Op-Ed - Buffalo News: Please Listen To Western New Yorkers, Mr. President

Op-Ed

In the 16 months that I've served as the 26th District representative in Congress, I can tell you that Washington does more talking than listening. It does more spending than saving, and often in the name of creating jobs that never seem to come. National unemployment continues to hover near 10 percent. Here are some ideas to address our common challenges.

My background is not in professional politics but in the private sector, and manufacturing in particular. The president was right to single out the "risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things" in his inaugural address, and I believe we should be providing incentives for our manufacturers and small businesses to grow and create jobs rather than growth in the federal government. We must if we are to be more than a service- only economy and stay strong in the 21st century.

Doing so requires that we level the playing field for U. S. manufacturers. We can start by strengthening the research and development tax credit and making it permanent, a crucial incentive that helps manufacturers create jobs here at home.

We can continue by passing tough, bipartisan legislation that will force China to stop manipulating its currency, which has kept it undervalued to our dollar. Until it does, Chinese firms will continue to have an unfair advantage over American manufacturers, and the jobs will continue to pour overseas.

In the 2008 campaign, Obama supported such a policy and I hope he recommits himself to it today in Buffalo.
We also need to recognize that Washington's spending is linked to our economic health. In just two more years, according to the president's own estimates, the debt will surpass the size of our entire American economy.
Unless we change course, our debt will reach levels we see in Greece, needing international bailouts with its debt a full 25 percent bigger than its economy. The deeper the debt hole we dig, the more we squeeze manufacturers, small businesses and this and future generations of Americans. We are seeing in Europe today what happens when debt spirals out of control, shaking the confidence of our job creators, and creating an insurmountable obstacle to economic recovery.

Western New Yorkers live within their means. We hope the president will walk away from his visit understanding that the federal government must also live by those same principles.

It's hard to imagine our politics being more polarized than they are today, yet our economic challenges know no party. I am confident that if Washington leaders did more listening to the American people and less talking, we could craft the solutions to overcome these challenges.

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