Job Creation

Floor Speech

Mr. STIVERS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to discuss some of the major challenges that face our Nation. We face a spending crisis, a debt crisis, a jobs crisis; and in order to solve those, the best thing we can do is focus on jobs because creating jobs will empower families, it will increase our economic power, and it will improve our government budget situation.

From my many travels around my district in Ohio, from Franklin County to Madison County to Union County, it has become clear that both individuals and businesses need more certainty when it comes to health care costs, energy costs, taxes, and regulation.

I visited Stanley Electric in London, Ohio, and they would like to expand. They have temporary workers they would like to make permanent full-time workers, but government regulations out of Washington are preventing them from doing that.

I held a jobs roundtable in Hilliard with small businesses, and from those small businesses I heard that we need Congress to get out of the way of job creators. We need to bring more certainty to the banking system so that they will start lending to small businesses. Capital and credit need to be available if small businesses are going to create jobs.

They asked us to change the culture in Washington so that people here understand that government does not create jobs; small business owners and entrepreneurs create jobs. We need to allow those local employers to focus their resources on hiring and to growing their businesses. If we allow them, business can and will create jobs. We just need to give them the incentives, and innovation will be there. Business owners need the flexibility to invest back in their businesses, and they need the ability to keep more of what they have earned if they do well.

I held a jobs forum in my district at Ohio State University's Fisher College of Business to discuss with central Ohio job creators what they need to invest and create jobs. A number of good ideas came out of that forum.

Dwight Smith, who is with Sophisticated Systems in Columbus, Ohio, said that Ohio and the Nation need to do a better job of putting together job training with unemployment. He said whole categories of jobs are being eliminated in this economy, and we need to make sure that the people that are out there are looking for jobs that are here today and are going to be here tomorrow. I think that is a great idea. We need to focus on training and preparing our workforce for jobs that are here today and here tomorrow. We need to tie our workforce development dollars together with our unemployment programs so they work together well.

Kathy Ivan, the owner of Fabric Farms, a small business owner in my district, was very concerned about the onerous small business regulation of the 1099 provisions that were in the health care bill. I am glad to say that particular portion of the health care bill has been repealed, but we have to take further steps to make sure that business owners have certainty with regard to health care costs and energy costs so that they will be willing to hire new employees.

John Ness of ODW Logistics shared that government ``has stepped on the hands and needs to stay out of the way'' of small business owners. We need to remove the obstacles for these business owners, and the United States Government needs to make tax rates competitive with the rest of the world. John Ness is in a global business, and America's tax rates are making him less competitive.

Dr. Michael Camp, who is with the OSU Center for Entrepreneurship, spoke about the importance of accelerator projects, and how collaboration with Ohio's Third Frontier can yield positive results.

We have a lot of work to do; but if we can stay focused on getting government out of the way and giving businesses more certainty, you'll see businesses creating a lot of jobs. Those are just a few of the great ideas that were shared at my jobs forum, and I will continue to work on those ideas and other ideas and reach out so that we can grow our economy because the best way to solve our problems is through creating jobs.

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