We congratulate Gov. Jerry Brown on a proposed balanced budget that will help California provide important government services.

We appreciate that the Governor proposes the addition of a statewide sales tax exemption on the purchase of manufacturing equipment.  This will make California a more competitive place to scale up production.

It is critical that we rebuild our middle class and grow high-wage manufacturing jobs. California still has almost 1.8 million people unemployed that could benefit from a growing manufacturing sector.

While our manufacturing employment lags the rest of the country, our manufacturing investments trail even farther behind.  In the past six years we had 6.8 new or expanded facilities for every one million people.  The rest of the country averaged a whopping 57.6 per million.

We look forward to working with the Governor to develop a plan to bring back manufacturing jobs and other middle class employment to grow our economy and ensure healthy state revenues in the future.