Jobs and the Economy

Even before the recession, working families were being squeezed by the rising cost of living, by healthcare costs and by home foreclosures. We are suffering from the loss of manufacturing jobs which once meant decent wages and benefits for workers. Our nation faces a painful economic transition which requires our government to be a good partner with America’s workers, researchers, and small businesses.

The economic growth we have seen hasn't reached the paychecks of the vast majority of American workers. Wages have barely budged while the cost of everything else is skyrocketing. Our nation can prosper in a ruthless world economy and the prosperity can reach every American worker, not just the top executives.

We need both short-term and long-term solutions to getting our economy back on track and keeping it there, and I’ve been working on both.

In order to start creating jobs, we need to make ensure that our small businesses are successful. We count on small businesses to grow our economy. Half of the American economy, our gross domestic product, is generated by small businesses. Even more important, small businesses create 75 percent of new jobs. I have worked to provide more than $7 billion in tax relief for small businesses so they can hire more workers and invest in new technology and equipment. I also worked on legislation that would make loans more available to small businesses. Both of these programs will help get people back to work and get our economy back on track.

Our economy is not going to recover fully until the housing market is back on track. Since I came to Congress my main focus has been protecting home owners and their ticket into the middle class. In past recessions, the first industry to suffer from the recession and the first industry to come out of it was residential construction, home building. Home building will not lead us out of this recession, no matter what we do. Too much of the foolishness that led to the financial crisis was connected to housing. But home building has been 16 percent of our GDP. We can't tell 16 percent of our GDP just to hang out until we get things figured out. I have been working to make sure that the mistakes that were made that led to this recession will not happen again, and I’ve been working to make sure that, in markets were there is a demand for housing we start putting some of the 3 million people who lost jobs in construction, back to work.

Our future will depend on having the most skilled workforce in the world, and that requires a commitment both to formal education and to on-the-job training.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that new jobs are going to come from science and research. I have been a leading supporter of legislation that will ensure that new jobs are created by the development and adoption of new technologies and that the workers who are going to produce these new technologies have the skills they need. This means supporting our research universities, as well as our community colleges.

We are fortunate that in the middle of a difficult economic transition our state is recognized as a pioneer and one of the leading states in the nation in providing workforce training. North Carolina's system started with training and workforce development and has grown into the one of the most comprehensive community college systems in the nation. Every person willing to work should be able to get job training that leads to a job that allows them to earn a living wage that can pay the bills.

I want to help make sure that happens by continuing to co-chair the Community College Caucus. The only way we can have the highest standard of living in the world is if we have the most skilled workforce in the world. We can't have folks continue to leave high school to go work in the mill without finishing their high school degree, and that's what generations of North Carolinians have done. We must find continue to find ways to re-train our workforce after so many factory closings in North Carolina.