Newhouse: Small Businesses Hamstrung by Progressive Democrats’ Policies
It’s time we reopen our economy
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-WA) spoke on the House floor to highlight the struggle American businesses are facing in finding employees to fill open positions and the need to focus on getting people back to work to kickstart our economy.
Click here to hear Rep. Newhouse's remarks.
Rep. Newhouse highlighted the impact that this labor shortage has had in Central Washington and called out the Biden Administration for their dismissal of the unemployment figures released last week.
Rep. Newhouse's remarks can be found in full below:
Mr. Speaker,
These are trying times for our country – specifically for small business owners and their families who, in some cases, are watching their livelihoods literally disappear right before their eyes.
The jobs report released on Friday was cited as the "largest miss" compared to economists' expectations since 1998. The United States filled only 266,000 of the estimated 1.3 million that were predicted to be filled – that's a million, more than a million jobs less than expected, and the unemployment rate actually rose for the first time during this recovery.
For over a year, our businesses have been shuttered, our schools closed, making it impossible for parents to return to work and for hard-working individuals to earn an honest living. To make matters worse, many of our local businesses simply cannot find the labor they need because federal unemployment "benefits" discourage workers from returning to the workplace further hindering the recovery of our local economies.
President Biden dismissed these figures as merely a snapshot in time, refusing to see that they represent the very real struggles our small businesses and communities are facing.
Just this weekend, I hosted our annual job fair in Central Washington, and the changes that I saw were stark. Dozens of employers, who represented everything from the agricultural industry to law enforcement offices, restaurants, distribution centers, to government contractors who are handling nuclear cleanup, they were all looking to hire hundreds of people – and guess what, less than 100 applicants showed up. Two years ago, we had 500 attendees competing for many of the same kinds of jobs.
Now I know that our small businesses are the economic engine of our economy, and we must ensure that we can get that engine restarted as quickly and as safely as possible. It's time we reopen our economy, get our kids back into the classrooms, empower the entrepreneurs that are the backbone of our economy, and allow America to recover.
Thank you, Mr. Bost from Illinois and I yield back…
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