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RNC Chairman Reince Priebus Remarks As Prepared For Delivery
Press Conference on Obama's Political Payoffs and Middle Class Layoffs
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
July 19, 2012
We're here to hold President Obama accountable for promising jobs to Pennsylvanians and then sending stimulus money and taxpayer dollars overseas.
President Obama took half a billion dollars of your taxpayer money and gave it to Fisker Automotive because they promised to create jobs at their Wilmington plant and to hire workers here in the Delaware Valley. They promised to build cars here and create jobs here.
Fisker took that money-your money-but they didn't create jobs for you. Their factory in Delaware, which would have created jobs for people both in Delaware and here in southeastern Pennsylvania, was supposed to be open today, but instead it's closed. And Fisker is still building their cars in Finland. They took taxpayer dollars to build their electric sports cars overseas. Good for Finland. Devastating for taxpayers. Devastating for those people who would have had jobs here in Pennsylvania and Delaware.
President Obama promised his 831 billion-dollar stimulus would create millions of "shovel-ready" jobs. But it failed. And it's not hard to see why. Americans are hurting. We need jobs-right here in Pennsylvania. But thanks to Obama's policies, unemployment in the United States has been over 8 percent for 41 months. 23 million Americans are struggling for work.
The country is 15.8 trillion dollars in debt, and yet President Obama is throwing away taxpayer money, spending it irresponsibly, wasting it on Finnish sports cars. We can't afford four more years of this. And it's not just Fisker. President Obama spent billions of taxpayer dollars with nothing to show for it. There's Solyndra for example-half a billion dollars to a solar energy company that went bankrupt and laid off 1,800 workers. Many of these companies had ties to Obama's major political donors. For their political support, they got billions in payoffs. American workers only got layoffs.
Americans know Big Government does not create jobs. Entrepreneurs and small businesses do. But President Obama thinks otherwise. Just the other day he said, "If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."
President Obama is wrong, and he demonstrated that he doesn't understand what fixing this economy will entail. It requires unleashing entrepreneurs, not relying on government. But he's never run a business, so maybe it's no surprise he thinks everything comes from government. President Obama is out of ideas. The only plan he has for a 2nd term is a tax increase.
His "jobs council" hasn't met in 6 months. His spokesman said he didn't have time for them. Well he's had time for 106 fundraisers and 10 rounds of golf. But no time for his "jobs council"...no time for jobs, supposedly his "number one" priority. It's time to end Obama's attacks on success. It's time to end his big government agenda. We can't afford for him to send another dollar of our taxpayer money overseas.
Mitt Romney understands the economy. He wants to help job creators and entrepreneurs, not vilify them. That's why we must make him the next president of the United States. Because after three and half years of Barack Obama, Pennsylvanians are still looking for the jobs he promised.
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Economy Small Business
