Athens News – U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, stressed business incubation, investment in manufacturing and investment in the future when he delivered the keynote speech at the Ohio University Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Affairs’ economic-growth strategies conference in Athens on Wednesday.

The conference, called “Positioning Appalachia: Economic Growth Strategies for Success,” was attended by numerous area elected officials, leaders and business people.

Brown was introduced by Democratic political strategist and Athens native David Wilhelm, who referred to the senator from Lorain as a “true capitalist.”

Wilhelm explained that this is so because Brown advocates for economic development that leads to success for Americans at all levels of the socio-economic spectrum.

For his part, Brown said it was embarrassing for him to see the debate in Washington over the past several weeks focused on something it didn’t need to be focused on.

“Not on budgets, it needed to be on budgets and deficit reductions, but mostly it needs to be on jobs,” he said. “There are things we need to do. We need to do an infrastructure (reinvestment) bank. We need to enforce trade rules better than we do. We need to work with small businesses. We need to do ‘buy America,’ when we’re spending tax dollars.”

Brown spoke about the importance of manufacturing, pointing out that Ohio is the third leading manufacturing state in the country behind the population-rich states of Texas and California.

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