December 8, 2009 Republican Leadership Conference

December 8, 2009 Republican Leadership Conference

DECEMBER 8, 2009

Republican Leadership Press Conference
December 8, 2009

Participants:
- Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH)
- Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA)
- Conference Chair Mike Pence (R-IN)
- Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC)

Multimedia:
Audio  |   Photos  

Transcript:

Conference Chairman Mike Pence
 
Good morning. We just completed our weekly meeting of the House Republican Conference, and we talked about the priorities of the American people compared to the priorities of this Administration and this Congress.
 
House Republicans believe the priorities of the American people are jobs, jobs, and jobs. The priorities, it seems, of this White House and this Democratic Congress are more government, more taxes, and more spending, a government takeover of health care, plans from the EPA for a cap and trade bill, to treaty negotiations oversees or continuing to push for a national energy tax.
 
And today, if press reports are accurate, the President of the United States will go to the Brookings Institute and suggest that leftover funds from the TARP legislation of a year ago be used to fund some sort of economic stimulus bill. It seems that the policy of this Administration on job creation is, "If you got it, spend it." Well House Republicans believe that the real prescription for economic growth is fiscal discipline in Washington, D.C. and fast-acting tax relief for working families, small businesses, and family farms. We're going to continue to fight to achieve deficit reduction, to get spending under control, and to give the American people more of their hard-earned dollars to spend. That's the way to grow jobs in this country.
 
Republican Whip Eric Cantor

Good morning. The president will speak to the Brookings Institution today on his plan to try and get this economy back on track and get Americans back to work. We welcome that attention to job creation, but the real question is whether it will just be words or whether there will be action. I know I'll be looking to see what he does tomorrow, and that is will he continue with promoting the cap-and-trade bill? Will he continue by promoting the trillion dollar takeover of our healthcare in this country paid for on the backs of small businesses? Because that's where I think the disconnect begins. How is it that this policy agenda here in this town reflects what most people in this country want, which is a job, which is some certainty back towards their economic future. President Obama was elected on a notion of change, right now what this economy needs, what small businesses need is some certainty.

Rep. Virginia Foxx

It's our understanding that only eight percent of the people who work for this administration have ever had private sector experience so they have one-track minds - more government spending. What the American people want to know is how we are going to help them get a job. In a time when the effective unemployment rate is about 18 percent, we need to stop this emphasis on more government spending and put more emphasis on reducing taxes and giving the American people more of their money to keep so they can create the jobs.
 
Republican Leader John Boehner
 
Last week during the president's job summit, he acknowledged that it's the private sector that creates jobs in America not government. Yet today, the president's going to go out to talk about a new jobs bill. This is stimulus two and of course they won't call this a stimulus bill because the fact they're talking about another bill is a clear recognition that the stimulus bill from earlier this year isn't working.
 
But it's not just the fact that they're going to talk about another bill and then pay for it out of TARP. It's the other policies that my colleagues have acknowledged that are causing employers to have all of this uncertainty about what the future looks like and as a result they are unwilling to bring new employees on. We've got this health care debate going on in the Senate, a trillion dollar takeover of health care, the president's going off to Copenhagen tomorrow and talk about climate change legislation, which is going to drive up the cost of energy and push millions of American jobs overseas.
 
And on top of that, they're talking about raising taxes in the middle of a recession. I think the first thing the president should do is do no harm. And right now all the policies coming out of this administration and this Democrat-controlled Congress are doing much harm to our economy. And if we're serious about answering the question that the American people are asking, "where are the jobs," what we ought to be doing is allowing American families and small businesses to keep more of what they earn because at the end of the day, only they can get the economy going again.