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Restarting Our Economy
After seven years of President Bush’s misguided economic policies, hard working Americans are struggling. In Connecticut, I hear from people who are worried about whether or not their job is safe or if the home they saved for is in jeopardy of foreclosure. Throughout my career, I have been dedicated to fighting for economic policies that preserve and strengthen the backbone of our country: America’s middle class.
Instead of giving tax relief to the wealthiest of the wealthy like George Bush did, I believe tax cuts should be directed toward middle class families who could use that additional money to offset skyrocketing energy prices, make a mortgage payment, or save for their children’s college tuition. That is why in January of 2008, I supported the bipartisan House economic stimulus package that provided a tax rebate to 1.5 million working families in Connecticut—up to $600 per individual, $1200 per married couple, and $300 for every child. These rebates will hopefully help Americans work toward regaining financial stability during this period of economic uncertainty.
In my first term, I introduced two tax cut packages aimed at helping individuals and businesses in Connecticut. Some of my ideas were incorporated in an end of the year tax bill that became law in late 2007, including a deduction for qualified tuition and related expenses, a credit to offset research and development expenses, a deduction for state and local sales tax, and a credit for businesses for brownfields remediation costs. I also helped to pass a $4.84 billion small business tax relief plan.
As a member of the House Financial Services Committee, I have been working diligently to help provide a solution to the housing crisis. Tens of thousands of Connecticut homeowners currently have subprime loans, and of those home loans in Connecticut that are 90 days delinquent and in foreclosure, more than half are subprime loans. So I responded by working on legislation to allow the Federal Housing Administration to help refinance at-risk borrowers into viable mortgages and to provide assistance to states and cities to deal with problems associated with large numbers of foreclosures in their neighborhoods.
Representing Connecticut’s 5th district, I know how important manufacturing jobs have been to our economy. In these times of economic uncertainty, we’ve got to put our heads together to figure out how to grow our business community, and the manufacturing sector should be at the forefront of that growth. I’ve visited dozens of manufacturers in the 5th district and organized panel discussions with these companies to discuss manufacturing workforce development issues so I can take ideas back to my colleagues in Washington.
Our country desperately needs to embrace trade agreements that ensure a level playing field for American workers. The “free trade” paradigm championed by the current administration has eroded our country’s manufacturing base and caused irreparable damage to the American worker in recent decades. We need a new trade framework that forces our trade partners in the developing world to more rapidly increase their labor and environmental standards so as to move toward an even playing field with American companies.
