Hoyer Remarks at Press Conference on the Make It In America Agenda

WASHINGTON, DC – Congressman Steny H. Hoyer (MD-05) held a press conference on the Make It In America agenda, which Congressman Hoyer has led since 2010. Congressman Hoyer was joined by other House Democratic Members to announce new policy recommendations for Supply Chain Resilience, and touch on the progress made on Make It In America's Education, Entrepreneurship, and Infrastructure policy recommendations. Below is a transcript of his remarks and a link to the to the livestream of the press conference:

Click here for a link to the video.

"I'm joined by a number of Members. Representative Davids from Kansas, Representative Phillips from Minnesota, Representative Stanton from Arizona, Representative Wild from Pennsylvania, Representative Dingell from Michigan, Representative Blunt Rochester, the senior Member of the Delaware delegation, Representative Kildee [from Michigan], [Rep.] Frank Mrvan from Indiana, and [Rep.] John Garamendi from California, we expect [Rep.] Brian Higgins may be here as well. I want to say something about John Garamendi at the beginning – nobody has talked about Make It In America, or COMPETES, or innovation, or competitiveness on our Floor, in the House, or around the country more than my friend John Garamendi from California. John, I appreciate your leadership, and he's going to be our clean-up hitter. Everyone here has a piece of Make It In America, more importantly, in the COMPETES bill, and we'll be talking about their bill as it relates to Make It In America and the [bipartisan innovation legislation].

"Twelve years ago, I launched the Make It In America plan in order to gather the best bipartisan ideas for making our economy more competitive and creating better opportunities for our businesses and our workers. Make It In America not only meant manufacture, make things in America, have services in America, have 0s and 1s in America, but it also means succeeding. You make it, you win the game, you get the job, you ace the test, whatever – you make it. That's what Americans really want. They want an opportunity to make it, to be successful, to able to take care of themselves and their families. At the time, our concerns was recovering the economy from the Great Recession, and much of our focus was on promoting domestic manufacturing and onshoring to create more jobs.

"As our recovery advanced, I worked with many of my House Democratic colleagues, some of whom are here, to update the Make It In America plan to focus more on how we could capitalize on the gains we had made to build a more competitive economy for the next generation. In 2015, we held a series of hearings, which some of you may remember, called ‘Make It In America: What's Next?' We followed up by traveling across the country in 2017 and 2018 for the Make It In America Listening Tour. We visited Indianapolis, Madison, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Las Vegas, and other communities around the country to hear from labor organizers, business leaders, educators, innovators, and local elected officials about what they needed from Congress as it related to growing our economy and making sure that Americans could make it. From what we learned in our hearings and on those visits, we adapted the Make It In America plan to reflect what our businesses and workers need to compete and win in the twenty-first century global economy. And, just as we did in 2010, we focused on identifying policies that have broad, bipartisan support and can be enacted into law.

"Make It In America is not about philosophical differences. Right and left, left and right, [we] want to make sure people can Make It In America and succeed in America. Congresswoman Haley Stevens from Michigan just came in, we'll add her to the list. So, the design of Make It In America was not to appeal to partisan differences but to appeal to common interests. Since 2018, the Make It In America plan has been divided into three core components; we've added, as you can see, a fourth. Education, infrastructure, and entrepreneurship – we've added a fourth, because we have seen, as we were relying on the unreliable in this pandemic, we've seen we need to be more self-sufficient for strategic reasons and for job reasons, for health reasons, for all sort of reasons. That is putting additional relevance, and immediacy to Make It In America.

"Right now, House and Senate conferees are working to reach agreement on a bipartisan innovation bill. What the name will be at the end, we'll see, but it's an innovation bill. I urge them to complete their work so we can vote on it in July. I intend to send a letter to all the conferees, we'll probably send another letter signed by all of those who have component parts and have worked so hard on this Make It In America agenda, as well. We've done about twenty-one bills, so far, over the years that were focused on making it in America, but we can't rest on our laurels. We need to move, and we need to move now. It means that it's time to create our plan to respond to the needs of today's economy and focus on new challenges and new opportunities. And to tell the American people: We feel your pain. We feel your pain when you go to the pump. We feel your pain when you go to the grocery store. We feel your pain when you're trying to pay your bills as costs go up. This legislation will bring costs down. This will make us more competitive and create more competition. That's why, today, we're announcing a new, fourth component to the Make It In America plan: ‘supply chain resilience.'

"Supply chain disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and by Putin's criminal invasion of Ukraine, have shown us how important reliable and resilient supply chains are to our domestic economy. We cannot, as I've said, rely on the unreliable. This new component to our plan addresses both the long-term needs of our economy and the immediate concerns as we work to ease inflation. Enacting a bipartisan innovation bill, whatever we call it, is a bipartisan bill. Why? Because we all agree we want to grow our economy. We need to get that legislation done, we need to get it done now. Again, I hope it will be ready for Floor action in July. I was hoping we would be completed by the end of this month and I still think we have an opportunity to do that. Next week is devoted fully to committee work, and I'm hopeful we get this done.

"But while we continue to focus sharply on inflation, it's important to remember we've achieved a great deal since the Make It In America plan was first launched, I told you about the number of bills that have been adopted. I'm glad, as I said, to be joined by some of the Members who have policies and legislation included in our agenda, included in the COMPETES bill, or are suggested for compromise with the Senate. Now, I want to yield to a dynamic young, new Member, but not new to making good policy. She is a dynamic Member, all of them are dynamic Members. I will not be introducing all of them because we'd have a time problem, if I introduced each of them and regaled you all with how great they are, we would never get through this press conference. Let me yield to [Congresswoman] Sharice Davids from Kansas."