Boehner made two stops Monday in Greater Cincinnati, first at University of Cincinnati and later at Humana’s West Chester Twp. distribution facility for its RightSource division, a prescription home delivery business.
Pending free trade agreements and the nation’s infrastructure needs are areas where both major political parties can find some agreement, Boehner said.
President Barack Obama will visit the Brent Spence Bridge in Cincinnati Thursday to promote his American Jobs Act introduced Sept. 8. Part of the American Jobs Act is to rebuild infrastructure, such as roads, railways and bridges, to create jobs.
But Boehner says the biggest hurdles for businesses to create jobs are the number of regulations that pin businesses down, the federal spending binge and the complexities of the tax code.
In his home district, Boehner said Americans are innovators, looking for a better idea that might give them an opportunity to start a business, grow a business or do what’s going on Humana — to take an idea and to apply enough technology and the right people to grow it into exponential numbers.
“This is what America’s all about. It’s not about the government, the government doesn’t create jobs. The government can kill jobs with too many regulations, too many taxes and a lot of nonsense,” Boehner said after touring the Humana plant, which recently announced plans to expand.
Kathy Wyenandt, chair of the Butler County Democratic Party Central Committee, said she thinks Boehner’s quick to point his finger when he could look at corporations sitting on record profits instead of investing their money. He also needs to hold the banking industry accountable for their tight lending restrictions that are also sitting on money, she said.
As far as the American Jobs Act, more than $1 billion would be available immediately in Ohio to rebuild infrastructure, creating more than 13,000 jobs, Wyenandt said. Ohio would get another $1 billion to help rebuild schools, which would create about 12,000 jobs, she said. She also said the Jobs Act prevents layoffs of an estimated 14,000 teacher and firefighter jobs in Ohio.
Efforts on both sides are trying to address still high unemployment rates. The U.S. unemployment rate was unchanged last month at 9.1 percent and the Ohio unemployment rate last month increased to 9.1 percent from 9 percent in July. The August unemployment rate for Butler County is supposed to be released today by Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. In July for Butler County it was 9.7 percent.
David Lippert, president of Hamilton Caster & Manufacturing Co., attended Boehner’s stop in Cincinnati.
“I think probably every person in the room, because hey, we’re all business people, seemingly agreed that the more government gets out of the way, the more government will help,” Lippert said. “The more we can feel good about how we can compete in the rest in the world and I’ll say how we can compete in the U.S. against the rest of the world, the more jobs we can provide.”
He said everyone talks about the economy turning around, but he doesn’t hear anyone saying it will take time. Hamilton Caster now has 66 employees, but it has yet to return to the number of employees before the recent economic recession started.
“I don’t think government can just make it happen,” he said.
Contact this reporter at (513) 705-2551 or clevingston@coxohio.com.
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