Political Quotes

“for much of the twentieth century, our great steel companies churned and poured out the material used to build our nation creating the skeletons of our battleships, military equipment and installations. Today, during floor consideration of the Military Construction Appropriations Act of 2003 (H.R. 5011), I intended to offer an amendment to ensure that only domestic steel could be used for military construction. However, due to restrictions under the rule for funding limitations, my amendment was subject to a point of order and was not offered. For the record, I would like to fully explain the intent of this amendment. Mr. Speaker, my amendment to Section 108 of H.R. 5011 was designed to help American industry ailing from the effects of globalization. Section 108 currently states that no funds appropriated in H.R. 5011 may be used for procurement of steel for construction projects or activities for which American Steel producers have been denied the opportunity to compete for such steel procurement. While I support this provision, the goal of my amendment was to strengthen that Section and require that the funds made available in H.R. 5011 would be spent on purchasing equipment, products or systems which contain steel manufactured in the United States. In other words, competition is good, but I wanted to go one step further and guarantee our military construction contracts involve U.S. steel. Our national defense depends on a healthy U.S.…”