Around Central Washington
Washington,
Feb 24 -
Serving as your representative in the United States Congress is a great honor. One of the best and most important parts of my job is meeting with and listening to those in Central Washington. This past week, I had an opportunity to stop in the Tri-Cities, Grandview, Sunnyside, Yakima, Moses Lake, and Othello. From meeting with veterans, small business owners, and community leaders, to visiting a manufacturing company, I always appreciate staying closely in touch with those of us that call Central Washington home.
In Yakima, I stopped by the newly rebuilt Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) post, which had to be rebuilt after a fire severely damaged the Post in 2010. Today, the VFW Post #379 facility is back in business and has seen major upgrades. Local VFWs have a long history of helping our nation’s veterans who have returned from war back to our local communities access benefits and services. Thanks to the hard work of the VFW members and area contractors, veterans in the Yakima area – including our newest veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan – now have an improved VFW facility to better serve them. We all owe our nation’s veterans a debt that can never truly be repaid, and its encouraging to see the Yakima community turn the disaster of the 2010 fire into an opportunity to provide our veterans with an even better facility.
During my recent trip to Moses Lake, I visited Laserfab – a metal fabrication company specializing in laser cutting of steel, stainless, and aluminum. Creating more American jobs is my top priority, and I understand that small businesses like Laserfab – and not the federal government – are the key to creating jobs and growing our economy. Laserfab is a small, but growing business that just last year added a third shift to their Moses Lake facility – bringing more jobs to the area. During my visit, Laserfab’s President and I talked about the challenges that our nation’s unpredictable and complicated tax code creates for small businesses as they try to plan ahead and invest. I have long supported measures making our tax code fairer, flatter, and simpler for American families and small businesses.
Later that day, I spoke to a group of business and community leaders at the Othello Rotary about our nation’s rapidly growing debt and the implications it has on our economy. As we discussed at the Rotary, the debt held by our nation currently exceeds $15 trillion and continues to grow every day. There is no question that this exponentially increasing federal debt is suffocating our nation’s economic recovery. It is time for the federal government to stop spending money it doesn't have, and to have an honest conversation with the American people about our budget crisis.
The necessary spending cuts and reforms to government programs needed to put our nation on path to fiscal solvency will not come easy, but we owe it to our children and grandchildren to address these problems immediately and stop kicking the can down the road. Last year, the Republicans in the House of Representatives passed a budget, which laid out a blueprint that cut $5.8 trillion in federal spending over ten years and strengthened entitlement programs like Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security, so they can continue to be viable for future generations. Unfortunately, the Democratic Senate refused to pass a budget. In the coming weeks, I’ll be working with fellow Republicans in the House to once again introduce a pro-growth plan to address our nation’s debt and put us back on a path toward economic prosperity.
In my regular stops to local communities, I am always encouraged by Central Washingtonians’ commitment to service, innovation, and common-sense approaches to growing our economy. I look forward to working toward real solutions in Washington, D.C., and continuing my work in support of policies to improve the climate for small business job creators – the backbone of our economy.
