By Mark Scott
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Washington, DC – U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand unveiled three legislative goals Tuesday that she plans to push to help create more manufacturing jobs in New York.
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New York's junior senator says she wants to make health care more affordable for small businesses and the self-employed. She also wants to make it easier for manufacturers to ship products by rail by offering tax credits to the operators of so-called short lines.
But Gillibrand says the most significant part of her proposal is securing billions of dollar in funding for manufacturers to move to clean energy production. She envisions a revolving loan fund that would help small- and medium-sized businesses retool, expand or establish homegrown clean energy manufacturing.
Gillibrand says every corner of the state has been "crippled" by manufacturing job losses. Gillibrand says the state has lost 160,000 jobs since 2001, with 23,000 of the losses occurring here in Western New York. But she says there are opportunities to in the emerging bio-tech industry, especially in the Buffalo-Niagara region.