call us order and today we will conduct oversight of the economic development castration like to welcome our witness doctor john fleming work together over the years assistant secretary at the mercer economic development in march of last, year march of last year to separate from your some confirmed after fleming, on the docket for the for hearing priorities for young about the agency's priorities under leadership. the economic heavy development administration's mission candidates is to foster demonstrations may have regional economic development efforts in communities across the promotion quicken nation. that hospitably timeout mission is guided by counties the principle of most of the sustainable economic prospects kindness words of guys to development, should be locally stay by driven, economic development instead of the washington knows best to look out approach, the economic below that could development administration be literally said works hand-in-hand with local partners. that the washington post is stepping up the the agency provides limited blossoming across the funding and technical assistance to events proud presidency for inanition result in congress local partners you provides limited funding in medical to these projects are linked where we just launched sustainable economic development strategy. many communities were hard hit through the great recession. the economic impact to cool communities under the obama administration were devastating. he cannot conditions combined with the war on coal put the industries best paying jobs in the crosshairs. no state felt this more than wyoming, a leading coal producing state. president trump has worked to reverse this trend. under his leadership, economic development administration established the assistance to call on communities initiative. coal is a valuable resource. it powers our home. it feels our factories, many outside coal country might not realize that there are new uses for coal that are emerging. just last year, mediate provided 1.4 billion dollars in funding to the campbell county economic development corporation for its advanced carbon products innovation center. this center is working to renew uses for cold from the lab to the marketplace. these uses might include carbon fiber, paving material and the center is expected to create jobs and react about 50 million dollars in private investment. in addition to attracting private sector investment, i commend the administration's partnership with our state educational institutions to promote workforce development. a great example is in northern wyoming community colleges last year the college district received a da grant to support workforce training at gillette college. the grant is funding the purchase of science, technology, engineering and management equipment. the economic development administration support for wyoming workers extends beyond the energy industry. in 2019, the agency provided 3 million dollars in funding to the central college to build a new agricultural training facility. the new 85,000 square foot facility is going to provide hands on training to -- the calls for the training facility an area identified as an opportunity zone by new tax reform law. these opportunities zones are areas across the country where new investment can spark economic development, as doctor fleming i'm sure will discuss the economic development administration is focusing its work in these areas of this is another example of how the trump administration is implementing the tax reform law to grow our caucus economy and help communities by providing additional opportunities i look forward to hearing more about these initiatives and the good work that's being done by the economic development >> administration. i now would like to turn to ranking member. >> senator inhofe. in light of your commitment as chairman of the armed services committee and this issue of scheduling. >> thank you. >> i thank both of you for giving me this opportunity. we had a reason we can't be here for i don't need your opening statement. i know exactly what you're doing. i know the successes we've had. i know the eda has performed well. it's followed the lines as the chairman just said that we have the opportunity to use matching funds to show that the support at home. in my state of oklahoma as you well know and others know here i'm sure, that we had a devastating flood this past year and it was one, one of these 100 year things that happens every year you always hear about. this was really bad. and our levee in tulsa, we call it the west tulsa levee was built in the middle'40s. well past its lifetime. and when this flood came in, we were actually we had people with fingers in the dike down there literally and getting we were very fortunate that we didn't have a major disaster. in addition to that we had problems a lot of people don't know that we in oklahoma are navigable. we have navigation that comes all the way up to tulsa. but going through the port of the muskogee there was damage and that falls into your category. those two years let me thank you and the corps of engineers for everything up the studies that will be necessary before we actually start fixing that dike. it's been initially thought it would be three years and turned out to be a year and a half. so we're making great headway. what i would like to do just to be sure as we found out when we had the committee hearing with >> the corps of engineers, they said there's not a higher priority in the country than this to get it done because it would mean lives if something else happened and i would like to make sure that you still feel the same way about your participation in helping us to fix that levee. >> thank you, senator inhofe. and let me say, first of all, since 2015 eda's priority when it comes to disaster relief has been to focus on resiliency. i think this project really points that out. so we're looking at the tulsa county drainage district 12, levee pump stations. an application has been made, and coincidentally, senator, the decision is being made by the committee that makes this decision today. so perhaps >> where is that taking place? >> in austin. we're broken up into six regions. and each application goes to whichever region, of course, has authority. in this case it's austin. and it would never make it that far if it wasn't a really good application. i can't get ahead of the decision, of course and in fact the decision is not mine. it does lie at the regional level. so i hope to have good news for you by the end of the day. >> now that's -- i appreciate that very much. i was not aware that that was taking place. we'll have to take note of that because this is something that i hear about on a daily basis. this is the number one concern and problem we've had there. so let me, first of all, thank the chairman and senator carper for letting me forge ahead on this. let me thank you for the priority you've already demonstrated that you're giving and we'll look for wonderful things to happen. >> thank you. >> senator carper. >> you never have too many doctors at a hearing. dr. fleming. i'm happy to welcome you back and nice to have you back. thanks for your service in a lot of different ways for our country. this is a great opportunity for us to hear a little bit about some of the programs that are with eda, some of which we're familiar with, other not. to hear how you're doing and how you approach the end of the first year of this leadership role, how eda is doing. senator miles and i are both recovering governors. we approach a lot of issues here with our recovering governor hat on. i was privileged to be governor for eight years, same years bill clinton was president. and during those eight years we had eight years of balanced budget, seven out of eight years where we reduced taxes. we paid down debt. more jobs were created in those eight years than any eight year period in the history of the state of delaware before or since. i didn't create one of them. you hear a lot from governors, mayors, presidents, senators, we don't create jobs. what we do is help create a nurtureing environment for job creation. there's a significant role for the federal government to play in that. we deal a lot here with transportation policy. that's important. we're trying to figure out how to reach to the next generation of nuclear energy. in a safe way. we do work a lot here on water projects and try to make sure not that we just have clean water to drink, that's important, but beaches that have been replenished, canals that have been dredged, and all that stuff. it all works together. as everybody in the room probably knows eda supports local development by providing federal funds to locally driven projects that jim inhofe has talked about. i can talk about a number of them and will in a moment. these investments can serve as a lifeline, especially in economically distressed or moribund communities like my native west virginia. but over the years i've had the opportunity to see firsthand how these investments including those by eda support projects and create jobs in all of our home states including my home state now of delaware. this past september a couple of months ago, dr. fleming, you came to open the delaware innovation space in wilmington. dupont, forever, for hundreds of years was the economic lynch pin in delaware, tens of thousands of job. in'93, 27, 000 people went to work that day for dupont. today 4, 000. the we is what do you do about that? how do you deal with that? we had a lot of dupont employees who were let go, a lot of them had phds at the end of their name. and created amazing things that dupont was famous for. then they were without a job. we created this innovation space station on the campus of dupont and it's a whole new creation, great jobs. eda has played a very significant role in helping us to make sure that the innovation space is open for business, helping local entrepreneurs including some former duponters. start ups, small businesses got off the ground. down at the other end of our state at the southern end of our little state is a place called georgetown. it's the county seat of sussex county, delaware. sussex county is one of the largest counties in america. they raise more chickens than any county in america. they may raise more soybeans than any county in america. owens campus and they were fortunate enough to receive about $2 million from eda in a grant last year. this grant supplemented about 3 1/2 -- my remarks here this grant supplemented almost 3. 5 million in local investment. it leveraged. we got the money from eda to help leverage from auto dealers like purdue upholstery and these companies have big trucks. we leveraged and put together close to $5 and a half million dolalrs what we call the automotive center of excellence. georgetown will soon be home to the first auto technician and diesel mechanics training program not just in sussex county but the whole delmarva peninsula and a win not just for sussex county but a win for every employer who need folks like that. in our home state, wyoming and west virginia, iowa, delaware, drive and visit your auto dealers today and almost all will tell you we need people who can do this work in our shops, who have the skills, willing to do this work and there's just a real shortage of them. but the center i'm describing will offer local students a trade to learn and opportunity to stay and raise a family in their home area instead of moving away to try to find good paying jobs elsewhere. they'll also give our area dealerships and diesel operators the workforce they desperately need to succeed. to say the least i'm pleased we received this assistance from eda for these projects in delaware and grateful for the vote of confidence and we can see the real impacts of eda's investment in our communities. however, as we near the release of the president's budget proposal for fiscal'20-'21 coming up. it's worth noting that in the three previous budget proposals the trump administration proposed to eliminate eda funding. i fear eda will suffer a similar fate in the upcoming budget proposals and it's the opposite of what we should be proposing. i'm sure you agree. the eda has not been authorized since 2008. as we review the programs at eda we must examine how these programs can be improved and expanded to better assist disadvantaged communities and communities of color and indigenous ncommunities as well. we need to examine how eda can assist those communities most vulnerable to effects of global climate crsis. senator inhofe talked about 100 year floods in oklahoma that now occur every year. in ellicott city, maryland where they got two thousand year floods within a year and a half. down in houston, they got two thousand year floods within 18 months of each other. something is happening here. we ought to see eda as one of the tools in our tool box to make sure we're planning and building more resilient communities. finally, our country's economy is undergoing historic changes. regardless of its changes in technology, automation, to address climate change we have to make certain we support workers and communities in that transition. let me say that again. our country's economy is undergoing historic changes regardless of changes in technology, automation, in order to address climate change. we have the to make sure we adegrees communities and workers in that transition. a golden rule, my neighbor coal miners in west virginia who are losing work in other places where their jobs that provided a living for people forever are slowly going away. we need to feed those people. and as we make changes in national energy policy, industrial practices we need to minimize impacts and provide assistance to communities and workers that are affected by these changes and i believe eda will be a key part of that effort too. so, mr. chairman thanks again for pulling this together. dr. fleming, just great to see you. thank you for coming to delaware and thank you for your leadership at eda. >> dr. fleming, welcome back to the committee. i want to remind you the entire full written testimony will be made a part of the record. please keep your statement to five minutes and then we'll have more time for questions. thank you. please proceed. >> chairman, members of the committee, it is a pleasure and a privilege to be here before you today to testify on behalf of the mick development administration in the department of commerce. eda welcomes this hearing as an opportunity to discuss the role of the department of commerce plays in supporting economic development in economically distressed area of the country. my focus as assistant secretary for economic development has been on helping foster economic growth. we do this by leveraging private capital investments in economically distressed areas including in opportunity zones harnessing innovation. assisting communities recover from natural disasters. assisting communities severely impacted by the declining use of coal. and supporting community driven workforce development strategies. one of the administration's key areas of focus and one that eda is leading to support are opportunity zones, which were created as part of the tax cut and jobs act of 2017. as the agency whose principal role is to make investments in economically distressed communities to generate jobs, foster resiliency and accelerate long term growth, the opportunity zones initiative fits hand in glove with the ed a's mission. since f.y. 2018 eda has invested millions of dollars in 262 projects in or near opportunity zones across the u. s. including in many of your states. the regional innovation strategies program -- ris -- is another distringt program in ed a's portfolio and one we continue to strengthen and harness and strengthen to harness and enhance technological innovation across the country. since the ris program's inception ris grantees have supported over 200 full-time jobs and helped raise over $1 billion in investment capital. at eda we're also working to support the development of skills training facilities that address the hiring needs of the local and regional business communities, particularly in the manufacturing sector. since 2017, eda has invested more than $118 million in public works in economic adjustment assistance grant funding in 80 projects to help communities and regions build the capacity for economic development through workforce development strategies. these investments directly support the goals of the national council for the american worker, established by presidential executive order to create our first-ever national workforce strategy, which is co-chaired by secretary ross and presidential adviser ivanka trump. as you know, in fy-2018 and fy-2019 our appropriators appropriated (inaudible) provide funding. to date eda has awarded over 170 grants totaling nearly $472 million to communities across the country that have been impacted by federally declared natural disasters. eda will continue to use the additional funding authorized by congress for our economic adjustment assistance program to invest in economic development and diversification efforts in coal communities through the assistance of coal communities competition. since fy-2017 eda has invested more than $96 million in 99 projects to assist such communities and regions across the u.s. i would also like to mention before i conclude that eda is working to launch newly funded initiatives in our fy-2020 appropriations. this includes the new stem apprenticeship program which will enable eda to continue to support nor innovation focused economic development by helping communities more directly develop talent to meet the needs of industries of the future. eda will also deploy $15 million in appropriations we received to support communities impacted by nuclear plant closures. chairman barrasso, ranking member carper, and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to address some of eda's efforts to enhance the global competitiveness of america's regions through economic development. i look forward to answering any questions you may have. >> thanks so much for your testimony and for your very diligent work on this important project and program. i have a couple of questions. i know my colleagues do as well. as i mentioned in my opening statement your agency issued a $1. 4 million grant to campbell county in gilette, wyoming to the economic development corporation so i'm pleased to see you're supporting the project. coal to products, technology is an emerging the industry and could have many new markets for coal. last month several senators caputo and manzi introduced legislation as 3047 creating opportunities and leveraging technologies for coal carbon act of 2019. the bill supports dedicated federal research and development of coal to products technology. so, how does your agency collaborate collaborate with other agencies in identifying promising new technologies like coal products but other technologies as well? >> well, i think i best answer that, senator, by giving you and example. we're currently concluding an mou with the department of energy that they are going to provide $2 million to our risk program that we will invest in innovative ways of dealing with blue energy, so-called blue water energy. using wave motion and things of that sort. we're working collaborately with our sister agencies and departments. many have focused on our ris program because it's niefrgs based and a very competitive program looking for the best possible ideas and new technologies that we can work cooperatively and collaboratively to achieve >> and then in terms of building workforce, certainly at home in wyoming, the university of wyoming, our community college system, they're key partners in building our workforce. so i was going to ask if you could explain how the economic development administration works with university centers and with community colleges to address some of the challenge that we have in workforce development. >> right. well, thank you for that, senator. that is a very exciting area. one along with our risk program we have the most interest in. community colleges are really engaging in the trade skills. whether it's advanced welding, instrumentation, brick laying, you name it. anything that requires skills. the reason is because these jobs go undertaken and they are good paying jobs. and these young adults in many cases don't have the opportunity to get those skills any place else. so we've been providing grants both technical assistance grants and direct grants such as in the panhandle of florida where we, where we had a million plus dollar grant for advanced welding. it's going to help them because their building schedules are getting way behind. why? because they keep getting hit by disaster after disaster. there just isn't enough skilled folks in the region to do this. so that's a very much growing area and we highly support that, senator. >> i was thinking back to your hearings for your confirmation, you being a fiscal conservative, were questioned whether a group of circle of fiscal conservatives of whether the government was a careful steward of taxpayer funds. how does your agency evaluate projects to determine if they are really a productive use of our taxpayer's money. >> great question. first of all, as an agency, we fight way above our weight class when it comes to how we deploy funds and what i mean by that is we also have a section of our agency that actually measures, particularly at three, six, and nine years, and mainly our construction projects, on how we're doing. so it has to be proven to us that there are jobs waiting to be had, that there's capital ready to be deployed and as a result of that over the measurement of many years we have seen for every single taxpayer, federal taxpayer dollar $15 of private capital investment. that's in addition to the local community match which usually one to one. so as you can see, we leverage the private-sector capital investment and we have the stats in order to prove that. >> my final question, since i'm here with my colleague from west virginia, we're both from coal states. they were devastated under the obama administration. i applaud your efforts to focus on opportunities in coal communities. do you intend to continue to prioritize coal country projects? >> absolutely, senator. i visited west virginia. we had a great time. we actually presented eight different grants totaling $7 million. it's going to help the good people of west virginia recover from a lot of these problems and difficulties, so we strongly support that. the appropriators are generously providing $30 million a year for us to fill in that space. we're always standing ready to help in that. >> thank you dr. fleming. senator carper. >> i'm a native west virginian from beckley, raleigh county and one of my great-great-grandfathers was the co-founder of raleigh county. i hope some of the grants makes its way to raleigh county. when i was a little kid a lot of our neighbors were coal miners. my grandparents, their neighbor was a coal miner. i have a great deal of feeling and empathy towards the plight they faced. happy to hear you can provide some real help with this. when i think about economic development, i love economic development. as a naval flight officer in vietnam war came back to the u.s. and moved to california and got an mba and met a guy running for congress. the next year i got to run for state treasurer because nobody wanted to run. we had the worst credit rating in the country. i got to run because nobody wanted to run. but i worked for less than a year before i ran for treasury in the economic development office and to this day when people ask me what do i do when i travel around the country. what do you do? so i end up spending the next two hours talking about impeachment for the affordable care act. >> these headphones you wear so you don't have to answer these questions. >> in any event, i tell people i'm retired navy captain and i work for the head of economic development for the state of delaware. i just love doing that. i think a lot of ways you can help people. best way you can help people is make sure they have a job. there are many elements. we don't create jobs but we're involved in helping create the environment for that sustain job creation including workforce. the kind of workforce training we're doing in sussex county, delaware for people will help keep our new generation of atuo, mobiles and trucks up and operating. but transportation systems and service transportation which we work on, access to capital. common sense regulation. fostering economic growth and the list goes on and on and on. i want to talk a little bit about the future. when air pressure nominee before us and you reflected back on your time in the house of representatives, how many years did you serve? >> eight years. >> eight years. one of the things we talked about was your choice not to support eda as a congressman but as a nominee we all learn as we go along, god knows i hope i'm smarter than i used to be. just talk to us about now that you've been at the helm for about a year think back on your views then and what you've seen and what you would like the chair for folks who aren't convinced we need a robustly funded eda and i think the administration has given us three budgets in wrote where they locked out eda. when you put in your input i hope you convince the president to do something else. >> i thank you for that opportunity. i can tell you that, you know, in preparing for the nomination, i learned a lot more about eda than i ever knew. what really excites me as a fiscal conservative as the chairman says is the fact that from my former life i was involved in entrepreneurship. i was a developer. >> is there something you haven't done? pretty impressive. >> you need to talk to my wife, senator. she can probably tell you. but as developers and entrepreneurs we're always interested in opm, other people's money. from a fiscal standpoint, from a conservative fiscal standpoint to me it makes a lot of sense for us, for the government to leverage the private-sector to do what it does so well and that's invest private capital with a great return. not only a financial return but a social impact return on that investment. so as i learned more about eda and the good work it's done and really the excitement from both sides of the aisle about the work eda has done, i really fell in love with eda and the work that it does. >> the president will submit his budget in a couple of weeks. any idea if the president will propose gone eliminate eda? >> my expectation in that and that of my staff and colleagues is that will also be in his budget, the fourth year budget, the elimination of eda. >> is that demoralizing for folks that work with you? is that demoralizing? >> i really have not detected anything like that, to be honest with you. if you look at your scores, the scores that we have that we've seen that lift and were already pretty good anyway. longevity we have people that have been there 30, 40 years. so really have not detected that problem. we just keep our heads down and our nose to the grindstone, and we just do our work every day and so far congress has been very generous to us. in fact, increasing our funding this year. so, that really gets us up every morning and doing the good work we do. and we focused a lot >> the senate has been focused in recent days. actually recent hours on checks and balances. and really the key to our success as a nation is underlying our success. the durability of our democracy. a good example of that is support for eda that you and >> the folks do. and leverage. incredibly important that we use this limited federal resource to leverage a whole lot more private-sector and state and local. my colleagues try to do that. thanks so much. >> thank you senator carper, senator capito. >> thank you, mr. chairman. great to see you again dr. fleming and see angela. i appreciate your visit to west virginia on veterans day. you being a veteran yourself. we had $7 million investment. the one we cut the ribbon on in putnam county was an infrastructure project which really can leverage a lot of private investment but also help those local water entities and economic development and county authorities really get the job done in an area where they can't grow unless they get this infrastructure. i'm pleased about the emphasis eda has placed on infrastructure. i'm also pleased that under your leadership and under the leadership of president trump, the prioritization of eda has reprioritized to where it needs to be. these are the under served areas where your options are non-existent or very, very low. >> right. >> i think we see that certainly in my state. obviously the assistance to coal communities has been an enormous help to us because as the chairman said wyoming and senator carper knows as a born west virginian some of those areas really decimated and have really long time to be able to recover. let's talk a little bit if we could about infrastructure. where >> where are you seeing when you set priorities, where your seeing the priorities in terms of you can go anywhere. can you go infrastructure, you can go in coal communities, tech development, workforce development, how do you set the priorities or is it project to project? >> senator, you mean specific to coal? >> no, just in general. >> well, over our history the vast majority of our investments have been in infrastructure. typically water systems, sanitation systems, 60% of our dollars go to rural areas. so, obviously, broadband is another type of infrastructure that we invest in. so in our regular or routine appropriations our focus is, again, on removing obstacles to private investment. one quick example i'll give you is in hattiesburg, mississippi. there's a road that had been so affected by weather and they didn't want to make that investment or take that risk unless the road was fixed so the community matched our investment of over a million dollars. and so now they are growing and blowing and hiring people and these are good paying jobs. >> thanks. well, we know diversification is the key to success. our states being very heavy energy jobs. there's still a lot of job growth and job development that occur in the energy field. eda, in your november visit we announced -- excuse me -- a half million dollar project for the city of philippi to able to extend sewer struck to your to a coal mine which is 450 existing jobs. i appreciate the fact that while aid to coal communities are to those that are no longer able to sustain that employment base, you're still having your eye on the diversification of the economy and retaining the jobs that we have. energy industry, you come from an energy state yourself. how do you see that in terms of job development because obviously we're much more energy independent in this country than we were even five to ten years ago. >> yes. well, senator, i think you already said it, diversification. when i came to congress in 2009 we were not exporting natural gas. today louisiana is one of the largest natural gas exporters in the world. and it's a cleaner form of energy than what we had prior to that time. so as the marketplace moves and as we find newer forms of energy or newer uses of existing energy forms, we're always happy to evolve with that from a technological standpoint and also remember that in the coal communities as well as the upcoming nuclear closures, we offer technical assistance. we actually pay for consultants to come in and look at what's going on in your section of the country, what's happening with the economies in your locale and how can we diversify that and get into whether it's other forms of energy, the same form or something else all together different. and also remember that in the coal section we're also working the supply chain too which extends up in other states such as massachusetts. >> right. lastly, in a hat tip to senator carper, the last eda assistance to coal communities that west virginia received was a $700, 000 in beckley, which is his birth place, and it's to -- for the regional development authority to do the entrepreneurship, to try to get creative minds to create their own small businesses, how do you do it. giving them -- and you're also working you're working with wvu beckley there but also the arc, which is the regional commission which has dollars to go along with the private dollar investment. it's also located in a designated opportunity zone, proud to say. that's legislation that i was on the forefront of and i think has great potential for eda to match investments in opportunity zones to help, again, going back to those communities that really their options are so limited that without that kick from eda and the opportunity and in an opportunity zone could further develop. sorry i went so far >> over. thank you. >> thank you, senator capito. before turning to senator whitehouse, i ask unanimous consent to enter into the record four letters in support of eda's work in wyoming. without objection they are admitted. >> can i say a follow-up to senator capito? my wife and i went on a roots tour towards west virginia, north carolina, south carolina and got to see our cousins. >> we're all related. >> we really are. in beckley, on a saturday morning i went for a run. i went downtown and went by the first baptist church where i used to go to church. it was 7:00, 7:30 in the morning. i run by th efirst baptist church and a guy pulls up in his car and stops and gets out. he's a deacon and looking to work on a project in the church. he said you're a united states senator, aren't you? wow, i had my gym clothes on. and >> he said senator manchin, we're very proud of you. he said which one are you. i said i'm shelly capito. i straightened out the record before i left. >> senator whitehouse. >> welcome, director fleming. as you know i voted for your confirmation and supported you and on occasion i've had some regret about people who i've voted for but in your case i came to say thank you and to express my appreciation for the work you're doing. i want you to know that in rhode island we very often get things done by working together. public, private partnerships, partnerships across municipal, state, federal, all sorts of different parties coming together and as you also know when that's your process things can sometimes take some time. >> sure. >> i think we have been particularly well served by linda cruz cardinal who is your, as you know, your regional director in our area and by the terrific marguerite mckinley who is the area director. we have a port in galilee that has had considerable rebuild thanks was to eda support and that's made it an attraction for other fishing boats that have not come there before but come there because the facilities are top quality. that's very helpful for our fishing community. as you know, in like a farming community or fishing community when you get below a certain point and you can't support the net makers, the motor repair people, the boat painters and all the others, then it begins to fall apart.