Manufacturing gets pre-election support

In broad terms, the strategy espoused by the White House, part of it spelled out in a memo this week, is to tax firms that transfer manufacturing jobs to foreign countries and invest in U.S. infrastructure.

There are also a raft of smaller bills on the congressional agenda, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.

The initiative is called "Make It in America."

"We know manufacturing produces good jobs, high paying jobs," said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md.

Republican Whip Eric Cantor, R-Va., said the Democrats were whistling in the wind. "More meaningless than harmful," he said.

The tide of job losses in manufacturing predates several administrations. In 1999, there were 17.3 million manufacturing jobs in the United States, Labor Department records show. That was down to 11.7 million by 2009, the Post reported.

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