No love for small business?

(Lance Enderle is the Democratic candidate for Congress in the 8h District. City Pulse has donated this space and requested Enderle to report it as an in-kind contribution. The material is unedited.)

Thank God we have a Democratic majority in Congress and the Senate. If it weren’t for Democrats, another initiative to put people back to work would have once again failed.  Republicans including Mike Rogers must think voters are either lacking in intelligence, or have a short memory.

The Republican propaganda machine is pushing the current economic climate as being  “Obama’s Recession,” but we all remember when this problem really started. We can thank the Bush/Cheney administration, and the lock step voting record of Congressional Representatives including Rogers who put us in this mess. Again, Democrats are forced to clean it up.

Since the year Rogers took office, more than 800,000 Michigan workers have lost their jobs--800,000!  This is a direct result of the reckless spending policies of Rogers, and the Bush/Cheney administration who rang up the credit card to record deficits long before 90% of Americans had even heard of Barack Obama.  But now, they would have you believe it’s all Obama’s fault.

But wait!  Rogers says he supports small business and tax relief which will create jobs.  The truth is that what he says has no resemblance to how he actually votes.

Just a few days ago, Rogers had a golden opportunity to make amends for the 800,000 jobs Michigan has lost during his tenure. He could have shown voters that he’s not out of touch with their problems by voting to support small business. But, as expected, he voted NO on the Small Business Lending Funding Act: H.R. 539.

This bill WILL create the Small Business Lending Fund Program. It WILL loosen up lending institutions so they can loan money to small businesses. It WILL change the tax code by giving breaks to small businesses that create jobs. This initiative WILL put people back to work. This bill is everything Rogers says he is campaigning for. But Rogers must have felt it would be more important to score political points against the Democrats.

In fact, this bill WILL move forward thanks to the Democratic majority in the house--no thanks to Mike Rogers and partisan Republicans who voted against it. Small business and Michigan workers will win despite Rogers efforts to smack them down.

It’s understandable that Rogers is out of touch with Michigan workers who are desperately searching for jobs--he rarely bothers to visit his own 8th district. Although he may not know his way back here, he does have the voters addresses at election time when he spends thousands of taxpayer dollars on his full color campaign literature.

Rogers’ record of voting against the interests of the working class goes all the way back to when he was a Michigan Congressman faithfully serving Governor John Engler who ran Michigan into a multi-billion dollar hole. Rogers supported Engler’s 50% sales tax increase and consistently voted to shift tax breaks to the wealthy, leaving the average working class families paying their bills.

Our economy will only recover when people are back to work. Congress needs to scrap the failed FREE TRADE agreements and support small business by putting FAIR TRADE policies in place.  They need to repeal NAFTA which is bleeding our jobs off to other countries. Congress needs to first represent the voters who put them in office--not just the special interests which has unlimited money to buy Congressional votes.

Congress needs to put job creation first on their list of priorities.  They need to not only say it--they need to do it!  Job creation in Michigan will occur at a much faster pace when voters tell Rogers it’s his turn to look for a new job.