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2004 SESSION


HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION NO. 261
Expressing the General Assembly's support for the Virginia Manufacturers Association's Virginia Strategy for Growth and Manufacturing Renewal.

Agreed to by the House of Delegates, January 30, 2004
Agreed to by the Senate, March 9, 2004

WHEREAS, Virginia manufacturing is essential to the strength of the American economy and its prospects for future growth and is as central to our national security as it is to our economic security; and

WHEREAS, the manufacturing sector for decades has accounted for about 25 percent of the United States' economic output and the overwhelming percentage of American exports and continues to do both today while leading the economy in productivity; and

WHEREAS, manufacturing in the United States is innovative, efficient, and productive, with the best workers in the world, technologies on the global cutting edge, and research and development programs and efforts capable of keeping it there; and

WHEREAS, manufacturing is challenged as never before, finding itself on the front lines of the most intense global competition in history, which makes it virtually impossible to raise prices even as costs continue to rise for many reasons, including the government's actions or its failure to act; and

WHEREAS, the costs of domestic production, for reasons ranging from health care inflation and regulatory and legal burdens to volatile energy prices, have combined with slow economic growth domestically and around the world, a persistently overvalued dollar, and terrorism and geopolitical uncertainty to increase the complexity of the challenge facing manufacturing; and

WHEREAS, the economic climate has yielded the slowest manufacturing recovery in decades and a decline in manufacturing employment totaling a loss of two million jobs, despite productivity gains and a threatened loss of the critical skills associated with them; and

WHEREAS, an effective strategy for manufacturing renewal to reverse these adverse trends depends in large part on the enactment and implementation of an effective policy agenda for growth by the Congress, the executive branch, and Virginia's General Assembly and administration; and

WHEREAS, according to the Virginia Manufacturers Association, special emphasis must be placed on such policy areas as tax policy, fiscal policy, fees for services, health care and retirement system reforms, worker's skills enhancement efforts, transportation policy, environmental policy, litigation efficiency, trade policy, national and state energy policy, asbestos litigation and the legal system, and technology policy; and

WHEREAS, the Governor of Virginia and the Virginia General Assembly have recognized the acute stresses confronting manufacturing, including the loss of employment; and

WHEREAS, to further refine and clarify the issues and to create broader public awareness of the centrality of manufacturing to Virginia's economic well-being, Virginia should create a blue-ribbon commission, interdisciplinary and interdepartmental, to analyze the situation and propose a strategy and plan of action for the state government to complement private sector actions to effectively sustain Virginia's leadership in global competition; now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED by the House of Delegates, the Senate concurring, That the General Assembly express its support of the Virginia Manufacturers Association's Strategy for Growth and Manufacturing Renewal; and, be it

RESOLVED FURTHER, That the Clerk of the House of Delegates transmit a copy of this resolution to the Virginia Manufacturers Association in order that the members of the Association may be apprised of the sense of the General Assembly of Virginia in this matter.