John Garamendi: “Mr. Tonko, thank you so very much for weaving together all the pieces of the puzzle that the Democratic Party and this…”

“Mr. Tonko, thank you so very much for weaving together all the pieces of the puzzle that the Democratic Party and this Congress are putting together. It is the education piece, the health care piece, and also there is another piece, and I'm going to use an example here of what is taking place in one of the counties I represent. It's Contra Costa County and the Contra Costa Council, which is made up of businesspeople who have said, let's use the purchasing power of government to incentivize and to help the small businesses. Now, it happens that in this particular area, there are major research institutions. The University of California, the Lawrence Berkeley Lab, Lawrence Livermore Lab and the Sandia Lab are all in the area. And out of that comes enormous numbers of new ideas. But those ideas are often left without a real market because they are new and they haven't been able to grow and to develop their market. So the local government said, why don't we get together and become the purchaser and jump-start, use the purchasing power of government, particularly in the area of energy conservation.”