After 12 consecutive months of double-digit unemployment, has your family felt the pain of this economy and the lack of leadership in Ohio?
Back in April 2009, Ohio’s unemployment rate skyrocketed to 10.2 percent—the highest unemployment rate in our state in decades. Now, state unemployment is currently at 11 percent, despite numerous promises from state leaders to save jobs and make Ohio more business-friendly.
But to date, these promises have been left unfilled. Instead of working to fix the economy and make Ohio more competitive, many of the tax-and-spenders in the Statehouse have forsaken long-term solutions in favor of short-term fixes.
I ask you—can your family afford yet another 12 months of double-digit unemployment and thousands of more job losses? Can you afford the higher taxes, lower standard of living and substandard economy that have been created by Columbus’s big spenders?
As your state representative and a staunch fiscal conservative, I believe that the key to expediting Ohio’s recovery is to look inward at state spending before even considering increasing the burden on the taxpayers.
This General Assembly, I cosponsored numerous initiatives to reduce wasteful spending, which in turn would reduce the tax burden on Ohio’s families and businesses while encouraging economic activity. One such initiative is House Bill 65, which would require the Ohio Auditor of State to conduct performance audits of state agencies. When a similar audit was performed in the state of Washington, more than $4.1 billion in waste was discovered and eliminated from the budget. I believe that with Ohio facing an $8 billion deficit in the next biennial budget, a performance audit of the same nature would help fill the budget hole.
House Bill 65, along with a collection of other House Republican job-creation and waste-reduction bills, could have both fostered a better business environment and encouraged job creation within our borders. My colleagues and I understand that to fix Ohio’s economy, we first need to be able to compete nationally for jobs. Instead, those in control of Ohio government have perpetuated a high-tax, anti-business status quo that families and small businesses simply can no longer afford.
This General Assembly has been a time of missed opportunities and constant disappointment. The down economy could have served as a catalyst to bring about fundamental changes to the way Ohio does business, yet House Democrats chose the easier option—to raise taxes after squandering the dollars they already had. I will continue to encourage my colleagues across the aisle to explore cost-saving options that will benefit our already-existing businesses, so we can create jobs and boost our economy.