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Tom Reed’s Revitalize American Manufacturing and Innovation Act (RAMI) will be part of the Fiscal Year 2015 appropriations bill considered by the House yesterday.  Reed’s bill was added as part of a compromise between House and Senate appropriators on a bill to fund government operations for 2015.  It is expected to pass both the House and Senate and be signed into law by the President this week.

"We have worked tirelessly to get this to the finish line – it was our main focus for this year and during the lame duck session,” Reed said. “In these hyper-partisan times, it can be difficult to build consensus, but that is what we did and I am excited to say that our manufacturing jobs bill could be law in just a few days."

"RAMI will create new high-tech, high-paying manufacturing jobs for our children and grandchildren,” Reed predicted. “It’s only fair that they have opportunities to create and innovate here at home. Our bill sets the stage for those jobs and makes sure the U.S. is a world leader in advanced manufacturing."

Reed’s bill passed the House in September but had been held up in the Senate. Reed thanked Senator Roy Blunt (R-MO), Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Congressman Joe Kennedy (D-MA) saying that the four worked together on a bipartisan basis to advance the bill and be sure that it was included in the appropriations bill.

RAMI will direct the Department of Commerce to establish Centers for Manufacturing Innovation to focus on advancing the next generation of manufacturing technologies. The Centers will help retain and grow manufacturing jobs across our nation by focusing critical resources in collaboration with public-private partnerships led by industry, universities, community colleges and non-profits. It also addresses the skills gap by producing the next generation of skilled workers and engineers focusing on education, workforce training, research and development, and commercialization.

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