December 2, 2009 Republican Leadership Conference

December 2, 2009 Republican Leadership Conference

DECEMBER 2, 2009

Republican Leadership Press Conference
December 2, 2009

Participants:
- Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH)
- Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA)
- Conference Chair Mike Pence (R-IN)
- Conference Vice Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA)
- Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA)
- Rep. Mary Fallin (R-OK)

Multimedia:
Audio 

Transcript:

Conference Chair Mike Pence

Welcome back everyone. We just completed our weekly meeting of the House Republican Conference and much of the discussion today was on the subjects of national security and jobs. Republicans had a thorough discussion of the president's address last night. And while we welcome the president's call for reinforcements in Afghanistan, many House Republicans have serious concerns about calls for a timeline or benchmarks, or even some discussions on Capitol Hill about a war surtax. While we welcome the president's embrace of the requests of our commanders in the field for reinforcements, Congress should resist efforts to impose artificial timelines or benchmarks on our soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan. It never makes sense to tell the enemy when your commitment to fight will run out.

Also, House Republicans are adamantly opposed, especially during this difficult economy, to passing a tax increase on the backs of our soldiers. Now is the time for us to focus on our national security and not introduce divisive domestic issues like a tax increase into this debate and Congress should resist that effort.

There was also much discussion about jobs. The president's job summit takes place tomorrow. We believe that it represents a tacit admission that the economic policies of this administration and this Congress have failed. And while we welcome the president's focus on jobs we hope it will not simply result in more of the same. House Republicans know we can't borrow and spend and bail our way back to a growing economy. We'll continue to advance policies that will give the American people and American business more of their hard-earned dollars to spend. That's the real prescription to get this economy moving again.

Republican Whip Eric Cantor

Good morning. As we just come back from Thanksgiving break, House Republicans continue to be focused on trying to connect what seems to be a huge disconnect on the part of Democrats in Washington and the concerns that Americans have around their kitchen table.

We continue to wonder as to why we can't just focus on getting America back to work. We see that next week the Speaker and the president are going to go to Copenhagen. Why can't we instead decide to sit down together and figure out some common sense solutions on how we can get America back to work? I will be talking later today at the Heritage Foundation on some common sense solutions. The Leader will be having an economic summit tomorrow. It's the things that we can agree on in this town so that we can get Americans back to work.

Conference Vice Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers
 
Good morning everyone. Last month, we learned that America has lost another 190,000 jobs, and as Eric just said, there seems to be a big disconnect between the priorities of this Congress and getting America back to work, and actually working on policies that will help get America back to work. You think about this entire year we have passed cap and trade. That's going to cost jobs. We've passed health care reform out of the House. That's going to cost jobs. We passed a stimulus bill that is questionable as to how many jobs it created or saved. And now we're talking about another stimulus.  You look at all of these policies, and what have they done? They actually included more mandates and more tax increases on the very people, our small businesses, that we're trying to help get going.
 
Everyone on Capitol Hill likes to say that they're a friend of small business. They like to say that they understand that small businesses are our job creators, but there's a big disconnect with the policies that are actually hurting our small businesses when you need to focus on policies that are going to help our small businesses grow, create jobs, and get this economy back on track.
 
Rep. Buck McKeon
 
Good morning.  As you know, the president gave his speech to the nation last night and to the world announcing his new strategy on what we're going to do and going forward in Afghanistan.  He announced that he's sending 30,000 troops to carry out the counter-insurgency effort that we'll be launching there. He did in the same paragraph say that we'll be starting a pullout in July of '11, that's one and a half years from now. Hopefully the troops will be able to carry out their mission in that time. I have some serious questions.
 
We're looking forward to hearing from Secretary Gates, Admiral Mullen and General McChrystal in the next few days. Republicans want to know: is the President serious about fulfilling this mission, about really bringing security to the Afghan people, and eliminating the sanctuary for the al Qaeda and Taliban where they launched the attacks on September 11th.  We'll be looking forward to the answers that we get in those hearings.  Thank you.
 
Rep. Mary Fallin
 
Back in January, President Obama and House Democrat leadership promised the American people that if we spent almost one trillion taxpayer dollars, that we would create more jobs in this economy. They also promised that the unemployment rate wouldn't go up above 8.2 percent. Then they said that if we pass the stimulus bill that they would have accountability and transparency and that the American people would be able to track where the money went and how many jobs were created. But here we are today in December of 2009 and the American people still want to know ‘where are the jobs?' We've had almost 3 million jobs that have been lost.
 
Americans are very concerned about how they're going to support their families, how they're going to make their house payments, how they're going to make their car payments. They also worry about the security of their financial well-being and their retirement accounts. But what we have seen since the stimulus was passed is that unemployment has actually gone up above 10 percent. It's the highest it's been since 1983. We've seen almost 3 million jobs that have been lost and we've seen that the stimulus spending has been riddled with errors and a lack of transparency and is inaccurate. And so the American taxpayers are still very concerned about ‘where are the jobs?' The American taxpayers know that we can't borrow our way to prosperity. They know the real economic engine of our society is small business.  Keeping taxes lower, keeping debt lower is what will really stimulate our economy and create the jobs.
 
Republican Leader John Boehner
 
Republicans have always supported our troops in harm's way and we believe that it's important that we continue to provide the resources to our troops who are out there on the frontier, defending our freedom here in America. Last night, we heard the president but what we didn't hear much about was success and we believe that success in Afghanistan is critical to denying al Qaeda and their friends in the Taliban safe haven from which to plan and execute attacks against the American people. I'm glad that the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs are coming to Capitol Hill tomorrow and I'm glad General McChrystal is coming. I think there are a whole host of questions that need to be asked so we can be sure that the plan that was outlined by the president has a reasonable chance of succeeding. Because at the end of the day, it's success in Afghanistan that really matters.
 
On the jobs front, tomorrow I'll be hosting an economic forum of my own with some leading economists, talking about what we can do to get jobs moving in America. We've lost 3 million jobs over the course of this year, we have a 10.2% unemployment rate and we'll be talking about how to really help small businesses and American families get the economy moving. We'll probably also talk about the job-killing policies that this administration continues to support. I used to run a small business before I came here and when you start talking about a government take over of health care and higher taxes, when you start talking about a national energy tax, when you look at all of the debt that's being piled up and the uncertainty over what tax rates are going to be in effect, you can understand why business people all over the country are sitting on their hands. They're scared to death to re-invest in this economy until there's some certainty about what's going to happen with all these policies.
 
So, I'm hopeful that the president will listen to the ideas that we submitted to him in January. I hope he'll listen to the ideas that we submitted to him in September about how to get our economy going again and put people back to work.