I held a news conference this morning at the National Flag Company on Freeman Avenue in Cincinnati, officially announcing that I am a candidate for Ohio’s First Congressional District seat. National Flag is a family-owned small business, and I chose this location to emphasize the importance of getting this economy moving again, and creating jobs – IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR. After all, 70% of the new jobs created in the United States over the last several decades have been created by small businesses.
Unfortunately, the Obama Administration and the Pelosi/Reid Congress (with Steve Driehaus’s support) decided to ignore small businesses, and instead pass a $787 billion so-called economic stimulus package which only stimulated growth in government, and did virtually nothing to create jobs in the private sector.
Then they spent the rest of the year trying to pass anti-business, anti-job-creating measures like cap and trade, card-check, and the healthcare debacle. Each of these bills would have burdened small businesses with higher costs, more regulation, more red tape, and thus made it less likely that they’d be able to hire anybody.
Americans across the country, and here at home, are fed up with perhaps the worst Congress in history. They’re fed up with government bailouts, government takeovers, and spending in Washington which is so out-of-control that we’re now looking at annual deficits not in the billions, but in the trillions. They’re fed up with huge bills being voted on with members of Congress not even taking the time to read them. And they’re fed up with being promised that there will be such transparency, that negotiations on key bills will be on CSPAN, but instead get members of Congress’s votes being bought, behind closed doors.
Unfortunately, Steve Driehaus, who promised he’d be an independent, fiscal conservative has been anything but. He has essentially done whatever Nancy Pelosi, the most liberal Speaker in American history, tells him to do. In fact, he has voted with her 94% of the time. That might be okay if you represent San Francisco (as she does), but Driehaus is clearly out of step with the people of the First Congressional District of Ohio.
Driehaus and Pelosi sort of remind me of an old TV commercial a few years back. The guy in the commercial would walk around with his cell phone saying “can you hear me, can you hear me now?” Well, not only do Driehaus and Pelosi not hear us, they’re not even listening. Although there are many examples, perhaps the worst example was their insistence on passing a very flawed healthcare bill, even though at town hall meetings and Tea Party rallies they were clearly told “we the people oppose this expensive, big government power grab of a plan.” Pelosi pushed it anyway, and Driehaus voted for it anyway.
Well, this year a change is coming. We saw strong evidence of it in New Jersey and Virginia a few months back, in Massachusetts a few weeks back, and in Indiana just a couple days back. The people are tired of being ignored by their own government. They’re tired of having policies they oppose rammed down their throats. They’re tired of having their elected representatives tell them one thing and then do another. Yes, change is coming. And I plan to be part of that change.