After touring Solid Stone Fabrics Inc.’s plant uptown on Friday, an excited U.S. Sen. Mark Warner said it may exemplify the future of manufacturing in this area. Solid Stone Fabrics builds on this area’s generations of manufacturing, but with 21st century skills, Warner said. He added that the small company is flexible, with quick turnaround time, and is high-tech. He said it makes a value-added product with environmentally friendly processes.

Senator Warner promoted bipartisan Startup Act 2.0 legislation he is sponsoring on CNN’s John King last night. Startup aims to jumpstart job creation by helping American entrepreneurs win the global competition for talent. Of course, the Senator could not pass up an opportunity to talk about his continuing efforts to craft comprehensive, bipartisan agreement on the deficit.

A bipartisan quartet of freshman senators on Capitol Hill has taken on two challenges: bolstering America's position as the world's most entrepreneurial nation and proving that Congress can get something done in an election year. It's a toss-up which challenge is the tougher one.

The new variant includes key provisions of the old bill that were highlighted in a previous blog post, such as creating STEM and entrepreneur immigrant visas to attract and retain human talent. A new provision, however, makes the Startup Act 2.0 even more potentially beneficial to the national clean energy innovation agenda.

"As a onetime start-up that now employs thousands of Americans and continues to hire many more each year, we are proud to support Senators Moran, Warner, Rubio, and Coons' Start-up Act,” former Rep. Susan Molinari, R-N.Y., who is now Google’s vice president of public policy, said in a statement.