GOP Address: 'Focusing on Jobs and Acting on Better Solutions' - East Idaho News
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GOP Address: ‘Focusing on Jobs and Acting on Better Solutions’

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141665255?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1345253696935Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call(WASHINGTON) — Missouri Rep. Vicky Hartzler says in this week’s Republican address that while the GOP-controlled House has passed “more than 30 jobs bills,” a budget and a bipartisan bill to help farmers and ranchers facing “the worst drought our country has suffered in decades,” President Obama has not urged the Senate to act.  In the meantime, she says, “Drought conditions continue to worsen, and the shaky state of the economy only amplifies our anxiety.”

“You’ve probably heard the president say recently that the private sector is ‘doing fine’ and that his plan ‘worked.’  If only that were true,” she says in the address.

But, she adds, “Unemployment has never been this high for this long after a recession.  Even those who have jobs are seeing their paychecks shrink.  Rising prices on everyday things from gas to groceries certainly doesn’t help matters.”

Citing an independent report from accounting firm Ernst & Young, Hartzler warns that a tax hike “would destroy more than 700,000 jobs,” and force manufacturers and small business owners to hold back on plans to hire and expand.

“Senate Democrats haven’t acted to stop the small business tax hike scheduled for January 1st, but the House has,” Hartzler charges.  “Because while the president tells small business owners like me ‘you didn’t build that,’ Republicans know better and are committed to getting government out of their way.”

Speaking in Roanoke, Va., last month, Obama pushed the importance of continued government investments in public services and infrastructure that many U.S. businesses rely on to function. “If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help … Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen,” Obama said.

Republicans and Rep. Hartzler have seized on the line “you didn’t build that,” claiming that the president was speaking directly to business owners about their businesses.

But at a fundraising event in Oakland, Calif., Obama hit back at his critics for “splicing and dicing” his words.

“I believe with all my heart that it is the drive and the ingenuity of Americans who start businesses that lead to their success. I always have and I always will,” he said.

Still, Hartzler says Republicans are focused on jobs and acting on better solutions even if President Obama won’t “do anything about it.”

“The president, on the other hand, still has no plan to save Medicare — in fact, he took hundreds of billions of dollars from it to help pay for ObamaCare — while Senate Democrats haven’t even offered a budget in more than three years,” Hartzler says.

“Here in the Show Me State, we expect our leaders to offer solutions to our most pressing challenges, especially when the going gets tough. But these days, the president doesn’t even want to talk about the bad economy, let alone do anything about it.  That, too, is a shame.”

Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

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