This December, we’re bringing you the greatest hits from Job Search, AAM’s Presidential Candidate tracking website.

In November, Bachmann, Gingrich, Santorum, Paul and Perry all participated in a Manufacturing Jobs Forum in Pella, IA. Here’s what they had to say:

Newt Gingrich:

Well, if you have the best trained workforce in the world with the most modern equipment in the world wages go up because your productivity goes up.  There's a study that just came out of the Boston Consulting Group I think it was in August that says by 2015 South Carolina and Alabama will be less expensive than coastal manufacturing in China if you take total cost.  It's not just what you pay the person but it is what is the cost of the equipment, what is the cost of logistics, what is the cost of all the other factors.  There's no reason we can't rebuild America at a remarkable speed.  We've done it before but we have to have a totally new attitude in Washington and frankly, as the Governor knows, in states, in local communities we're not going to remain the post World War II America coasting because we're so dominant.  We're going to have to go through a period of very fundamental change in our policies and in our institutions.

Michele Bachmann:

In other words, we need the federal government to get off our back when it comes to taxes, you're taxing us to death, you're making us uncompetitive because United States manufacturing is 20% more difficult, less competitive you might say than their nine leading competitors around the world.  Next, the regulatory burden is out of control.  Steve Jobs recently said this to President Obama, he said you're killing us with regulations.  It's true.  Tort reform is a must do.  It costs our GDP two percent of GDP just to deal with tort reform and lawsuit abuse.

Rick Santorum:

If there is one thing I hear when I go out across the country it's that we need made in America again, we need to make more things in America again and it's not just that pride of making things but it is the opportunity for those at the bottom end of the income scale to be able to get the jobs and I think the average manufacturing job earns about $20,000 more than non-manufacturing jobs.  That means folks at the bottom end and the middle can move up that income scale and if we create a competitive environment -- I've heard some candidates talk about we need a trade role with China.  No we don't, we need to just beat them.  We need to have to have an environment here that can attract those jobs back from China and the new innovative products to be made here.

Ron Paul and Rick Perry did not make any mention of manufacturing at this forum.