Make it America

Floor Speech

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Thank you, Representative Garamendi. It is always a pleasure to join you on the House floor to speak to any issue, but in this case, to Make It In America.

I am certain through the hour you have talked about the capital and physical infrastructure demands, but we also have to highlight the human infrastructure portion of the equation that will resound in the greatest success for the Make It In America agenda, and that is training the skilled talent that we need.

We need to promote the development and the advancement of manufacturing--advanced manufacturing, as it has been coined of late--but also to understand that it is an innovation economy, and so that means dealing with issues in production with great precision.

That great precision requires extremely gifted skill sets and education, apprentice programs in higher ed, making certain we have a growing force of engineers, where we are woefully underproducing the amount of engineers we require.

There are bits of legislation that all of us have cosponsored, that perhaps we are leading as sponsor, that will encourage the development engineers that we require for our being able to be a great manufacturing nation as we move forward.

Those are important elements, making certain that we have the precision instrumentation that will enable us to, again, compete because it is not the cheapest investment, but the wisest investment that is made.

It is not going to be significant by the dollar only, but what is the best product, what is the most thoughtful product that is developed for whatever needs society may have. The engineering components of all of this is very important, and the skill set component is very important.

As we go forward, we want to make certain that that human infrastructure is geared up and ready to go with cutting-edge skill sets that speak to today's economy. That is very important.

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Well, I just say, let's move forward with investment. It happens when we have a laser sharp focus on just where to apply our resources to capital, physical, and human infrastructure, so as to be the strongest competitor out there in a global race for kingpin of the innovation economy, and whoever wins that race, becomes the go-to agent for the worldwide economy. So we can't afford to hesitate or fail in our attempt here.

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