February 1: Budget Should Focus on Jobs, Economic Growth

Appearing on the On Point program hosted by Tom Ashbrook, Congresswoman Kaptur noted that one county in the Ninth Congressional District, Ottawa County, is suffering from 17 percent unemployment.

“So direct efforts to help people are a very high priority with me,” she said.

Kaptur also stressed the need for jobs and economic growth. “Whatever we do,” Kaptur said, “we have to create growth in the economy—that’s right at the top … You grow your way out of a deficit and this long-term debt. People have to work.”

Kaptur said fiscal responsibility is achievable. “I have been a part of a Congress, back in the Nineties, that balanced the budget and started to bring down the debt,” she said.

“We gave President Bush a balanced budget in 2000. So it can be done, but the choices will be tough. This president (Obama) assumed office in a vortex. Things were going down. The Bush Administration had left a huge deficit. We never had a balanced budget in those years and these two wars have extended for over a decade, and there’s a huge cost to that.”

She also emphasized the importance of reforming the financial system. “We have to do what’s right in the banking system,” she said. “The public sector can’t possibly substitute for the capital that is being destroyed every day in the banking system.” She said she would support targeted tax cuts, citing the success of the first-time homebuyer tax credits that Congress approved last year.