Bob Casey

I think we need to see Congress step up to the plate.

Currency manipulation is costing our workers jobs, and it needs to be stopped.

It is time for that to change, and changing means charting a new manufacturing strategy which will strengthen our economy and help create new jobs and new opportunities.

Since the end of 2009, manufacturing has added 250,000 jobs approximately.

The Treasury Department can do more.

Even though our manufacturing employment has declined significantly since the 1970s, the U.S. remains the world's manufacturing leader.

The U.S. needs to develop a comprehensive national manufacturing strategy built from the input of small and large businesses.

It is time to crack down on China's currency manipulation and other unfair trade practices so that American companies and workers have a fair shot.

Manufacturing employment peaked in the United States in 1979 at 19.6 million workers. Today we are down to 11.7 million.

We must extend trade adjustment assistance to help workers who have lost their jobs based upon unfair foreign competition.

The unfortunate reality is that our trade policies have failed to protect our workers from unfair trade practices.

This is--if it is not the key thing we have got to do, it is in the top two or three.

Thank you, Senator Mikulski, for chairing this important hearing on quality early education and care.

This is a critically important priority for the country, what happens to our children.

Just stunning when you think about that number.

It is essential, I should say, for building a stronger workforce.

I am grateful for the opportunity to be here today, and I would like to thank the witnesses for taking the time to share their insights with the subcommittee.

I certainly share concerns about how those dollars are distributed.

I believe that we would be more successful in Afghanistan by reducing our troop presence in the south.

That present policy has had an enormous toll on American lives and on American treasure.

I certainly stand ready, and I'm sure all of us do, to be helpful to you as you take on this new assignment.

Sustainable stability.

It was wrong then; I think it's wrong now.

I have total confidence that you'll be confirmed, and you should be confirmed because we need you there.

We've got an obligation, an enduring, abiding obligation, to do all we can.