[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 6]
[House]
[Page 8553]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              JOB CREATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Ohio 
(Mr. Stivers) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. STIVERS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to discuss some of the major 
challenges that face our Nation. We face a spending crisis, a debt 
crisis, a jobs crisis; and in order to solve those, the best thing we 
can do is focus on jobs because creating jobs will empower families, it 
will increase our economic power, and it will improve our government 
budget situation.
  From my many travels around my district in Ohio, from Franklin County 
to Madison County to Union County, it has become clear that both 
individuals and businesses need more certainty when it comes to health 
care costs, energy costs, taxes, and regulation.
  I visited Stanley Electric in London, Ohio, and they would like to 
expand. They have temporary workers they would like to make permanent 
full-time workers, but government regulations out of Washington are 
preventing them from doing that.
  I held a jobs roundtable in Hilliard with small businesses, and from 
those small businesses I heard that we need Congress to get out of the 
way of job creators. We need to bring more certainty to the banking 
system so that they will start lending to small businesses. Capital and 
credit need to be available if small businesses are going to create 
jobs.
  They asked us to change the culture in Washington so that people here 
understand that government does not create jobs; small business owners 
and entrepreneurs create jobs. We need to allow those local employers 
to focus their resources on hiring and to growing their businesses. If 
we allow them, business can and will create jobs. We just need to give 
them the incentives, and innovation will be there. Business owners need 
the flexibility to invest back in their businesses, and they need the 
ability to keep more of what they have earned if they do well.
  I held a jobs forum in my district at Ohio State University's Fisher 
College of Business to discuss with central Ohio job creators what they 
need to invest and create jobs. A number of good ideas came out of that 
forum.
  Dwight Smith, who is with Sophisticated Systems in Columbus, Ohio, 
said that Ohio and the Nation need to do a better job of putting 
together job training with unemployment. He said whole categories of 
jobs are being eliminated in this economy, and we need to make sure 
that the people that are out there are looking for jobs that are here 
today and are going to be here tomorrow. I think that is a great idea. 
We need to focus on training and preparing our workforce for jobs that 
are here today and here tomorrow. We need to tie our workforce 
development dollars together with our unemployment programs so they 
work together well.
  Kathy Ivan, the owner of Fabric Farms, a small business owner in my 
district, was very concerned about the onerous small business 
regulation of the 1099 provisions that were in the health care bill. I 
am glad to say that particular portion of the health care bill has been 
repealed, but we have to take further steps to make sure that business 
owners have certainty with regard to health care costs and energy costs 
so that they will be willing to hire new employees.
  John Ness of ODW Logistics shared that government ``has stepped on 
the hands and needs to stay out of the way'' of small business owners. 
We need to remove the obstacles for these business owners, and the 
United States Government needs to make tax rates competitive with the 
rest of the world. John Ness is in a global business, and America's tax 
rates are making him less competitive.
  Dr. Michael Camp, who is with the OSU Center for Entrepreneurship, 
spoke about the importance of accelerator projects, and how 
collaboration with Ohio's Third Frontier can yield positive results.
  We have a lot of work to do; but if we can stay focused on getting 
government out of the way and giving businesses more certainty, you'll 
see businesses creating a lot of jobs. Those are just a few of the 
great ideas that were shared at my jobs forum, and I will continue to 
work on those ideas and other ideas and reach out so that we can grow 
our economy because the best way to solve our problems is through 
creating jobs.

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