As Congress debates legislation aimed to ease supply chain distress, American manufacturers are pressing lawmakers to get something passed.

"We are getting outcompeted right now by the rest of the world, especially China," Jay Timmons, CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), told Yahoo Finance (video above).

Lawmakers are currently attempting to combine two pieces of legislation to boost U.S. manufacturing and the competition: the Senate's United States Innovation and Competition Act, or USCIA, and the House-passed America COMPETES Act.

The National Association of Manufacturers sent a letter to congressional leadership on Thursday laying out its top ten priorities on the issue. Timmons emphasized that addressing the issue was a matter of urgency and expressed hope that lawmakers would "put aside all partisan differences" to get a bill passed.

Global supply chain pressures ticked up in April for the first time this year: The Global Supply Chain Pressure Index rose to 3.29 in April from 2.8 in March — though it was still off its peak of 4.45 in December. The gauge provides a bird's-eye view of potential disruptions as well as regional indicators for analyzing trade, inflation, and globalization trends across the United States, China, Japan, the Euro-zone, South Korea, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom.

According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, heightened geopolitical tensions could further strain the logistics of moving global goods.

“The supply chain issues are not going to go away tomorrow — there's no way that will happen,” Timmons said, adding that some provisions in this legislation “will help get us through this very difficult period. But again, it's not going to solve it tomorrow."

U.S. manufacturers' priorities

In the letter, NAM praised the $52 billion in semiconductor manufacturing subsidies included in both bills and supported another $45 billion to create a Manufacturing Security and Resilience Program as proposed in the House bill.