Nothing to Offer on Manufacturing

It is not surprising that an administration whose greatest economic priority is to permanently extend tax cuts for the wealthy has little to say about the dismal manufacturing decline over the past few years. As the nation has endured painful drops in employment, concentrated heavily in the upper Midwest and Northeastern regions of the country as well as parts of the Deep South, the Bush administration has passed up every opportunity to jumpstart growth and address the ailing manufacturing sector. As Senator Hillary Clinton stated today in a speech sponsored by the Center for American Progress, "The Bush administration's answer is to do nothing; to wait and see what comes next; to sit idle as the global playing field levels."

• President Bush has presided over the steepest decline in manufacturing employment in our nation's history. Manufacturing employment has dropped for 42 consecutive months and is down 3.3 million jobs from its last peak in March 1998. Yet since the start of the recession in March 2001, manufacturing has shed more than 2.6 million jobs – 80 percent of the decline since 1998 – and many of these jobs are gone for good. The decline in manufacturing jobs explains the bulk of the overall employment loss during the president's term, now totaling 2.3 million lost jobs – the worst employment record since the Great Depression.
• Manufacturing is critical to our economy and to the survival of America's middle class. Historically, the manufacturing sector has been the most solid path to the middle class, particularly for Americans without a college degree or higher education. It is the primary source of America's explosive productivity growth over the past decade and has larger employment spill-over effects, pays higher wages, and provides more benefits than other sectors of the economy. Manufacturing is critical to our nation’s future, yet the Bush administration continues to ignore the sector and the plights of those hard hit by the decline.
• President Bush has nothing to offer on manufacturing except more supply-side tax cuts for the wealthy. In 2001, 2002, and again in 2003, President Bush had an opportunity to help the manufacturing sector. At each turn, he chose to ignore the pain of millions of Americans in favor of tax cuts for the top 2 percent of earners. And the president's big suggestion to boost manufacturing jobs? The appointment of a new assistant secretary for manufacturing in the Commerce Department – a position the president has yet to fill 6 months after first suggesting the job.

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