Political Quotes

“The amendment before the House now is a relatively simple one. We have, over the last 10 years, lost 42,000 factories in this country. We have lost 5 million jobs in manufacturing. And we've had a long discussion here in this Congress over the past 3 years as to what we can do to stimulate that engine of middle class job growth and security. This amendment seeks to increase our defense industrial capacity without spending any additional money. What the amendment before us simply allows is for the Federal Government to be able to consider at their leisure the amount of jobs being created here in the United States by a particular bid for U.S. defense work. Frankly, most of my constituents think this already happens. Most of my constituents think that there is an ability for the Federal Government today to factor in, when awarding a particular bid, which bid is going to create more jobs here in the United States versus overseas. This amendment is purely permissive. Frankly, if it were up to me, I would make it mandatory. But this amendment, which in bill form came out of the Government Oversight Committee last Congress unanimously, allows an individual contractor in their bid submission to state how many American jobs they are going to create, and then simply allows the contracting agency to factor that into their bid award, and then requires a report back to Congress as to how often that information, that job impact statement was used.…”