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President Again Cites City's Manufacturing Hub
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- President Barack Obama’s call again for Congress to support his plans for manufacturing hubs modeled on the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute here marked the second consecutive year that the president has referenced NAMII, drawing reaction from area business and political leaders.
About 13 minutes into the president’s State of the Union address to both houses of Congress and the nation, Obama cited the manufacturing hub already established in Youngstown, also known as America Makes, and the recently announced one in Raleigh, N.C., “where we’ve connected businesses to research universities that can help America lead the world in advanced technologies.” He announced plans to establish six more manufacturing this year and said Congress could double that amount if it acted on bipartisan legislation already in both houses.
In a statement emailed following the speech, U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan, D-13 Howland, said he applauded the president’s commitment to high-tech manufacturing in Youngstown and his call “to replicate the success here” in six other locations around the country. “That our region is once again being held up as an example for the nation to follow should make every Ohioan proud,” Ryan said.
Ryan, seated next to U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-23 Fla., chairman of the Democratic National Committee, during the speech, also praised the president’s call for more infrastructure investment and his proposal to raise the minimum wage for federal contract workers, and said he would work with the president to pass legislation increasing the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour for other workers. Additionally, Ryan called failure to reinstate unemployment benefits “a moral lapse.”
Within minutes of Obama's Youngstown reference, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown released a statement urging Congress to pass his Revitalize American Manufacturing and Innovation Act, which would establish a Network of Manufacturing Innovation, of which the NAMII is the pilot. Earlier this month, the Senate Manufacturing Caucus announced its support for the legislation. Passage of the bill “would ensure that American workers, universities, and large and small manufacturers can out-compete and out-innovate the rest of the world,” Brown said.
If the United States is going to reclaim its dominance in manufacturing, “We have to make sustained efforts at commercializing new products, integrating advanced manufacturing technologies into our operations and enhancing the skills of our workers,” observed Barb Ewing, chief operating officer of the Youngstown Business Incubator, where America Makes is based.
“However, for new technologies to really impact the economy, innovation can't just happen in Fortune 500 Companies on the east and west coasts,” Ewing continued. “It has to happen in the thousands of small firms dotted across the country in small cities and towns like Youngstown and the Mahoning Valley. YBI is proud to be a partner to America Makes [NAMII] and of the role we play in helping to integrate this transformational technology as deeply as possible into the local economy."
Added Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, "The innovation hubs can make a real difference for American manufacturing if they are coupled with a more robust strategy on trade and investment. [Congress] could do its part by passing bipartisan legislation” authored by Brown and U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., to expand funding for the network.
Although he welcomed the “strong rhetorical focus” on manufacturing in a third consecutive State of the Union Address, Paul said progress has been “painfully slow,” despite the “rosy picture” Obama painted, and the United States has been backsliding in some areas, such as the trade deficit with China. He also said Obama left “some important things” off the list of things he planned to do without Congress to boost the economy, including designating China as a currency manipulator and tightening Buy America compliance among federal agencies.
David Spigelmyer, president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, praised the president’s remarks relating to natural gas, which he said was brining America closer to energy independence thanit has been in decades.
“Affordable supplies of oil and natural gas, driven by tightly-regulated shale development, have catapulted America from a period of energy scarcity to a new and more prosperous era of energy abundance. And the results are clear: a plunging trade deficit, stronger geopolitical standing, cleaner air and significant consumer savings,” he said.
“We appreciate the president’s steadfast commitment to the safe development of American natural gas. It’s a false choice to suggest that we can either produce natural gas and create jobs or protect and enhance our environment. Pennsylvania continues to lead the way in achieving both of these shared goals,” on a visit to Pennsylvania today, Obama “will see firsthand how shale production is boosting our regional economy and creating good manufacturing jobs here at home,” he said.
Republicans leveled familiar criticisms against Obama in their responses to the State of the Union Address.
U.S. Rep. Bill Johnson, R-Marietta, said he was “disappointed, but not surprised,” by the president’s decision to “double down on the same Big Government policies” he says are making people’s lives harder. Obama’s agenda isn’t about “equalizing incomes” but instead to “equalize outcomes,” Johnson remarked.
“Missing from his speech, and what many in eastern and southeastern Ohio wanted to hear, is how the president plans to fix Obamacare,” Johnson said. “Ohioans are seeing their premiums skyrocket, while others are having their health plans canceled. The law is hurting businesses in eastern and southeastern Ohio, and small business owners are being forced to make painful decisions. Also missing from his speech was any mention of easing his administration’s crippling regulations that have cost so many Ohio coal jobs.”
U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., argued the policies the president decried during the speech “have grown far worse a direct result of his policies” and Obama now “is threatening to double down on those failed policies with unilateral executive fiats that may exceed his constitutional and legal authority.”
Toomey touted a bill he introduced with U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., that would help small businesses grow and hire more workers, and said he supports tax reform that would spur economic growth and enable U.S. workers to compete successfully against their foreign counterparts.
“From 2007 to 2012, the places that saw median household income grow were predominantly energy producing areas,” Toomey said. “Let’s approve the Keystone XL pipeline which would create many jobs for Pennsylvania-based contractors and suppliers and allow the production of oil and gas on more federal lands to diminish our dependence on foreign energy.”
U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, R-3 Pa., said he listened for the fourth year in a row as Obama “spoke boldly and ambitiously” but failed “to acknowledge the true solutions that our country desperately needs or accurately describe the true challenges” that Americans face. “While the president once again depicted a far-reaching agenda sure to please his political base, his speech once again provided the wrong answers to the wrong questions,” he said.
“Disappointingly but not surprisingly, throughout tonight’s speech, we did not hear about the millions of Americans who’ve seen their health plans shattered by Obamacare, including at least 250,000 Pennsylvanians; we did not hear about the 92 million Americans out of the workforce, the most dire level since 1978; we did not hear about the $17 trillion of national debt that is threatening our children and grandchildren’s future every single day,” Kelly said.
“As expected, tonight we did hear about the president’s willingness to use what he’s called his ‘phone and pen’ to push his unaffordable agenda, apparently regardless of popular will or congressional involvement. What most of us view as a system of checks and balances to cherish, the president seemingly sees as an inconvenience to ignore,” he added.
Copyright 2014 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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