While Republican House Speaker John Boehner said President Barack Obama’s jobs plan “merits consideration,” Montana Congressman Denny Rehberg struck a somewhat less conciliatory tone following the president’s speech Thursday.
<a href="http://thehill.com/news-archive/180505-obama-gets-cool-response-from-republicans-even-some-dems" title="According to The Hill“>According to The Hill, “Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.) stood to applaud heartily after Obama said: ‘Some of you sincerely believe that the only solution to our economic challenges is to simply cut most government spending and eliminate government regulations.’”
Following the speech, Rehberg released a statement emphasizing that “reining in senseless regulation” is a better option to spur economic recovery (Obama’s $447-billion jobs package is a combination of tax cuts, state aid, infrastructure spending and assistance for the unemployed).
Meanwhile, Sen. Jon Tester, who is defending his seat against Rehberg in the 2012 election, said it’s time for Congress to work together to create jobs:
“From introducing my bipartisan Forest Jobs Bill to asking Halliburton to hire more Montanans and hosting eight workshops for small businesses, creating jobs has been my priority. It’s high time Congress works together to do what’s best for Montana by creating jobs and moving our country forward.”
Here’s Rehberg’s statement in its entirety:
“For too long now, folks in Washington have been acting under the notion that the government creates jobs through deficit spending. That’s what led to the failed stimulus which wasted nearly a trillion dollars expanding the government but couldn’t deliver on the promise to keep unemployment under 8 percent. Then, doubling down on that philosophy, Washington gave us taxpayer bailouts for ‘too big to fail’ companies and fat cats on Wall Street. If government spending was the key to job creation, the record spending of the last two years should have resulted in record employment. But it hasn’t. It’s time to re-evaluate the role government plays in economic recovery. Jobs don’t come from the government spending. They come from small businesses. That means reining in senseless regulations and getting government back on the side of American job creators.”