Jobs Tops Blumenthal’s Long List Of Concerns

By John Voket

This is the first of a two-part interview with Senator Richard Blumenthal

Senator Richard Blumenthal walked through the offices of The Newtown Bee January 9 like many a visitor who has never been past the newspaper’s lobby.

As he moved from the reception area headed for a meeting room, the lawmaker and former longtime state attorney general became more animated as he glanced around, taking in the multitude of antiques, folk art pieces, pictures and bric-a-brac populating many of the walls, shelves, and surfaces.

It was the senator’s second stop of the day at a Newtown company that boasts a collection of unique memorabilia. A few hours earlier he visited SMT Corp in Botsford where Mr Blumenthal not only learned about the company’s cutting -edge techniques for rooting out counterfeit electronic components, but marveled at a company collection of original World War I and II war bond posters. (See separate story.)

After settling into The Bee’s conference room sofa, Senator Blumenthal provided a wide-ranging interview touching on observations from his first year serving Connecticut in the beltway versus the capital city and his concerns about Chinese currency manipulation and electronic parts counterfeiting.

Mr Blumenthal also talked proudly about several initiatives to assist and support returning veterans, touched on some of the legislation he backed to improve educational opportunities, as well as a bill to fund research on antibiotics to fight drug-resistant viruses.

But most of all, Sen Blumenthal talked about listening to constituents, learning about their needs, and focusing on getting Connecticut and the nation back to work.

“You know, jobs really have to be our priority. Creating employment not only because its the right thing to do economically, but also for dignity and self respect,” he said, explaining a tax credit and the first piece of Senate legislation he proposed, aiming to help get returning veterans back into the workforce by offering a tax credit to potential employers.

“That credit was actually adopted by congress and signed by the President, and I’m very proud that I’ve begun making a difference on employment and jobs and veteran affairs all in my first year in the senate,” Mr Blumenthal said.

He also sought to boost the ability of community colleges to expand to meet the growing workforce demand for skilled training and continuing education.

“As I go around the state listening to small businesses and manufacturers, [I hear] that they have jobs and they can’t fill them because they can’t find people with the skills to fill them,” the senator said. “In Newtown SMT is going to be expanding and adding 15–20 more people in the next year or so, Goodrich is going to be adding 75 more people in Danbury, other businesses are going to be growing and they need to have people with the skills for those jobs of the future we need to grow, we will grow…we have to grow.”

Having just visited the Abbott Technical High School in Danbury, Sen Blumenthal was enthusiastic about finding ways to combine state and federal money to improve the access to work-based vocational training in cooperation with the state’s technical school system.

The senator said he is supporting the expansion of an existing but underfunded job training program that designs on-site training at companies for the jobs they offer. Sen Blumenthal also noted that America’s competitiveness in the world market has to remain strong to sustain the workforce, so he is also keeping a close eye on a particular issue that he believes is a threat to America’s workforce.

“I really think we have to crack down on Chinese currency manipulation, which creates barriers to our exports. Undervaluing their currency, which the Chinese have relentlessly done, means we have higher prices on our goods going abroad,” the senator said. “So I’ve pursued legislation that would require sanctions if the Chinese don’t change their unfair trade practices.”

Safeguarding Military Electronics

Senator Blumenthal then turned to his earlier visit at the SMT Corp, which stocks and supplies electronic components, as well as conducts state-of-the-art testing to determine if electronic parts are counterfeit. The senator said that he was concerned about the potential for look-alike but subpar components to find their way into the sensitive systems used by American defense forces.

“The counterfeiting of electronics is not only costly [to consumers], it’s actually life-threatening to our troops — the war fighters who depend on the accuracy and reliability of the parts in the machines they fly, the weapons they fire, or other systems,” he said. “The pictures we saw of piles of parts [being sold] on the street is unacceptable.”

He likened the high volume counterfeiting of sensitive electronics to a cyber war involving the Chinese government.

“Every day, literally, they are looking to penetrate our cyber defenses. And one of my frustrations is I can’t really discuss the threats that we hear about in our briefings, but the American people need to know that a cyber war is very much going on and threatening.”

Sen Blumenthal then refocused on a different type of defense, providing increased support for the underfunded researchers looking to develop antibiotics to fight developing drug-resistant viruses. He explained that drug companies have little interest in mounting expensive research from the ground up, to develop antibiotics that may only be taken by a limited number of people for just a few weeks.

“Whereas, other kinds of cholesterol drugs, or high blood pressure medicine, or other chronic disease medications may be taken for the rest of people’s lives, so they are huge profit producers,” Sen Blumenthal said. “We need to create incentives — better protection for the intellectual property that goes into these new antibiotics that will fight these drug-resistant germs, as well as fast-tracking the FDA approval process so the costs are lowered.”