In this Capitol Report:
This Capitol Report is brought to you by:
Two Weeks Until NAM’s Manufacturing Day!
Today, CACI received the following email from the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), with which it is mutually affiliated. CACI encourages its members that are manufacturers to participate in Manufacturing Day.
Manufacturing Day is just two weeks away. Have you invited your members to host a Manufacturing Day event?
The focus of Manufacturing Day is on strengthening manufacturing awareness in local communities and ensuring a robust workforce for the future, an aim that I feel confident that we all agree is of critical importance to your members, as it is to members of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM).
Manufacturing Day is a great opportunity to showcase our great industry. Lawmakers need to fully understand the potential for their policies to disrupt key areas of process flow. Educational institutions should provide students the skills they require to thrive in a manufacturing workplace. Guidance counselors and parents must encourage today’s youth to explore careers in manufacturing and counter misconceptions about pay, quality of life and advancement. Manufacturing Day events address these topics in a direct and proactive way.
My challenge to all State Associations Group members is to have 5 or more of your member companies host a Manufacturing Day event in 2015.
Sign-up and registration can be easily completed on the official Manufacturing Day website. The Manufacturing Day partners have also put together a resource rich toolkit to guide companies through every step of planning and executing a successful event.
NAM Director of Public Affairs & Grassroots Advocacy Christopher Glen is also available for planning assistance or to answer any Manufacturing Day related questions you or your membership may have.
Christopher Glen
Director, Public Affairs & Grassroots Advocacy
[email protected]
(202) 637-3121Celebrating the amazing things that manufacturing does for the economy and workforce by opening our doors for community members to personally experience is a win-win for all involved. I hope you will join the NAM in strongly encouraging your membership to start changing the misguided perceptions of manufacturing by hosting a Manufacturing Day event in 2015.
Thank you for your support of the NAM and of Manufacturing Day 2015.
Across the nation, manufacturers and NAM have planned almost 1,000 events. In Colorado, several events open to the public are planned:
Front Range Community College at 2120 Miller Drive in Longmont will provide an open house from 3 p.m. until 6 p.m. of its Advanced Technology Center. Visitors can meet with instructors of the Precision Machining Technology Program to discuss machining classes and see demonstrations of manual and CNC machine tools.
Bal Seal Engineering, Inc., in Colorado Springs will host a facility tour from 7:30 a.m. until 12 Noon. Bal Seal Engineering makes “components that improve the performance and reliability of critical equipment used everywhere from deep sea to deep space.”
In Pueblo, Peweag Traction Chain will offer tours of its plant from 8 a.m. until 3 p.m. According to the company, “pewag has hundreds of years experience in the manufacturing of chains and their components. Since the first documented reference of its forging plant in Brueckl, Austria in 1479, the pewag group has become one of the leading chain manufacturers worldwide. Today its success is based on well-engineered, state-of-the-art quality products. pewag’s primary product lines are traction chains, industrial chains and tire-protection-chains. In 2014 pewag opened a brand new chain manufacturing plant in Pueblo, Colorado. The new state-of-the-art plant manufactures snow chains for the North American market.”
In Denver, three post-secondary institutions—Metropolitan State University of Denver, Emily Griffith Technical College and Community College of Denver—are cooperating to offer campus tours from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. that focus on manufacturing careers. Visitors will tour new facilities supported by the “Colorado Helps Advance Manufacturing Program” (CHAMP), which is funded by a grant from the U.S. Labor Department to a consortium of Colorado colleges to increase the number of students earning degrees and certificates in manufacturing.
In addition, at least three manufacturers are planning events that are not open to the public.
CACI Gold Partner Lockheed Martin Space Systems will host a by-invitation-only event to educate visitors about its manufacturing capabilities for spacecraft subassemblies and vehicle integration and testing.
In Fort Collins, CACI member Wolf Robotics will host students to teach them about how robots and CAD drawings interact with programming robots.
Intertech Plastics in Denver will provide a three-hour tour for a hands-on experience to students from the advanced manufacturing classes at MLK Early College.
It’s not too late for other CACI manufacturers to plan such events for National Manufacturing Day as inviting high-school students to tour their plants. NAM can help in the planning for such an event.
“NAM and CACI Promote ‘National Manufacturing Day’ on October 2nd,” CACI Colorado Capitol Report, September 3rd.For more information, read:
Federal Policy News
New Ozone Regs Create Risk for Economies in Colorado, Nationwide...
With an October deadline fast approaching for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to finalize a new emissions limit for ground-level ozone, the volume of concerns regarding the risk that the new regulation could pose to Colorado’s and the nation’s economy are steadily increasing.
Just yesterday, The Denver Post editorial board joined the conversation, staking out a cautionary position regarding the danger that an overly aggressive tightening of ground-level ozone emissions limits poses to Denver and more broadly to Colorado.
Noting that the current ground-level ozone emissions limit of 75 parts-per-billion (ppb), established in 2008, has yet to even be fully implemented, the Post goes so far as to warn that:
“A standard of 65 ppb, for example, would amount to a seriously costly and complex challenge for Colorado, and the Front Range in particular, and be out of reach for the foreseeable future.”
The Wall Street Journal has also addressed the risks of the pending ozone standard in a piece titled: “The EPA’s Next Big Economic Chokehold.”
This article features links to supporting documents regarding the science, or lack thereof, underlying some of the fundamental arguments the U.S. EPA is advancing to advocate for the need for more aggressive ozone standards, as well as some of the studies that analyze the potentially crippling effects that an overreaching standard could have on the U.S. economy. The article notes:
“The new regulation may be the most expensive ever for the U.S. economy—even worse than the Clean Power Plan’s effect on coal-fired power plants. Some studies, such as one published in August by National Economic Research Associates, estimate implementation costs of hundreds of billions of dollars a year in the short run, and trillions of dollars over the next two decades, as well as millions of lost jobs. Why would it be so costly? Because attacking ozone involves almost every facet of the economy—as the EPA notes, “automobiles, trucks, buses, factories, power plants” and “consumer products” all contribute to ground-level ozone.
The pending ground-level ozone standard is a critical issue for CACI and its member due to the direct impact it could have on specific industries and the risks that the standard could pose to the strength and momentum of Colorado’s economy.
CACI has engaged the Federal rulemaking process regarding the proposed ozone standard and is continuing to advocate to Colorado’s Congressional Delegation regarding the importance of a standard that takes into consideration the costs of compliance, as well as the numerous environmental and geographic factors contributing to higher ozone levels in Colorado that are far beyond the control of any one individual, company or industry.
For more information, read:
“EPA’s ozone emissions rule now in Obama’s hands; business groups urge him to reject it,” by Kent Hoover, The Denver Business Journal, August 31st.
“CACI Hits Back Against Ozone Rules,” CACI Colorado Capitol Report, August 14th.
NAM Launches 2016 Election Center
The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), with which CACI is mutually affiliated, Wednesday announced that it has launched its 2016 Election Center in its effort to encourage manufacturers to “get out the vote” by their workers to encourage the election of a pro-business president and U.S. Congress.
Here’s the message to CACI from NAM:
While it may appear early, the campaigns to elect our next president are moving forward very quickly. Primaries are just around the corner. The second Republican presidential debate will take place this evening.
With this critical election season underway, we are launching our National Association of Manufacturers 2016 Election Center. I hope you will consider sharing this site with your team.
There are over 12 million manufacturing workers in this country, but in a NAM survey we conducted earlier in the year, only 17 percent of them had heard from their employers about the importance of voting during the 2014 elections. We can—and we MUST—do better to protect the future of manufacturing in America.
That is why the NAM is launching this program now. We are committing more resources this election cycle to our Get-Out-The-Vote efforts than in past elections. An aggressive approach is needed to get all manufacturing voters to the polls as part of our great nation’s political process. But for our work to succeed, we need you to join us.
Our recently re-designed 2016 NAM Election Center webpage will serve as a central hub for all of the NAM’s election resources and information. It has all the tools your member companies and their employees need to register to vote, best practice information for building a successful voter education program, and candidate Voter Guides on key federal races later in 2016. It has all the resources you need to talk legally and effectively with your employees about voting.
Can you forward this email to the person on your team who is responsible for member communications, and ask them to consider participating in our programs?
Please take the time to encourage your member companies’ leaders to use the NAM voter education and turnout effort materials. We all know this is a pivotal election for the nation’s manufacturers, and the NAM stands ready to assist you every step of the way.
As partners in the manufacturing community, we need you to take the time to encourage your members, employees, family, and friends to be Manufacturing Voters in 2016.
Thank you for your commitment to our advocacy goals and to this critical initiative. If you or your team have questions please reach out to Leann Paradise, the NAM’s manager of external relations, at (202) 637-3049 or [email protected].
Congress in Brief
- Congress 12 days away from a government shutdown: Disagreements to fund the government are primarily over sequestration cuts (demands to remove spending limits from many Democrats) and Planned Parenthood (de-)funding being pushed by Presidential candidates Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and the House “Freedom Caucus” – The Government May Shut Down, Here’s What You Need to Know, Bloomburg News.
- Iran Deal Moves Forward – The Senate took its third vote to address the Iran deal and failed to reach agreement.