[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 124 (Tuesday, July 23, 2019)]
[House]
[Pages H7227-H7229]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
MAKE IT IN AMERICA
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 3, 2019, the gentleman from California (Mr. Garamendi) is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Madam Speaker, given all of the talk that is going on
and the investigations and questions about deficits and the like, I
thought it would be useful today to start this discussion, which I will
spend most of the evening talking about American manufacturing, but I
often want to start these discussions with some sense of value: What is
our goal? What are we trying to accomplish here?
I keep going back to FDR. At the height of the Great Depression, he
said: ``The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the
abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for
those who have too little.''
And so, last week, the House of Representatives--the Democrats, that
is, and maybe just a few Republicans--voted to increase the minimum
wage across this Nation so that, over the next 5 years, the minimum
wage would rise from, I guess, just over $7 an hour to $15 dollars an
hour--not a jump immediately, but over time increase it.
Why do we do that? Well, we are for the people.
That is our goal: for the people; and keeping in mind what FDR said:
It is not about whether we add more to those who have much, but,
rather, what we do for those who have little.
And so we raise the minimum wage. Why? Because those people who are
making $7 an hour across this Nation, they have very, very little, in
fact, so little that they cannot have both food and shelter.
And, of course, we talk about healthcare and our goal to expand
healthcare to every American so they have insurance, so that the
worrying about how they would be paying for their hospital visit or
their doctor is set aside and they are able to get the care that they
need to lead a healthy and productive life.
That is our goal. We are for the people, and we are going to address
this in so many, many ways.
{time} 2000
One of the ways that we want to address it is to make sure that
America remains a strong manufacturing country.
Many, many years ago in California, I was looking at how to keep the
California economy going, and we hit upon the five keys for a
successful economy:
First of all, a great education system so that your workers are well
educated and can handle the questions of the day and the tasks of
tomorrow;
Secondly, that there be strong research, and, from that research, you
build tomorrow's things. Sometimes that is an app. Sometimes it is a
computer. Sometimes it is a ship or perhaps a car, an autonomous
vehicle, a drone, whatever, so that your research then moves on into
things that you make, and, that is, the manufacturing. That is the
creation of wealth.
Some time ago, I was visiting one of the wineries in my district in
California, and I was talking about this Make It In America Agenda in
manufacturing. And, finally, the owner got up from behind the desk, and
he said: Come. I want to talk to you.
We walked outside and out to his winery, and he said: You know what
this is?
I said: Yeah. It is a winery.
He said: No. This is a manufacturing facility. I take grapes, and I
turn them into some of the finest wine in the world. So, when you talk
about Make It In America, guess what. I am making it in America.
So, it includes all of these things, putting a tomato into a can,
into a bottle of ketchup. But what we are going to talk about tonight
is something far more than that.
I want to really not so much talk about these gentlemen and ladies,
but to use them as an example of what America used to make. These
gentlemen, three of them, are World War II merchant mariners.
This is an effort we have now under way to provide these mariners,
who had the highest death rate of any unit in the armed services during
World War II, a Congressional Gold Medal. We now have nearly 300
Members of this House who are signed on to that so that they will get a
Congressional Gold Medal.
But this is not about their gold medal; it is about what they were
able to do.
America, during the World War II period, was the manufacturing center
of the world. And we made ships--literally, thousands and thousands of
ships--that these gentlemen and so many like them sailed the oceans,
provided the material, the personnel to fight that war.
When we met and took this picture, they asked me: Why is it that
America doesn't build ships anymore?
I said: Oh, but we build naval ships; we build aircraft carriers; we
build destroyers; we build many other kinds of naval ships.
They said: No. No. That is not what we are talking about. We are
talking about the ships that sail the high seas. Why doesn't America
make those ships?
And I said: We can. We can if we write the laws in the proper way to
encourage the shipbuilding industry and, just as important, the cargo
to go on those ships.
Now, it happens that America is in the midst of a great energy
revolution--the green energy, no doubt about it. We are talking about
every kind of green energy, from wind to solar, biofuel and biomass,
and on and on. And we are doing that.
But, simultaneously, America, over the last decade, has become a
major developer and supplier of petroleum products: oil, as a result of
fracking in the Bakken area and Texas, California, onshore, offshore.
We are a major oil producer.
And, simultaneously, we are also a major producer of natural gas. All
of these energy supplies, whether they are the green energy or the
petroleum energy, are a strategic national asset.
And, as these gentlemen told me: Our ships, during World War II, were
a strategic national asset. We had oil tankers, we had cargo vessels,
all of them built in America and with American mariners.
[[Page H7228]]
We, the mariners, we were a strategic asset. And a lot of us died.
Our ships were a strategic asset, and the oil that we sent around the
world was also a strategic asset.
So, where are we today? Are we making ships? Nope. We are not. But we
could.
So, this last week, Senator Roger Wicker--my colleague in the Senate,
a Republican from the Gulf Coast--and I introduced, for the second
Congress, the Energizing the American Shipbuilding Act, taking a
strategic national asset, our petroleum and natural gas, and welding it
together with the shipbuilding industry, which gives us the strategic
ships that we need to move our military around the world and to provide
the energy that they need.
So, the Energizing the American Shipbuilding Act is now introduced in
the Senate, for the second session, last year and again this time
around with the new session of Congress.
What we will do is to address this problem: We could buy ships that
are made in China, Japan, and Korea, or we can make them in America. If
we make the ships in America, we will provide thousands of jobs, not
only in the shipyards and the steel industry and the aluminum industry,
but also the maritime suppliers, the men, the factories here in the
United States that build the pumps, build the engines--the electrical
engines, the big diesel engines--that are in these ships or the LNG
engines that are in these ships, and all of the electronics.
That entire array of equipment that goes into a ship could be built
in America if the Energizing the American Shipbuilding Act were to
become law.
So, how does it work? Pretty simple. It simply requires that our
strategic national asset, the petroleum and the natural gas, be
exported on American-built ships with American mariners--not all of it,
just a small percentage of it, 15 percent of the oil and 10 percent of
the natural gas, which will be liquified natural gas on American-built
ships.
What does that mean? That means that American shipyards that are now
producing zero commercial oil tankers and zero LNG carriers would, over
the next 13 to 15 years, build upwards of 40 ships: 25 to 30 LNG
tankers and 10 to 15 oil tankers.
Thousands of jobs would be created in American shipyards, and that
strategic national asset, the shipyards themselves, would be able to
continue to operate here in the United States. They would continue to
be able to have the skilled workforce and, simultaneously, be better
prepared to compete for the U.S. naval ships, giving the American
taxpayer a strategic advantage, more competition in the shipyards, more
competition when it comes time to build our naval vessels.
There is another aspect of this that I want to bring to your
attention. Beyond the shipbuilding and the Energizing the American
Shipbuilding Act, there is the rest of manufacturing here in the United
States.
About 8 years ago, when I first came to Congress, we were looking at
this issue based upon my time in California, and we decided, together
with Steny Hoyer, who is now our majority leader, that we should
establish the Make It In America program. We have been working on this
for 8 years now, and we are looking at different pieces of legislation
over time to encourage the manufacturing here in the United States.
One of the ways we can do this--and we are not going to go into the
President's tariffs right now, but we are going to go at it in a little
different way. Here is just an example of about what happened almost a
decade ago.
In California, it was time to build the new San Francisco Bay Bridge.
The bid went out. The State of California went out to bid on this thing
for the steel in the bridge.
At that time, a Chinese company decided that they wanted to enter the
market. Very specialized steel in this bridge in the San Francisco
area, so they wanted to enter the market, and they produced a bid that
was 10 percent lower than an American steel company.
China got the bid. What did they get? Not only did they get the job;
they got a new steel mill, one of the most advanced in the world, and
they also had some over 3,000 jobs in China.
At the very same time, New York was building the Tappan Zee Bridge.
They said, no, we are only going to buy American steel, and so they
did, total cost, $3.9 billion.
In California, total cost, $3.9 billion over the estimated cost. Why?
Because the Chinese steel had problems, the welds and other problems
with the steel.
Not in New York. They came in on the bid, and there were 7,700
American jobs in the steel industry and in the manufacturing and
engineering--just.
An example, not current today, but certainly current nearly a decade
ago.
But this is what happens when our laws or our governments decide that
we are going to make it in America, we are going to produce the steel,
we are going to build the bridges here in the United States.
So, building on this idea, we have now introduced in both the Senate
and the House another Make It In America piece of legislation. This
legislation is authored in the Senate by Senator Tammy Baldwin and here
in the House by me.
It basically says that all of this talk about infrastructure, which
is critically important, that that infrastructure, if it is an American
taxpayer dollar that is being used to build that infrastructure--
whether that is a power line or a highway or a sanitation system or a
water system or an airport--if there is a Federal dollar involved, that
we make it in America.
It simply applies to all types of infrastructure. When American
taxpayer dollars are being used, that that infrastructure--the steel,
the pipe, the electronics, the other elements that are in that
infrastructure--that they be made in America.
So it is part of our Make It In America agenda that we have been
working on all these years, and we are going to apply it wherever we
see an opportunity. If it is in the steel industry for bridges and
infrastructure, you bet. You bet, we are going to make sure that it is
made in America.
Many of these laws already exist. A couple of years ago, we were able
to raise the percentage of American content by a couple of percentage
points to about, if I recall, about 65 percent on certain
infrastructure projects. But we want to extend that beyond.
And why not go the whole way? Let's make it all in America. If it is
a taxpayer dollar, 100 percent American made. That is our goal. So our
Make It in America agenda goes forward from here.
I am going to end with putting this one back up again because this
has an opportunity to be a very, very important part. The steel in the
ships, the pumps, the pipes, the electronics, the propellers, the drive
shaft, the engines--all of those things--can be made in America if we
have a national policy that simply says the export of a strategic
national asset, oil and gas, that that be on American-built ships. Not
all of it, 10 percent, 15 percent, 40 ships over the next 15 years or
so when the Energizing the American Shipbuilding Act becomes law.
{time} 2015
We are looking for support. We have broad support right now, both
Republican and Democratic, with Senator Wicker from Mississippi and
Senator Casey from Pennsylvania. On this side, about 30 of my
colleagues, Democratic and Republican, have signed up in support of
this legislation.
It has great potential. It has great potential, but not so much for
these mariners. They are all in their nineties right now. Hopefully, we
will be able to get them a Congressional Gold Medal.
For tomorrow's mariners, for those men and women who will be on ships
that will supply the necessary material, oil, gas, or whatever for our
military around the world, and will participate in the annual commerce
of goods and services that are being transported in and out of America,
that next generation of mariners will have the ships, jobs, and cargo.
For the People, once again, we are constantly looking for different
laws, different ways in which we can advance the well-being of the
American public. If it is healthcare, we are looking to lower costs. If
it is education, we want to make sure that the cost of college
education is affordable. If it has to do with jobs, we are looking for
ways to make that happen by requiring that your tax dollars be spent on
American-made equipment, by requiring that a
[[Page H7229]]
small percentage of the export of a precious national resource be on
American-built ships with American sailors.
I want all of us to keep in mind that there are things that public
policy can do to improve the well-being of every American. Our For the
People policy includes all of these elements, and we draw your
attention to that.
I am looking to my colleagues for continued support on these two
pieces of legislation that we will be working on in this session.
Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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