Pat Kreitlow on The Economy
Campaign Website Statements
Job Creation and Education
America has the most productive workforce in the world, but we are putting American workers at a huge disadvantage with unfair trade deals, a tax code that encourage companies send jobs overseas, and by ignoring China and other counties who manipulate their currency and violate trade agreements. Even in these difficult times, the American marketplace remains the most attractive to every other country in the world. We need to get tough on China and Chinese currency manipulation. It artificially inflates our trade deficit. I won't vote for bad trade deals with ship our jobs overseas. President Obama hasn't yet fulfilled his pledge to renegotiate NAFTA. If elected, I'll press to make renegotiation one of the very first votes taken by Congress in 2013.
We need to invest in education, medical and high tech research, and job training. These are the long-term investments that create jobs and help us compete in the global economy. Additionally, we need to invest our farm-communities. A growing world population depends on American farmers and our agriculture science more than ever. That means helping farmers get a fair price, get fair access to global markets, have good schools for their kids, good roads to move their products and access to global communications.
We need to make more opportunities for the true American job creators. Just as workers must earn their raises, businesses must earn their tax breaks through actions that actually put more money into the economy through new hires, expansions or research and development initiatives in America. There can also be tax credits for hiring unemployed veterans, expanded loan opportunities for small businesses that want to hire or expand, and we can attack red tape without undermining basic protections for people and resources.