GOP Address: Congressional Candidate Vernon Parker on Jobs & ‘Restoring the American Dream’
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Vernon Parker for Congress(WASHINGTON) — In this week’s Republican address, congressional candidate Vernon Parker of Arizona highlights his experience growing up in a tough neighborhood “replete with guns, gangs and violence,” and shares his party’s solutions for creating jobs and “restoring the American Dream.”
Parker, who is seeking to represent Phoenix’s ninth congressional district, says that after family members had sacrificed so much for him to obtain an education (he was first in his family to attend college) and complete law school, he promised himself that “I would work hard to get others out and make it easier for them to have the same opportunities that have given me a chance to make a difference.” For this reason, he says, he’s running for Congress.
During his congressional campaign, the Paradise Valley mayor says people ask him most often about what he would do about jobs.
“I tell them nothing is more important than getting the middle class back to work. The unemployment rate in our state is 8.3 percent, more than the national average and unacceptably high. That figure doesn’t take into account people who have given up looking for a job altogether. It doesn’t reflect the struggles of families trying to keep up with higher prices on everything from gas to groceries,” he says in the address.
“I tell my neighbors it doesn’t have to be this way. We have employers who want to hire and workers who want to work, but government won’t get out of the way.”
But, Parker says, something must be done about the U.S. having “the highest corporate tax rate in the world. That just pushes jobs away, overseas to India, to China, to all our competitors.” Parker says he agrees with Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan that government should act to put a stop to looming tax hikes and develop a pro-growth tax code that will bring jobs back to the U.S.
Additionally, Parker says, “we need to look at reining in all the excessive red tape that is making it harder to live, work, hire and do business.”
“If we pull together, we can get the middle class back to work, we can restore America’s promise.”
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio