Issue Position: Jobs and the Economy

Issue Position

My vision is simple: long-term opportunities and
prosperity that benefits all, not just some, Americans.

As a member of Congress, I will work to provide small businesses, working families, displaced workers, and young people just entering the workforce, a hand up, a push forward, and a clearer path to achieving their own American Dream.

Congress can and must play a bold leadership role setting a course for the country that will lead to sustainable economic growth. Most important, we must have growth that benefits those struggling the most and those in the shrinking middle class, not just those at the top.

My strategy for growth includes five key elements:

Incentives for Jobs Now: While smart policy will help us grow long-term, I will also seek to provide immediate incentives for companies, states and local communities to invest in people and equipment today. We must emphasize existing programs and develop new, targeted tax incentives for companies to hire and train new workers, purchase new production equipment, and develop new products and processes. We must continue to invest at the local level to help cities, towns and villages retain teachers, police, firefighters and other community-enhancing service providers.

Investment in Infrastructure: We must create many public/private partnerships to reinvest, rebuild, and reinvent our national infrastructure. We should start immediately rebuilding our national electrical grid to power both the homes and the cars of the future. We should accelerate reinforcing and rebuilding our bridges, highways, and streets. We should plan for, design and construct new high-speed rail networks, linked to modern mass transit systems that restore our world leadership in transportation. And we should start now, to produce good jobs today, and provide the framework for long-term growth and jobs for years to come.Towards this end, we need to create an infrastructure bank to accelerate investments in projects as soon as possible.

Creation of Quality, Long-Term Jobs: We must create incentives for companies presently holding trillions of dollars in cash accounts to deploy that capital in people and long-term investment. We can do so with comprehensive, common sense laws and regulations that protect people and the environment, while at the same time providing entrepreneurs and managers the policy certainty they need in order to take prudent risks in their businesses.

Investment in People Today and in the Future: Concurrently, we must invest in education and training programs for workers, young and old, to hone the skills necessary to compete in the 21st Century global economy. By reinforcing our workers skills, we create further incentives for companies to bring high quality, value-producing jobs back to America.

Investment in New Technologies, Including Clean Energy, Health Care, and Information: We must create public/private partnerships in new technologies to develop and implement innovative solutions to many of the future challenges we can see facing us on the horizon, including energy security, environmental sustainability, and affordable health care.
These investments will not only create jobs today, they will create wealth for our nation long into the future.

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