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Economic Recovery - The Latest Information and Resources
I am extremely troubled by the state of our economy. Millions of our nation’s citizens are out of work, and Congress needs to act to help American families and small businesses. I am focused on working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to do our part to help create jobs and get our economy growing again. Economic stimulus proposals should focus on job creation, small business tax relief and putting money back into the pockets of hard-working Americans. I have heard from families across the First District who are hurting - families who have lost jobs, seen the value of their home drop, and seen their retirement savings disappear as the stock market has dropped. Time and time again, these families told me that we need to allow them to keep more of what they earn, give them the tools to rebuild their savings, and invest in job creating infrastructure improvments that will ensure our economy is competitive long into the future. While the focus of February 2009's stimulus bill should have been job creation, much of the spending in this bill will not create a single job and will do nothing to get our economy growing again. Republicans in Congress offered a better idea that would create twice as many jobs as the Democrat’s trillion dollar spending bill at half the cost. I also worked with my bipartisan colleagues on the Transportation Committee to make job creating infrastructure investments the focus of any stimulus spending. Unfortunately, our ideas were ignored and Congress took up partisan legislation offering a raw deal for the American people that I could not support. While I could not support the Democrat’s partisan trillion dollar stimulus package, I was proud to work with my Republican colleagues as we developed and offered a better idea. I am hopeful that future attempts to address the challenges of our economy will be truly bipartisan, because the stakes are too big for us to fail. Visit this page and sign up for e-mail updates to keep updated on the latest developments before Congress. February 4, 2010 December 3, 2009 October 22, 2009 October 2, 2009 September 15, 2009 Category:EconomyPosted by: Brown Staff (October 30, 2009, 01:14 PM)
WASHINGTON (AP) - The White House is promising that new figures being released Friday will be a more accurate showing of progress in President Barack Obama's economic recovery plan. It aggressively defended an earlier, faulty count that overstated by thousands the jobs created or saved so far. Ed DeSeve, serving as Obama's stimulus overseer, said the administration has been working for weeks to correct mistakes in early counts that identified more than 30,000 jobs paid for with stimulus money. He said a new stimulus report Friday should correct many mistakes an Associated Press review found that showed the earlier report overstated thousands of stimulus jobs. "I think you'll see a pretty good degree of accuracy," DeSeve said in an interview. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs downplayed errors in job counts identified by the AP's review, telling reporters, "We're talking about 4,000, or a 5,000 error." Read more here. Posted in Economy | View Full Posting
Nation’s Unemployment Hits 26-Year High, Reaches 9.7% Posted by: Brown Staff (September 08, 2009, 02:10 PM)
200 days after signing the $1 trillion “stimulus,” President Obama and Democrat leaders continue to tout the virtues of a tax, borrow, and spend economic policy while Americans lose their jobs. Recently, the Department of Labor announced that the August unemployment rate hit a staggering 9.7 percent—the highest level since June of 1983 and the largest one month jump since March. Where are the Jobs? Unemployment: In the month of August, there were 14.92 million unemployed individuals looking for work, the highest number in history. Since February, when the Democrats passed their “stimulus,” 2.46 million people have lost their jobs. Employment: The number of employed individuals in August was 139.6 million. This is the first time that the number of employed people has been below 140 million since 2004. In the same month last year, there were 145.2 million people working in America. Under-Employment: The number of individuals who reported being employed only part-time because of economic reasons was 9 million in August, yet another historic high and 3.2 million more than last year. The number of people counted as “Marginally Attached to Labor Force”—meaning people who were available and wanted work, but had stopped looking for work in the past four weeks—reached 2.2 million. All told, the unemployed, under-employed, and those who wanted work but were no longer aggressively looking totaled 26.1 million. What are Democrats Doing?
“Stimulus”: To date, $88.8 billion of the “stimulus” has been spent. The vast majority of these funds have been spent on Medicaid payments to States, State education payments, and unemployment benefits. Only $2.3 billion or 0.3 percent has been spent on transportation construction projects, though the President said in February that “400,000 men and women will go to work rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges.” Meanwhile, 216,000 men and women lost their jobs in August. The Rhetoric: In an effort to justify spending $1 trillion on a failed “stimulus,” Vice President Biden has made a number of public appearances claiming that “the Recovery Act has created or saved between 500,000 to 750,000 jobs.” The Vice President, however, has not shown what jobs have been saved. The 2.4 million workers who have lost their jobs since the “stimulus” was signed certainly know what jobs have been lost. The Bottom Line: While Americans lose jobs at the fastest rate in a quarter of a century, Democrats continue to spin the results of their “stimulus” and push a government-run takeover of the healthcare system and a national energy tax. In other words, a 9.7 percent unemployment rate does not appear to be causing Democrats to rethink their job-killing economic policies. Posted in Economy | View Full Posting
The Search for Economic Stimulation and Jobs for Americans Posted by: Congressman Brown (August 27, 2009, 02:25 PM)
On August 17th, we reached the six-month anniversary of the signing of the President’s $787 billion economic stimulus plan. Since becoming law, over two million Americans have lost work and only 18 percent of Americans say that the trillion-dollar plan has helped the economy, and I would have to agree. Posted in Economy | View Full Posting
Soaring deficit may defy forecasts Posted by: Brown Staff (August 11, 2009, 12:02 PM)
Posted in Economy | View Full Posting
Brown Comments on Port of Georgetown Netting New 20-Year Contract Posted by: Brown Staff (July 29, 2009, 03:49 PM)
Georgetown, SC – The Port of Georgetown will soon welcome the first ship call as part of a new, 20-year contract that will bring business to the port while supporting local manufacturing and maritime jobs. Posted in Economy, Georgetown County, Transportation | View Full Posting
Read More about the House GOP Economic Recovery Alternative H.R. 1 - Stimulus Resources EconomicRecovery.gov - One-stop resource from the Department of Commerce. FinancialStability.gov - Information from the Department of the Treasury
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