On the recordFebruary 16, 2012
From Buffalo to Rochester, New York, people in my district want to get back to work. They just need the opportunity. That's why during budget hearings yesterday with the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security, I posed the question: Can our government be doing more to make sure that our limited Federal procurement dollars are being spent on jobs in manufacturing right back here in America? The answer is, yes. They want to work with us, and we need to work together to make more of our limited dollars spent in companies that have a higher percentage of the American workforce right here making our defense systems and our products for the Department of Homeland Security. My policy is to give more preferences to those businesses based on the percentage of workers in America. We need to have a policy that is going to reward those companies and not penalize them. We need to create more opportunities for manufacturing right here in America and in my district in upstate New York. So I look forward to working collaboratively. I'm going to introduce legislation that I expect to be bipartisan in nature. Who could not agree that we could do more to make it in America? ____________________
