Mr. President, I come to the floor today to repeat a point that I think is worth repeating, which is that on this second day of the shutdown of our Federal Government, we need to focus more on manufacturing jobs than on manufacturing crises.
I have been here as a Senator now just 3 years. As the Presiding Officer knows, and many of my other colleagues know, the folks from home are calling us in record numbers to say they want us to listen to each other, to work together, and to try to help to get America back to work.
We all remember where we were 5 years ago at the depth of the fiscal crisis, our financial system in collapse and our economy on life support. Millions lost their jobs and millions more lost their savings. We have begun to recover and to heal. We have had 7 1/2 million jobs created over the last 42 months, jobless claims are now at a 5-year low, and we have had 9 consecutive quarters of economic growth. I think we need to find ways to work together to continue to sustain that forward movement. The shutdown of this government does not help in any way.
One thing I want to highlight is some good news we have had. We just learned the manufacturing sector grew last month at its fastest pace in more than 2 years. We need to invest in that success and invest in that growth.
In the first decade of this century, we lost 6 million manufacturing jobs in this country, good-paying jobs, high-skilled jobs, jobs that come with benefits, jobs you can raise a family on. In the last 3 years, we have gained back half a million manufacturing jobs, but we are still way short of where we were in 2000.
There are a few items we could focus on that would help us grow this sector: skills training, opening markets abroad, expanding access to capital, and creating a national manufacturing strategy. I hope to come back to the floor and speak to these in much more detail in the days ahead.
Let me close by saying something that I think is simple. A shutdown is not the answer to this ongoing economic recovery. Defaulting on our debt is not the answer to what the folks from our home States are calling and asking us to do. The answer is for the Speaker of the House to allow the House to vote on a bill passed in this Chamber that, if adopted, would reopen the Federal Government and allow us to work together to revitalize our economy.
I yield the floor.