Protecting Volunteer Firefighters and Emergency Responders Act of 2014

Floor Speech

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I thank my colleague from Delaware for his leadership on this issue. He has been indefatigable. He has been very strong on this issue. I think it is one of the most important issues that faces us.

I am not an economist; I am a country lawyer from Maine, but one of the things I know about any economy is you can't build an economy by taking in each other's laundry. Somebody somewhere has to make something, and that is the basis of wealth creation. Somehow in the 1980s, 1990s, and the early part of this century, we sort of lost sight of that and manufacturing took an enormous hit. We lost 32 percent of our manufacturing jobs in the decade from 2000 to 2010. We lost 42,000 factories--not people, 42,000 factories. Manufacturing was literally withering away in this country.

I think a lot of people sort of wrung their hands and said: Oh, well, I guess that is just the way of the world. It is all going to Asia, China, and Mexico. It is going to low-wage countries, and that is just the way it works.

The problem is, as my colleague from Delaware pointed out, Germany has gone in the opposite direction, and their country has the same standard of living, the same labor standards, the same employment cost levels, and yet 20 percent of their economy is based upon manufacturing; whereas, it is only 10 or 11 percent in this country. So that tells me it is not impossible. It tells me there is an opportunity here and that we can't just lay back and say: Well, I guess that is going to go away. Woe is us. That is never the way to seize the future.

Why do it? The Senator from Delaware said it: Better pay. In Maine, in looking at the data, employees in manufacturing on average make twice as much as employees in other areas--twice as much. There is a tremendous difference in pay, and of course a better difference in benefits. There is also a bigger multiplier for manufacturing. Manufacturing creates more jobs down the line and around a manufacturing facility. It is important for national security.

We are in danger of losing our industrial base, which is part of our national security infrastructure. If we can no longer make things--whether it is destroyers at Bath Iron Works or jet airplanes or uniforms or boots or other things that are necessary to support our national security apparatus--we are in trouble, and that is a danger to our country. That is a national security danger because if we are dependent upon other countries that may or may not be our friends for essential components of our national security infrastructure, that is a very dangerous and risky place to be. That is not often talked about, but the maintenance of manufacturing jobs in the United States is a critical part of our industrial base and a part of our national security strategy.

Manufacturing allows for more exporting. It brings money into our country. Eighty-three percent of the exports from Maine come out of the manufacturing sector, and that is bringing money into our country rather than sending it out to other countries.

Also, I think it is very important to remember that this is a way of dealing with what I think is one of the most serious issues of our time, which is income inequality. It is the widening gap between those at the top and those at the bottom, and what is really a concern is the stagnation, and, in fact, the decline of the American middle class.

Manufacturing was the path into the middle class for our parents and grandparents. The manufacturing resurgence after World War II--by the way, part of that resurgence was based upon the GI bill, probably the greatest economic development program ever fostered by any government anywhere in the world--which helped to create the middle class is in danger. One of the ways to preserve and strengthen the middle class--and to deal with this problem of income inequality--is more manufacturing and more of those good jobs.

This is the 100th anniversary of one of the most amazing and transformative actions in American corporate history.

The year was 1914 when Henry Ford doubled the pay of all of his workers. Everybody was astonished. His competitors were aghast. The advocates of unbridled capitalism said: How can he do this? Henry Ford was a genius in many ways. But one of his insights was he wanted his workers to be able to buy his products, and one of the problems in our economy today is a lack of demand. The people of the middle class don't have enough income to buy the products and it becomes a downward spiral. It is a lack of demand that is truly at the heart of the weakness of the current economy, and it is because people don't have good enough jobs and they are not being paid enough.

Henry Ford realized if he paid his workers more--and, by the way, that munificent sum in 1914 was $5 a day, but it was a doubling of what the rate of pay was everywhere else in American society at that time. That was a huge breakthrough intellectually, economically, and socially for this country.

OK. We talked about the losses. There is some good news. In the last 2 1/2 years we have gained 500,000 jobs. We lost 6 million in that decade, but now we have gained 500,000 back. So something is happening. A lot of different things are happening. The low price of natural gas I think is helping to rejuvenate manufacturing. I know it is in Maine. I think there is more innovation happening around the country. People are realizing--I have talked to manufacturers who have been offshore and have come back because they said the offshore factory was a little cheaper, the labor costs were less, but the hassle factor was higher, and what I have learned is I can control costs, I can control transportation, I can control time limits better if the manufacturing is in the United States.

So what do we do? What do we do if we want to increase manufacturing? We can't wave a wand here in Washington. We can't say, well, go out and create jobs. We have to create an atmosphere where we can create jobs.

When my little girl Molly, who is not so little anymore, was in the third grade, I used to teach her things with pneumonics. I would say the three Xs or the three Ys or whatever. In this case, if she were here and she were still in the third grade, I would say it is the four Ps, Molly. It is the four Ps that are going to make this happen. The first is a plan. Nothing happens without a strategy or a vision or a plan. This bill has a vision of how to link innovation and the American economy and manufacturing in such a way as to create and rejuvenate this sector. A plan--we have to start with a plan or a vision.

The second P is partnerships, and this bill is based on partnerships. Nothing good happens without partnerships. It is based upon linking the academic world with the manufacturing world with government; putting those partnerships together, mostly universities and manufacturing, to create innovation, to create new jobs, to create new ways of building wealth. We don't have to look much further than Silicon Valley in California. That is a perfect example of a natural born innovation hub built around several knowledge factories: Stanford University, University of California, University of San Francisco. Knowledge factories, together with manufacturers, created one of the greatest hotbeds--probably the greatest hotbed--of innovation, creativity, and new wealth creation in the history of this country and perhaps in the history of the world. We want to create these kinds of hubs all over the country, putting together the academic community and the business community to develop the capacity for innovation and creativity.

I should mention--it is not part of this bill, but the other thing I think we have to do a lot of thinking about is the skills gap. I got a call right after my election from a chamber of commerce director in southern Maine and he said: Senator, we want you to come down and talk about jobs.

I said: Oh, OK. I will. And I was prepared to talk about how to create jobs and add jobs.

He said: No, no, it is not that. The problem is we have 500 jobs and we can't fill them. These are good-paying jobs in manufacturing, and we can't fill them because the people we need aren't available with the skills we need. There is a mismatch.

I believe one of the things we have to do around here is think hard about all the programs--I think there are something like 59 different Federal job training programs--how to integrate them, coordinate them, and focus them on business-ready jobs, not 10-years-ago jobs but the jobs of today. Therefore, I think the coordination and cooperation between business and the job training infrastructure has to be much closer than it is today.

That gets me to S. 1468. I think it is a wonderful idea. One of the best parts of it is that it is bipartisan. This is an idea that is supported--Sherrod Brown and Roy Blunt were the spearheads of it, and then we have people such as Roger Wicker, the Senator from Mississippi, and the Senator from Delaware; we have a good bipartisan group from around the country geographically and across party lines. This is what we have to do. Why is it so important? Because what drives new manufacturing jobs is innovation.

When I was Governor of Maine, somebody gave me a cap and on it it said "innovate or die.'' Bill Gates once famously said: Every product we make today is going to be obsolete in 5 years. The only question is whether we make it obsolete or someone else does.

Innovation is the heart of this economy. That is why we have to put together the knowledge factories with the production factories--the knowledge factories, the universities, such as the University of Maine, that has the advanced composites lab that has created amazing new ways to deal with composites. One of their creations is the bridge and a backpack. The bridge and a backpack is a composite system which I have seen in action. They are long tubes made of fiberglass. You spread the tubes out, fill them with concrete, mold them into the shape you want, and in about 3 or 4 days you have a bridge, and you put the deck over it. It is a wonderful system. It came out of the University of Maine and now it is being used across the country.

The other piece I like about this is that it isn't a government program. Government is the catalyst, the convener, the pulling together of these hubs, and that is, I think, our function. We shouldn't be doing it. We shouldn't be steering it, but we should be launching it, and that is what this bill is all about. Does it solve all the problems of manufacturing? Of course not. There are dozens of things we have to do in order to support this industry, whether it is tax reform, job training or innovation hubs and more support for R&D. All of those we have to do, but I think this is one of the most important, and we don't have to guess about it. It works in Germany. They have twice the role for manufacturing in their economy as we do. It works. So let's see what we can do here with the same idea.

I compliment the Senator from Delaware and the others who have led this bill, and I am delighted to be able to tag along. I think this is a great idea. It truly can make a difference, and I think we will see that difference in the coming years.

I yield the floor.

Mr. COONS. Madam President, I thank my colleague from Maine for sharing his personal experience both as Governor and for his work and partnership with the University of Maine and their composites center and his understanding of the importance of a modern, skilled workforce in order to take advantage of the work we are hoping to catalyze through this bill.

I wish to summarize across three large areas. This bill, if enacted, would take advantage of linkages, leverage, and labor in a way that would grow lasting middle-class jobs. All of us want to work together to find a way to give American workers and families a fair shot, to give them a fair shot at the kind of middle-class quality of life that dominated over the last 50 years. As my colleague said, it was because of the GI bill and its investment in education, it was because of innovation and competitiveness, and it was because of a skilled workforce that we were able to dominate the world in manufacturing for much of the last 50 years of the last century. If we are to seize this moment and regain our global leadership not just in the productivity sector of our manufacturing but also in the base, in the employment of our manufacturing, we have to do the sorts of things this bill imagines.

We have research being done in national labs, in federally funded national labs--fundamental research. That is wonderful. We have applied research on composites being done at the University of Delaware and at the University of Maine and every other State university that does higher research. We have manufacturers trying to take advantage of new technologies and new opportunities. This bill will link them all together to create regional hubs that allow the researchers, the private sector, and the new employees to all come together.

It also, as my colleague mentioned, leverages private sector funds. Every one of the four hubs announced to date is a more than a 1-to-1 match; 2 or 4 or, in one case, 8-to-1 match of private sector dollars to public sector dollars.

Last, it invests heavily in training and in skills and making sure the workforce is ready as these new technologies get out there.

I wish to describe the reach of some of these linkages and partnerships for a moment. Let me take a second and take a walking tour, if I could, of the four hubs that have been finalized so far.

For example, the one in Youngstown, OH, deals with 3D manufacturing. This is a relatively new, cutting-edge technology that radically alters the scale of early stage manufacturing and what is possible in terms of prototyping, and then, I think fairly soon, what is possible in terms of customized, unit-by-unit manufacturing. It has enormous promise. But if we are going to stay competitive globally in manufacturing, when there is something new invented in the United States, we have to also make sure it is made in the United States. So this is the sort of hub that makes that possible.

There are four hubs, and I will mention them briefly: the one in Ohio, the one in Raleigh, NC, the one in Detroit, and the one in Chicago. But they don't just engage the universities and the workforce and the companies right in that immediate community. They benefit from national networks. For example, General Dynamics and Honeywell are two of the very large national footprint firms partnering with the Youngstown hub. Universities from Arizona State to Florida State are collaborating in the wide bandgap semiconductor work in Raleigh, NC. Researchers from the University of Kentucky, the University of Tennessee, Notre Dame, and Ohio State are partners with the hub that is in Detroit. There are researchers from Boulder, Indiana, Notre Dame, Louisville, Iowa, Nebraska, UT, Austin, and Wisconsin that are partnering with the hub in Chicago.

So what are these hubs? Are they just some diffuse academic teams that share names and a little bit of data with each other? No. If there were, for example, to be a hub in Maine on composites, we would find researchers at the University of Delaware who have done great work in composites and companies doing work in composites partnering with the fundamental research being done, let's say, hypothetically, at the University of Maine, and learning about how to deploy that new technology in ways that would benefit the local workforce and the local manufacturers.

That is why there is so much leverage coming out of these linkages. That is why these hubs have been so generative and so powerful in Germany's experience. It is a way to harness our Federal investment in research by the national labs and by State universities with the energy of the private sector and the capacity of our manufacturers to relentlessly innovate.

We have a very broad menu of bipartisan manufacturing bills that have been taken up and discussed in this Chamber. This one--this manufacturing hubs bill--has some of the broadest support and I think some of the best reasons for it to be considered in committee and taken up on this floor later this spring. It is my real hope our colleagues will join us in doing so.

Let me yield back to my colleague from Maine.

Mr. KING. I like the Senator's suggestion of a hub in Maine involving composites. Could we write that in the bill? I wouldn't object to that amendment.

Mr. COONS. If there is a footnote that says ``and Delaware.''

Mr. KING. I think this is such an important idea, and in my comments I outlined how we get here. We start with a vision or a plan which the bill entails, and we start with partnerships, which is truly the essence of the bill, but there are two more pieces. There are two more Ps. One is perseverance. Any Member of this body knows about perseverance. That is what this place is all about. We have to stick to it. We have to not take no for an answer. We have to listen to our colleagues to find out how they feel about the bill and try to form a consensus and then move this bill through.

Last Friday was the 100th birthday of Ed Muskie of Maine. Ed Muskie was the father of the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. Talk about perseverance. He spent 2 years, hundreds of hearings, hundreds of hours of markup and ended up with that bill passing the Senate unanimously--unanimously. That is a monument to perseverance.

Normally, I would say those are the three Ps: plan, partnership, and perseverance, but I think there is one more, and I am sure my colleague from Delaware agrees with me.

Nothing is going to happen without passion. We have to care about this. The people of America have to care about this. We have to say that this is something we are going to do. We are going to rebuild the manufacturing centers that made this country what it was--a sector that made this country what it was. We are going to have to do it with passion and commitment. I believe this bill is an opportunity to restart that process.

It will, and as I mentioned earlier, it can change us and provide benefits everywhere from higher wages to better national security to a stronger middle class. A plan, a partnership, perseverance, and passion--that is what changes the world.

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Madam President, I appreciate the comments of the Senator from Virginia. I think they were timely and important. I wanted to add one note. The Senator and I were in a hearing yesterday in the Budget Committee with three eminent economists--one was a Noble Prize winner--talking about income inequality and the status of our economy and where we are going.

But there was one aspect of the Affordable Care Act that came up in a discussion that really has gotten essentially no play whatsoever, no discussion in the press or in the media. I think in the long run it may turn out to be one of the most important aspects of the Affordable Care Act. It came home to me 2 weeks ago. Every Wednesday morning I have a coffee in my office here in the Senate office building for anybody from Maine that happens to be in town, whatever reason they are here, whether they are touring or have business in Washington. They can come in and have some blueberry muffins and some Maine coffee.

I met a couple there. The woman, in talking to us--she was down touring and everything. She said: By the way, thanks for supporting the Affordable Care Act.

I said: Oh, well, that is great. I appreciate that. Why do you say that?

She said: Because I have been in a job for a number of years that I do not like. But I could not leave it because it was how I got my health insurance. My husband does not have health insurance. So I had to stay in the job in order to keep the health insurance. She said: Now under the Affordable Care Act, I have an option to get health insurance at a reasonable price so I can leave this job and start my own business.

After I had this discussion, I did a little research. It turns out there is an economic term for this. It is called job lock. All over the country there are thousands, perhaps even millions, of people who are locked into a job where they are not feeling very appreciated, where they are not really enjoying it, where they are not expressing their productivity and their talents fully because they could not leave their insurance.

Now they can. There is a lot of talk around here about job creators. The job creators are the people that start businesses, the entrepreneurs. Those are the job creators. This is going to lead to an explosion of new businesses, of people who do not have to stay in the job that they are in simply because of their health insurance but have the option to go out and start a business of their own because they can get their health insurance at a reasonable price through the Affordable Care Act.

So there is a lot to discuss about the Affordable Care Act. But this is one of the aspects of it that has been underappreciated. As the years go on, we are going to see a decrease in people uninsured--which we are already starting to see--and we are going to see an increase in small businesses because people no longer have to stay in their jobs simply to maintain their insurance.

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