Paul Tonko: “No, no. It is fine because you are just speaking to the point of listening and responding, learning from our…”

“No, no. It is fine because you are just speaking to the point of listening and responding, learning from our constituents, learning from the front line of the business community and the worker community. Basically, when we travel this route, if we gather the information and then act accordingly, great things can happen. Prosperity blooms and blossoms. I believe that when the business community is speaking--from small to medium to large industry--when they are telling us we need workforce development investment, we ought to listen. When they are telling us they need immigration reform, we ought to listen. When they are talking about reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank, we ought to listen. When they talk about incentives that modernize and transfer and transition traditional manufacturing into advanced manufacturing, we ought to listen. The list goes on and on. Just recently, I toured a manufacturing center, a factory in my district. My grandparents called the district I represent home. Ironically, a set of them worked in that factory. I am a product of immigrants--grandparent immigrants, who were dairy farmers and factory workers. Those factory workers worked on that same floor that we were visiting, those grandparents--my grandparents. One couldn't help but wonder the equipment changes that have come in those decades that have passed.…”