Paul Tonko: “Sure. I want to pick up on the importance of education as a role for our comeback, but before I do that, I want to thank…”

“Sure. I want to pick up on the importance of education as a role for our comeback, but before I do that, I want to thank two very good friends and two very sensitive hearts for the empathy that you have expressed on behalf of the people of my district and neighboring districts in the northeast. So Representative Garamendi from California and Representative Jackson Lee from Texas, thank you for bringing out the neighborliness in all of us. That is our best expression as an American people, and we do it through the auspices of our Federal Government when one amongst us hurts. We respond in a way that enables us to come back and strengthen the fabric of our entire Nation. But to the point of education, recently the district I represent, the region that I represent, was dubbed the fastest-growing hub in America for green collar jobs and the third-fastest growing jobs for high-tech jobs by two independent surveys. The reason that happened was because we invested through Federal Government, State government, and private sector and academia in an agenda that speaks to cutting-edge technology, and it happened because there are three basic formats of infrastructure that need to be reinforced and responded to, that being your physical infrastructure; your fiscal infrastructure, your capital infrastructure; and human infrastructure. Representative Garamendi and Representative Jackson Lee, you both referenced the education issues.…”