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Digital News Report – As the governor said in his State of the State Address, the priority of the Legislature needs to be jobs, jobs, jobs. To be more specific, our priority needs to be private-sector jobs, and that means getting government out of the way of the large and small businesses that create them.
Some say the recession is over, but if you’ve lost your job or your home, or both, it certainly doesn’t feel like it to you.
Unemployment in Central California continues to rise, even as rates decline in other areas. The official unemployment rate in San Benito County is 18.7 percent and Merced County is 18.3 percent, just a tad higher than Stanislaus County, which reports 17.2 percent unemployment. Madera County stands at 15 percent and Monterey County has a 16.7 percent unemployment rate.
The many families who are struggling to stretch unemployment benefits, who are standing in lines around the block at hiring events, need jobs, not words.
You would think the Democrat-controlled Legislature would be doing everything within its power to help job creation. Right? Think again. It has done exactly the opposite; passing one job-killing regulation after another and cementing California’s reputation as a difficult and expensive place in which to open a business and keep it open.
Perhaps that’s why one out of six American employers that closed permanently in 2008 was a business in California. So lawmakers who are truly serious about getting Californians back to work must restore the Golden State to the land of opportunity it once was by undoing some of the damage.
That means the Legislature must roll back over-burdensome regulations that put good employers out of business, or send them into the waiting arms of the many states with better business climates.
Californians need more jobs and want less government, and that is what I will spend my last year in the Senate fighting to deliver.
By: Sen. Jeff Denham