McCarthy: end ban on off shore drilling, give small businesses a break and deal with the debt

Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield and House Majority Whip, gives us his weekly view from Capitol Hill. In his words:

"Like many parents, I’m worried about the future opportunities of kids in America. Are we laying a foundation for them to succeed? I know we can, but we must change course. Over the past two and a half years, spending has skyrocketed and we have accumulated an additional $3.2 trillion in debt. Still, our economy remains sluggish. In June, we added a paltry 18,000 jobs. This is unacceptable. We should be adding hundreds of thousands of jobs every month. Big spending and big government have clearly failed. I’m fighting every day to change the culture of spending in Washington. There has been progress, but we can do more, especially in the following three areas:

•       Cutting Spending: Since January, we have cut an historic amount of pending, voted to repeal Obamacare, aggressively attacked the law’ slush funds and passed a budget that brings spending to the 2008
levels we promised in our Pledge to America. Now we’re fighting for trillions more in spending cuts and pushing a Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA). Back in 1995, the BBA failed to pass Congress by just
one vote. 16 years later, we’re $14 trillion in debt. But we have another chance to get it right. This month, we will bring a new BBA to the Floor and I will vote for its passage. This week I released a video on the BBA, which you can watch on my YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/RepKevinMcCarthy

•       Growing small businesses: Small businesses employ over half the private-sector workforce. If we look at the end of the last recession from 2001 to 2007, small businesses – those with 500 employees or less
– added more than 7 million jobs. We’re clearly not seeing the same comeback now. In fact, 70 percent of small businesses said they don’t plan to hire over the next 12 months in a recent U.S. Bancorp survey,
primarily because of economic uncertainty. We must boost private-sector confidence. That means not raising taxes, as some in Washington are proposing. Taxing job creators is not the way to grow our economy and I will not stand for any proposal that increases taxes on families and small businesses.

•       Increasing energy production: Tapping our own abundant natural resources will drive down energy costs, create jobs and increase our ation’s energy security. My colleagues and I have recently passed
legislation to move forward on oil and natural gas lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and offshore Virginia, put an end to the Obama Administration’s de facto moratorium on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, and lift the President’s ban on new offshore drilling. These three pieces of legislation could help create an estimated 1.2 million jobs long-term, according to Louisiana State University Economist Dr. Joseph Mason. In addition, we passed legislation to allow oil extraction in the Alaskan Outer Continental Shelf to move forward in a timely and safe manner, which could create tens of thousands of jobs annually. The Senate must act on this legislation.