Democratic U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown discussed manufacturing, health care and the federal budget Tuesday, as he addressed the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce seven weeks before the November election.

Brown, finishing his first Senate term after 14 years in the U.S. House, is running against Republican state Treasurer Josh Mandel, who addressed the Dayton Chamber last week. Most recent polls show Brown with a single-digit lead.

Brown said America needs a cohesive manufacturing strategy, including better workforce training, after losing 5 million manufacturing jobs from 2000 to 2010.

“Since early 2010, we’ve gained about 500,000 manufacturing jobs nationally – nothing like the 5 million we lost – but it was the first time … we had job growth in manufacturing since something like 1999,” Brown said.

Brown repeatedly pointed out Ohio companies and Miami Valley business leaders he has worked with. He pointed to his efforts to help expand the Ohio supply chain for Airbus, and spotlighted his continuing fight against China’s trade policies, listing Harco Manufacturing Group of Moraine as a local business that is hurt by currency manipulation.

During a question-and-answer session, two business owners quizzed him on his support for health care reform, with one of them blaming the Affordable Care Act for a recent surge in health care costs for his company. Brown said he was proud to have voted for the bill.

“Costs (to employers and employees) are not going up as sharply, partly because of this health care law,” Brown said after Tuesday’s event.

Brown called the federal sequestration budget process “a bipartisan creation of Congress.”

“I can’t imagine we can deal with sequestration without some defense cuts, some non-defense discretionary cuts, some work on Medicare … something about Medicaid and something with taxes,” Brown said. “I can’t imagine that we won’t do all of the above. Because you can’t get to the numbers you’ve gotta get just by cutting Head Start, just cutting National Institutes of Health and EPA enforcement.”

Travis Considine, spokesman for Mandel’s campaign, said Mandel “supports a budget that protects defense from sequestration by switching the scheduled cuts to non-defense discretionary spending this year and going forward.” He also argued that the health care bill Brown supported would kill Ohio jobs and said 66 percent of Ohio voters “symbolically rejected” health care reform when they voted for a 2011 state issue on freedom to choose health care coverage.