Murphy and Blumenthal: Manufacturing is back

HARTFORD — With U.S. financial markets hemorrhaging Monday afternoon, the irony of positive economic news for Connecticut was not lost on Congressman Chris Murphy (D-5) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who teamed up to present the results of a manufacturing survey in a televised press conference at the state Capitol.Launching the survey in April, the congressman and senator provided online links to a questionnaire, asking respondents to give their outlook for the future of their businesses and to identify pros and cons of doing business in Connecticut. Murphy said they collected responses from 151 manufacturers from across the state who suggested that business is beginning to boom again.“We are of the belief that Connecticut’s economy cannot thrive going forward without a vibrant manufacturing sector, and as we have seen with the last round of jobs numbers, manufacturing is far from dead in this country,” Murphy said. “In fact, it is one of the leading edges of growth as our very fragile economy continues to creep toward recovery.”Murphy noted that 89 percent of manufacturers surveyed reported that they had plans to hire new workers or maintain current employment levels in the next year, which is in contrast to a decade of decline in manufacturing in Connecticut and across the country. “The optimism that you hear nationwide from manufacturers is reflected in Connecticut,” the congressman said. “In the last month, the United States added 24,000 jobs in manufacturing, and since December of 2010, this country has added almost 300,000 new jobs in manufacturing. That reverses a decade-long decline in manufacturing throughout this country. We are on the brink of a reindustrialization of this nation, and Connecticut has to make sure that it is part of that manufacturing rebirth.”Murphy said the primary lesson from the data was that America should not decrease its investment in education and vocational programs. “When you hear that almost 90 percent of manufacturers want to expand and almost 90 percent are having trouble finding trained workers, it should be a caution to anyone in Washington who is talking about dramatically cutting funding for education or job training,” he said. “Cuts that could come down to the state of Connecticut could result in a reduction in slots at community and technical colleges and that could have a devastating impact on Connecticut’s ability to be a part of this manufacturing renaissance.” Murphy said it would be “foolhardy” to make such cuts.Blumenthal agreed with Murphy and called the manufacturing survey “a game changer. It shows in the real world that Connecticut manufacturing is poised for expansion, creating jobs and new businesses. “The takeaway here is that almost all manufacturers are looking forward to hiring or maintaining their present workforce and that what they need is the skilled workers to fill those potential openings,” Blumenthal said. “We’ve been hearing that but to have it reinforced so overwhelmingly by these numbers is really groundbreaking.”Both Blumenthal and Murphy acknowledged that the positive economic news was coming on a bad day for the U.S. economy, as the markets reacted to the Standard & Poor’s (S&P) first-ever downgrade of the country’s credit rating, from triple-A to AA+. As Connecticut’s congressional delegates were delivering their positive survey results, President Barack Obama was addressing the country regarding the downgrade and its effects on the markets.“I know we’re going through a tough time right now,” Obama said from the White House. “We’ve been going through a tough time for the last two-and-a-half years. And I know a lot of people are worried about the future. But here’s what I also know: There will always be economic factors that we can’t control — earthquakes, spikes in oil prices, slowdowns in other parts of the world. But how we respond to those tests — that’s entirely up to us. Markets will rise and fall, but this is the United States of America. No matter what some agency may say, we’ve always been and always will be a triple-A country.”Financial markets continued to reel Monday afternoon, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average losing 634 points to settle at 10,809.85 while the NASDAQ lost 174 points, or more than 7 percent, to end up at 2,357.69. Blumenthal had particularly strong words for Standard & Poor’s, which he said was partially responsible for the country’s fiscal crisis. “Standard and Poor’s has completely surrendered, in my view, any claim to credibility and integrity over the years by its contribution to the fiscal crisis that brought this nation to the precipice of catastrophe,” the senator said, adding that the credit-rating agency was “a little bit like the arsonist setting the house on fire, pouring fuel on it and then wanting to claim a reward for reporting the house on fire when the fire department’s already there.”Blumenthal also noted that, in his first six months on the job, he has been “astonished by the gridlock, even paralysis,” that exists in Washington, but he remains encouraged by the manufacturing survey response. “I think there has to be consensus that the American economy needs more jobs, that we need to rescue the home manufacturing industry and we need manufacturing to thrive, and the way to do it is to provide workers to fill those openings,” he said.Murphy said he and Blumenthal would be taking the survey results back to Washington to lobby for support of education and job-training programs and to address manufacturers’ concerns about health-care costs, tax structure and regulations. “There is a lot of new information in this report, but some of it simply confirms a lot of what the senator and I have been hearing as we’ve been traveling around the state,” Murphy said. “For me, it reaffirms some of the work that has already been underway and gives me new impetus to be a stronger voice on many issues.”