Heidi Alexander: “I congratulate the Senator from Arizona. There is no one more thoughtful on finance matters and job creation than he. He…”

“I congratulate the Senator from Arizona. There is no one more thoughtful on finance matters and job creation than he. He has made a very important point. It was a well-intentioned effort by the administration to say: We have an economic recession so we need to stimulate the economy through some government spending. There were proposals on the Republican side to do that to a much lesser extent. But what has happened is, as the Senator has pointed out, the focus has been much too heavily on creating more government jobs, when what we need is an environment for job growth in the private sector. In fact, as the Senator from Arizona pointed out, the actions the government has taken over the last year during this great recession too often make it harder to create jobs in the private sector. The health care bill taxes job creators and investors. Those are the ones who create the jobs. The stimulus package runs up the debt. The higher the debt goes, the more money it sucks out of the system, and the harder it is to get money and to create jobs. The financial regulation bill makes credit harder to get on Main Street, as we now see it going through the Congress. If you can't get credit, you can't create a job. Jobs are at the front of everyone's mind. Our friend, the former Governor from Virginia, is here. He knows this very well. The Governor of Tennessee, Phil Bredesen, said the other day that in my State, if he had 100 conversations, 95 would be about jobs. I agree.”