BIDEN PORT BALTIMORE REMARKS
EXT BROLL VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN REMARKS AT PORT OF BALTIMORE
Monday, September 09, 2013
TRANSCRIPT: Vice President Joe Biden remarks at the Port of Baltimore
DC Slug: 1400 BIDEN BALTIMORE RS34 72
AR: 16x9
DISC # 963
(Applause.)
14:21:58 VICE PRESIDENT JOSEPH BIDEN: Governor, thank you very much. Thank you. (Applause continues.)
14:22:04 It's an honor -- it's an honor to be here with Secretary Foxx. And Mayor, I -- it's good to see you, Stephanie. You're doing a great job down here. And Governor O'Malley, you've had a heck of a run, man. This state, this city, this -- this -- this region is growing and it's -- no small part because of you.
14:22:25 And Ben Cardin and Barbara Mikulski, I not only -- I not only move her -- her stool; when I was in the Senate, I got her coffee, I did whatever she wanted me to do -- (laughter) -- even though I was much senior to her. But I know where the power lies. If anybody ever has fought harder for their constituency, their state and their city, in my -- I -- when I left the Senate, Governor, after having been elected the seventh time, to be sworn in as vice president, the secretary of the Senate came in, and they do what they call a history minute.
14:23:00 And, trying to make me feel good, I guess -- and Barbara may remember this -- he said, all of your colleagues should know that only 13 people in American history have ever served as long as Senator Biden. I thought, oh, my God, that can't be right. And -- but I -- it never affected Barbara. It never even crossed her mind I was senior to her. (Laughter.) It never crossed her mind that anyone is senior.
14:23:28 So that's why we all -- and anybody who thinks being -- having the chairman of the Appropriations Committee in your state is not a good thing, well -- (chuckles) -- they don't understand anything. And John (sp), and Dutch, and Elijah, it's great for you guys to be here -- to be with you. You know, Barb was kidding me about being Amtrak Joe in the C&D Canal; you know, in Delaware, we call it the D&C Canal, because it's Delaware and Chesapeake, it's not -- but, you know, that's how we kind of look at it. You've got to get across our state.
14:24:01 But the truth of the matter is that I -- and Stephanie (sp) said earlier, I have roots in Baltimore. My whole family's been here since 1825. And as I came through Dundalk, I -- my family started in Dundalk. That's where they used to live, according to my father and my grandfather; I have not checked that out personally, but that's what I am told.
14:24:24 But I'll tell you what, they would marvel at what's happened here. It's become -- this is an extraordinary facility here. It's been almost 200 years since Francis Scott Key looked across this harbor and said our flag was still waving after an attack of the most powerful country in the world. But that's the last time -- that's the last time anybody ever tried to close the Port of Baltimore.
14:24:52 Since that September day, these warves have -- these warves have maintained our connection to secure sea lanes all around the world, and they've fueled -- they have fueled in large part the continued growth of our economy.
14:25:09 You know, right now about 70 percent of the world's commerce, as we speak, is sitting on the ocean. About 70 percent of all the commerce in the world is sitting in the hulls of ships, the tops of ships on the world's oceans. And it's something that most Americans don't think about, they don't think about. And more than ever, more than ever we are a maritime nation. More than ever, because we are a maritime nation, an Atlantic power as well as a Pacific power, it's critical -- it's critical that we keep the peace with the project to widen and deepen the Panama Canal.
14:25:49 I've spent time with President Martinelli in Panama. I'm supposed to go down there -- it may be postponed a little bit because of another issue in the Senate right now. But they -- they've widened that canal, and there are going to be a whole new type of ship that's going to come rolling through, 50 percent bigger, 50 percent more cargo.
14:26:10 The world's changing. The world is changing. We're now able to carry so much more on cargo ships. Unless we expand the ports of the East Coast, great ports like Baltimore, the ninth largest port in the nation and the largest port in the export of cars and light trucks and farm machinery, we're going to fall behind. We're going to fall behind badly. Baltimore has never fallen behind and America's never fallen behind.
14:26:38 But it's not just Baltimore. It's the entire East Coast that needs to modernize in order to keep current. As a matter of fact, the entire infrastructure of the United States has to be modernized.
14:26:49 That's why we conceived the TIGER grants. We got an awful lot of heat for the Recovery Act, which I might add, all the studies show was less than 1 1/2 percent of waste or fraud involved with the implementation of that act. And it was all about, how do you make America competitive in the 21st century? TIGER grants were conceived by our administration to build a 21st century infrastructure, a 21st century economy.
14:27:17 You know, I've said before, if I blindfolded you and landed you in some airports around the world, you'd say, we must be in America, and you find yourself in the middle of Beijing or you find yourself in other parts of the world with more modern infrastructures than we have. How can we maintain our place in the world without having the best, most modern infrastructure in the world?
14:27:40 We invested only $3 billion in this program at the start of this administration, and thus far, it's leveraged over $15.7 billion in outside investment, public and private investment. And as usual, Governor O'Malley has led the way, with an incredibly innovative public-private partnership that -- it's a league, FORCE America, FORCE America private entity created to build a 50-foot deep berth, erected those cranes over my shoulder that can lift as much as 187,500 pounds of cargo with every lift.
14:28:18 The longshoremen here can tell you -- and by the way, thank you. I wouldn't be standing here without the longshoremen, including the Longshoremen Union in the state of Delaware. You guys have been with me my whole career, and I appreciate it. But they get it. They understand. (Applause.) They know. FORCE America came through, knowing we were going to come through.
14:28:39 And that's why the secretary and I are here today, because we're coming through with a $10 million TIGER grant for the Port of Baltimore. This grant is going to help take this historic port to a new level of service of our nation, expanding the Fairfield Terminal, adding rail service, creating wider channels that will accommodate 160-foot-wide ships.
14:29:00 You longshoremen have been around doing this for a while. Did you ever think you'd see a 160-foot-wide ship coming up this channel, let alone anywhere else? Well, that's what's going to be able to come through the Panama Canal starting in 2015.
14:29:15 And all of this is creating jobs here in Maryland and throughout the nation. The expansion -- just this expansion is expected to lead to an additional 5,700 new jobs, 300 of those on the infrastructure improvements, another 2,700 on the additional business that those investments are going to bring to this area. With the help of the -- with the help of this effort, there's 108,000 jobs in this state that are going to rely on the continued growth of this port.
14:29:45 And folks, these just aren't any jobs. The thing about every one of us up here -- we're not about creating jobs. We're about creating jobs you can raise a family on, middle-class jobs, jobs that you can have the knowledge that you can be able to buy your home, not just rent it; be able to live in a safe neighborhood; be able to send your kid to a decent school; be able to know when you -- if they do well at that school, you can send them to college. That's what built this country. That's why labor built this country. That's why organized labor -- that's why we have had the kind of growth we've had. But it's been stalling. And everything -- everything we're doing is designed to build the middle class, so there's a ladder up.
14:30:30 And by the way, when the middle class does well, the wealthy do very well, they do very well, and the poor have a shot. That's why we're investing in cutting-edge infrastructure, like the -- this facility, to help fuel the manufacturing growth that's going on.
14:30:46 When we started this job, I remember talking to Elijah, and he and I were talking about bringing manufacturing back to the United States.
14:30:52 And you listen to all the experts -- yeah, man, if we -- we can't compete anymore. We can't compete with manufacturing. Manufacturing's coming back to the United States. We're not outsourcing; we are insourcing manufacturing. It's coming back. (Applause.) We've created over 500,000 new manufacturing jobs. And there's a couple reasons for that.
14:31:11 One of the reasons is we have the most productive workers in America. American workers are three times as productive as their Chinese counterpart. A second reason is we have a system in this country where your intellectual property is protected, where you can go to court and have your claims adjudicated, where you know you're going to get a fair shake. That's why they're coming back. That's why companies are coming back.
14:31:35 But they're only going to come back if they are able to have the best infrastructure in the world because when you have the best infrastructure in the world, you allow them to be competitive. They can compete. They can produce their products and export their products more cheaply if they have the infrastructure to accommodate that. Manufacturers locate where they can operate, where there's infrastructure, where they can ship their products around the world.
14:32:02 Manufacturing output in the last quarter in the United States is at its highest level in five years. That's 7,300,000 jobs we've added; 500,000 have been new manufacturing jobs. And I say manufacturing because these are good-paying wages. These are jobs, again, you can raise a family on. And modernizing our infrastructure -- our ports, our canals, our rails, our roads -- does nothing but encourage manufacturers to come back to the United States because it enables them. It enables them to efficiently compete with everyone around the world.
14:32:38 Look, folks, if we -- if we -- if we make it here in America, and we're going to continue making more and more in America, we got to be able to ship it around the world.
14:32:50 Our exports are at the highest level ever, $2.2 trillion in 2012. And now, with the modernization of the port of Baltimore and other East Coast ports, that number is going to do nothing but grow. Global commerce has radically changed to the day since the Baltimore Clipper to the era of the megaship. And we had to be fully prepared for that era.
14:33:14 Americans are not afraid to compete, for God's sake. Every time I go around -- I travel a lot around the world, over 800,000 miles so far, just as being vice president. And everywhere I go, I make it real clear, we want to see you grow, we want to see China grow, we want to see Indonesia grow, we want to see Brazil grow. Why? If you're growing and your economy is growing, we have a better market to sell to, a bigger market. And we can compete. It's stamped into our DNA.
14:33:46 But in order to be able to do that, we have to be able to get our products efficiently around the world. As I said, our workers are three times more competitive than workers around the world. Our system and our institutions are more -- are more conducive to keeping major manufacturings on shore. 14:34:05 But our job is to help them get their products around the world, and the -- overwhelmingly in the interests of the United States to expand, to see other nations expand, so we have better markets. You know that old bad joke? They asked Willie Sutton once, why did you rob banks? He said, because that's where the money is. Why do we want China and these other countries to grow? Because that's where the customers are. And given a level-playing field, we can out-compete any nation in the world. It's in our DNA. (Applause.) Genuine competition.
14:34:39 And that's why the president (and I ?), we're pushing so hard for expanding trade agreements, both the trans-Atlantic trade agreement and then the so-called TTIP with -- in terms of trans-Pacific trade. We want these countries to grow.
14:34:52 And we want to be in the game. And we want to change the rules of the game, change the rules of the game so in order to be able to compete, you have to sign on to a certain basic set of rules and commerce that in fact make it equitable to compete. But it all starts -- it all starts in the ports of Baltimore and the ports around the country. It all starts in us being able to get our product where it has to go.
14:35:20 Ladies and gentlemen, this is -- this is just the beginning. This is just the beginning. Baltimore is ahead of the curve because of this delegation working so hard years ago and because of your dad, John, having the foresight to dredge this harbor earlier, get it to 50 feet. Right now we're fighting like the devil in Delaware. We have a small port but a vibrant port that provides significant jobs. The port of Philadelphia. We're trying to get done on the Delaware River what you've gotten done here. So you're ahead of the game.
14:35:51 But this doesn't stop here. This doesn't stop here. All the East Coast ports, all of them, all of them have to get in the game. And when they are, when they are in the game it just means more product, more capability, more manufacturing, more ability to compete internationally.
14:36:09 So folks, there's more to say, but a lot of it's already been said. Just let me say that, you know, the port of Baltimore's going to continue to send ships out over the horizon, but it's not just Baltimore. The rest of the country has to catch up with you, the rest of the East Coast has to catch up with you, because the opportunities are immense. They are immense.
14:36:30 There is no reason why, no reason in the world why America will not be the leading economy in the 21st century. Not another nation in the world can compete with us given half a chance. Not another nation can compete with us.
14:36:50 And these are jobs that are good, decent-paying jobs so you can raise a family and have the kind of opportunity every one of us was taught if you work hard and play by the rules here you get a chance to have.
14:37:05 But again, a lot of this is -- I'll be going around the country to these other ports in the next weeks because Americans never think about the ports. Unless they work around the ports or in the ports they don't get it. And we got to explain it to them because it affects their jobs as well.
14:37:22 So, Governor, thank you for your leadership. To the congressional delegation, you're the best congressional delegation, I think, in the country. You're the most effective. And because of that -- because of that everybody in Baltimore and this state is going to do better. And you're setting an example for the entire East Coast.
Thank you all very much. (Applause.)