From the Senate Commerce Committee, an announcement of a hearing scheduled for Wednesday, “Manufacturing Our Way to a Stronger Economy.”

May 11 2011 2:30 PM
Russell Senate Office Building – 253
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Senator John D. (Jay) Rockefeller IV, Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, today announced a second in a series of Commerce Committee hearings focusing on manufacturing in America and the ways in which the government and industry can strengthen the sector and promote job growth.

Witness Panel 1

• Dr. Stephanie Burns
  Chairman, Dow-Corning Corporation
• Mr. Leo W. Gerard
  International President
  The United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial and Service Workers International Union (United Steelworkers)
• Mr. Mike Rowe
  Creator, Executive Producer and Host
  Discovery Channel’s DIRTY JOBS

Gerard, the Steelworkers president, had a good letter published last week in The Washington Post, challenging an editorial that had criticized the pulp and paper industry’s use of a tax credit to promote biofuels, the “black liquor” issue. Gerard argued:

Biomass energy is green energy. When the fuel base is managed properly, unlike fossil fuel, biofuel is carbon-neutral. Pulp and paper mills not only use biomass as fuel, it is their main raw material to make products that keep carbon out of the atmosphere for months, years or, in some cases, generations…. (continue reading…)