Janice Schakowsky: “I thank the gentleman for yielding. I rise also to support the effort of my colleague Mr. Garamendi to require that…”

“I thank the gentleman for yielding. I rise also to support the effort of my colleague Mr. Garamendi to require that materials made in America be used to construct and renovate the charter schools that we're talking about in this legislation. We have a serious issue in this country, in case the Republicans haven't noticed, that we need to create as many jobs as we can. And anybody who has made a speech about job creation these days, talking about making it in America is a definite applause line. I would just like to recommend that. Making it in America is something that really has resonated with people all around this country. Why would we take taxpayer dollars, when we could spend it on products that are made right here, including the building materials that we need to upgrade, to create more schools in our country, and buy products that are made overseas and support jobs that are outside of our country? The issue in this bill of creating more schools is so important. In the United States, schools on average are 40 years old and actually in need of an estimated $500 billion in repairs and upgrades. I'm actually introducing a piece of legislation next week that would provide $100 billion dollars to repair, renovate, modernize America's schools and would create 400,000 construction and 250,000 maintenance jobs alone. But in addition, what we should be doing is rejecting this previous question that's up before us so that we can make a good bill even better.…”