Political Quotes

“As a proud member of the Blue Collar Caucus, I thank the gentlewoman for both wearing blue and bringing a message from that caucus. It is extremely important. The Make It In America agenda, which we have been talking about here for at least the last 8 or 9 years, has all of these pieces. The gentlewoman talked about trade, taxes, infrastructure, education, and labor--all the pieces of this puzzle. As we discussed today, there are programs that are clearly going to be at risk. If the Jones Act somehow gets repealed or gets waived or otherwise is made less effective, then there are some 400,000 jobs in American shipyards across the Nation that will be lost. These are shipyards in Philadelphia, the Gulf Coast, and out in the West, as we heard Ms. Jayapal talk about Seattle. San Diego has a major shipyard, the NASSCO shipyard. These are places where the Jones Act allows for American ships to be built not in China, but, rather, in America. Make It In America. The Jones Act does that. Mr. Speaker, I will give you a couple of examples. One of the companies that ships goods from Jacksonville, Florida, to Puerto Rico is the TOTE shipping company. They recently spent nearly $400 million on two of the most advanced clean energy ships anywhere in the world. {time} 1900 These ships were built in San Diego. They are LNG-powered, natural gas-powered ships, and they are now plying the Jacksonville-Puerto Rico trade twice a week, back and forth.…”