Political Quotes

“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.”