Regarding climate change legislation and job creation, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) says on Tuesday that “our unemployment rate remains far too high…and we must be diligent to create jobs, including in the energy sector.” (0:12)
By Mariko Lamb, Talk Radio News Service
“Cap and Trade is a jobs killer,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said in a bicameral Western Caucus hearing on the impact of Cap and Trade on jobs Thursday. He urged the Obama administration to “get their priorities straight,” and start creating jobs.
Bill Kovacs, Senior Vice President of the Environment, Technology, and Regulatory Division at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said the Waxman-Markey bill will promote regulatory chaos, foster lawsuits, do great harm to the economy, and ultimately not reduce carbon emissions in the atmosphere.
President and CEO of the Black Chamber of Commerce, Harry Alford pointed to a recent study by Charles RIvers Associates which concluded the Waxman-Markey bill will lead to higher energy and transportation costs fir businesses and consumers, a fall in household disposable income and consumption, decline in purchasing power, a fall in wages and returns on investments, net job loss and a decrease in the U.S.’ ability to compete internationally.
“There are two jobs destroyed for every green job created,” Former GOP Rep. Dick Armey (R-TX) argued. “Global warming might be, in fact, one of the most hyped fictions in America today.”
Armey added that the “most treasured umbrella objective in public policy” right now is to “create the illusion of a crisis and then… demonstrate the need for their policies of government growth and income redistribution as a resolution of the crisis.” Armey went on to describe global warming as a “high-profile [fiction] designed to serve the political purposes of the majority party.”
Bill Kovacs, Senior Vice President of the Environment, Technology, and Regulatory Division at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, warns that the Waxman-Markey bill will promote regulatory chaos, foster lawsuits, harm the economy, and ultimately do nothing to reduce carbon emissions in the atmosphere. (0:16)
“Cap and Trade is a jobs killer,” says Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.). Barasso goes on to urge the Obama administration to “get their priorities straight,” and start creating jobs. (0:46)
“We believe the number one priority of America ought to be job creation, not because we’re trying to hide from a health debate, in fact, we’re eager to have a health debate, and it’s a pity that the President is unwilling to have a bipartisan discussion about how to get to a better approach,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says. (0:26)
“America does not work if Americans are not working, and getting Americans working should be the number one priority,” says former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, advocating American Solutions’ Jobs Here, Jobs Now, Jobs First campaign. “Jobs Here, Jobs Now, Jobs First ought to replace all the other priorities that the politicians are currently running around chasing,” he says. (0:20)
By Justin Duckham-Talk Radio News Service
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) claimed during a press conference Thursday that if the economic recovery efforts were placed in the hands of Congressional Republicans, at least twice as many jobs would have been created.
“Our projections…would be that we would have created twice as many jobs, at half the cost. Given the fact that unemployment continues to rise, we probably could have created ten times as many jobs as [Congressional Democrats] have.”
Boehner claimed that he had based the conclusion off the same method the White House is currently using to compose their statistics.
The House Minority Leader warned that the upcoming health care reform will contribute to further job loss.
“This isn’t hard to figure out. When you raise the cost of employment…you get less employees. There’s no question that their proposal raises the costs of employers to have employees, because it requires all employers to have health care,” Boehner explained.
The Department of Labor recently released a report showing that 9.5% of Americans are currently unemployed.
Boehner also attacked Congressional Democrats’ management of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
“16 million of the stimulus money was appropriated to take care of the salt marsh harvest mouse,” said Boehner, who appeared alongside a picture of the endangered rodent based in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) district. “People a hundred miles away have farms that are drying up because they wouldn’t use any stimulus money to turn on the pumps.”
Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack says he hopes Congress will enact a bill that meets the President’s objectives on energy, which include creating an efficient, cost-efficient and a comprehensive approach that leverages the Nation’s capacity for innovation. He also touched upon the need for job creation, reduced dependence on foreign oil, and protection of U.S. children from “ills associated with pollution.” (0:20)
