Creating Jobs in America

Floor Speech

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Mrs. ROBY. I appreciate my colleague from Arkansas for giving us time tonight to talk about this most important issue, which is jobs.

It is the number one issue here, and what I see and we've all testified to tonight is that, as we travel throughout our districts, the number one thing that we hear from business owners all throughout the United States is the heavy hand of government has created so much uncertainty that the private sector, even those who have the ability to create jobs, are not doing so because they're fearful. They don't know what the Federal Government is going to do to them next, and this is so evident by the recent unemployment numbers that have come out.

Since the first day that this administration took office through the end of April of this year, the economy has lost 2.5 million jobs. That is an average of 3,044 jobs every single day. And unfortunately, and just to talk about the gentlelady from Washington's unemployment numbers, those numbers aren't even necessarily correct, because the rate is so much higher because so many job seekers are giving up and they are leaving the labor force.

I traveled, like you all did, throughout my district this week, and I found myself at Rand Manufacturing, and they manufacture water heaters. It's a household name. They have over 1,000 jobs in the city of Montgomery, and they brought me into a room that was used for research and development for their company, but it was an addition, a $1 million addition to their headquarters which is already over 700,000 square feet, but $1 million that they had to invest due to regulation alone. This is not a research and development facility to further their products. This is to keep up with the government regulations that they have to comply with.

How in the world can we expect the private sector to invest in job creation when every dime they have is going toward complying with government regulation? Companies in the United States of America are hitting the brakes on hiring and production. And to go back to the U.S. factory sector, the engine of our recovery, it had its biggest 1-month slowdown since 1984, and they showed private sector hiring dropped drastically.

You know, I'm a mom. I have two children, Margaret and George, who you hear me talk about often, and a lot of Members have their children up here this week with them. And as I look around the floor and I see these young people, I think: This is why we're here. And as was so eloquently said, it has to be about the future generation and not the next election. And when I look into my children's eyes, I am reminded about how important it is that we do all we can, which is what we are. We're leading. We're doing all we can to lift this heavy hand of government. And when I go to the grocery store and when I'm at the gas pump, we see it. We feel it. We know exactly what is going on.

In January of 2011, President Obama said entrepreneurs embody the promise of America, the idea that if you have a good idea and you are willing to work hard and see it through, you can succeed in this country, and in pursuing this promise, entrepreneurs also play a critical role in expanding our economy and creating jobs. That was President Obama in January of 2011. The Obama administration has done nothing to encourage businesses to create jobs. They have been obstructionists, causing uncertainty, this growing uncertainty with this overreaching regulation. Economic growth has been stifled.

House Republicans have taken steps to reduce spending in a meaningful way by approving all the legislation that the gentleman from Arkansas talked about

to decrease spending for the rest of the year, and we adopted a budget that will cut nearly $6 trillion over the course of the next 10 years.

Our friends on the other side of the aisle have done nothing to demonstrate their commitment to private job growth in this country. Increased spending, misguided attacks on the budget that we passed, raising the debt without deficit reduction, and burdensome regulations--this is the plan being offered by the other side of the aisle, and this is not what the American people sent us here to Washington to do for that future generation.

I ask the President and my Democrat colleagues to let us make sure that entrepreneurs continue to embody the promise of America. Enough is enough. More taxation, regulation, and litigation will not create more jobs in this country.

America is certainly at a crossroads. We have an opportunity here, and House Republicans are committed to taking every possible step to spur job creation and get our economy back on track so that Americans can do what they do best, that is, create and innovate and lead.

I again thank the gentleman from Arkansas.

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Mrs. ROBY. To add to that, again, the district work weeks, this new schedule that we have, which affords all of us more time with our constituents, which is so important for transparency and accountability to the people who elected us to be here, who we are making decisions for on their behalf, representing their interests. I can't tell you how many times in these meetings--just what you are saying--in preparation for full implementation of this health care law, we are seeing businesses sit around conference tables, throwing their hands up, having to spend lots and lots of dollars that could go toward creation of jobs. But they're spending all this money just trying to figure out how this law is going to affect them and their bottom line. And it is a huge travesty. And I'm sure that each of you have had similar situations. But we know that there are free-market solutions to driving down the cost of health care in this country, and that law does nothing to do that, to increase competition and to drive down cost. But yet what we do see every time we sit down at the table with these business owners is, we see how the costs associated with implementing the law is killing them.

So I just wanted to add that to the table. And on behalf of the folks in Alabama that I'm so grateful to have the opportunity to be here to represent, I can't say it strong enough and loud enough about the plan that we have here in the majority of the House to do all that we can to untie the hands of our business owners so that we can get this country back on track.

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