In the News 

KEY QUOTE: "Our economy is not creating enough jobs, and Democrats’ binge of taxing, spending, borrowing and over-regulating is a major reason why growth continues to lag.  Recently, it was announced that the national unemployment rate rose to 9.1% in May and the number of unemployed Americans edged up by 167,000 to 13.9 million."

A plan for America's Job Creators
By John Boehner
Greenville Daily Advocate
June 11, 2011

Our economy is not creating enough jobs, and Democrats’ binge of taxing, spending, borrowing and over-regulating is a major reason why growth continues to lag.  Recently, it was announced that the national unemployment rate rose to 9.1% in May and the number of unemployed Americans edged up by 167,000 to 13.9 million.  It’s clear that the economy still isn’t creating enough jobs and that Washington hasn’t done nearly enough to eliminate the uncertainty facing job creators.  Unfortunately, rather than joining Republicans in focusing on policies that create jobs and promote economic growth, the Democrats who control Washington continue to propose higher taxes, more ‘stimulus’ spending, and even more regulations.

But higher taxes are not the answer.  As a former small businessman myself, I know what it takes to create jobs and meet a payroll, and I know that every tax dollar the government takes is a dollar that Americans are unable to invest in their family, their business, or our economy.

More ‘stimulus’ spending is not the answer either.  In the two years after the ‘stimulus’ spending bill was enacted, a total of 1.5 million jobs have been lost and the unemployment rate has averaged 9.5 percent – despite promises by the White House that the ‘stimulus’ would keep unemployment below 8 percent.

And more regulations are not the answer.  According to the Small Business Administration (SBA), ‘The smallest firms (fewer than 20 employees) spend 36 percent more per employee than larger firms to comply with federal regulations’ – or roughly $10,585 per employee for all federal regulations.

This combination is clearly a recipe for discouraging private-sector job creation and it certainly hasn’t provided relief to families and small businesses who are struggling to make ends meet.  If we’re serious about creating jobs in America, we can’t raise taxes on the very people who create jobs, and keep spending money that we don’t have.  Talk to job creators in Ohio and they’ll tell you that all of the over-taxing, over-regulating, and over-spending that’s going on in Washington is holding them back.

Our focus in the House since the moment we were entrusted with the majority has been on passing reforms that would take a different approach – policies aimed at creating an environment for long-term job growth.  It started with the Pledge to America, which focused on helping small businesses create jobs and reining in our massive debt.  So far we’ve kept our pledge by passing legislation to ease the regulatory burden, expand American energy production, repeal the job-crushing health care law, and make significant spending cuts.

On May 26th, we built on our Pledge to America by proposing a plan for America’s job creators that focuses on creating lasting economic growth and job creation.  The pro-growth agenda detailed by House Republicans addresses our economic challenges, fosters innovation and investment, and helps job creators without raising taxes on working families and small business owners.

The plan outlines policy proposals that will reduce regulatory burdens, fix the tax code, increase competitiveness for American manufacturers, encourage entrepreneurship, maximize domestic energy production, pay down America’s unsustainable debt burden and force government to start living within our means.  I encourage you to learn more about our Plan For America’s Job Creators by visiting www.gop.gov/indepth/jobs.

Helping Americans get back to work is our number one priority, and we’re going to do everything we can to help create jobs and boost our economy.  But we only control one-half, of one-third of the government which is why we once again met with President Obama and urged him to change course and work with us to enact our plan for economic growth.  We hope he will take us up on our offer.

One look at today’s jobs report should be enough to show the Democrats who control Washington that it’s time to get serious about cutting spending and dealing with our ailing economy.