Our country has lost nearly three million jobs this year and today the Labor Department will release its monthly jobs report for June where analysts expect unemployment to increase once again. Families and small businesses are hurting, but all we’ve seen from Washington is reckless spending, taxing, and borrowing that piles up more debt on our kids and grandkids. The President promised unemployment would not rise above eight percent if his trillion-dollar “stimulus” was passed. But unemployment has soared above nine percent. After all of this spending…after all of this borrowing from China, the Middle East, and our children and grandchildren…Americans have every right to ask, “Where are the jobs?”
Today I am releasing a new web video asking that very question: Where are the jobs? The tongue-in-cheek web video, inspired by a classic 1984 TV commercial by now-Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), features a job-sniffing GOP bloodhound named Ellie Mae and a down-home voiceover by Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA). In the video, job-sniffing bloodhounds follow the “stimulus” money trail across the nation in search of the millions of jobs the Obama Administration promised to “save or create” if the trillion-dollar spending bill were enacted. The trail takes them to AIG Headquarters in New York City, where “stimulus” funds were used to pay big bonuses to top executives; to Wisconsin, where “stimulus” funds are paying for repairs to a bridge that reportedly carries about 260 cars per day, many to a place called Rusty’s Backwater Saloon, according to a June 16 report in the Wall Street Journal; and to North Carolina, where “stimulus” funds were reportedly used by one town to hire a new worker whose job is to apply for more “stimulus” funds from Washington.
The web video is lighthearted, but the broader point is a serious one. Democrats promised their trillion-dollar “stimulus” would have an impact “immediately,” but it’s clear it isn’t working. We’re losing more and more jobs, and all Democrats have done is make government bigger, waste taxpayers’ money, and pile new debt on our children and grandchildren. Republicans have put forth a better solution – a plan that recognizes small business, not government, is the engine of the American economy and we hope Washington Democrats will eventually work with us. In the meantime, check out the “Bloodhounds” web video.