Issue Position: Business in Idaho

Issue Position

Idaho's economy has not flourished. Our congressional delegation has played a role in harming opportunity for our families and communities to prosper.

Our congressmen have focused on fighting each other and pitting citizen against citizen. They have squandered their time in Congress. To score political points, they have voted again and again to push forward a Tea Party agenda despite knowing that they were wasting tax dollars when they did it. The highest profile waste happened last October when Congress shut down the government, costing our nation $24 billion in economic activity. In eastern Idaho, logging contractors were unable to log. People how earn a living off the national parks were shutdown. The wages of military workers, such as those at Mountain Home Airforce base were threatened. The Idaho National Laboratory was threatened. All of this to create publicity around issues that Republicans hoped would translate into election victories. Congressman Mike Simpson, in the end, voted to end the shutdown. But he lacked the courage to stand up and stop it in the first place. That lack of leadership was a direct hit to Idaho families.

This is a disgraceful way to run a government and a shoddy way to do a job that Idahoans sent them back to D.C. for.

Idaho's economy needs every bit of help that it can get. I will work to once again unite the congressional delegation to support funding at the INL. I work to help grow our universities and colleges and see that they have the capacity and tools they need to meet business needs and student needs alike.

I will work for policies at the federal level that stop shifting more and more of the cost of college onto parents and students. I will work to reform a public education system that saddles our young people with a mountain of debt just as they are beginning their careers and their families.

I will work at the federal level to bring high paying jobs to Idaho and do whatever I can to lure new companies and retain the ones we already have. I will not waste this vital position pounding the drums of partisan warfare. We have already suffered the consequence of this failed model of leadership.

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