We looked for background material this morning to accompany the President’s speech at the AFL-CIO’s Laborfest in Milwaukee, where he announced and briefly discussed a proposal to spend $50 billion on infrastructure. There’s a little, here and there.

A transcript of the President’s speech is here.

There’s a two-and-a-half page summary sheet, available via a blog post by the vice president’s economic adviser, Jared Bernstein, entitled, “Let’s Stop Torturing Facts and Start Working Together.” (How’s that for extending hand of cooperation?)

Excerpt from fact sheet:

This plan would build on the investments we have already made under the Recovery Act, create jobs for American workers to strengthen our economy now, and increase our nation’s growth and productivity in the future. At the same time, the plan would reform the way America currently invests in transportation, changing our focus to enhancing competition, innovation, performance, and real analysis that gets taxpayers the best bang for the buck, while moving away from the earmarks and formula debates of the past. In prior years, transportation infrastructure was an issue that both parties worked on together, and the Administration hopes the same can be true now.

Some of the tangible accomplishments of the President’s plan over the next six years include:

• ROADS: Rebuild 150,000 miles of roads – renewing our commitment to the backbone of our transportation system;
• RAILWAYS: Construct and maintain 4,000 miles of rail – enough to go coast-to-coast;
• RUNWAYS: Rehabilitate or reconstruct 150 miles of runway – while putting in place a NextGen system that will reduce travel time and delays.

Note to White House writers: Prolepsis notwithstanding, it’s not a “tangible accomplishment” until it actually happens.

At the Department of Transportation’s website, we don’t find any additional information on the President’s proposal. (Searched at 7:37 a.m., Tuesday.) There’s a Distracted Driving Summit coming up, through.

Senior White House advisers on Monday briefed reporters on the proposal. From Politico, “President Obama unveils $50 billion road, rail plan“:

Senior administration officials, in a conference call with reporters Monday morning, would not say whether they would push Congress to pass a bill before the end of 2010.

“These types of reauthorizations have always been a substantial undertaking,” one official said. “This one is particularly ambitious because of the front loading and the set of reforms.”

Under the best-case scenario, however, jobs would be created in 2011, the official said. “This is not an … immediate jobs plan. This is a six-year reauthorization that’s front-loaded,” according to the senior administration official. “We’re not trying to put out an idea today that in October 2010 will be creating jobs.”

Oh. But the surface transportation authorization expired on Sept. 30, 2009. As the National Governors Association summarized:

Comprehensive federal laws and regulations that guide national surface transportation policies and programs expired in September 2009. While the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (P.L. 111-5) provided one-time funding for highway and transit infrastructure spending, Congress has not passed a long-term authorization.

The National Association of Manufacturers regards investment in infrastructure as a central responsibility of the federal government and a competitive imperative, as covered in our NAM ManuFact. The economic value of investing  in infrastructure was a central thrust of the Milken Institute study the NAM released in January, 2010, “Jobs for America: Investments and policies for economic growth and competitiveness,” and the NAM prominently cites the need for infrastructure investment in our policy guide and call to action, “Manufacturing Strategy for Jobs and a Competitive America.”

President Obama will promote infrastructure spending in his speech today at the annual Laborfest in Milwaukee. It’s taxes on Wednesday in Cleveland. But today …

New York Times, “Obama to Call for $50 Billion Spending on Public Works“:

WASHINGTON – President Obama on Monday is to call for as much as $50 billion in government spending to start up a long-term public works plan emphasizing transportation projects – roads, rail and airport runways – over the next six years. …

While Mr. Obama’s plan would call for investment over six years, the White House says it would be front-loaded with an initial investment of $50 billion in taxpayer money, to help create jobs in the shorter term. The administration says it would work with Congress to find ways to pay for the plan, so that it would not add to the nation’s rising deficit. One possibility would be to cut existing subsidies for oil and gas exploration and production.

• The Hill, “Obama to push $50B infrastructure plan“
• Bloomberg, “Obama to Announce Transportation Infrastructure Plan“
• Reuters, “Obama to announce $50 bln infrastructure job plan“

Perhaps anticipating the announcement, the Association of Equipment Manufacturers released a statement from its president, Dennis Slater, this morning. From “America’s Manufacturers Need More to Celebrate This Labor Day“:

Jobs and the economy are popular topics in Washington right now, and many are talking about investing in America’s infrastructure as an important first step.  But almost nobody is addressing the elephant in the room:  America needs a fully-funded, multi-year transportation bill, and we need it now.  There are few, if any, better drivers of economic growth and job creation than infrastructure investment, and it can’t be done piecemeal.  We need a strategic vision for modernizing our country’s infrastructure, and leaders with the courage to make it happen.  That’s what will build America’s manufacturing sector and our economy, and bring lasting benefits to America for generations to come.

Verily. The surface transportation bill expired on Sept. 30, 2009, and since then the federal highway spending has been reauthorized several times on a short-term basis. The President’s renewed focus on infrastructure is welcome: Perhaps he will include  a demand that Congress reauthorize the highway bill before it leaves to campaign. (We’d love to hear something like: “Jobs are the priority, and so I urge Congress to drop extraneous, partisan and divisive legislative proposals from its agenda. This is no time for such destructive distractions as the DISCLOSE Act.”)

The National Association of Manufacturers has long identified transportation infrastructure as a competitive imperative, well summarized in our NAM ManuFact. The economic value of investing  in infrastructure was a central thrust of the Milken Institute study the NAM released in January, 2010, “Jobs for America: Investments and policies for economic growth and competitiveness,” and the NAM prominently cites the need for infrastructure investment in our policy guide and call to action, “Manufacturing Strategy for Jobs and a Competitive America.”

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution today publishes a Labor Day-oriented editorial and commentaries on the economy and jobs, including a contribution from John Engler, president of the National Association of Manufacturers. Excerpt from Engler’s column:

Campaign season will be full of slogans, position papers and one-shot proposals about reviving manufacturing, but we need more than political tactics. Instead, let’s seriously address what it actually takes to create jobs in the global economy. The key word here is “competitiveness.”

When the United States recovered from the last deep recession of the early 1980s, it did so without competition from a unified Europe, a manufacturing giant in China, or rising industrial powers in Brazil and India.

These competitors think strategically about manufacturing. So must we.

For years, Washington has tried to encourage industry with specific pieces of legislation, government initiatives and small fixes. These are tactics. A manufacturing strategy will take a comprehensive view of what’s needed for U.S. manufacturing to succeed in the face of global competition.

The piece builds on the NAM’s report released in June, the “Manufacturing Strategy for Jobs and a Competitive America,” available at www.nam.org/manufacturingstrategy.

Other contributors to the AJC’s feature are Michael Thurmond, Georgia’s labor commissioner, and Paul Garcia and Donna Hyland, respectively the chairs of the Metro Atlanta Chamber’s technology and bioscience leadership councils.

President Obama will make a statement at 10 a.m. at the White House on today’s new employment report, which showed August unemployment at 9.6 percent.

In the meantime, speculation soars about a September “stimulus” plan. The Washington Post reports, “White House considers pre-midterm package of business tax breaks to spur hiring“:

With just two months until the November elections, the White House is seriously weighing a package of business tax breaks – potentially worth hundreds of billions of dollars – to spur hiring and combat Republican charges that Democratic tax policies hurt small businesses, according to people with knowledge of the deliberations.

Among the options under consideration are a temporary payroll-tax holiday and a permanent extension of the now-expired research-and-development tax credit, which rewards companies that conduct research into new technologies within the United States.

Running it up the flagpole, eh? Well, salud!

But it all seems so tactical, more a matter of packaging than policy. Take the research and development tax credit, for example. President Obama’s proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2011, released February 1, already called for making the R&D tax credit permanent. If you have to give it a new label, call it “Super Stimulus Innovation Jobs Great Tax Credit for Business, Business, Business,” to get it passed, fine, but the credit — first adopted in 1981 — has proved to be an effective tool for job creation and innovation that should have passed long ago on its merits.  (It’s like the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill: OK if you want to redub it the Manufacturing Enhancement Act, just get it done!)

Dena Battle, tax policy director at the National Association of Manufacturers, appeared on Fox Business News on Thursday to discuss these issues (video). Asked about the new proposals being floated, she said:

Some of the things they are talking about are good ideas. Obviously we support a permanent R&D tax credit. I think what’s really missing here are some other key elements. You’ve got these 2001 and 2003 tax cuts expiring at the end of this year, and Congress has done nothing to extend those. Businesses are looking at that, and they have no idea what tax rates they’re going to be paying next year.

You really have to do something to show businesses and give them that level of certainty right now. That has to be part of anything they’re doing for job creation.

Right. If you read toward the end of the Post story, you see a reference to the White House considering “targeted business tax breaks.” Targeted = tactical.

But as NAM President John Engler argued in his introduction to the NAM’s report, the “Manufacturing Strategy for Jobs and a Competitive America“: [We] have no battle plan, no comprehensive approach for making manufacturing in the United States more competitive, more productive and creating even more high-paying jobs. The unprecedented challenge to U.S. manufacturing pre-eminence requires clear thinking, a global vision and a plan.” That is, a strategy.

UPDATE (10:25 a.m.): President’s White House appearance amounted to a reaffirmation of his proposal for small business loans and extending “middle class tax cuts,” which is to say, letting the bulk of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts expire. He’ll say more next week.

We’ve previously noted here the challenges facing manufacturing in New York that are similar to those in other states around the nation. Yesterday, Rep. Chris Lee (R-NY) at a manufacturing facility outside of Buffalo, NY, announced his plan to help manufacturers create and retain jobs. Rep. Lee’s plan focuses on five key policy areas that are important to long-term manufacturing competitiveness not just in New York but for all manufacturers throughout the country:

• Tax relief and fairness for U.S. workers and manufacturers
• Education and workforce training and preparedness for the 21^st century
• Tort reform to address job-killing lawsuit abuse
• Customs reform to stop intellectual property violations
• Open new markets to create U.S. jobs and grow our domestic manufacturing base

Rep. Lee is familiar with the challenges facing manufacturers and the need for creating good, high-paying manufacturing jobs, as he ran a manufacturing company prior to be elected to Congress. The Congressman’s plan is something that all members of Congress should embrace and builds on many aspects of the NAM’s “Manufacturing Strategy for Jobs and a Competitive America.” For more information click here.

WashingtonPost.com this morning posted a lengthy and interesting report on the Congressional politics of manufacturing, “New Democratic strategy for creating jobs focuses on a boost in manufacturing“:

President Obama and congressional Democrats — out of options for another quick shot of stimulus spending to revive the sluggish economy — are shifting toward a longer-term strategy that promises to tackle persistently high unemployment by engineering a renaissance in American manufacturing.

That approach, heralded by Obama last week in Detroit and sketched out in a memo to House Democrats as they headed home for the August break, is still evolving and so far focuses primarily on raising taxes on multinational corporations that Democrats accuse of shipping jobs overseas.

We lost track of how many attempts there were on Capitol Hill last week to try to use billions of dollars of new taxes on foreign earnings to pay for other federal spending.

As several of the National Association of Manufacturers “Key Vote” letters (here and here) noted:

An estimated 22 million people in the United States – more than 19 percent of the private sector workforce and 53 percent of all manufacturing employees – are employed by companies with operations overseas. Manufacturers feel strongly that imposing…tax increases on these companies …will jeopardize the jobs of American manufacturing employees and stifle our fragile economy.

Some of the proposed tax increases, which are mischaracterized as closing tax loopholes, actually represent significant changes to pro-growth tax policy supported by Congress and the Administration.

It’s just not a good approach, making the United States a less attractive place to do business.

Anyway, as Crocodile Dundee might say about raising taxes, “That’s not a strategy. Now, THAT’s a strategy.”

The Joint Economic Committee today released a new report in its Understanding the Economy series. The report, “Promising Signs of Recovery in Manufacturing,” was written by the majority, i.e., Democratic, staff of the committee.

Key points, according to the executive summary:

The durable goods sector was particularly hard-hit by the recession. About three-fourths of the almost 2.7 million manufacturing jobs lost between June 2006 and December 2009 were within the durable goods manufacturing.

In June 2006, manufacturing made up more than 10 percent of employment in 26 states; by December 2009, only 17 states had manufacturing sectors that made up more than 10 percent of employment.

In the first half of 2010, manufacturing gained 136,000 jobs. Nearly all of those employment gains were in durable goods manufacturing. The gains in durable goods employment have been concentrated in states with large manufacturing bases in the Midwest and South. Michigan, Ohio and Texas have shown particularly strong gains.

Some of the recent employment growth in manufacturing may be due to inventory restocking – as manufacturing inventories began to rise in January 2010 so did manufacturing employment. In fact, the ISM Index shows that growth in the manufacturing sector is slowing now that firms have restocked their inventories.

Congressional actions to support manufacturing have included support for exports, tax credits for clean energy manufacturing and efforts to spur domestic demand for vehicles. More actions are needed to ensure a robust and sustainable recovery in the U.S. manufacturing sector.

Agreed entirely that more actions are needed. The National Association of Manufacturers’ recent “Manufacturing Strategy for Jobs and a Competitive America” details just what those actions should be.

• The Hill, “House Democrats seize on manufacturing rebound, but call it ‘uneven’“
• USA TODAY, “Factories expected to create jobs despite slowing growth“

As previewed last week, House Democratic leadership has scheduled several bills this week to emphasize the caucus’ commitment to the manufacturing economy. On the weekly floor schedule are pieces of the House “Make it in America” agenda:

The first bill creates a Clean Energy Technology Manufacturing and Export Assistance Fund in the Department of Commerce. The second calls for establishment of a President’s Manufacturing Strategy Board to research and propose a manufacturing strategy every four years.

Last week, the House passed H.R. 4380, the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill, which had been redubbed the U.S. Manufacturing Enhancement. The measure passed with strong bipartisan support, and the NAM issued a statement lauding its passage.

Anticipating this week’s emphasis on manufacturing, President John Engler of the National Association of Manufacturers has taped a video message, urging Congress to act on the NAM’s “Manufacturing Strategy for Jobs and a Competitive America.”

Excerpt:

The National Association of Manufacturers appreciates the fact that the House will spend the last week of July talking about the manufacturing economy. But it’s not enough…it’s simply not enough. (continue reading…)

Speaker of the House Steny Hoyer (D-MD) joined other Democrats Thursday at a news conference to promote next week’s legislative emphasis on manufacturing, the “Make it in America” agenda. Rep. Hoyer issued a statement on next week’s agenda, and majority leader’s website now lists the bills that constitute it. Excerpt from the statement:

“Make it in America” is a new legislative initiative from House Democrats to increase American manufacturing and create new American jobs.  The American public strongly supports a renewed focus on American manufacturing. This effort builds on House Democrats’ actions since the start of the Great Recession to create jobs and lay the foundation for a strong economy.

“Make it in America” bills that have passed the House:  

• U.S. Manufacturing Enhancement Act 
• Strengthening Employment Clusters to Organize Regional Success (SECTORS) Act 

“Make it in America” bills that are scheduled to come to the House Floor the week of July 26th, 2010: 

• National Manufacturing Strategy Act 
• Clean Energy Technology Manufacturing and Export Assistance Act
• End the Trade Deficit Act 

We thought it might be helpful to provide more context on the bills as well as the NAM’s position where applicable. On the already enacted legislation, then:

• The U.S. Manufacturing Enhancement Act is H.R. 4380, the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill, was introduced last December and recently given the new, manufacturing-evoking title. The National Association of Manufacturers supported passage with a “Key Vote” letter and lauded House action with a statement.
•  The SECTORS Act is H.R. 1855, introduced by Rep. Dave Loebsback (D-IA) in April 2009, was referrred to committee, never had a hearing, and then re-emerged earlier this month for the floor vote. The bill authorizes the Department of Labor to award competitive grants for worker training in high-demand and emerging industries. The National Association of Manufacturers supports skills training, generally, but House action on this bill came unexpectedly.

On next week’s bills: (continue reading…)

The National Association of Manufacturers’ strong support for the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill, H.R. 4380, was cited several times by advocates on the House floor yesterday, including by the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Sander Levin (D-MI), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. (Page H546 of The Congressional Record.) We’re pleased the NAM could help: It’s an important bill, and the strong bipartisan vote of 378-43 should inspire the Senate to quick action after nearly three years of Congressional delay.

The political tactics were something to behold, too, as the Democrats put the Republicans in a quandary: Either back GOP leadership on a one-year moratorium of earmarks or vote for jobs.  The AP story describes the circumstances, “Conflicted GOP supports trade bill,” while Politico provides an illustration, “Dem: GOP ‘parks brain at the door’.”

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) followed the vote with remarks on the House floor about his caucus’ leadership on jobs and the economy, knocking the Bush Administration, and adumbrating next week’s House focus on manufacturing. Excerpt (starting at H5902):

In coming weeks we will be bringing to the floor the Make It in America agenda. A comprehensive strategy to boost American manufacturing. It’s based on the idea that when more products are made in America, more well-paying, blue collar jobs, white collar jobs, no-collar jobs are going to be created; and it will be possible for more people to make it in America.

This bill, the Manufacturing Enhancement Act, is the first piece of that agenda. It includes hundreds of tariff suspensions and reductions so that American companies will find it easier to obtain the materials they need to produce goods, grow, and add workers, which we passed today. So we’ve already started on that agenda.

And by the way, I noticed that our Republican friends out of habit voted “no.” Then they started talking to one another and said, Hey, you know what this bill does? It starts to grow our economy. By the way, the National Association of Manufacturers are for this bill these Democrats put on the floor. They’re for it because they know it helps to build jobs. And, oh, by the way, the Chamber of Commerce is for this bill. Why? Because it starts to build jobs. That’s the agenda the Democrats are on. And did you notice how they sort of all talked and said, Hey, gee, maybe I better vote for that bill and we saw those “noes” go to “aye,” “noes” go to “yes.” It was a strange experience for them. I hope it’s catching.

I hope they will keep doing it. I hope they will keep saying “yes” to the American worker. I hope they will keep saying “yes” to growing manufacturing capability in America. I hope they will say “yes” to the proposition that we can, we should, and we will make it in America.

America is the greatest land on the face of the Earth, and our people are some of the most talented, innovative, entrepreneurial people on Earth, and if we give them the tools and we give them the opportunity, they will compete with anybody in the world.

That’s why we, Democrats, are committed to an agenda that says, yes, we can, we will make it in America, and in that enterprise, a manufacturing expansion, more people will make it in America.

It’s not quite clear yet what that manufacturing agenda is going to include. One hopes leadership omits H.R. 4678, the awful Foreign Manufacturer Legal Accountability Act, that despite all its good intentions would create lengthy, expensive delays in importing products, disrupt supply lines, encourage more frivolous lawsuits and invite worldwide trade retaliation. (Coalition letter in opposition.) The House Energy and Commerce Committee passed the bill out on Wednesday, which suggests an intent to act next week.

Thankfully, as yesterday’s debate demonstrated, when debating manufacturing Democrats and Republicans alike want to hear from manufacturers. The National Association of Manufacturers has developed a policy guide and call to action to transcend tactics to address what’s really needed for the U.S. economy and workers — a comprehensive, strategic vision for the manufacturing economy.

The document is “Manufacturing Strategy for Jobs and American Competitive.” It’s available at http://www.nam.org/manufacturingstrategy. We look forward to it being cited repeatedly next week on the floor of the House.