[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 153 (Thursday, September 22, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4956-S4957]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             MANUFACTURING

  Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, as everybody in the Chamber knows, I am 
extremely proud to be from Michigan. Our State leads the world in 
innovation. We created and built the automobile, the automotive 
assembly line, and the American middle class along with it.
  And today, our workers are still putting the world on four wheels--
and really amazing wheels right now.
  I got to show one of our Nation's foremost car guys, President Biden, 
some of Michigan's latest and greatest creations during last week's 
Detroit Auto Show. He was so happy behind the wheel of Chevy's new 
Corvette that I was a little worried he was going to put on his 
aviators and drive right out of the exhibition center. It took a lot to 
get him out of that car, he was so into it.
  He was inspired, and we all were. Of course, the auto show is always 
inspiring, but this year it was even more, and that is because our 
Nation is in the middle of a manufacturing renaissance. And I don't say 
that lightly. We are in the middle of a manufacturing renaissance.
  Democrats in Congress, along with President Biden and Vice President 
Harris, are helping to revitalize American manufacturing. With tiny 
House and Senate majorities and the car guy in the White House, 
Democrats have done more to advance manufacturing in America than at 
any point in the past 70 years. We are not just bringing back the jobs 
lost during the pandemic; we are going far beyond that. Already, nearly 
700,000 new manufacturing jobs have been created under the Biden 
administration. This represents the strongest manufacturing job growth 
since the 1950s--in our lifetime. In 2021 alone, more manufacturing 
jobs were created. Just last year, more manufacturing jobs were created 
than in any single year, any 1 year in nearly 30 years, which is 
extraordinary, and it is exciting.
  And over the past year, the construction of new manufacturing 
facilities in the United States has grown by over 100 percent--116 
percent. Meanwhile, 80 percent of our CEOs in a recent survey were 
either in the process of moving manufacturing operations from China or 
were seriously considering doing so. So we are seeing a real shift 
about bringing jobs home, and we have been providing the incentives and 
the support to do that. So that is really great news because we know if 
you are going to have an economy, somebody has to make something--
somebody has to make something. And, frankly, that is what we do in 
Michigan. We make things. We innovate. And then we make things even 
better and then we do it over and over again.
  Of course, we can't make much of anything if we don't have the 
semiconducting chips--these little microchips the size of a nail. 
Whoever thought that not having microchips would shut down a whole 
plant, and that is what has happened in Michigan, unfortunately, during 
the height of the supply chain breakdowns.
  A lack of chips means that auto manufacturers have to idle plants. 
Assembly lines shut down, and workers get sent home. Parking lots at 
plants fill up with cars that can't be sold because of these missing 
chips. And I see many of them not very far from my home in Lansing, MI.
  Car lots that normally are full of different makes and models sit 
empty, and the price of new and used cars goes up and up without these 
chips--all because of a tiny piece of technology no bigger than a 
thumbnail.
  That is why the legislation that we passed, the CHIPS and Science 
Act--this legislation that was signed into law is really a big deal. 
This law is bringing semiconductor manufacturing back to the United 
States where it belongs. Instead of the majority of what we need being 
overseas, it is now going to be coming home and creating millions of 
jobs in the process, and that is, frankly, great news. Currently, U.S. 
manufacturers only have 12 percent of the world's semiconductor 
manufacturing--12 percent. And it actually was down from 37 percent in 
the nineties.

[[Page S4957]]

And now we are going to reverse that and bring those jobs home.
  We are already seeing it make a difference. Intel is building new 
semiconductor fabricator plants in Ohio and Arizona. This year, Micron 
Technologies is breaking ground for a new $15 billion factory in Idaho, 
and we would love to see them come our way. It is a great beginning, 
and we are just getting started.
  The American manufacturing boom goes far beyond semiconductors, 
though. The investments we have made in research and development will 
ensure that the next generation of clean energy of telecommunications 
and transportation technologies will be developed and manufactured 
right here in America as well.
  President Biden got a taste of what that was like in the auto show 
when he got behind the wheel of an all-electric Cadillac Lyriq and 
drove it across the floor. Again, we were hoping he was going to 
restrain himself from driving it off the exhibition floor.
  Democrats provided a huge boost to manufacturing, including clean 
energy manufacturing, through the Inflation Reduction Act, which 
unfortunately none of our Republican colleagues voted for. It created 
new and expanded tax incentives for the next generation of clean energy 
technologies. I have constantly been talking about the importance of 
battery production tax credits--production tax credits, meaning you 
don't get the credit unless it is actually produced in the United 
States. We have done that now. That is now law.
  And the new solar manufacturing tax credit is going to help American 
manufacturers like Hemlock Semiconductor create new products and good 
jobs as well. They create one-third of all the polysilicon materials 
for solar panels, but the production has been in other countries, 
primarily, China. Now, with the production tax credit, the incentive 
will be to build them, to make them here in America.
  The CHIPS and Science Act also provided $11 billion to develop 
cutting-edge technologies, including up to three new Manufacturing USA 
initiatives. We are proud to have two Manufacturing USA initiatives 
already in place from the Obama administration. There is the 
Lightweight Innovations for Tomorrow, or LIFT, and Michigan State 
University's Scale-Up Research Facility, or SURF. Both are located in 
the same facility in Detroit, and LIFT projects include research into 
better welding processes for Navy ships and an anti-rollover system for 
military humvees. SURF is partnering with the Department of Energy and 
Ford and GM to make sure that America is a leader in advanced 
technologies--advanced vehicle technologies.
  And the CHIPS and Science package also more than doubled funding to 
develop technologies that are crucial to our national and economic 
security. That includes cyber security and biotechnology and artificial 
intelligence and quantum computing, advanced materials science, and 6G 
communications.
  Now, if we are going to be inventing all of this new stuff, we also 
need workers. You hear that all the time. We need workers who are 
skilled to produce these things, and that is something that we as 
Democrats have been laser-focused on also. In everything that we have 
done, there has been a workforce development piece of it, which is so 
critical. The CHIPS and Science Act includes dedicated funding for the 
development of semiconductor workforce opportunities.
  The Inflation Reduction Act includes incentives for clean energy 
manufacturers to create high-paying jobs and apprenticeship programs, 
which we know are so successful and so needed. And we have also 
invested in workforce development programs in regions all around the 
country.
  The Build Back Better regional challenge awarded $1 billion to 120 
projects across 24 States to help people get the skills that they need 
for these great new jobs. These projects are building a sustainable 
mariculture workforce in Alaska, training aerospace workers in Kansas, 
and ensuring that Michigan has the highly skilled workers needed to 
build the advanced vehicles on display at the Detroit Auto Show.
  One thing I am also particularly proud of in all that we have been 
doing around manufacturing as well is that we have worked to ensure 
that our tax dollars are spent on American products made by American 
workers and American companies. Now, that sounds like a no-brainer. I 
know, Mr. President, you agree with that, but we have had laws on the 
books for a long time that have not been enforced. There has not been 
transparency about what was going on, and now they are going to have to 
be accountable and transparent.
  ``Buy American'' needs to be more than a slogan on a bumper sticker, 
and now it is. We have ushered in the most significant expansion of 
``Buy American'' policies in decades, including a new Made in America 
office at the Department of Commerce that is working with each Agency 
to make sure that they are exhausting all the possibilities to buy 
American before they are allowed to have a waiver to that provision, 
which is very important.
  Decades from now, people are going to look back at the past 2 years 
as a real turning point. I really believe that. It is the point when we 
really truly stopped talking and started acting to rebuild American 
manufacturing. It is the point when we created hundreds of thousands of 
good-paying jobs, the kind of jobs that support families. And it is the 
point when we started to really bring jobs home.
  Democrats are standing on the side of American manufacturing. We are 
standing on the side of good-paying American union jobs. We are 
standing on the side of the American worker and our American middle 
class. And we are building things in America again--building things in 
America again--and that is really good news.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nebraska.

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