Make It In America
In 2022, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and House Democrats unveiled the new Make It In America plan to create jobs and expand economic opportunity. With too many Americans only getting by instead of getting ahead, the plan focuses on four key areas where Congress can be a partner in creating the best conditions for the growth of jobs and opportunities. They are: education, entrepreneurship, infrastructure, and supply chain resilience. Twenty-two bipartisan Make It In America bills have now been enacted into law, including the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in 2021 and the CHIPS and Science Act in 2022.
To read Leader Hoyer’s remarks on the updated Make It In America plan, click here. For more information on the goals and policy recommendations included in the Make It In America plan, click here.
First launched by Leader Hoyer in 2010 when our economic recovery from the 2008 global financial crisis was just beginning, the Make It In America plan has been focused on gathering the best ideas and transforming them into policies that Congress can enact to help workers and businesses succeed. The plan has brought together bipartisan policies and legislation aimed at promoting economic growth, the creation of jobs that won’t be outsourced, and building a competitive workforce that can access opportunities in today’s changing global economy.
Recognizing the many changes that took place during our recovery, House Democrats held a series of hearings in 2015 called “Make It In America: What’s Next?” to explore new challenges and new opportunities in our economy. During the hearing series, seventy-seven House Democrats heard testimony from innovators, entrepreneurs, economists, Members of Congress, and others about how the Make It In America plan should be updated to address new challenges and take advantage of new opportunities. Click here for a look at testimony from the hearings. It was in these hearings that House Democrats identified the three original areas on which Congress ought to focus: education, entrepreneurship, and infrastructure.
Understanding that the best ideas would come from outside of Washington, Leader Hoyer and House Democrats embarked on the Make It In America Listening Tour starting in 2017, visiting nine cities across the country to hear directly from Americans about the challenges they face and identifying best practices in meeting them. The ideas shared on this tour informed the 2018 update to the Make It In America plan.
As we continue our financial recovery from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Make It In America agenda is responding to the challenges of today’s economy with the inclusion of a fourth pillar, supply chain resilience, which joins MIIA’s existing pillars of education, entrepreneurship, and infrastructure to serve as an effective playbook to expand American families’ and businesses’ access to the tools they need to succeed in our twenty-first century global economy
Today, President Obama laid out his budget proposal for the next fiscal year, and I am pleased that it places a strong emphasis on investments in education, innovation, and infrastructure. His budget builds on the blueprint he laid out during his State of the Union address last month – a blueprint that reflects the core commitment to job creation and the middle class in House Democrats’ Make It In America jobs plan. Manufacturing will be key to our long-term recovery, and I am glad that the President’s budget includes provisions that will help us remain the world’s manufacturing leader and a place where innovation fuels the creation of middle class jobs for years to come.
Today’s report showed our economy added 257,000 private sector jobs in January, lowering our unemployment rate to 8.3%. While it is a welcome sign that the pace of hiring has increased, and our economy experienced the twenty-third month of consecutive private sector job growth, 13 million Americans remain out of work and looking for jobs as we continue our still fragile recovery.
The manufacturing sector grew at its fastest rate since last summer as new orders picked up pace, contributing to the economy's strong start this year.
Over the past year, House Republicans have claimed over and over again that their focus is on jobs and the economy. Unfortunately, their record doesn’t match up with their rhetoric.
As an early educator, my wife Judy devoted her career to helping provide children with the opportunities, care, and support they deserve. Before she passed away in 1997, Judy had already impacted the lives of so many children in Prince George's County, Maryland, where she oversaw the county's early education programs.
A key component of House Democrats’ Make It In America jobs plan is taking action to ensure that our trading partners are playing fair. President Obama has made this an important part of our trade policy and approach to economic competitiveness, and I applaud the diligence with which his Administration, including U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, has successfully pursued this case before the World Trade Organization. This ruling will discourage companies from relocating to China to take advantage of artificially-cheap raw materials, and it will help American manufacturers compete with China’s producers and create jobs here at home.
I thought it was an excellent speech. I thought it was a serious speech. We have a lot of challenges. The President obviously focused on what I think is critical to the American people - that's jobs…[House Democrats] have had an agenda, we call it “Make It In America,” in the Congress of the United States for the last two years. We’ve talked to the President about it. His manufacturing focus we think was absolutely right. We’ve lost 9 million manufacturing jobs over the last 20 years. We need to expand our manufacturing sector. We need to make things here in America. We need to provide the kind of middle class jobs paying good wages and having good benefits that the America middle class needs to grow, not shrink.
Tonight the President will deliver his State of the Union address to Congress, and discuss his “Blueprint for an America Built to Last,” a plan that will emphasize four pillars to support economic revitalization: American values, American manufacturing, American energy and skills for American workers. These pillars line up with House Democrats’ Make It In America plan, which aims to support job creation by cultivating an encouraging environment for businesses to innovate and make products here in the U.S.
Today marks the beginning of the second session of the 112th Congress, and another opportunity for Republicans to abandon their ideological agenda and focus on jobs and reducing the deficit. Instead of putting forward a comprehensive jobs plan or taking meaningful action on the deficit, so far, House Republicans have led a do-nothing Congress.
This morning’s announcement that our economy added 200,000 jobs in December, bringing our unemployment rate down to 8.5%, is a sign of progress and provides further evidence that our economy is recovering. However, while we have now experienced twenty-two straight months of private sector job growth, too many Americans remain out of work.