On the recordNovember 7, 2013
I rise today to talk about an important initiative that is not only important to my State of Arkansas but important to our entire Nation, and that is manufacturing. This country is an economic powerhouse, and we are certainly a manufacturing powerhouse. There is an important initiative that is being put together here in the Senate called the Manufacturing Jobs for America campaign. I think so far we have maybe 21 colleagues, maybe 22, or maybe even more who are in support of this effort. I encourage others to look at it. We see a lot of manufactured crises here in Washington. It may be the farm bill or the government shutdown or the near debt default. Those are all just kind of manufactured by the Congress. But I am glad to see we have 21 or 22 or 23 colleagues here who are ready to turn off the ``my way or the highway'' politics and turn down the rhetoric and really focus on what our No. 1 priority should be, which is jobs and the economy, because if we didn't learn anything else from the shutdown and some of those high-wire act politics of the last few weeks, hopefully we learned that if we want to get anything done in Washington, we need to work together. That is the bottom line. That is what this package of bills and this initiative are intending to do. If we really want to create jobs and if we really want to make a difference for the U.S. economy, we have to reach across the aisle. There are many bright spots in the Congress.…
