Chris Coons: “I come to the floor again today to talk about good jobs and how we can work together in a responsible and bipartisan way…”

“I come to the floor again today to talk about good jobs and how we can work together in a responsible and bipartisan way to create high-quality and lasting middle-class jobs. All of us hear from our home States about how they want us to work together to produce for America today and America tomorrow. As someone who worked for 8 years for a manufacturing company in the private sector before going into public service, I can tell you we can win in manufacturing. We can learn from our competitors, we can strengthen our workforce, we can strengthen our access to foreign markets, and we can strengthen our access to credit. We can do all of it and we can compete and win in advanced manufacturing in the United States. One of the aspects of my own experience in the private sector that has stayed with me is that more of our manufacturing employment was in Germany than any other single country, and that often seems unlikely given that Germany actually has higher labor costs, labor protections, environmental protections, and in many ways a higher cost of doing business than almost any other advanced country. So how is it possible they are so successful? In fact, more than twice the percentage of their GDP is in manufacturing than is the case in the United States. Why would we fight for manufacturing jobs? Why would we fight to emulate Germany's example? Because manufacturing jobs are great jobs.…”