut our way to opportunity, cut our way to an economic recovery. We do it through investment, investment of the soundest order.

Now, to your point, I had served, before entering Congress, as president and CEO of NYSERDA, the New York State Energy and Research Development Authority. And it was there that I got to see programs that we've devised and funded through the State legislature, where I served for nearly 25 years, my last 15 of which were as energy chair. It was quite an eye-opener to see the program development that was providing job opportunities of a new variety, of a cutting-edge opportunity.

And there, not all the research scenarios were, perhaps, a success story; but without that investment, without government joining forces with academia and the private sector, we do not strike that sort of visionary outcome, and what you saw were tremendous investments made that enabled us to pave the way for investments in the Internet, or GPS, or working through the DARPA vision of how we strengthened our military, and then sharing a lot of that information and that intellectual property with the growth of jobs here in this country.

That is the sort of opportunity that is envisioned here by the President in his budget presentation to Congress. And it's that sort of investment that believes in the American worker, believes in a thriving middle class, believes in the strengthening that small business brings to any community, and believes in entrepreneurs, that ``rags to riches'' scenario that has been, you know, very much a part of our American story. The American history is replete with success stories, ``rags to riches'' scenarios where America was seen as the promised land.

Well, we have not abandoned manufacturing. We have endorsed this idea of investing in manufacturing, investing in research; and I am really pleased to see that we're moving forward with soundness, with this budget presentation in a way that translates into jobs, no other higher priority, and we do it by reigniting the American Dream.

So, Representative Garamendi, seeing those success stories through the lens of NYSERDA, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, where we were able to speak to water efficiencies, where you're saving mountains of electrons, we got to see it in electric vehicles that were being developed, we got to see it in energy retrofits for business.

These are the sorts of ideas that a sophisticated society embraces. We don't abandon these goals. We get into it full steam and go forward.

And by the way, it's because we are competing with other nations in what is a global race on clean energy and innovation. If we don't take that in, if we don't acknowledge that we're in the midst of that race, we will watch nations pass us by, and we will let down generations of American workers, and that would be unforgivable.

Representative Garamendi, thank you for that lead-in. Certainly Representative Altmire talked about the need for us to invest in manufacturing, when you look at that precipitous drop, losing the many millions of manufacturing jobs, perhaps the largest loss of manufacturing jobs in world history. It's up there. It ranks very high. Why? Well, policy, tax policy that encouraged taking jobs offshore and investing in other nations. We were rewarding that behavior.

What we're talking about now is turning that around, doing this U- turn, putting the brakes on a process, on an incentive that really was destroying hope for American workers. So now what we see is a new vision of providing incentives for those who will build opportunity in this Nation.

Also, I think when we look at some of the focus that existed or didn't exist over the past decade and a half, you look at where we were going as a Nation, and the focus wasn't on agriculture, it was not on manufacturing, but it was on the service sector, and primarily on the financial service sector.

Now, we know that scenario. We won't go down that road. Suffice it to say, we turned our back and said, Here's the keys; play as you wish. No watchdog in the equation, and people created vehicles by which to circumvent regulation. So we put at risk the Nation's economy. Every family that invested into their future was put at risk.

So we ignored manufacturing.

Absolutely.

It's a valid point. Where was that linear, where was that outreach, that extension into all of America with the good products we developed that would serve this Nation well? So what we're talking about now is bringing back some programs.

What was ignored was the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, MEP. MEP is a program I hear about all the time from my manufacturers who are still clinging on, who are working trying to be productive, offering hope to the worker. They're saying, Where is the MEP program? Well, it was brought back last year, and it's reinstated into the budget this year. The request to Congress is to support the Manufacturing Extension Partnership.

What does that do? It's an MEP program. Okay. It's alphabet soup. But

what does it do? It allows for manufacturers, small and medium-size businesses, small and medium-size manufacturing firms, to develop additional markets.

The President has said let's get into exporting; let's build it in America and export to the world. That's a vibrant economy. Also, it enables us to define, to explore new opportunities and to adopt those technologies and retrofit our manufacturing base with that know-how, with that productivity margin growing. That means greater opportunity for us to compete in the global market, to create jobs, and to provide hope again for the worker.

So it is good to see that MEP, the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, is back in this budget. It's a statement that we care about manufacturing, we care about small and medium-sized businesses, and that we are going to see that as the springboard, the economic springboard to the economic recovery that we so much deserve.

It's about priorities. That's what a budget is. It's like, Where are you putting your investment? How are you developing that formula? What is the hope that you anticipate that is translating to America's working families?

This is the moment for us to move forward by reigniting the American Dream, doing it through small and medium-sized business, the pulse of the American enterprise, investing in those dreamers, those movers, those builders, those entrepreneurs, and then resulting in a thriving middle class. Again, where there's a thriving middle class, you have a strong democracy.

So reignite the American Dream, and, gentlemen, we have work to do.

I think before we leave this talk of manufacturing growth, both of you gentlemen held up tremendous charts that tell the story.

What I think is interesting is, when you overlay those two charts with the deficit--the trade deficit and the loss of manufacturing jobs--they mimic each other. They absolutely trace the same curve. And so as you drop those manufacturing jobs, as the commitment was the tax policy and the investment in manufacturing declined, the trade deficit impact from Representative Altmire's chart--they're mimicking each other. You can see the precipitous drop here is almost at the same rate as the impact of the trade deficit.

So we can step back and deal with facts or we can be in denial. We can be bitter about success and come on to the floor and try to hold back success. But instead of a tug of war on this House floor, let's tug together. Let's tug forward to make certain that we're investing where we ought to. Let's cut where we can but invest where we must. One of those investments has got to be in the human infrastructure. We're talking about capital investment, and we're talking about physical infrastructure, but we need to talk about the human infrastructure with this manufacturing comeback.

When I see advanced manufacturing embraced in my district, where we as a hub in the 21st Congressional District of New York, in the Capital Region of New York, have seen tremendous growth in clean energy and innovation, those jobs are coming about because of an investment in nanotechnology, semiconductor research so as to transmit more electrons over an exact same-sized cable. From what we do today, we talk about the investment in chips and in growing those chips to a smaller, smaller dimension so that they can have an impact--a partnership with agriculture, communications, energy generation, health care--you name it. Any industry can be impacted by that nanotechnology investment. So there is all this investment, but you're going to need the workers who are now being part of an advanced manufacturing stage in our society, where we're having more and more investment and keen intellect. You need to train those workers.

The President has said, Look, we've got a vehicle that is very sound out there. They're called community colleges. In my district, we not only have Hudson Valley Community College, Fulton-Montgomery Community College, Schenectady County Community College, but we also have an ag and tech campus in the SUNY system, the State University of New York system, in Cobleskill.

All of these are having cutting-edge involvement in research that spills over to the worker. Cleanroom science, retrofitting homes to solar, making certain that you have a trained workforce for nanotechnology, all of this is happening in our community colleges. And the President said, Let's go forward and invest. There is, I believe, an $8 billion investment in our community colleges to train the worker. So let's not pull back on success. We see what's working. We know what has to happen. We have the formula based on history that ought to speak to us. And let's get it done. The worker can't wait until the next election.

The decisionmaking on this floor should be about hope and opportunity, not about the next election, but about the next jobs we can bring into the congressional districts of this great country that, in a cumulative format, will spark a reigniting of the American Dream.

My district is the donor area to the Erie Canal; and we saw a necklace of communities emerge from that investment which, by the way, came at a tough time for this Nation. Governor DeWitt Clinton said, Look, here's a solution: We have a tough economy. Let's provide opportunities for shipping our cargo, building. And what happened? A number of immigrant patterns traveled to these shores in hope of that rags-to-riches scenario, and they invested. They were the brains behind the industrial revolution, immigrants who came here and developed-- along with the industrial giants--an agenda for jobs.

We can do that again. This is the American pioneer spirit. The DNA within my district is a pioneer spirit where these mill towns became the epicenters of invention and innovation. And the same story can be lived today if we're willing to reignite the American Dream through investments in small business, entrepreneurs, and a thriving middle class.

Representative Garamendi, if you will just yield on one point, what I believe is also important with the community college investment is the stated purpose of creating partnerships with the private sector.

So it's not like one person or one institutional network working in a vacuum but, rather, a partnership that is fostered by this budget process, by the thinking here of the administration working with Congress. Let's develop those partnerships with academia, community colleges training people and retraining.

Many people are starting second careers. They lost a job through no fault of their own. This was a brutal time on America's manufacturing base. Let's bring that base back, and let's give them the tools they need to be successful so that it grows more and more opportunity so that we can have as sharp a competitive edge as possible as we enter into the global sweepstakes on jobs.

Let me just mention this. Last night, I spoke before the ERC, the research center at RPI, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. They are well regarded for their development of scientists and technology experts and the engineers of the future. Their funding is primarily from the NSF, the National Science Foundation.

There is a 5 percent increase in NSF in this budget, and rightfully so. What they're doing in this think tank is stretching the creative genius and the imagination of folks with regard to lighting designs, lighting designs that will be used in ways that are unbelievably creative and constructive. It's about creating the incubators of the future, the entrepreneurs of the future. It's about developing the professors that will train students into the future. It is an infrastructure unbelievably sound, and it is NSF-funded.

You know, for people to say, Well, our best days are behind us--what I'm hearing tonight is that there's optimism. There's great optimism. There's a reason to be hopeful. There is a charge for us to be optimistic by investing in opportunity. There are the tools that America's base needs. They need these tools. And how dare we not provide them. Earlier statements on the floor were denouncing workers instead of providing hope, training, and retraining people in areas that will be geared toward their specific strengths.

We all have certain skill sets or have that potential for those skill sets. There's a passion that everyone has for certain types of work. Let's not denounce the worker. Let's insert hope in the equation and, again, provide for the infrastructure, human infrastructure required for this manufacturing base.

I did.

Yes. Well, there was concern expressed on that train that the transportation bill advanced in this House falls grossly short of what's needed.

And, you know, when you look at the many sectors of the infrastructure community, it's not just our traditional roads and bridges which require assistance. It's mass transit. It's rail. It's also telecommunications and it's energy. And it's water. So all of this infrastructure requires an investment. And how do we make up ground where we have underinvested in this area?

Well, the President proposes a $10 billion infrastructure bank bill that will leverage government moneys and private sector moneys that will enable us to provide for the sorts of investments that are required. Now, investing in our transportation infrastructure has great merit. Many of us can cite those weaknesses out there.

My district, in Montgomery County, lost 10 people when a bridge collapsed along the New York State Thruway. There are bridges around the country that need immediate attention. There are those situations where many believe we're going into a water economy in the next 10-20 years. If that's so, how are we treating that resource of water? Are we being the most efficient?

And energy, if we're going to move into a creative, innovative arena for energy supplies and diversify our mix, we need to retrofit the grid system in order to make it all work, in order to incorporate these ideas. Or we can stay beholden to a fossil-based infrastructure for energy supplies, which means that we'll be beholden to nations that are oftentimes unfriendly to the United States and use those energy consumer dollars, American consumer dollars, to pour into their treasury and develop their troops to fight against the American forces. So it's an issue of national security.

So there are many dynamics here that need to be addressed in a full- picture view, not just dealing in some sort of snapshot of denial. That does not produce an infrastructure bill that is worthy of the needs of Americans out there from coast to coast.

You know, sometimes, Representative Garamendi, you're looking for that Sputnik moment. That's what inspired our win in the global race on space--U.S. versus USSR. We gave it our all because we had that Sputnik moment. We got knocked on the seat of our pants, stood up, dusted off the backside and said: never again. And we won that global race on space.

What is our Sputnik moment today?

Is it bridges collapsing with people dying? Is it paying God-awful prices for energy supplies and not creating our new energy supplies? Is it ignoring a water economy that is to come and will be a strength for this Nation and a wisdom to invest in our water resources?

All of these moments could be referred to as Sputnik moments, and we need to take those experiences and that recent history and have it influence our thinking and have us go forward with a sound investment in infrastructure.

So I see great potential here in this budget. I see great opportunity. And I see investing our way to opportunity and investing our way to an economic recovery, investing our way to the reigniting of the American Dream, which is our principal foundation by the Democratic Caucus in this House. Let's reignite that American Dream. Let's do it through small business and through investment in entrepreneurs and a thriving middle class. Infrastructure is prime amongst those areas of investment.

Sure. Absolutely. I think beyond the innovation and the ideas that translate into jobs, research equaling jobs, there are these benefits of connecting us as a Nation. We are a large Nation geographically, and the interconnecting that can be done through the investment in infrastructure is important.

Now, we know beyond the roads and bridges and the rail and the grid system for our energy supplies there's a telecommunications network; and that effort to create a national wireless initiative is very important. It will range from first responders with interoperable communications devices for first responders to a high-speed Internet system so that we're wiring in to remote areas and enabling this country to truly prosper.

So, tonight, we have heard such great comments about what we can do and what we must do about cutting where we can, by addressing inefficiency, waste, fraud and outmoded programs, but maintaining the vigilance about investing where we must. If we do not invest, we deny the American Dream. If we invest, we reignite that American Dream. We reignite the dream through the investment in a historic display of what America is at her greatest: when she invests in ideas, she invests in her workers, invests in infrastructure, in small business, entrepreneurs--those dreamers, shakers, movers and builders--and invests in a thriving middle class. It can be done, and it will be done if we put our minds to it. Mr. Garamendi, we have work to do.

Madam Speaker, I rise today because I believe this Congress needs to stop playing blame games and start working together to reignite the American Dream by helping our Nation's small businesses and entrepreneurs and empowering a thriving middle class.

Small businesses are the pulse of the American enterprise and the creators of jobs and economic growth up and down Main Streets across the United States of America. Entrepreneurs are the dreamers, movers, shakers, and builders that help take ideas and inventions and turn them into the manufacturing jobs of the future.

And a thriving middle class, well, that's the underpinning of support to make reigniting the American Dream even possible. A strong middle class leads to a strong America. The best functioning democracies around the world share one thing in common--a thriving middle class.

So, Madam Speaker, I rise today to ask my colleagues to enact policies and legislation that achieve these ends: to reignite the American Dream by building up our small businesses, encouraging our entrepreneurs, and empowering our middle class. We can start by extending the payroll tax cut for the remainder of the year without delay and without games.

I look forward to continuing to work toward these ends throughout the year.

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chair, I rise today to offer an amendment to H.R. 3581, the Budget and Accounting Transparency Act.

My amendment restores a critical step that was skipped by my Republican colleagues. You see, we never once had a hearing in the Budget Committee devoted specifically to exploring the main proposal contained in this bill--the use of fair value estimates to determine the cost of Federal loans. If I could change that, I would, but my Republican colleagues have pushed this bill to the floor.

When so many at home look at Congress and shake their heads at the political gamesmanship that has come to dominate this institution, my amendment simply asks that we take a moment to be objectively smart rather than just politically savvy about a policy decision with major repercussions.

If this legislation took effect this year, CBO estimates that we would see the Federal deficit jump by $55 billion. This is a bill that would impact things like housing loans, student loans, small business loans, and even our mortgage guarantee programs for vets. It would create the appearance that these loans and loan guarantees cost more with an accounting method that is relatively new and certainly under debate.

For a bill with ``transparency'' in its title, we're talking about using some pretty mirky math. My Republican colleagues will say that we need CBO estimates on loans to reflect the risk involved in Federal lending. That makes sense, which is why we already do it. The approach under current law already reflects the risk that borrowers will default on their loans or guarantees.

The real difference here is whether we think estimates of Federal loans should be based on how the government borrows and lends or, alternately, on how the private sector borrows and lends. I understand my colleagues have a great esteem for private sector business practices, and as a former small business owner myself, I share that admiration; but we have to understand that the Federal Government of the most powerful country on Earth isn't a private actor.

No private lender is in the same position as the Federal Government with its ability to borrow at Treasury rates and its ability to spread risk across such a broad portfolio. So, understandably, there is significant debate as to whether and how fair value estimates could be applied to government loans. The bottom line is that it would involve a lot of guesswork.

At a time when our housing market has been devastated, when our workforce is struggling to attain the knowledge and skill set it needs in a difficult job market, when small businesses are fighting their way out of the worst recession since our Great Depression, and when our vets are facing a higher jobless rate than the rest of the country, why on Earth would we make a change of this magnitude without consulting with the best budget and accounting minds in our country? The impact of this legislation is too big to be treated more like an election year talking point than a major policy change with very real impacts on the people that we are here to represent.

That is why I am offering this modest proposal. My amendment simply proposes that we convene a commission of budget and accounting experts to provide recommendations to Congress regarding the best measure to accurately account for the costs of Federal credit programs. Congress will then

have the opportunity to vote on the commission's recommendations, and if changes are deemed wise, we can move forward with the smartest course of action and with a policy that brings our Federal loan and loan guarantee estimates into uniformity. After all, as we heard on this very floor, it's the people's money we're dealing with.

I urge my colleagues to look before we jump on this one, and I urge support of my amendment.

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

Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

I'm always willing to help a sore throat get soothed.

Representative Garamendi, thank you for bringing us together in a manner that allows us to look closely at the American economy, the American Dream, and the decline of manufacturing, which represents a serious concern for workers across the country and which represents a serious concern for communities as we engage in this effort to grow jobs and retain jobs. It's important to look at the statistics out there.

Where was the focus? Where was the emphasis on job creation and job retention? Could we do a better sort of stewardship, if you will, of our resources and our policies? I believe the answer is a resounding, yes, we can do better.

As was made mention by Representative Garamendi, it is important for us to acknowledge that the work done here--the challenges, the crises that face us--can also be transformed into opportunities. The opportunity here for this great Nation--for the powerful force that we are in the global economy--is to reignite the American Dream, to reignite that dream with the underpinnings of support that come through three separate dynamics.

The first is engaging in a small business comeback, inspiring that comeback because small business, the pulse of American enterprise, is replete with a history of mom-and-pop operations, of ancestors that built their American Dreams into an ideas economy, into a service economy that enabled small business to become that very promising enterprise.

The second leg of the stool would be that of entrepreneurs--those movers and shakers, those builders, the dreamers, if you will--in our society who constantly inspire us with job creation that is driven by ideas and by the moving of ideas into a product and enabling us to again create that engine of ingenuity and creativity.

Then, finally, there would be a thriving middle class.

These are the basic principles: a thriving middle class that is driven to have additional purchasing power simply by policy that is done so that there is tax fairness, tax justice, in our outcome. Reigniting the American Dream is driven by those principles of small

business, entrepreneurship and of a thriving middle class.

It is a basic, simple approach that we have embraced as Democrats in the House, driven by a set of policies and goals that will enable us to look at all sectors of the economy and to understand that the manufacturing sector was grossly ignored. We focused primarily on service as a sector of the economy--ignored agriculture, ignored manufacturing. When the focus was on the service sector, it was primarily on financial services, which, when they were given free rein--when we turned our backs and said ``do as you like''--we found that that drove America's economy to its knees.

Now we look at the results. We look at the history of the last decade or two. The precipitous loss of manufacturing jobs from 1997 to 2009--a 12-year run--produced a loss of 6 million jobs in manufacturing alone, Representative Garamendi. What that meant--indicated, reflected, personified--was the largest such loss in world history. That is unacceptable.

So, when we talk about reigniting the American Dream, there is work to be done. There is work to be done, and it's time for us to engage in a set of policies, of resource advocacy and goals that are established to create those ladders of opportunity and to enable people to climb up the economic ladder as we had done from our humble beginnings as a Nation, where rags-to-riches scenarios were commonplace and where immigrants saw this land as the promised land. That's history that ought to speak to us, and we can bring it back through the appropriate advocacy here--a climate that creates manufacturing jobs and makes us competitive in a global economy.

Yes.

Absolutely.

I think my response to some of those changes that you just shared is that it creates this sea change. It creates the U-turn in the road, if you will, and it gets everyone's attention. People understand that.

Now we're operating under a different set of principles--you need to invest in America, invest in her workforce and in the job opportunities that will follow. That's what it basically says. When you look at machine tool operations and activity and when you look at it over the last, again, decade or so, you will find, in both categories, Representative Garamendi--of the consumption and production of machine tools--that we're not in the top three. That ought to be a flag that goes up that draws our attention, hopefully, expressing a dire sense of urgency. When you see Japan and China and Germany not only producing the machine tools but also consuming, it tells you where the activity is, and it is robust. That's all a matter of policy. Those are intentional outcomes that were driven by a very focused agenda in these nations, and America--the United States--needs to get back to that agenda.

I applaud the President for setting the tone in his recent State of the Union message. I applaud the leadership in this House, which is coming under the banner of the Democratic leadership, that has engaged in ``Make It In America'' as our mantra. Reigniting our American Dream is within our grasp if we begin to advocate a stand that brings back a robust quality to manufacturing opportunities in this country.

I agree that those are great incentives. If we can provide for employment-linked investments in R&D, in tax credits, that's a feather in the cap; that is a catalyst that draws a great response, a great reaction. Your indications here of procurement, with regard to Buy America, is very important as one of the cornerstones of our agenda. But also, I think we need to focus on the investments in infrastructure and energy and the investments in a different order of infrastructure, the human capital, the human infrastructure, making certain that we move forward with the training and retraining of the American worker, advancing higher education, certainly looking at pre-K through 12, and providing career path opportunities.

Now I mention that because the employment-linked investments in R&D-- bringing back R&D here because where research is, manufacturing follows. So I mention that. But I will use the real-life example of Wynn Kintz, and I have mentioned this before on the floor, but it's a recent example that is worth repeating.

Wynn Kintz of Kintz Plastics in Schoharie County in the 21st Congressional District in New York State----

Oh, I think it's Paul Tonko.

But I use that as an example because in order for Kintz Plastics to compete effectively in a global market, they needed to move to an automated portion of their assembly operations. They worked with the local higher ed infrastructure. And we have the partnerships in this country that have existed for a long time. There is this intellectual exchange of creative genius coming from campuses, working with the private sector, public sector. It happens. It happens to a great degree.

And while they developed this automated assembly process for his industry, they also needed to train the workers on this new equipment so that it brought with it an employment link. And it did that through one of the local community colleges, did an RPI automation design, and then did a Hudson

Valley Community College-driven training process so that you developed the workers you needed.

Now, these are the investments that then produce these very tangible results and very lucrative dividends that enable us to prosper. And that's just one small example, but I see it over and over again in the 21st Congressional District. We're a hub of innovation jobs that are coming: green collar, high-tech jobs, clean energy jobs. That's happening because there is a partnership with government, a partnership where government assumes some of the risk, as we do with ARPA-E, a Department of Energy program which has advanced research project moneys. They expedite some of the ideas, innovation concepts, move them along in much quicker stead so that we can develop the jobs associated with that.

So when you talk about the toolkit here, it's an investment in employment-linked R&D and tax credits; and it's an investment in procurement procedures that link themselves with Buy America; and then it's the work investing in infrastructure of a routine kind: wiring communities, wiring the businesses, making certain that our roads, bridges, and rail are state of the art; and then the human infrastructure: creating programs that train, retrain, and educate workers of the future. You need that in a cutting-edge fashion where we can maintain world leadership.

It takes investment. Other nations have shown us that when they invested, they were able to be the giants in the machine operations, the machine tool operation. So it's possible. It's within our reach, and it's all about reigniting the American Dream.

Sure. Before my involvement here in the House of Representatives, I served as president and CEO of NYSERDA, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. And it was there that I got to see policy put into action. I had worked in the State assembly. I had represented the 105th Assembly District in the State of New York for nearly 25 years, the last 15 of which I served as Energy chair. So I got to see that energy policy put into action at NYSERDA where there were very meaningful partnerships with the private sector, where they would retrofit machine operations, manufacturing assembly lines with energy-efficiency outcomes.

Number one, we're the most gluttonous user of energy, as a commodity. It is so important for us to become more resourceful. That should be a social economic goal that is embraced by the Nation. But beyond that, it saves money when we enable these companies to embrace these new technologies in a way that creates a more competitive outcome for them, especially as we move more and more to a global marketplace that is the competing ground.

Also, in so doing, there were opportunities to invest in research. Now, not every story in research is a success story; but the wonderful outcomes, when they are a success story, produce the sort of savings of the environment, savings of our energy supply, and savings of the green, the dollars. Those are quantifiable benefits that ought to be encouraged by policy. And here, what I see is us walking away.

We had a hearing the other day on ARPA-E, on the Energy Department's programs that model themselves after DARPA, with the Defense Department, that gave us a lot of strength for our military, that brought about the application of science and technology, high tech.

Exactly. Right. And ARPA-E is the mimicking of that in an advanced research area of energy.

Now we're going to sit there and battle over--perhaps denying dollars to concepts like this when we found out at the hearing that it is expertly managed, very tight-fisted, very laser-sharp in its focus, and has outstanding results.

We should produce additional resources for a program like that that enables us to stay ahead of the curve, and that ought to be government's mission. If we are going to reignite the American Dream, if we're going to do it through the support of small business, which is the economic engine of our recovery and our comeback scenarios, if we're going to do it by partnering with entrepreneurs, who are the dreamers who develop the ideas for the future that grow into job opportunities, if we're going to do it through a thriving middle class, that takes investment. It takes focus, it takes policy, and it's what we're asking to have done here--reignite the American Dream, create the ladders of opportunity, the ladders that build us to success. It happened in generations past. We saw it driven by groups that came here seeing this Nation as the land of opportunity, a promised land. Why not bring that pioneer spirit back into the front line of our thinking, front and center of our thinking so that what we witnessed in the 21st Congressional District in the humble beginnings of this Nation--my district was the donor area to the Erie Canal that inspired the birth of a necklace of communities called mill towns that became epicenters of invention and innovation, inspired a westward movement--that's what we can achieve here if we stay focused and we believe in reigniting the American Dream.

Representative Garamendi, as you toss out pieces of the puzzle there, it conjures up all sorts of responses that I think we need to provide and share.

You talk about the intermittent nature of renewables. The sun not shining at night, the wind ceasing to blow, you name it. The hydro facilities perhaps if you have a dry season, whatever. We need to advance the notion of the battery as the linchpin to move forward aggressively with a sustainable agenda which renewables can provide. And so the advanced battery manufacturing that I see taking hold in the 21st Congressional District in Schenectady with the GE operation.

It seems to be the one that I know the best. But what I see happening there is, again, a great intellect being poured into design and the concepts of advanced batteries. Not only can these batteries move heavy freight, heavy equipment, they can also deal with storage of renewable, intermittent power. Once you do that, now you've solved the reliability issue, which is so important for our operations of energy.

But to your point, not only is it sustainable and not only does it create energy independence, it speaks to our policies from a national security perspective. We are purchasing from some of the most troubled spots in the world. If we're not doing that at the moment, we inspire, we cause the world market to do that, and a cartel controls our destiny. Is that smart? We are sending hundreds of billions of dollars into treasuries of unfriendly nations that can then use that to train troops against our own American forces. So it speaks eventually and very directly to our national security issues.

And beyond that, when you talk about job creation, when we go energy independent, when we become more resourceful, which we ought to pledge to do simply because no matter how it's generated, no matter what the mix of our supply of energy resources, we need to steward those resources in a very, very deliberate fashion, in a way that is resourceful and not wasteful. So we build alternative technologies, we build into a renewable market, and we do the linchpin activity with the advanced battery design and manufacturing all in the U.S., and then we also provide for the training of the workforce.

When we at NYSERDA had invested in our annual conference on workforce development, green collar job development, in one seminar we had the presentation of how they were training plumbers in Germany in a solar hot water agenda where they were able to put together the training that enabled homes in a very aggressive fashion to use solar panels on their house simply for their hot water purposes. What that could do for a State like California or a State like New York, and en masse cumulatively for the Nation, is an incredible savings to our environment, to our job creation, and to energy costs. Absolutely important. Households will do well. Jobs will be created. The environment will be better addressed, and isn't that the goal of a think tank like the House of Representatives?

Instead, why did we ignore manufacturing for a decade and a half? Why did we avoid dealing with agriculture? Why did we not get into sound energy policy?

I ran for this seat simply driven primarily by the lack of a comprehensive energy plan for this Nation. How can a Nation as great as the United States with all of its small business, all of its manufacturing, its industrial sector, its households demanding a better outcome for energy, how could we not develop a comprehensive energy plan?

It's what the President has asked us to do. He has challenged us, he's challenged us with fairness in the Tax Code, he has challenged us in a way that will inspire the reigniting of the American Dream driven by that notion of small business support, entrepreneur nurturing, and a thriving middle class. It's achievable, and what I would say, we have the format out there, we have the plan, we have work to do. Let's move forward.

Just on the grid thing, I would like to make a comment because sometimes it's like we're challenged so that we can walk away from the challenge of the moment, and it's not the best thing for us. In 2003, this Nation witnessed the blackout from Ohio right through southern Canada into the great Northeast, New England, New York and some of the eastern sea coast, all driven by failure in the grid system.

Now, never in that year that elapsed was there much discussion about public policy, and that was a Presidential year that befell the Nation. And it just does not get talked up. Now, finally, historic amounts of investment through the Recovery Act were made in the grid system and challenging us to step it up, do what's required to use state-of-the- art opportunities for smart grid, smart thermostats, and smart meters enabling people to have more control, more destiny over their energy usage and over their energy bills, making certain that, again, we pour ourselves into an investment of a unique type, a historic investment that enables us to go forward with the sorts of responses that we need.

We need the arteries and veins: the transmission and distribution system to wheel the electrons to the workplace and the home place as it's required. And in New York, again, in our bordering of Canada, if we want to import hydropower from another nation and wheeling now, we've moved well beyond the monopoly setting where you had regional situations. Now you wheel from region to region, State to State and nation to nation. We need upgrades in the system just to transport the electrons that are required.

It's not if we're going to do it; it's when we're going to do it. And the chance that we have right now is to move us forward in a way that strengthens this economy, cuts energy costs, provides for more wise use of those energy supplies, enables us to produce the energy ideas if it's alternative technology or energy efficiency or what have you, but this Nation is replete with a history of invention that has come through very thoughtful application of what is needed out there by society.

For us to have walked away from those challenges is unacceptable. And that's what the grid is telling us right now. You can lay back and say, hey, you don't need an upgraded train system, you don't need an upgraded grid system, you don't need broadband, you don't need all this technology, and you don't need the investment in R&D. Well, that complacency or the contentment that people might feel with the status quo will get us nowhere. In fact, it will push us farther behind as nations bulk up, invest and stretch their opportunities simply by committing to a progressive agenda. And that's what we call for here, to reignite the American Dream.

Representative Garamendi, would you yield to a point? I believe I saw earlier a chart that you had on manufacturing jobs. Could you just put that one up on the easel over that pattern there and point to the '97 to 2009 curve? And it's a startling mimicking; those two graphs absolutely mimic each other. I think you can draw a correlation there that deals with the loss of manufacturing jobs as it relates to the trade deficit. I think that is something that ought to guide our discussions, guide our policy development and actually address the sort of response we need in terms of job creation and job retention.

Right.

Well, what I hear here is that an election outcome is more important than the outcome for the American worker. And when political party benefit trumps the American worker or trumps America's manufacturing base and trumps hope into the future, that's a regrettable outcome.

What we need to focus on is the big picture. If there is upset and upheaval because we're coming back from what was a very long and deep and painful recession, if that's upsetting news to a political scene, then we have lost the spirit that is required right now to bring America back and to reignite the American Dream.

That reigniting of the American Dream I believe is what people want to see in action. They keep asking Washington to work together in a bipartisan, bicameral, spirited way, work in a way that will engage the policies and advocate for the resources that will build the hope back into the fabric of America's families, her individuals. And it's within our grasp.

These ladders of success, these rungs of opportunity, they are a very achievable goal. We saw what happened when you ignore manufacturing. We saw what happened when you avoid sound agriculture policy. We saw what happened when you didn't get aggressive about an innovative agenda for energy generation, energy alternatives, energy efficiency. These are the things that people are asking us to do as leaders. They say, We asked you to lead, not to sit content with the status quo, not to watch others pass us by.

Our best days lie ahead of us. I'm filled with optimism about reigniting that American Dream. I saw what happened in my district when there was a commitment. You know, the Erie Canal itself, that came about in response to tough economic times. The leadership then said, Let's do this. Let's wed the waters. Let's build a port on the coast out of New York. Let's wed it to the Great Lakes. Let's inspire progress.

And look what happened. That response to troubling economic times drew upon the leadership. It produced the leadership. It gave it a face and it gave it a voice. The message was: We're going to build. We're not going to cut our way to prosperity, cut our way to opportunity, cut hope. We're going to build hope. We're going to build and invest in America, her workers.

Our best days lie ahead of us, Representative Garamendi. Thank you for the chance of joining you this evening.

Were those regulations the same regulations we wanted to take away from Wall Street?

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to celebrate and honor the centennial of our Nation's Girl Scouts. For 100 years, the Girl Scout experience has enriched the lives of millions of girls and their families through innovative and progressive programming that embraces the rich diversity of communities across our country. A cornerstone of the Girl Scout movement, community service, allows girls to exercise their leadership skills on a variety of levels and at any age.

Each year, thousands of service hours are provided to communities. Cleaning parks, organizing food and toy drives, planting trees and clearing forest trails, tutoring young students in migrant camp summer schools, collecting basic essentials and backpacks for children entering foster care, sending school supplies to Third World schools, visiting the elderly, and helping deliver food to homebound citizens are just a few of the important activities that Girl Scouts do every day to make the world, our world, a better place. That is something from which each of us can and should learn.

I would like to personally honor the Girl Scouts of northeastern New York, which serves 12,000 girls and their families in a 15-county region. I look forward to dozens of these girls coming to visit Washington, D.C., in early June, where they will join others in song along the National Mall.

From their individual efforts to hosting the Women of Distinction Award, thank you to our Girl Scouts and their leaders, and a very happy and healthy centennial celebration.

Thank you, Representative Garamendi. Thank you for bringing us together for a very thoughtful hour of discussion about the need to invest in America's infrastructure.

What I like about the comments made here are that we have the tools within our grasp to make a difference, to invest in the infrastructure, whether it's safety on the highways, whether it's dealing with environmental soundness as an outcome, by promoting public transportation, or by enhancing energy efficiency at our water treatment facilities, which is something I worked on when I was president and CEO in NYSERDA, New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.

But prime in the focus of this investment in infrastructure is an outcome that speaks to the reigniting of the American Dream. We have work to do.

This dream should not be beyond the grasp of Americans, certainly not beyond the grasp of America's middle class. The underpinnings of the support for reigniting the American Dream, embrace small business, which is the pulse of American enterprise that speaks to the moms-and- pops that raised a family based on a business that they developed, and they can feed this plan to rebuild America's infrastructure.

It's also driven by the dynamic of entrepreneurs, the doers, the believers, the dreamers. Those pioneers that made things happen in this country are out there ready to respond to a present-day, modern-day, cutting-edge retrofit of infrastructure in this country.

It speaks to empowering the middle class.

Those three legs of the stool are what reigniting the American Dream is all about. We have work to do. Unfortunately, it's not being done in this Chamber. We need a progressive agenda, embraced aggressively, to bring about an outcome that grows jobs driven by reigniting the American Dream.

I represent a district in the upstate reaches of New York that was impacted in 1987 by the collapse of the interstate highway bridge, brought down by the flood waters of April of '87, equal to the flow of Niagara Falls. We lost, I believe, 10 lives in that incident. We saw what economic crippling occurred in that given region. You could not transport your products, the area lost volumes of visitors, and there was an economic consequence to that failed infrastructure caused by Mother Nature. There are samplings of that around this Nation.

That incident and the data that are assembled based on similar experiences should motivate us, inspire us to invest in our infrastructure. Water, an essential for industry, for residents, water efficiency, energy efficiency as you're dealing with water treatment facilities, can be upgraded in a way that addresses the bigger picture of energy policy inextricably linked to the economic comeback, linked to the grasping of the American Dream.

When you look at a number of our communication and energy retrofits that are required to provide for energy self-sufficiency for enabling cottage industries to be developed in remote places, if you broadband out to those areas, great things can happen.

So, Representative Garamendi, my statement is let's reignite the American Dream. We have work to do; and we can do it through small business, entrepreneurs, and a thriving middle class. The thriving middle class is the pulse of the Nation. If the middle class is doing well, America does well.

Any democracy around the world is most effective, most strong if it has a thriving middle class. Let's go forward with the agenda. It's possible. We have the intellect. Let's embrace America's intellect as the intellectual capacity, and let's get it done.

I think there are a great number of things that we need to invest in in order to make it happen; but let me preface that response with a description, if you will, of the 21st Congressional District.

As I stated earlier, we are a chain of mill towns given birth to by the Erie Canal. The waterways of the 21st Congressional District can easily be defined as the ink that wrote the history of the Industrial Revolution. They were the gateway to the Westward Movement. What you had there were ideas from people working in factories, oftentimes the immigrant patterns entering this Nation, the very first stages of immigrants. So that American Dream was ignited there in a scenario that was very much deemed rags to riches. People came here with nothing but an idea and the hope to build for their families. They provided the fuel that created the Industrial Revolution, and so America became this promised land.

Our best days lie ahead of us. We, as a sophisticated society, based on our humble roots, developed some of the primary products that are now manufactured in other nations; but we need, as a sophisticated society, to step up to the plate and do those product deliveries now that are not yet on the radar screen. We have it within our intellect to be able to do that; but when it comes to the infrastructure, we need capital; we need physical infrastructure; and we need human infrastructure. That's what we're looking to do with our Make It in America agenda, produced by the Democratic Caucus in this House, and we need action on these legislative items in order to make things happen.

Let me just close with this statement for now.

My district was ravaged by storms this past August. In late August, we were hit with Irene and Lee, and the infrastructure was devastated. People lost homes, homes that were entirely swept into the waters. People are still repairing homes that we hope will be recoverable. The infrastructure needs of taking a navigation channel like the Erie Canal and retrofitting it for flood design purposes so that it can be there as flood control infrastructure is an enormous mission. It's not just the engineers and the teams of construction workers who will put this together. You will need hydrogeologists to determine what the best patterns are. If we're going to simply build bridges at the same height and at the same span as currently exists when all the forecasts are that you're going to have greater amounts of water flowing, based on historic data now that are available, then that is foolish government. We need smart government. People want thoughtful government.

There is a way to embrace a recovery for these flood-torn areas and to rebuild their infrastructure by reaching

to all elements of manufacturing and intellect that can build an agenda, that builds this Nation--and that is going back to our pioneer roots, to a rags-to-riches scenario that is driven by the initial American Dream. We need to reignite that American Dream. We need to do it with innovation, education, higher education, and research, research into how best to do things so that we are ahead of the curve, not constantly reacting to issues with a Band-Aid approach.

We have work to do.

Representative Garamendi, thank you again for bringing us together.

But when you speak to the history of the Erie Canal, it was devised because of economic tough times. This Nation was struggling at the moment, and we responded by building. We didn't walk away and cut our way through; we

built our way to opportunity and prosperity.

And so as we look at the present moment, reigniting the American Dream begins with those underpinnings of support, investing in capital infrastructure so that there are the dollars available for research and retrofitting America's business community, its manufacturing base, which was for far too long ignored. It also requires the investment in human infrastructure. It is totally unacceptable to develop jobs in our Nation that will grow as we develop automation with advanced manufacturing, to not invest in the nurturing of skill sets within the American worker, totally unacceptable to not do that.

So I tell people now, as we tour with our roundtables on manufacturing, that there are thousands of jobs across this country waiting to be filled because there is an automated process that has been engaged in for manufacturing. And I have, at my community college base, training that is done for automated manufacturing.

I have within my technical 4-year college base and grad school base in the region--RPI and Hudson Valley Community College come to mind. But they allow, through incubator programs, to develop automated response to a particular manufacturer that we visited, Kintz Plastics. And Win Kintz reminded us that he has now been able to compete internationally by not necessarily doing it cheaper but smarter, and that's what the tools we require here are all about.

It's putting the capital, human, physical infrastructure demands into working order so that we're realistic about providing hope to America's working families, all by reigniting the American Dream. And yes, Representative Garamendi, we have work to do. Let's do it in this Chamber.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to clause 1, rule I, I demand a vote on agreeing to the Speaker's approval of the Journal.

Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in frustration--frustrated with the lack of compassion for the middle class coming out of this body, frustrated with the lack of ideas and focus on job creation, and frustrated with the continued partisanship and division that have led to some of the lowest levels of confidence and trust for this body in its history.

America deserves better than this, Mr. Speaker. One hundred and sixty million middle class individuals deserve to have their payroll tax cut extended through the end of this year. Those who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own deserve to know that they will be able to continue to have a lifeline in the time of need. And seniors deserve to know that they can visit their doctor of choice without worrying whether or not Medicare will cover the visit. America and Americans don't deserve more wasted time.

Instead of a vote today on the debt ceiling, one that is partisan, divisive, and ultimately dead on arrival in the other Chamber, we should be focusing on jobs and creating jobs and protecting the middle class. Think of it: 61 percent of Americans always or usually live paycheck-to-paycheck, which has risen from 43 percent in 2007.

Mr. Speaker, I'm frustrated with the American people being also frustrated. It's time this body come together, put politics aside, and work on growing jobs.