President Obama is coming to Youngstown today to tout his administration’s recovery efforts, but its policies are only making matters worse in the Mahoning Valley.
While it’s encouraging that the factory in Youngstown that the president will visit on Tuesday has recently expanded, the city’s painfully high 15.1 percent unemployment rate is a harsh reminder that the “stimulus” has not created jobs “immediately,” or held our national unemployment rate (9.9 percent) below eight percent as the president promised.
Worse yet, the policies of the Obama Administration could quickly put jobs at the factory, which manufactures steel pipes for oil and gas drilling, on the chopping block as it continues to push a “cap-and-trade” national energy tax that will raise energy prices, drive thousands of American jobs overseas to countries with less-stringent environmental regulations, and devastate our domestic oil and gas industries.
Last December the administration unilaterally acted to pave the way for this bureaucratic nightmare, and it’s not looking back. In fact, last week the EPA finalized new rules for manufacturers and power plants scheduled to go into effect in January of next year, regulations that American Iron and Steel Institute President and CEO Thomas Gibson warns “will impose significant new costs on manufacturing industries at the worst possible time… [and] arbitrarily picks winners and losers.”
This disturbing trend of harmful government overreach is only increasing as the administration uses taxpayer bailouts and a bevy of new powers to aid special-interest allies and inject politics into every corner of America.
Just look at the government role in the unequal treatment of thousands of Ohio retirees of the now bankrupt auto parts manufacturer Delphi Corporation. More than 20,000 Delphi salaried retirees, many of whom live in the Youngstown and Dayton areas, face the loss of health care coverage and up to 70 percent of their monthly pension checks, while obligations to the former company’s union retirees are being covered in full by government-owned General Motors.
Americans across the country are watching this, and they’re saying ‘enough is enough.’
They’re tired of the payoffs, kickbacks and sweetheart deals for Washington’s special-interests.
They are scared as they watch government spend like there is no tomorrow, piling more and more debt on the backs of our children and grandchildren.
And they don’t want the president’s new health care law, which will punish small businesses and states with new mandates, cut Medicare benefits for seniors, and actually increase health care costs, according to a recent report from analysts at the administration’s Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Already, 20 states have filed suit in court to block the law’s costly mandates. On Friday, the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), which represent the nation’s small businesses, announced it will join these efforts to overturn the president’s health care overhaul due to concern it will hurt our economy and prevent the creation of American jobs.
Republicans are listening to these concerns, and we’re offering better solutions to help middle-class families and small businesses tackle the challenges they are facing every day.
We want to repeal the president’s jobs-killing health care law, and replace it with real reform to lower costs. We want to put an end to taxpayer bailouts, and get the government out of the business of picking winners and losers in the private sector.
And we are offering an “all of the above” energy strategy to create jobs, lower energy costs, and establish a cleaner more reliable energy future, solutions to curb government spending, and a jobs plan to help small businesses create jobs.
President Obama has billed his ‘Main Street’ tour as a ‘listening tour.’ As Ohioans continue to ask “Where are the jobs?” it’s time for the president to scrap his job-killing agenda, and work with Republicans on these types of better solutions to help create new jobs and get our economy moving again.
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