Political Quotes

“I have no higher priority in the Commerce section of the bill than MEP. I have visited with them in their meetings with local manufacturers. I visited with them in Orlando with over 1,000 manufactures from around the country. I know intimately the work that they're doing. The National Innovative Marketplace, which the gentleman refers to, has been very helpful. This is the only program in the last year that left the House at a higher number than the Senate and left the conference committee at a higher number than the House or the Senate. So you can tell it rose to its highest level of funding at $128 million. This program started under Senator Hollings at $5 million. It's very, very important. But not only would we accept this amendment--and I thank the chairman--but I think you have to look at what we've done in this bill in total in terms of manufacturing because the chairman has been focused on this. Over $140 million in the National Science Foundation with the Advanced Manufacturing Initiative. We have money in this for the Advanced Manufacturing Technology Consortium. We, with the chairman's leadership, have an onshoring initiative funded at $5 million to help businesses think through their cost- benefit analysis of coming back home. And we actually held a hearing, as the last hearing of the subcommittee before we marked up our bill, focused on manufacturing. I've said there's nothing more important to the country or to my caucus than this matter.…”