Roskam Gives Republicans Weekly Address

From Roskam’s Office…

Rep. Peter Roskam (R-IL) Delivers Weekly Republican Address

Rep. Roskam: “Back in Illinois and around the country, the situation has reached a boiling point. Americans are asking ‘where are the jobs?’ and – forget about getting answers – they can’t even get President Obama and Washington Democrats to listen to their concerns.”

WASHINGTON, D.C. – In the Weekly Republican Address, Rep. Peter Roskam (R-IL) says President Obama needs to listen to the American people, who are asking ‘where are the jobs?,’ and abandon his failing ’stimulus’ policies in favor of common-sense solutions that will promote private sector job creation. Republicans are listening to the American people through America Speaking Out and offering better solutions to cut spending now and help small businesses get people working again. Now in his second term in Congress, Rep. Roskam represents Illinois’ Sixth Congressional District and serves as job-creation policy director for America Speaking Out. Text of the address follows; audio of the address is available here and video of the address will be available here once the embargo is lifted.

Transcript

“Hello, I’m Peter Roskam, and I work for the people of Illinois’ Sixth Congressional District.

“Yesterday, Americans woke up to learn that our economy lost another 131,000 jobs in the month of July. Here in the president’s home state of Illinois, where the unemployment rate is well over 10 percent, families are wondering why Washington is spending money we don’t have and piling up a mountain of debt only to have the economy sputter and job losses continue. Businesses are afraid to invest in the economy when Washington continues to hand down mandates and tax increases that make it harder to succeed and to grow.

“Unfortunately, instead of taking decisive action to provide small and medium sized businesses with the tax and regulatory relief they need to flourish and hire new workers, Speaker Pelosi and Democrat Leaders in Congress are coming back to Washington next week to double down on their ’stimulus’ agenda that has led to fewer jobs and more debt.

“This latest round of ’stimulus’ spending comes in the form of a political season payoff to union bosses, and even worse, it’ll be financed with a job-killing tax hike on America’s job-creators.

“Under Democratic Leaders in Congress spending has gotten completely out of control. It reminds me of when Mom and Dad go away for the weekend. The teenagers say, ‘leave us home alone, we’re responsible, what can go wrong?’ Except Mom and Dad come home a day early only to find the house is trashed, the police are parked outside and everything is a mess. At this outrageous rate of spending, the Obama Administration and Congress are on track to triple the national debt over the next 10 years.

“Back in Illinois and around the country, the situation has reached a boiling point. Americans are asking ‘where are the jobs?’ and – forget about getting answers – they can’t even get President Obama and Washington Democrats to listen to their concerns.

“Well, Republicans are listening. This spring, we launched the America Speaking Out project to transform the way people interact with their elected representatives. Every day, whether it’s online or at town hall meetings, Americans are sharing ideas and engaging in a constructive dialogue about the future of our country. It’s time to put the American people back in the driver’s seat. As the great Illinois President Abraham Lincoln once said, ours should be a government ‘of the people, by the people, and for the people.’

“One of the best and most popular ideas on AmericaSpeakingOut.com right now is stopping Washington Democrats’ job-killing tax hikes on families and small businesses. At a time of serious economic challenges, massive new tax increases are a surefire way to stall growth and prevent businesses from creating jobs.

“That’s because every dollar in new taxes owed is a dollar that can’t be used to pay current employees or hire new workers. Hobbling the small businesses that are the backbone of our economy will further delay a robust recovery. According to an analysis by the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation – that’s Congress’s official tax scorekeeper – half of all new taxes collected under President Obama’s plan would come from America’s small businesses.

“Now, many economists agree that raising taxes on small businesses is the wrong approach. Among them is Mark Zandi, a favorite economist of the Obama administration. Mr. Zandi wrote this week that ‘raising taxes on anyone now’ would be a ‘mistake.’

“I served in the state Senate with President Obama, and I know that he has the ability to work across party lines when the moment demands it. And after 18 months of spending sprees, backroom deals, and government takeovers, this is the moment. We need a real economic agenda for growth and job creation, one that moves beyond partisan politics and puts our nation’s economic health front and center.

“For bipartisan economic solutions that can help all Americans, I hope President Obama will take another look at the ‘No-Cost Jobs Plan’ that House Republican leaders presented to him last December. The ‘No-Cost Jobs Plan’ lays out several common-sense ideas that are designed to move us away from government ’stimulus’ spending that hasn’t worked, and towards responsible policies that free up the nation’s entrepreneurs and job creators to create jobs.

“Ultimately, the key to improving our nation’s struggling economy depends on the strength and innovation of America’s private sector. By engaging the small and growing businesses that fuel our economy, we can get our country back on the right track. That’s why Republicans are listening to the American people and offering better solutions to cut wasteful spending and get people working again.

“Visit AmericaSpeakingOut.com to learn more and to share your ideas. We look forward to hearing your solutions.”

Rep Peter Roskam Returns From Israel After Meeting with Netanyahu

From the Office of Illinois Representative Perter Roskam…

Greetings from Washington! In this town, it’s easy to get swept up in the critical domestic issues facing our country each day. With the mid-term elections less than four months away, a Democratic majority unable to draft a budget, and unemployment near ten percent, there is plenty keeping us busy.

However, our country is also facing critical security issues on the international stage. Recently, I had the privilege of leading a bipartisan Congressional delegation to Israel – our nation’s only democratic ally in the tumultuous Middle East – to get a first hand account of the situation on the ground as it relates to American interests. As the co-chair of the House Republican Israel Caucus, this trip was particularly insightful.

Earlier this year, the international community was stunned to see President Obama usher Prime Minister Netanyahu out the side door of the White House. This unprecedented diplomatic slight to our most trusted ally in the Middle East coupled with controversial statements regarding the need for Israel to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty has created months of turmoil and ambiguity in the international arena. That ambiguity has left the door open for Iran to continue smuggling arms to Hamas in an effort to undermine the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Hezbollah, another client of Iran, is destabilizing Lebanon.

This month, President Obama back peddled from his provocative treatment of Israel and hosted another yet another meeting in the White House. As they say, this time the “optics” were different. This time all the pomp and circumstance was afforded to our only democratic ally in the Middle East. I believe our interests at home and abroad are best served when Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran know where the United States stands in support of Israel. But it’s going to take more than pomp and circumstance for America’s interests to be protected abroad.

?Upon the Prime Minister’s return to Israel, I sat down with him in Jerusalem to discuss America’s relationship with Israel and the Iranian nuclear threat. In our discussion, Netanyahu was optimistic about continuing the historically strong relationship between our countries.

The danger of a nuclear armed Iran, however, grows exponentially each day they continue enriching uranium. He pointed out that these Islamic extremist groups are methodical and aggressive – they’ve demonstrated this repeatedly with the use of suicide bombers in Pakistan, London, and India. If they will go to these lengths now, it is impossible to predict when and where they may choose to strike with a nuclear weapon in their hands. I also met with Salaam Fayaad, Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority, to discuss his security challenges and economic development.

My trip to Israel was thought-provoking. With such turmoil in the Middle East right now, I believe the United States must remain dedicated to our alliance with Israel and focused on taking proactive steps with our international allies to deter a nuclear Iran. For more information and pictures from my trip, check out The Hill, Roskam Tweets Israel Trip.

Sincerely,
Peter J. Roskam
Member of Congress

P.S. Traveling to Israel reminded me of the critical international issues facing our country today, and the Democrats’ ineffective leadership in this area. As we approach Election Day in November, I hope you will join me in standing with our friends and continuing to project freedom and security throughout the world.

PelosiCare: An Expensive Mistake

The most recent report from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services brings a new level of disappointment following the hype and false promises of healthcare reform.

This report, an assessment from the non-partisan CMS, confirms the Democrat health plan will raise healthcare costs and threaten access to care for millions of Americans.

When the Ways and Means Committee called for this review in March, we knew the American people wanted all of the facts before moving ahead with the Democrat health bill.  Speaker Pelosi rushed the bill through the House without giving time to thoroughly evaluate it, actually claiming “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.” This new CMS report reveals exactly why the Speaker wanted to keep the American people in the dark about the details of her damaging healthcare legislation.

I am extremely disappointed that the American people now face a healthcare law that increases spending at a time when Congress’ priority should have been on reducing out-of-control costs.  While millions more Americans will receive insurance cards under this legislation, few will have meaningful access to healthcare.  Under the bill, almost half of all new individuals gaining ‘coverage’ will be dumped onto Medicaid, a failing welfare program that will not meet their healthcare needs.

The report finds that while the legislation will nominally achieve President Obama’s goal of expanding coverage to 34 million individuals, it will ultimately do so by forcing 18 million Americans onto a broken Medicaid system, “exacerbating existing access problems for Medicaid enrollees.”  The study estimates that national healthcare expenditures “would increase by $311 billion” as a result of the new law.  Additionally, fourteen million employees who currently enjoy employer-sponsored insurance will be dropped from their coverage.  Finally, the bill increases pressure on an already serious health professional shortage, meaning patients will have to wait in long lines for their health treatment and care.

This is neither the responsible spending nor policy people want. Rushed and forced healthcare that doesn’t meet the needs of the people is a pointless, expensive mistake

Roskam Slams Obama Nuclear Weapon Plan

President Barack Obama’s self-imposed nuclear restrictions concerns U.S. Rep. Peter Roskam.

On Tuesday Obama announced a new Nuclear Posture Review that limits the United State’s potential use of nuclear weapons, even in self defense. This is part of Obama’s plan to render nuclear weapons as obsolete across all nations. Obama is hoping his unilateral action will bring Russia to the bargaining table to reduce nuclear stockpiles.

“To stop the spread of nuclear weapons, prevent nuclear terrorism, and pursue the day when these weapons do not exist, we will work aggressively to advance every element of our comprehensive agenda — to reduce arsenals, to secure vulnerable nuclear materials, and to strengthen” international agreement, Obama said in a statement.

Under the new plan, the U.S. promises not to use nuclear weapons against countries that don’t have them. However, the policy would not apply to states like North Korea and Iran, because of their refusal to cooperate with the international community on nonproliferation.

Roskam, a DuPage Republican, said he is concerned the plan will hamstring all available national defense options for the U.S. military. He said no one wants to see nuclear weapons used but the announcement of this plan telegraphs our defense strategies to hostile nations and makes the U.S. less secure.

“This one-sided policy hamstrings the U.S., but does absolutely nothing to rein in hostile countries even as they fail to live up to their international obligations. The President’s recent wavering on the need for strong and enforceable sanctions to curb Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons only further encourages defiant foreign powers like Iran and North Korea to continue down a road of aggressively developing and producing nuclear weapons,” Roskam said in a press release today. “I urge the President to rethink this issue, work with our international partners to convince Iran to abandon its quest for nuclear weapons, and pursue multi-national solutions to global nuclear responsibility.”

GOP Launches Health Care 218

U.S. Rep. Peter Roskam and the Republican members of Congress are launching a program called “Health Care 218,” a plan to educate Americans on the necessity to repeal and replace the Democratic health care plan passed last week. The 218 refers to the number of days between the launch of the program and the November 2 election.

Over the next 218 days the GOP program will “daily chronicle the massive new costs, delays, hidden problems and bureaucratic hurdles the recently passed healthcare legislation will impose on American families.” The program will show the extraordinary costs of the Obama health care plan which will mean new taxes and massive amounts of new national debt. Republican leaders predict taxes will increase by $569.2 billion under the Obama plan.

Republican leaders are counting on this program to impact the general election and help sweep Republicans back into control of the House and perhaps the Senate.

For details on the tax increases go here.

Ten things Everyone Should Know about Democrats’ Health Care Plan

House Minority Leader John Boehner said the Democrat’s health care plan will kill jobs in America if it is rammed through the House this weekend.

The analysis below:

NUMBERS TO KNOW:

• $569.2 billion in tax increases
• $523.5 billion in Medicare cuts
• $48 billion more for Medicaid

1. A Job-Killing Government Takeover of Health Care. No amount of changes or legislative tricks can hide the true destructive nature of this bill: $17 billion in new taxes on Americans who do not comply with the individual mandate, $52 billion in new taxes on employers that do not provide health coverage deemed “acceptable” or “affordable” by government bureaucrats, and new taxes on capital gains, dividends and interest that will further stifle economic growth and job creation.

2. New Tax on Capital Formation and Job Creation. The Medicare tax on capital gains, dividends, and other investment income gets bigger, magnifying the destructive power of this new tax.  The bill increases the tax from 2.9 percent to 3.8 percent, pushing the top capital gains rate to 23.8 percent and the top rate for dividends to 43.4 percent in conjunction with tax relief expiring at the end of this year.  As The Wall Street Journal editorialized this week, this tax will “permanently skew the incentives to work, save and create jobs.”

3. Democrats Continue to Say ‘I Do’ To Marriage Penalty.  The bill leaves in place a massive marriage penalty, which will mean higher premiums for those that tie the knot.  As highlighted in January by The Wall Street Journal, “the disparity comes about in part because subsidies for purchasing health insurance … are pegged to federal poverty guidelines.”  The final bill leaves this unfair penalty on married couples in place.

4. Lower Wages and More Unemployment.  The final bill imposes $52 billion in new taxes on employers, including small businesses, that cannot afford to provide health coverage or that don’t offer coverage.  The effect of this type of tax, similar to a payroll tax increase, would ultimately fall squarely on workers in the form of lower wages or reduced employment.  In fact, the Tax Policy Center concluded that “economists generally believe that the burden of payroll taxes is borne by workers in the form of lower wages, regardless of whether the tax is levied on the employer or the employee.”  The tax proposed in this bill will likely have the same effect.

5. Employers Targeted By Even Higher Taxes to Enforce Employer Mandate. The final bill incorporated President Obama’s suggestion to rake in a little more cash to pay for a massive government-takeover of health care by nearly tripling the job-killing mandate tax on employers who do not offer health coverage to $2,000 per employee. Sure enough, the President’s suggestion raises an additional $25 billion on the backs of American employers, according to CBO.

6. Individual Mandate Tax Reduced?  No, Not Really.  Democrats are highlighting their generosity by lowering the amount of the tax for not complying with the mandate. But just how generous are they?  Not very.  Democrats propose to reduce the individual mandate tax flat payment amount by a scant 14¢ a day.  And, while Democrats “reduce” the individual mandate tax flat payment amount, they actually raise $2 billion more by making other alterations to the individual mandate, according to CBO.

7. The Power to Tax Our Health Care.  The Democrats’ final bill doesn’t just tax individuals and employers if they don’t comply with the complex mandates in the bill. The bill sends the IRS out to tax the very products Americans use to maintain and restore their own health.  New taxes on medical devices, on prescription drugs, and on health insurance itself are all targets of the bill.  And, with $10 billion in new enforcement resources, you can bet the IRS will be taking its full share out of the pockets of every American who uses any of these products or services.

8. Even More Subsidies, Even Greater Threat to the Economy.  The bill increases the subsidies provided under the bill from those provided in the Senate bill by $65 billion, a significant and unsustainable increase. In fact, the Associated Press reported a warning from Massachusetts’ state treasurer, who stated that Congress will “threaten to wipe out the American economy within four years” if it adopts a health care overhaul modeled after the Bay State’s.

9. Taxpayer-Funded Abortion Coverage. The final bill does not include the Stupak amendment language that would prohibit federal funds from being used to fund elective abortions.  Instead, states are given the option to opt-out of providing insurance coverage of abortions.  Still, taxpayers in a state that opts-out would still see their federal tax dollars fund elective abortions in other states. Additionally, each state through the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) can provide access to two multi-state plans, and only one of them will exclude abortions. OPM’s current health care program – the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) – does not include any plans that cover elective abortion. For the first time, a federally funded and managed health care plan will cover elective abortions.

10. Medicaid Rolls And Waiting Lines to Swell Even More. CBO estimates that as a result of the Democrats’ bill, one million more Americans will get their coverage from Medcaid, which is plagued with financial woes and wreaks all kinds of budgetary havoc on cash-strapped states.  The Democrats’ bill, as the New York Times highlighted, will push even more Americans into a program where they will have trouble finding doctors and have to wait for potentially months to receive care.  That’s not meaningful reform by any measure.

BONUS: Republicans have proposed a health care bill based on common-sense reforms that, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, would reduce premiums for families and small businesses by up to 10 percent. It is not too late to start over.

Despite Lean Times, We Must Protect our Resources

My campaign launched a household battery recycling program that will make it easier for constituents to personally be good stewards of our planet. Many kinds of batteries contain heavy metals and other toxic chemicals that, left to rot in a landfill, will one day contaminate our soil and pollute our water. By providing a place where household batteries with hazardous waste material can be properly disposed, we are doing a small part to leave our planet in better shape for our kids and our grandkids.

Roskam Launches Innovative Environmental Program

Washington Grows While Businesses Continue to Fall

Even though the national unemployment rate remained at 9.7 percent for the month of February, more than 36,000 jobs were lost in February and since the so called stimulus was passed over 3 million jobs have been lost. This indicates the economy is in serious trouble and the central economic planning from Washington, D.C. is not working, U.S. Rep. Peter Roskam, a DuPage Republican said this morning.

It has been over a year since the Democrats’ misguided “stimulus” plan was enacted, and while they guaranteed it would create millions of jobs, instead it has delivered near double-digit unemployment, record spending, and record debt,” Roskam said. “We need a change in direction in Washington. My constituents are fed up with the Democrats’ spending adventure and unyielding obsession with ignoring the will of Americans and trying to pass a massive healthcare overhaul.”

The actual unemployment rate, which includes part- time workers who’d prefer a full-time position and people who want work but have given up looking, rose to nearly 17 percent, according to Business Week.

Roskam said there are ways to jump start the economy with pro-growth policies including tax relief for small businesses and families, and enact the “no cost jobs plan”: Free Trade Agreements with Columbia, Panama, and South Korea.

“Under Democratic control, Washington is growing while everyone else is suffering. It is long past time that reverses.”

Friday’s report from the Labor Department showed government payrolls decreased by 18,000 in February. State and local governments reduced employment by 25,000 during the month, while the federal government added 7,000. The increase at the federal level reflected in part the hiring of 15,000 temporary workers to conduct the 2010 census, according to a Business Week report.

Obama’s Stimulus a Failure

On the one-year anniversary of the federal stimulus, U.S. Rep. Peter Roskam, a DuPage Republican, said the enormous expense has been a failure.

Roskam said President Obama promised unemployment would remain below eight percent, yet the national average is 10 percent and Illinois has an unemployment rate of 11 percent. He said the stimulus is a failure that created next to zero jobs.

Some Stimulus Facts:

• Illinois’ unemployment rate has risen from 8.6 percent to 11.1 percent since the “stimulus” passed. The Obama Administration projected 148,000 Illinois jobs would be created or saved by the “stimulus.”  According to the U.S. Department of Labor, Illinois has lost 171,400 jobs since then.

• According to the Obama Administration, it has cost taxpayers $686,000 per job created in Illinois by the stimulus. More than $7.7 billion has been spent, with under 11,300 jobs created or saved through February 10, 2010.

• According to the Obama Administration, it has cost taxpayers $1.5 million per job created in Illinois’ 6^th district by the stimulus. More than $138 million has been spent with only 89 jobs reported created or saved.

• A CBS News/New York Times survey released last week found that just six percent of Americans believe Democrats’ trillion-dollar ‘stimulus’ has created jobs.

Yesterday, Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh said this: “If I could create one job in the private sector by helping to grow a business, that would be one more than Congress has created in the last six months.”