advertisement

---

During a meeting yesterday with U.S. Senate leaders, Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM) President Dennis Slater called on Congress to address the “urgent need” to rebuild America’s infrastructure and actively pursue innovative funding approaches for the work without increasing the federal deficit.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska) called the meeting to hear from business, labor and state government representatives on ways to work together to advance comprehensive infrastructure investment legislation in Congress, AEM officials said in a prepared statement.

AEM supports policies that create manufacturing jobs. Slater spoke to the group about AEM’s “I Make America” campaign to promote U.S. manufacturing jobs through infrastructure investment and passage of export agreements.

“The opinion research we’ve conducted shows not only that voters nationwide overwhelmingly agree that modernizing and rebuilding infrastructure is both a safety and a jobs issue, but that we need to be thinking ‘outside the box’ with innovative, new funding approaches to make this critical investment without increasing the national deficit,” Slater said.

Other attendees at the meeting included CSX Corp. Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer Michael Ward, Amtrak President and CEO Joseph Boardman, and Genesis High Speed Rail America Chairman Duane Wilder.