New York”™s junior U.S. senator hopes Congress will unite across party lines to pass three bills aimed at stimulating growth in high-tech manufacturing and creating good-paying jobs in New York and other states where manufacturing has declined in recent years.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand is a Senate co-sponsor of pending legislation to create a “Make It in America” block grant program. In a recent conference call with reporters, the Hudson Valley Democrat said party colleagues in the House of Representatives are seeking a Republican co-sponsor for the bill in the Republican-dominated House.
The Make It in America program would provide competitive grants to small- and medium-size manufacturers in states and local communities with six consecutive months or more of double-digit unemployment since 2007 or where manufacturing jobs have declined by 15 percent over the last four years. New York, which lost more than 123,000 manufacturing jobs from 2005 to 2010, qualifies for the program, she said.
The grants would help companies retool or retrofit their plants and retrain their workforce for advanced manufacturing in areas such as clean energy, computer technology, aerospace and biotechnology.
Gillibrand also backs the Security in Energy and Manufacturing (SEAM) Act, legislation that would extend and expand the current advanced energy manufacturing tax credit for U.S. companies that invest in clean energy manufacturing projects.
The federal government has funded $2.3 billion in advanced energy manufacturing credits, which amount to 30 percent of qualifying company costs. The federal funding leveraged more than $5.4 billion of private investment that helped create an estimated 17,000 jobs, Gillibrand said.
The SEAM bill would extend that program and allow companies to receive grants in place of tax credits. Gillibrand said the grants would aid new companies that do not yet have tax liabilities and so cannot claim credits and companies struggling to obtain credit.
In New York state, “Almost all of the manufacturers I met with would like to green their operations” and could benefit from the SEAM program, she said.
The senator is also co-sponsoring legislation that would give a long-term extension to the 8-year-old New Markets tax credit program. The program provides a 39 percent tax credit for community development entities to spur additional private investments in businesses in economically distressed communities.
Over a six-year period, every federal dollar invested in the program leveraged $12 in private capital, Gillibrand said. In New York, 155 businesses have received more than $1.42 billion in New Market credits.
The tax credit since 2007 has been extended on a year-to-year basis, she said, making it difficult for communities to plan projects and leverage additional private investment in new business ventures.
The extended New Markets program would cost an estimated $25 billion, or $5 billion annually over five years.
Despite “a climate of anti-spending” in Congress, Gillibrand said she thinks bipartisan support can be mustered for programs that create advanced manufacturing jobs and business growth. “This I think is the best targeted strategy that we can have,” she said.
The state comptroller”™s office in 2010 found that computer and electronic manufacturers in New York increased employment by 9 percent from 2004 to 2008, while traditional manufacturing continued its decline. In the same period, high-paying employment in information and communications technology rose by 6,000 jobs and the state”™s biotech or life-sciences industry ”“ a major focus of business and job growth initiatives in Westchester County and the Hudson Valley region ”“ added 1,800 jobs.
“America was built by New York”™s manufacturing,” Gillibrand said. “Our manufacturers powered our economy through the 20th century and will be the key to fueling our economy in the 21st century.”
