Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman from California and my friend from New York (Mr. Tonko). We have a discussion going now about manufacturing in America. And our colleagues understand the relationship that exists between manufacturing and R&D, research and development. And it's critical that we look at those together, because of the discussion that we're having in this country about why, over the past several decades, we've lost so much in manufacturing, we've lost our core manufacturing businesses. I come from western Pennsylvania. We have seen the steel industry over the past several years. Although there is a resurgence today, it's been many, many years since we lost a lot of that steel industry that we had in western Pennsylvania, and it was the core base of employment for generations in the Pittsburgh area. Across the country, we've seen our manufacturing industry decimated by foreign competition; and the reason R&D relates to this, as the gentleman certainly knows, is it's a continuum. And at first, when America lost its manufacturing lead to other countries, we still kept the innovation; we still kept the R&D. But the continuum that exists between someone in America coming up with an idea, an invention, turning that, through R&D, into a real product, a real innovation, we have always been the leaders in that in America.…”