John Garamendi: “Let's not forget, this is not new economics. George Washington in his first month in office, and this is the first…”

“Let's not forget, this is not new economics. George Washington in his first month in office, and this is the first President, folks, his first month in office, turned to his Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton, and said, develop an economic policy. Hamilton came back a couple of months later, not with a report that we would have, several thousand pages, but maybe 50 or 60 pages, and he laid out an economic policy. Number one on his agenda was to build America's infrastructure--ports, canals. I know you're going to launch into the Erie Canal now that I've mentioned canals, which is your favorite subject. And he also talked about roads. He talked about laying down the infrastructure for the growth of the economy. Before we get to your Erie Canal, I want to talk about something that actually happened. This is a good thing. This is a very good thing. In the stimulus bill, which by the way did work, not as robust as we would have liked, but it did work, there was a provision to build locomotives for Amtrak. I think it was about $800 million over a period of years would be spent on building locomotives for the east coast. {time} 2000 This is so you can get home, Mr. Tonko, on the east coast here. These locomotives were to be 100 percent American-made. I don't know who wrote that provision, but it was one of the very few provisions in the stimulus bill that said make it in America, 100 percent American-made.…”