September 7, 2012

Huelskamp: Taxes, Overregulation, ObamaCare Keeping Unemployment High

(DODGE CITY, KAN.) - The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the unemployment rate for August 2012 stood at 8.1 percent, the 43rd month of unemployment above 8 percent. When the Democrat-controlled Congress of 2009 and President Obama made the $787 billion stimulus law, they pledged that unemployment would never go above 8 percent. Additionally, the labor report showed that the labor force participation rate - those either employed or looking for a job - fell to the lowest rate since 1981.

"Forty-three months of unemployment above 8 percent - averaged at 9.1 percent - coupled with the lowest workforce participation rate in 31 years is a disaster of epic proportions," Congressman Tim Huelskamp said. "Hope is lost on businesses who are afraid to hire as well as on workers who fear never being employed again. Uncertainty with taxes, overregulation, and ObamaCare is the trifecta keeping the unemployment rate excessively high, and out-of-work American families are paying the price."

"What happens in Washington is both a cause and effect of a poor economy. Job creators know that Washington cannot sustain perpetual trillion-dollar deficits and debt equivalent to the size of the nation's economy. They know that eventually Uncle Sam will come-a-knockin' for the resources to pay back China and other foreign nations that hold our IOU's. And, when they are forced to pay higher taxes, economic growth will contract. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office affirmed this recently when it projected a recession for 2013 should the Bush-Obama tax cuts fully expire. Washington's problem is and always will be that it spends too much - not that it has too little to spend."

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