Paul Tonko: “Right, and I think it was through neglect on manufacturing. They focused on the service sector, primarily the financial…”

“Right, and I think it was through neglect on manufacturing. They focused on the service sector, primarily the financial services. They ignored agriculture, they ignored manufacturing, and now we are paying the price. Even though we lost a third of the manufacturing jobs in this country, we are still perched as number one in the global race. However, if we are to allow that neglect to continue, we would eventually fall out of the number one position. So the 4.6 million jobs lost, manufacturing jobs lost due to that neglect, that trend has to be turned around, and I was so delighted to hear the President speak to a progressive agenda, a proactive quality, to the tone he was establishing at that center with his speech. He talked about the strength of America's manufacturing and how we can impose a strong uplift for the middle class of this country. You know, 66 percent of the wealth that was generated, of the recovery during 2001 and 2007, went to 1 percent, of the top 1 percent of wealth in this country. So they accumulated all that wealth, and it's middle class America that needs to get that clout now. We can do that because the investment in R&D, the investment in basic research that transforms into jobs that allows us to be more productive in our starter-up small businesses and in our big industries like GE. If we introduce a soundness of basic research in R&D that then equates into jobs that translates into an empowerment of the middle class.”