Roy Blunt: “The Senator's point is well made. These manufacturing jobs are goods jobs. The American workforce is competitive. As…”

“The Senator's point is well made. These manufacturing jobs are goods jobs. The American workforce is competitive. As Senator Brown said, we have always been on the cutting edge, the outside of competition, making things in a better way than we did last year. Everybody who is competing today is trying to figure out how they can do whatever they did last year better. We see that and what we can add to that, how we can make that process work better. In our State, the average manufacturing job pays 21.5 percent more than the average wage. Mr. President, $52,000 or so for the average manufacturing job salary in Missouri is a significant improvement in where you might otherwise be. In Missouri we have 6,500 manufacturing firms. Almost a quarter of a million people work in manufacturing in Missouri. We used to have more than that. We used to have more than that, and I think we will have more than that again. The country used to do more in terms of manufacturing than it does now. But we are going to see that happen. The Senator from Delaware just wrote an article in Congressional Quarterly that talked about what needs to be done, the great opportunities we have in energy. If we take advantage of those great energy opportunities, suddenly the utility bill is more predictable, the delivery system is more guaranteed. I was talking to a manufacturer today in my office and this topic came up.…”