In my maiden Senate floor speech, I focused on the budget and economic issues we face and how our burgeoning debt and deficit is directly linked to the sluggish pace of job creation and economic growth in states like Ohio.
As I said during the speech, I believe the twin challenges of our time are to revive the American economic miracle and stop the reckless government spending that threatens to extinguish the American dream. One affects the other.
Without a growing economy and more jobs we simply cannot reverse the dangerous trend of record deficits and deepening debt. At the same time, without getting our spending under control, we can’t get our economy moving. With the fiscal time bomb on our doorstep and all the uncertainty it creates, we will not have a strong recovery. So we have to do both.
The current economic climate encouraged by Washington is one of uncertainty and apprehension, which discourages risk-taking and private investment. Economists say this is the biggest challenge we face on the road to economic recovery. We must aggressively create the climate for job growth, innovation, invention and entrepreneurship.
Leadership is needed to get a handle on our serious fiscal issues. Instead, we are debating at the margins. It played out on the Senate floor this week – we are locked in a fierce partisan battle about less than one percent of federal outlays – actual federal spending – in this fiscal year. We aren’t even addressing the biggest and fastest growing part of the budget, which are the important, but unsustainable, entitlement programs.
American families have tightened their belts the past few years and businesses have done more with less, but the federal government has taken the opposite path, spending more, growing bigger, and becoming more involved in our private economy and our lives.
We also can’t compete if our health care system costs double the rest of the developed world while outcomes are unsatisfactory. This is wrong for small businesses who are trying to provide health care and yet stay afloat. It’s wrong for working families whose rising costs are closing their opportunity to move up the ladder.
People are looking for leadership from Washington to take on the challenges that Ohio’s businesses and workers face every day. The status quo isn’t working. We must meet our economic and fiscal problems head-on by putting in place pro-growth measures and spending restraint, and we have got to do it now.
To view the whole speech, please click here.
The views expressed by guest bloggers on the Foundry do not necessarily reflect the views of The Heritage Foundation.
Pingback: Guest Blog: Sen. Rob Portman on Job Creation and Economic Growth | Big Propaganda
The only thing wrong with what the Senator Rob Portman stated, is the fact some in leadership continue to focus their conduct, on the opposite. Joint effort necessary!
Thank you, Senator Portman!
The Senator's speech is Vintage New Speak. A Vintage New Speak speech always starts with a long and specific recitation of the problems facing America. Is there a politician alive who has not warned Americans of crashing finances, out of control spending, and imminent financial collapse. Indeed, we get this speech from many of those politicians who are the very ones responsible for the financial collapse of America.
Finally, after this specific recitation of damage, something suddenly happens to all this specificity; frankly, it vanishes; after which, we are treated once again to one vacuous and empty phrase after another. We need to do something with entitlements. Sure, of course, so what exactly?We need to reorient America to a path of fiscal sanity. A No Brainer, But precisely what is that path? We need to address out of control entitlements. We've heard all that.But what precisely do you intend to do? And so on and so on as America continues her downwards trajectory. Americans are not stupid. We know that this politicians over the years have betrayed the people of have voted them into office just as they have repudiated and American Constitution
and the rule of law.
It is a bit strange for a senator to describe his first speech as a "maiden" speech. Does he not see a certain irony in this statement. Is it conceivable that Octavian might have announced his "maiden speech" to the Roman Senate. Perhaps the good Senator should man up a bit.
Besides which there are no maidens in Washington D.C. Another famous feminine profession, sometime described as humanities "Oldest profession" comes to mind but is perhaps better left unsaid so not to offend the sensibilities of the censors.