Chris Coons: “I come to the floor to talk about jobs-- about manufacturing jobs. As we all know, manufacturing jobs are high- quality…”

“I come to the floor to talk about jobs-- about manufacturing jobs. As we all know, manufacturing jobs are high- quality jobs. Manufacturing jobs come with higher pay and higher benefits. Manufacturing jobs help create other local service sector jobs, and manufacturing jobs contribute more to the local economy than jobs in any other sector. Beyond that, manufacturers invest the most of any industry sector in research and development, which is critical to America's continued growth and our security as a leading innovation economy. Last week 21 Senate colleagues and I joined in a new initiative called the Manufacturing Jobs for America to help create good manufacturing jobs here at home today and tomorrow. It has grown out of 25 Senators who have all contributed different policy ideas. This is not one big megabill with dozens of sponsors, but just one bill. Instead, it is a constellation of 40 different proposals. Some of them have already been introduced as bills, and half of those that have been introduced are bipartisan. These bills illustrate some of our best ideas about how we can work together across the aisle to provide badly needed support for our growing manufacturing sector here in the United States. There are 4 different areas these 40 different proposals fall into, and I wanted to talk about 1 of them today. Three of them are: How do we open markets abroad? How do we strengthen America's 21st century manufacturing workforce?…”