John Garamendi: “Well, that reigniting of the American Dream will be dependent upon two factors, that is, the public, the small…”

“Well, that reigniting of the American Dream will be dependent upon two factors, that is, the public, the small businesses, the entrepreneurs putting together their businesses. And at the same time, it's going to be dependent upon public policies. You mentioned education. For the last 2 years, the Democrats have been proposing and pushing a series of pieces of legislation to enhance the ability of Americans to go to school. The Workforce Investment Board, very, very important. I suspect that that was one of the programs that your plastics company took advantage of in retraining. Our Republican friends last year, in the budget and in the appropriations, tried to reduce the workforce investment, but we wouldn't have that, and we've been able to at least maintain it. We were able, on the Democratic side, to increase the Pell Grants so that kids can go to college. Now, I would hope they would go to college to be chemical engineers, process engineers, and not financial engineers, which I discussed early on. But I think that if we can just continue to support the educational system, including such things as vocational education--we used to do vocational education in America. We let it go. And as it went, we saw more and more dropouts. So supporting the educational system. You mentioned--and I think we need to drive this point home tonight-- the research side of it. This is something, Mr. Tonko, that you know a great deal about.…”