[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 3]
[Senate]
[Pages 3882-3884]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     MANUFACTURING INNOVATION HUBS

  Mr. COONS. Madam President, I come to the floor once again to talk 
about good jobs--about manufacturing jobs--and about what we can do 
together in this Chamber to strengthen the vital manufacturing sector 
of the American economy.
  Last year, Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown and Republican Senator 
Roy Blunt came together in a bipartisan effort to cosponsor an 
important bill, S. 1468, the Revitalize American Manufacturing and 
Innovation Act of 2013--an effort to build a national network for 
manufacturing and innovation, also known as manufacturing innovation 
hubs.
  This bill, if enacted, would allow us to build institutes across our 
country dedicated to discovering the next breakthroughs in technology 
and translating them to the next breakthroughs in manufacturing. I have 
been proud to support and fight for this bill,

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and now, because of my colleagues' leadership and determination, we are 
close to getting a vote.
  We have heard about the importance of these innovation hubs for 
manufacturing before. Last year two hubs opened--one in Youngstown, OH, 
and another in Raleigh, NC. Just last week I was thrilled to hear about 
two more opening--one in Detroit and another in Chicago.
  These hubs are good first steps, but they are being done by the 
executive branch, without express and explicit authorization for a 
whole and broader program through this bill, which would extend this 
national network, would make its life longer and greater, and give more 
specific details to the process by which they would be authorized going 
forward.
  It is my hope, having already seen several demonstrations on a more 
modest scale, this Congress will come together in a bipartisan way and 
enact this legislation to put a framework in place for the long term.
  These hubs, as I said, are good first steps, but we in Congress can 
and should do more. In my home State of Delaware we are blessed to have 
some remarkable institutions of higher learning: Delaware State 
University, led by the great President Dr. Harry Williams; the 
University of Delaware--both research institutions which benefit from 
federally funded research and both of which do work in energy and 
engineering, relevant to manufacturing. We also have Del Tech--Delaware 
Technical & Community College--which does great workforce training and 
partners with manufacturers. We also have a whole series of 
manufacturers, large and small; some iconic companies such as DuPont, 
some unknown outside my State that employ dozens or hundreds.
  What a manufacturing hub would do is bring together a university that 
is doing cutting-edge research in a new field with companies looking to 
start manufacturing using that technology, with those community 
colleges and others who would train the new workforce, creating a 
network that would do the innovative work in an iterative way that 
would accelerate new manufacturing opportunities.
  The reason this bill has such a diverse set of bipartisan backers--
from Democrats such as Sherrod Brown, Debbie Stabenow, and myself, to 
Republicans such as Roy Blunt, Lindsey Graham, and Mark Kirk--is 
because these hubs represent a great example of how the Federal 
Government can help foster partnerships between businesses, 
universities, and communities in a hands-off way.
  As to these first four hubs I mentioned, in these instances, the 
Federal Government is also getting terrific leverage. There is a more 
than 1-to-1 match from private, State, and local partnerships in these 
existing hubs--partnerships, I might add, that have national reach, 
giving the hubs the potential to benefit not just their immediate 
regions or their immediate communities but the whole country.
  General Dynamics and Honeywell, for example, are two of the partner 
companies in the Youngstown, OH, lab. They have footprints all across 
our country. At the hub in Raleigh, NC, researchers from other 
universities--such as Arizona State and Florida State--are 
collaborators as well, contributing their knowledge to the great work 
of these hubs and then also bringing back to their labs and their 
communities what is being learned through this common collaborative 
work.
  So the Youngstown and Raleigh hubs--now well established--are about 
more than just those two cities, and the hubs in Detroit and Chicago 
will be about more than just Michigan and Illinois, and the hubs we 
would create, we would authorize, through this bill would be about more 
than just the cities or States in which they are based.
  By bringing together such a wide-ranging and diverse set of partners, 
hubs allow many different stakeholders to pool their resources, 
minimizing the risks of investing in the early stage research that is 
critical to innovation but not feasible for one company alone to invest 
in.
  It is about the private sector coming together with the university 
and public sectors to solve tough problems without just one firm 
bearing all the risk or the burden. R&D--research and development--as 
we know, is critical to our economic future. These hubs offer an 
innovative model for increasing our national capacity for invention.
  The Federal Government acts as a convener for private firms, 
nonprofits, universities, and researchers, creating an environment 
where they can all do what they do best and share it. This idea 
transcends ideology or party. That is why I think Members of both 
parties should feel comfortable getting behind this bill. It has been 
endorsed by folks ranging from the National Association of 
Manufacturers to the Bio, which represents the bio and pharmaceutical 
community, and folks in the private sector and public sector in my own 
State and in States across the country.
  Manufacturing is at the heart of what can and should make this 
country competitive and prosperous in this century. At the end of the 
day, this is about creating good jobs. Manufacturing jobs are high-
quality jobs. It has a significant secondary benefit in the community 
as well as having higher wages and benefits than jobs in any other 
sector.
  If we are looking for the key to a dynamic innovation economy, we 
need to look no further than manufacturers. They invest more in R&D 
than any other private sector within the country. When we think of 
manufacturing and innovation today, we often picture researchers in the 
United States inventing things and manufacturing factories overseas. 
But that is not how sophisticated, advanced manufacturing innovation 
works anymore. The reality is that innovation is just not linear. R&D 
and manufacturing need to be closer together. It does not just start in 
the lab and then get sent to a factory and then to a store and your 
home. More often R&D results in innovations that improve the products 
already in our home, that improve the manufacturing process to discover 
better ways to make things faster, more safely, more efficiently, and 
that innovative cycle can speed up the more closely connected and 
articulated it is.
  By creating these manufacturing innovation hubs, all of which focus 
on a specific sector or industry, we can help fuel the discoveries that 
will make manufacturing a critical part of our long-term economic 
future, while ensuring that the discoveries that change our world are 
made here in America and the products that come out of them are 
manufactured here in America.
  These hubs focus on emerging areas where there is enormous potential. 
For example, the hub in Youngstown, OH, is focused on 3D printing, 
which already has the potential to transform how manufacturing, large-
scale and small-scale, is done not just in the United States but around 
the world. We believe--I certainly believe we should continue to be at 
the cutting edge of developing and deploying what 3D printing has to 
offer.
  The one in Raleigh, NC, is about wide bandgap semiconductors or 
energy-efficient electronics and will likely dominate much of the next 
generation of electronics. Again, why would we not want to be on the 
ground for not just the inventing of new technologies but demonstrating 
how to manufacture them?
  In Detroit, researchers and businesses and universities and other 
stakeholders in this newest hub will work together on advanced 
lightweight materials, on remarkable metals that are stronger, more 
durable, more ductile, and more lightweight than other existing 
materials, with applications, of course, in automobiles but across a 
very wide range of products and platforms.
  Lastly, in Chicago, small businesses, universities, and larger 
companies are working together on some remarkable advances that speed 
up the whole manufacturing process so new ideas can go from the lab to 
your home faster than ever before.
  Hubs such as these are central to our competitiveness because it is 
not just about the work happening at the lab or the institute itself; 
it is about how they then attract companies with a national reach to an 
area that is capable

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of building sustainable and dynamic local economies. It is about 
bringing researchers and manufactures together to spur innovation, 
commercialize R&D, and create good jobs that do not go somewhere else. 
It is about the larger impact for our communities and our country, as 
innovation breeds new supply chains and new businesses locally and 
across our country.
  Today's global economy is more competitive than it has ever been. We 
are competing not just with developing countries that have lower labor 
and environmental standards or lower wages but also with developed 
nations that are trying to out-educate, out-research, and out-innovate 
us. Germany, for example, has a well-developed, well-established, well-
deployed network of more than 60 manufacturing innovation hubs exactly 
like the ones I have just described. It also has fairly high labor and 
environmental standards but is the manufacturing powerhouse of Europe. 
It has nearly double the percentage of its GDP in manufacturing as the 
United States. How are they able to do this? How can they sustain these 
high levels of manufacturing? It is in no small part because of the 
manufacturing innovation hubs they have developed and deployed.
  So let's get this done. There is absolutely no reason that the season 
of governing and of legislating here in Washington needs to be over, 
especially when there is so much important work to do--work that I know 
we can and should get done on a bipartisan basis. Senators Brown and 
Blunt have done great work and shown strong leadership in developing 
this bill, refining this bill, and getting it to this point.
  Let's show that we can come together in areas where we do agree and 
put campaigns and politics aside for now and put American jobs and 
American innovation first.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Begich.) The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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