Herb Kohl: “I come to the Senate today as a cosponsor to the Boxer-Dodd amendment. I thank my colleague from California for pulling…”

“I come to the Senate today as a cosponsor to the Boxer-Dodd amendment. I thank my colleague from California for pulling together this package--and for including a provision I authored to restore the funding for the Manufacturing Extension Program, MEP. I hope my colleagues will join us in resounding, bipartisan vote for the amendment. It remedies a serious failing of the budget before us. A budget worthy of the Senate's support should have vision. It should point the way to a better world for our workers, our families, and our communities. Senator Boxer's amendment has a vision for bringing good jobs back to our shores--and training a workforce able to fill and create such jobs. Without the Boxer amendment, the budget will remain a document whose only answer to the deterioration of the manufacturing job base is upper income tax cuts cloaked in discredited trickle-down economic theory. I am particularly pleased that Senator Boxer's amendment provides the resources to increase funding for the Manufacturing Extension Program from the $39.6 million suggested in the President's budget to $100 million, fully funding the program for fiscal year 2005.”