Drug Quality and Security Act-- Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

MANUFACTURING JOBS

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I come to the floor to talk about jobs--about manufacturing jobs. As we all know, manufacturing jobs are high-quality jobs. Manufacturing jobs come with higher pay and higher benefits. Manufacturing jobs help create other local service sector jobs, and manufacturing jobs contribute more to the local economy than jobs in any other sector. Beyond that, manufacturers invest the most of any industry sector in research and development, which is critical to America's continued growth and our security as a leading innovation economy.

Last week 21 Senate colleagues and I joined in a new initiative called the Manufacturing Jobs for America to help create good manufacturing jobs here at home today and tomorrow. It has grown out of 25 Senators who have all contributed different policy ideas. This is not one big megabill with dozens of sponsors, but just one bill. Instead, it is a constellation of 40 different proposals. Some of them have already been introduced as bills, and half of those that have been introduced are bipartisan. These bills illustrate some of our best ideas about how we can work together across the aisle to provide badly needed support for our growing manufacturing sector here in the United States.

There are 4 different areas these 40 different proposals fall into, and I wanted to talk about 1 of them today. Three of them are: How do we open markets abroad? How do we strengthen America's 21st century manufacturing workforce? How do we create a long-term environment for growth through a manufacturing strategy? The fourth is: How do we ensure access to capital?

Of the four I just mentioned, I want to speak about access to capital. As any business owner knows, you cannot ensure the long-term growth and vitality of your business unless you have capital to invest--whether in research and development, new workers, new products, or new equipment to expand into new markets. Access to capital is absolutely essential to manufacturing jobs for America.

The three bills I am going to talk about today, which are part of this constellation of 40 different proposals, would each expand access to capital for manufacturers in different ways.

Let me start with the Startup Innovation Credit Act. This is an existing bipartisan bill I have introduced, along with Senators ENZI, RUBIO, BLUNT, and MORAN, who are all Republicans, and Senators SCHUMER, STABENOW, and KAINE, all, like me, Democrats. Although we represent different parties, come from different parts of the country, and have different backgrounds, we have all come together to strengthen our economy and in particular to support innovation and entrepreneurship.

One way we do that now is to support private sector innovation and manufacturing through the research and development tax credit. The R&D tax credit generates new products and industries, benefiting other sectors. But there is a critical gap in the existing and longstanding R&D tax credit. It is not available to startups because they are not yet profitable. This is a tax credit you can only take if you have a tax liability and are profitable.

We worked together--Senator Enzi and I, and the other cosponsors--to fix this hole with a relatively simple tweak, and that is what the Startup Innovation Credit Act does. It allows companies to claim the R&D tax credit against their employment tax liability rather than in income tax liability--a corporate income tax liability. Supporting small innovative companies in their critical early stages of research and development could unleash further innovations and unleash greater growth that would spur good job creation for Americans in the long run.

Between 1980 and 2005, all net new jobs created in the United States were created by firms 5 years old or less. In total, that was about 40 million jobs over those 25 years. This credit is specifically designed with those new young firms in mind--those early-stage firms that are the font of the greatest source of creativity and jobs. It is limited to those companies that are 5 years old or less, and it is limited to being an offset against their W-2 liability so we can provide some access for early-stage startups to this R&D credit that encourages them to hire more folks and grow more quickly--just a part of Manufacturing Jobs for America.

The second bill I would like to talk about today is the Master Limited Partnership Parity Act. It levels the playing field as far as getting access credit. Instead of giving smaller, early-stage startup companies the same access to capital that larger, more mature firms have, this bill levels the playing field in the energy sector. It levels the playing field, in particular, for clean energy firms.

This is bipartisan as well. I introduced it with Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow as my lead cosponsor and Republican Senators Jim Moran and Lisa Murkowski. I am grateful for their persistent and engaged leadership on this bill. I am thrilled that in the last couple of days Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu and Republican Senator Susan Collins signed on as cosponsors as well.

The MLP Parity Act allows us to have an ``all of the above'' energy strategy. As I presided in my first 2 years--as I served on the Energy Committee--there are many Senators, Republican and Democrat, who think we should not pick winners and losers in technology and we should be promoting an ``all of the above'' energy strategy. This bill makes that possible in clean energy financing and in preserving a widely used tool for existing traditional energy financing. Oil and gas will play a significant role in our Nation's energy picture for the foreseeable future, but right now we don't have a level playing field between renewables and between oil and gas and pipelines.

For nearly 30 years, traditional nonrenewable sources of energy have had access to master limited partnerships. MLPs give natural gas, oil, and coal companies access to private capital at a lower cost. That is something that capital-intensive projects, such as pipelines, badly need. I would argue that alternative energy products need that as well; in fact, in some ways more than ever.

Last night I spoke to a group of board members at the National Academies of Science, and what we spoke about was how much technology has developed and sped up in the clean energy space, but how financial innovation has not kept pace. This has held back renewable energy and investments in energy efficiency even as technology has made energy production and distribution and energy efficiency cheaper to achieve.

Expanding access through this broad bipartisan bill to low-cost, long-term capital would be an important step to letting new energy sources take off and letting them compete on a level playing field with all sources of energy. That is exactly what the MLP Parity Act intends to do.

Last but not least, I was proud to be able to join a number of other Senators in cosponsoring the Small Brew Act. Senators CARDIN and BEGICH, Senators COLLINS and MURKOWSKI, Democrats and Republicans, have worked together to give small brewers a leg up by lowering the excise tax they face on the beer they produce.

Small Brewers, such as Dogfish Head in my home State of Delaware, are big job creators in communities across the country. As Senator Cardin said on the floor earlier this year, ``While some people may think this is a bill about beer, it is really about jobs.'' And I would say jobs in manufacturing.

Small and independent brewers today employ more than 100,000 Americans and pay more than $3 billion in wages and

benefits. Sam Calagione, the owner of Dogfish Head Brewery in my home State of Delaware, now employs 180 workers at their facility in Milton. Of course, what they are manufacturing is not a new or innovative or recently invented product. People have been brewing beer for thousands of years. Sam has done a remarkable job of coming up with a very broad range of different brews, and, in fact, of bringing back brews that are centuries or millennia old by recovering recipes for fantastic and tasty beers.

What I am focusing on today is about the expanse. This particular company has invested $50 million in a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility. When I recently visited, I was struck at how different it is from the beer bottling plant of the past, from what some may have seen on ``Laverne and Shirley'' or what they would imagine a traditional manufacturing plant to look like.

Those folks who work on the manufacturing line at this particular facility have to be able to use programmable logic controls. They have to be able to do quality control and math, and to communicate as a team. They have to communicate in a way that puts them at the cutting edge of advanced manufacturing. This highlights some of the biggest challenges in manufacturing. It takes a lot of money to invest in a plant and machinery in order to make them capable of competing as a modern-day plant. It takes access to capital.

We also need to change the public's perception of what manufacturing is. It is a very different place to work--a manufacturing line--than it was 20 or 50 years ago. They are safe, clean, and well lit. These are decent, high-paying jobs. If we are going to win in the global competition for manufacturing, we need to strengthen the skills and the perceptions of manufacturing across our country.

Each of the three bills I have spoken about today will help create good manufacturing jobs here in America, and I believe are ready for consideration on a bipartisan basis by this Chamber. We need to take action together on a bipartisan basis to get our economy going again.

I will remind everyone: Manufacturing jobs are not just decent jobs, not just good jobs, they are great jobs. They are the jobs of today and tomorrow. They are the jobs that sustain and build the backbone of the American middle class.

We already have all the tools in this country to ensure its growth, but if we work together and put in place stronger and better Federal policies in partnership with the private sector, we can put jets on our manufacturing sector, and it can take off and grow again.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, every so often in between the crises and rancor and partisan fighting, we have an opportunity to make real progress in the Senate. This week we are considering the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. It is a bill that will put in place basic workplace protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans.

It has been a big year for equality nationally and in my home State of Delaware. The Delaware General Assembly legalized same-sex marriage in May, giving every Delawarean access to the full rights and responsibilities of marriage, no matter the orientation.

A month later, Delaware's General Assembly built on its 3-year-old law by protecting LGBT people from workplace discrimination, adding protections for transgender Delawareans as well. These two laws are about dignity, respect, and basic fairness for our neighbors.

Of course, a month later, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, giving all married couples across our country access to the Federal benefits they are due. This has truly been a historic year for civil rights and for our country.

For all of our progress, much remains to be done. In 29 States it is still legal to fire someone just because they are gay, just because they are lesbian, or just because they are bisexual. That means that more than 4 million Americans across those States go to work day in and day out with no protection against being fired summarily because of who they love. In 33 States, which include 5 million people, it is legal to fire someone because of their gender identity.

I thank my colleague, the Senator from Oregon, for his hard work and leading this fight here on the floor, and the Senator from Iowa for his long advocacy for this bill that should have passed years and years ago.

More than 40 percent of lesbian, gay, and bisexual Americans, and almost 80 percent of transgender Americans, say they have been mistreated in the workplace because of who they are or because of who they love. Clearly there is still work for us to do.

The Employment Non-Discrimination Act would provide basic protections against workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. It is a bill that is built on our Nation's historic civil rights laws, including the Civil Rights Act and the Americans With Disabilities Act. This is about basic fairness.

The overwhelming majority of Americans--in fact, more than 80 percent--think it is already against the law to fire someone just because they are gay. Most Fortune 500 companies already have policies preventing discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in place.

Some of Delaware's biggest employers and companies, including DuPont, Dow, Bank of America, TD Bank, Christiana Care, and the University of Delaware have led the way with their own policies to protect the rights of LGBT Delawareans and their employees.

There is real momentum behind these protections, and it is time for Congress to pass this law. Protecting Americans from discrimination is part of America's shared values, and it needs to be part of our laws as well.

No one here thinks it is OK to fire someone simply because they are African American or because they are a woman or because they are an older American. It is not OK to fire someone because they are gay or transgender either. Equality is a fundamental part of our shared American values: Do unto others; treat people with the respect and dignity with which you want them to treat you. Majorities in every State support putting these protections in place.

Majorities of Democrats and of Republicans and of Independents support putting these protections in place. Majorities in every Christian denomination support putting these protections in place. The majority of small business owners surveyed support putting these protections in place.

Freedom from discrimination is a fundamental American value that we don't just share, we cherish. Why not put these protections in place now, today, to ensure that gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Americans will be able to go to work, to earn a living, to provide for themselves and their families, without the fear of being fired just because of who they are.

The opportunity in front of every one of us is an important one. Leadership on civil rights in this Chamber has traditionally been bipartisan, and this period of partisanship on civil rights is only fairly recent and need not be permanent. In fact, this bill is cosponsored by two of our Republican colleagues, Senator Collins of Maine and Senator Kirk of Illinois. When he came to the floor to speak on ENDA earlier this week, Senator Kirk noted the importance of a Senator from his home State of Illinois being in a position of leadership on this civil rights issue. This really is a historic opportunity.

When the Senate votes on final passage on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act tomorrow, I hope we all will take advantage of this historic opportunity.

With that, I yield the floor.

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