Idaho Senators React To President’s Job Speech

U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, said President Barack Obama’s American Jobs Act provides mostly temporary solutions.

Crapo, who is a member of the Senate Budget and Finance committees, said the plan needs to fundamentally reform economic and fiscal policy.

“What I hear from business and industry leaders is that we need to refrain from the almost-daily increase in regulations that job creators in the private sector are facing,” Crapo said. “Businesses need an economic environment that rewards capital formation, risk-taking, innovation and growth, not a regulatory climate that is strangling them. We need new tax policies that encourage innovation and investment while making American companies more competitive.”

U.S. Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, said the president is just recycling old ideas. “The last stimulus bill cost almost $1 trillion and we still lost 1.7 million jobs. We cannot afford to keep doing the same thing,” Risch said. “It is time to do what we have done for over 200 years and what the president acknowledged tonight. He said, ‘Our recovery will be driven not by Washington, but by our businesses and workers.’ I agree. We need to turn the private sector loose, remove the stranglehold of regulations, lower taxes and get the government out of the way so the private sector can create jobs.”

“(The) proposal lays out nearly $450 billion in federal spending, yet it does not set out a long-term deficit reduction plan,” Crapo said. “Instead of proposing new spending, the president should be focused on mechanisms that will encourage the small business community to create jobs.”