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Economic Recovery - The Latest Information and Resources

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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
Brown Says the Democrats' Fiscally Reckless Agenda Harms South Carolinians
WASHINGTON - Today, the House of Representatives passed legislation to increase the amount the government is allowed to borrow, pushing the Federal debt limit to $1.9 trillion. This not only represents the largest debt limit increase in history, but also marks the third increase since President Obama took office a little over a year ago. This legislation barely passed the House by a vote of 217 to 212, with every Republican and 37 Democrats voting no. Full Story »

December 3, 2009
Brown Opposes Death Tax
WASHINGTON - Following the passage of H.R. 4154, Permanent Estate Tax Relief for Families, Farmers, and Small Business Act of 2009, Congressman Henry E. Brown, Jr. (R-SC) made the following remarks: Full Story »

October 22, 2009
As Unemployment Rises and Democrats Continue to Back Job-Killing Health Care Reform, Brown Works to Protect Local Small Businesses and Manufacturers
WASHINGTON - Congressman Henry E. Brown, Jr. (R-SC) made the following statement today after the Employment Security Commission announced that South Carolina’s unemployment has risen to 11.6 percent and the state has lost over 24,000 manufacturing jobs in the past year: Full Story »

October 2, 2009
Brown Comments on Ever-Rising Unemployment
Washington, DC – Congressman Henry E. Brown, Jr. (R-SC) made the following statement today after the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the unemployment rate rose to 9.8% and 263,000 more Americans lost their jobs in September: Full Story »

September 15, 2009
Brown Signs onto Legislation to Stop All Federal Funding of ACORN
WASHINGTON- Today, Congressman Henry E. Brown, Jr. (R-SC) became a cosponsor of the Defund ACORN Act, legislation introduced by House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) that will sever all ties between the federal government and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).  House Republicans have also sent a letter to President Obama asking him to take action to end taxpayer funding of ACORN. After signing onto the Defund ACORN Act Congressman Brown issued the following statement: Full Story »

Category:Economy


STIMULUS WATCH: Stimulus jobs overstated in report

Posted 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.

Since its signing on February 17, 2009, the American people have been waiting for the “jolt” to the economy and “immediate” creation of jobs that the Administration promised.  We have been waiting so long that my constituents in South Carolina are beginning to wonder if they will ever come.

The President insisted that to save or create up to four million jobs, Congress had to support this stimulus. Unfortunately, today, more than 2.8 million jobs have been lost and Congress continues to pass legislation that has added $869 billion in new debt, and will continue to further increase unemployment around the country.

We were told by the Administration that unemployment would rise as high as eight percent without the stimulus, but as we all know, national unemployment is now at nine and a half percent. In my home state of South Carolina it is 12 percent. 

It’s a shame that, while my constituents are desperately waiting for jobs, the Democratic leadership has made job creation a lower priority than growing government, increased borrowing and ever greater federal spending.

In fact, the runaway spending that has been forced through the Democrat Congress, since January, has finally added up to the unimaginable- One Trillion Dollars in a month. To put this number in perspective, One Trillion Dollars is enough money to:
•    Buy everyone in the First District their own 26-acre island in Panama.

•    Spend a dollar per second for 32,000 years.

•    Stack up $ 1,000 bills, $ 1 trillion would need a pile that is 80 miles high.

•    Buy the most expensive house on the market in Charleston ($13 Million) 77,000 times.

•    Pay the rent of every renter in the US for 3 years and the mortgage of every homeowner for 14 months.

This type of spending shows no sign of slowing and unless we get this spending surge in check, Americans will be indebted to the recklessness of this Congress for decades to come. We must make hard choices to halt this slide into fiscal disaster to protect our children and grandchildren from an overwhelming financial burden in the future.

Republicans offered a better solution for fast-acting tax relief for working families and small businesses that would have created twice the jobs at half the cost, but unfortunately our alternatives were and continue to be ignored.

Our nation deserves a strategy for prosperity, not more spending, more taxes and more unemployment. In the next six months, Democrats must join Republicans in making our number one priority getting Americans back to work.  My constituents are getting tired of waiting.

Note: A recent Gallup poll, of 1,010 adults nationwide, states that after six months, less than two in ten Americans say they have been helped by the supposedly timely “stimulus”, with 18 percent saying that the economic stimulus plan has made their financial situation better, 13 percent saying that it has made their financial situations worse and 68 percent saying that the economic stimulus has had no effect on their financial situation whatsoever.

Posted in Economy | View Full Posting

 


Soaring deficit may defy forecasts

Posted by: Brown Staff (August 11, 2009, 12:02 PM)


 DEFICIT SOARS

The federal budget has gone from surplus to deficit during the past decade.

Fiscal year     Surplus or deficit
2000     $236 billion
2001     $128 billion
2002     -$158 billion
2003     -$378 billion
2004     -$413 billion
2005     -$318 billion
2006     -$248 billion
2007     -$161 billion
2008     -$459 billion
2009*     -$1,841 billion

* Estimate
Source: White House
        
Stagnant unemployment, shrinking tax revenue and a struggling economy threaten to quadruple the size of last year's federal budget deficit, raising more questions about the timing of costly proposals to overhaul health care. Read more here.

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.
 
Carolina-Pacific, a South Carolina-based producer of wood briquettes used as a renewable energy source, will begin manufacturing and exporting product from the Port of Georgetown in October.  The first vessel is expected to handle 6,000 metric tons of product onto a ship for export to Europe.
 
Carolina-Pacific plans to move approximately 66,000 metric tons in its first year of operation at the port. Carolina-Pacific has signed a 20-year contract with the SCSPA with two, 5-year renewal options.
 
Local officials and business leaders joined company representatives, the maritime community and the South Carolina State Ports Authority (SCSPA) today at the port to announce the new business.
 
In addition to the business across the pier, Carolina-Pacific will initially occupy more than 100,000 square feet of warehouse space at the port to support manufacturing and exporting the wood briquettes, which are used in power generation as an eco-friendly substitute or supplement to coal.
 
Wood pellets and briquettes are quickly becoming a high-demand commodity overseas due to requirements that member countries of the European Union generate 20 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020.
 
“We are excited to welcome Carolina-Pacific and this new business to the Port of Georgetown,” said L. David Schronce, the SCSPA’s director of the Port of Georgetown and Veterans Terminal. “Each ship entering the port supports tugs, pilots, longshoreman and others within the local maritime community, which means more dollars in the local economy.”
 
“Georgetown is a vital part of the state port system, and the Ports Authority is dedicated to keeping it a viable port facility for this community,” said David J. Posek, chairman of the SCSPA. “Today’s announcement demonstrates the Ports Authority’s commitment to aggressively pursue and grow business through Georgetown. Especially in this tough economic climate, we must focus on our core mission of serving as an economic engine for the State of South Carolina.”
 
“We appreciate and commend the Ports Authority’s flexibility and ingenuity in helping us launch this business,” said John B. Kern, chairman and CEO of Carolina-Pacific. “South Carolina is now staged to enter the renewable energy industry on a global scale.”
 
Kern noted that the operation has a direct connection to the state’s forestry and agricultural industries by utilizing South Carolina-sourced Southern Yellow Pine in the on-site production of the briquettes and in the transport of switchgrass grown in the I-95 corridor.
 
“I welcome today’s announcement and applaud Carolina-Pacific’s faith in the positive business climate of coastal South Carolina,” said Congressman Henry E. Brown. “This is also an important step forward for the Port of Georgetown, a significant economic development resource that I have long supported in Congress.  The key to addressing the Port’s maintenance needs is to increase the tonnage coming across the dock, and the aggressive work by the community and the Ports Authority should be commended,” said Congressman Brown.
 
“This announcement is another indication that Commerce’s close partnership with the state Ports Authority is a winning combination. Having Commerce project manager John Scarborough stationed at the port provides further evidence that strong leadership at the Ports Authority working hand-in-hand with an economic development professional is a team that is producing dividends for South Carolina,” said Joe Taylor, Secretary of Commerce. 
 
“Our state’s ports system continues to be an incredible asset for South Carolina and Carolina-Pacific’s commitment to the Port of Georgetown is another example of how export activity and the strength of our state’s ports are integral in attracting new jobs and growing our economy. Thanks to the team efforts of state and local leaders, Georgetown County will benefit from this announcement now and in the years ahead,” Secretary Taylor said.
 
Attention is being focused on maintenance dredging for Georgetown’s 27-foot authorized channel.  Thanks to the action of Congressman Brown, the Energy & Water Appropriations bill approved by the U.S. House earlier this month included another $1 million toward needed maintenance dredging in Georgetown.  With Sen. Lindsey Graham’s support, the Senate Appropriations committee adopted the same provision in its version of the bill.
 
ABOUT THE SOUTH CAROLINA STATE PORTS AUTHORITY:
The South Carolina State Ports Authority, established by the state's General Assembly in 1942, owns and operates public seaport facilities in Charleston and Georgetown, handling international commerce valued at more than $62 billion annually and receiving no direct taxpayer subsidy. An economic development engine for the state, port operations facilitate 260,800 jobs across South Carolina and nearly $45 billion in economic activity each year.
 
For more information:
  Byron D. Miller
  Director, Public Relations
  S.C. State Ports Authority
  843-577-8197
www.scspa.com

Posted in Economy, Georgetown County, Transportation | View Full Posting

 


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