Jobs

As our country stretches into almost four years of 8% or higher unemployment, the President's promises of lower unemployment and a healthier economy seem further away than ever. His $800 billion bailout has created more debt than jobs. His policies, while leaving us with over $5 trillion in new debt, have done little to improve the situation of American families these past three-and-half years.

Job growth numbers for the last two months have averaged 74,500 jobs, well below the generally recognized minimum of 150,000  jobs per month just to keep up with population growth.

Small employers are struggling to make ends meet, and while the pace of foreclosures has slowed, many people continue to have difficulty finding work and paying their mortgages. Whether through tightening family budgets or cutting expenses for small business expansion, the American people are making critical sacrifices during these tough economic times.

Despite the facts, the President continues to propose more of the same expensive, big-government policies.

Small businesses have always been the backbone of our economy and have played a traditional role in spurring new jobs and economic recovery.   Contrary to the President’s claim that “the private sector is doing fine,” I see continued stress from the regulatory, tax, and spending policies in Washington D. C. 

Washington should be doing all it can to create a healthy environment for job creators to grow their businesses and help individuals find much-needed jobs. We should not be pushing burdensome new regulation and seizing 1/6^th of the economy through the new "ObamaCare" entitlement – a law the Supreme Court has now officially recognized as a tax that will hit many in the middle class.

As the Chairman of the Science, Space, and Technology Committee, I continue to hold hearings to shed light on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) regulatory regime that has hit small businesses with expensive, complex regulations. I recognize the importance of citizen safety, but the EPA has acted on bad science and taken aggressive, intrusive measures that effectively stifle energy producers and raise costs for businesses.

Democrats and Republicans must come together to bring relief to the American people and to our small businesses. Putting Washington’s fiscal house in order will require both parties working together. I will continue to fight for fiscal discipline and work to get the economy back on track.