Creating Jobs, Growing our Economy

A jobless economic recovery is no recovery at all. Getting people back to work must be our top priority. Yet despite the disproportionately negative impact of the recession on our communities, Congressman Cravaack has voted against virtually every measure to deal with the challenges that we face. Instead, he advocates for the same policies that got us into this mess in the first place, even opposing meaningful Wall Street reform – all at Main Street’s expense. When it comes to fixing our economy and putting people back to work, Congressman Cravaack votes ‘no’ at every turn.

My husband Doug and I know a lot about working hard, paying for things ourselves, and saving up to make a big-ticket purchase. Hard work is the basis of our faith and family, and it is one of the foundations of our country. Now, as the mother of recent college graduates, I want to make sure we’re doing everything we can to ensure opportunity for this and future generations.

Whether as a Housing and Redevelopment Authority Commissioner, as a member of the Governor’s Workforce Development Council, as the Executive Director of the Minnesota Community Action Partnership, as a Legislative leader, or as the National Co-Chair of the Jobs21! Campaign for the BlueGreen Alliance, I work to bring people together to create conditions, policies and smart investments to grow jobs and make our country the global leader throughout the 21st century.

While we lost about 7 million American jobs in the great recession, we can put in place strategies and smart investments that will not only create good sustainable jobs in our communities, working together we can strengthen our infrastructure and retool our industries building on American ingenuity and productivity ensuring our world economic leadership. We can achieve this in the short-term through smart investments in infrastructure, high tech and clean-energy jobs, by retrofitting schools and public buildings, by re-tooling manufacturing, and by getting banks lending again so that small and medium-sized businesses can expand and create new jobs. In the longer term, creating a highly skilled, educated workforce and promoting cutting edge industries will grow new jobs that make us globally competitive.

We’re slowly coming out of the deepest recession since the Great Depression, and it will take perseverance – and yes, time – to recover. I will keep the focus on job creation until every Minnesotan who wants a job and is able to work can find a job that pays a decent wage. Only by working together to find serious solutions to serious challenges will we return to economic prosperity and growth, and that’s what I’ll work toward in Congress.