On the recordFebruary 14, 2012
Representative Garamendi, thank you for that lead-in. Certainly Representative Altmire talked about the need for us to invest in manufacturing, when you look at that precipitous drop, losing the many millions of manufacturing jobs, perhaps the largest loss of manufacturing jobs in world history. It's up there. It ranks very high. Why? Well, policy, tax policy that encouraged taking jobs offshore and investing in other nations. We were rewarding that behavior. What we're talking about now is turning that around, doing this U- turn, putting the brakes on a process, on an incentive that really was destroying hope for American workers. So now what we see is a new vision of providing incentives for those who will build opportunity in this Nation. Also, I think when we look at some of the focus that existed or didn't exist over the past decade and a half, you look at where we were going as a Nation, and the focus wasn't on agriculture, it was not on manufacturing, but it was on the service sector, and primarily on the financial service sector. Now, we know that scenario. We won't go down that road. Suffice it to say, we turned our back and said, Here's the keys; play as you wish. No watchdog in the equation, and people created vehicles by which to circumvent regulation. So we put at risk the Nation's economy. Every family that invested into their future was put at risk. So we ignored manufacturing.
