This past week, Rep. Tim Walberg (MI-07) sponsored a jobs fair. So far, so good. I’ve been waiting for him to do something, anything related to jobs so I view this sort of thing favorably. Unfortunately, the fair doesn’t appear to have been very successful.
On Wednesday, I hosted a Job Resource Fair at the Jackson County Fair Grounds. This event gave companies across the district a chance to connect with an estimated 600+ job seekers. While visiting with job seekers I thought, “How great it would be if at the next Job Resource Fair we could reduce the number of attendees and raise the number of employers?” We need to encourage job creation for those who want to be employed and provide a service. Every day I wake up and think about how we can encourage job creation by eliminating uncertainty that puts a hold on hiring caused by regulations in the health care and financial industry. I will continue to keep fighting in Washington to encourage job creation and economic certainty for you and your families.Sincerely,
Congressman Tim Walberg
600+ job seekers. Only 25 “employers”. One of the “employers” was Michigan Works and a second one was Michigan Troops to Teachers, both state of Michigan jobs programs. Several of them were temp agencies and there were several universities/colleges.
Even after this, Rep. Walberg’s stated effort to create more jobs is to “eliminate uncertainty” by rolling back advances in health insurance and Wall Street reform and eliminating regulations.
Here’s an exercise for everyone at home. Go to your local business and ask them three questions:
- Which regulations are keeping you from hiring more people?
- Which Wall Street reform is preventing you from hiring more people?
- Which health insurance reform provision is stopping you from hiring more people?
Chances are very, very good that they won’t be able to give even one. That’s obviously because none of these are the actual reasons for our economic sluggishness and high unemployment rates. The real reason is that businesses are waiting for demand to rise before hiring more people and without jobs, people aren’t buying things so demand remains low. What’s needed is an infusion of capital into our economy to get demand back up again. This is EXACTLY what President Obama is trying to do with his new American Jobs Act.
Republicans like Tim Walberg are still trying to figure out how they can use opposition to this bill to help their corporate benefactors and harm President Obama. The rest of us are waiting for them to figure out that we need them to pass this NOW and get the economy going again.
This isn’t about too much regulation, health insurance reform or Wall Street reform. Those things take the burden OFF small businesses which are the engines of our economy. If we were talking about a “surge” by pumping people and money into a foreign land to make more war, Republicans would be all over it like ugly on an ape. But when a similar “surge” is proposed for our economy, one that will put Americans to work, earn more profits for our businesses including small businesses, and raising deficit-reducing tax revenues by pumping up the economy, they suddenly get religion and become austere.
Harming America for political gain: today’s Republican Party.
