Political Quotes

“Let me give you another example of what we can do with policy. Right now we have a ``Buy American'' policy that really has not been enforced much. So I've introduced a piece of legislation, H.R. 613, that simply says that if it's our tax money--and every time we buy a gallon of gasoline or a gallon of diesel fuel, we pay either 18.5 cents for the gasoline or 26 cents for the diesel fuel in taxes, where's the money going? Some of it all too often, in fact, a lot of it all too often, winds up going offshore. I will give you an example: the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge, a multibillion dollar project, $1 billion worth of steel going into that bridge. It will be a beautiful thing when it's completed. The bids for that came in for an American-made steel bridge or a Chinese-made steel bridge. {time} 2100 It was a 10 percent difference in cost. That's a lot of money. So the State of California Bridge Authority decided that they would take the 10 percent cheaper Chinese steel. The result is after years, the steel had problems. The welds had problems. The cost went well above 10 percent, and 3,000 jobs wound up in China, and zero jobs wound up in America. So what this bill does, it simply says no more waivers. No more. If it is American tax dollars that are being used, it is going to be used to buy American-made equipment--buses, trains and the steel and concrete. It works.…”