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News
Rep. Foster: Stimulus has helped economy : News : Oswego Ledger-Sentinel : Hometown Newspaper for Oswego and Montgomery, IllinoisRep. Foster: Stimulus has helped economy
| Congressman tells gathering he's frustrated by political partisanship
| by Tony Scott
| 2/18/2010
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U.S. Rep. Bill Foster told a group of local business professionals at a lunch Tuesday afternoon that the economy is improving, thanks in part to the stimulus funding put into place by the Obama Administration.
Foster, D-Batavia, gave an address to approximately 50 people, including Yorkville Mayor Valerie Burd, at a Yorkville Area Chamber of Commerce luncheon at the Whitetail Ridge Golf Club in Yorkville.
Incumbent Foster is facing Republican challenger Randy Hultgren of Winfield in the November general election.
Foster suggested that he empathizes with small business owners as he and his brother started a theater lighting business in their parents' basement 35 years ago, using a $500 loan from their parents. Their business is now a multi-national corporation that supplies lighting to the majority of concert venues, theaters and schools in the world.
"We do all of our manufacturing in the Midwest, and I'm very proud of that; it's a struggle," he said. "We go to every trade show worried that one of our competitors will have offshored their production and will undercut our prices. It's a real worry, and so far we've been able to keep our production in the United States."
Foster said manufacturing businesses are needed in this country for national security reasons. He gave an anecdote about Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto stating that he knew Japan would lose World War II because of the number of factories in the United States.
"The problem is, today, when you look at those factories, they're not in the United States," Foster said. "They're in China, and that's a danger that we're facing. So we have to, as a matter of strategic national interest, preserve manufacturing. And that's a very tough job."
Foster said it is difficult to get things done in Congress when there is such an environment of partisanship between the Democratic and Republican parties.
"I'm very frustrated, frankly, with the partisanship," he said. "I can have wonderful discussions with individual members of Congress from either side, doesn't matter. But something happens when everyone files onto the floor of the House of Representatives, and it's like we form into street gangs. And we try to do everything we can to undercut any record of accomplishment by the other side."
Foster explained that those in "safe seats" end up gaining seniority and then leadership roles in Congress, thanks in part to gerrymandering district boundaries. He said the only danger to losing their seats is a primary election challenge from a "more extreme" wing of their own party, so the incumbent acts more extreme in reaction to that.
"The leadership of both parties is more extreme than the ordinary rank-and-file, and it makes it very hard to get compromise," he said. "And I don't have any solution for that, except getting rid of gerrymandering."
Stimulus helped economy
Foster said the United States lost $17.5 trillion in wealth between July of 2007 and March of 2009, prior to the stimulus package going into effect. Since that time, the country has gained $5 trillion, he said.
"Things are, in fact, recovering," he said. "Since March of 2009 there has been about a $5 trillion increase in the wealth of households. And this is why businesses are becoming profitable again. It's very painful with the unemployment situation the way it is, but there are big improvements in the profitability of businesses."
Foster said the businesses in the 14th District are doing better, but are leery of hiring new employees. He said he had to lay off people twice in his business' history, once after the 2001 terrorist attacks.
"It is such a searing experience to have to lay off people that you will do anything not to repeat it," he said. "As a result, many of the businesses are scared to re-hire. Many of the businesses I've talked to are actually very busy, they're running Saturday shifts, but they don't want to re-hire the extra people because they're afraid things are going to retract again."
Foster outlined the unemployment rate trends from the end of the Bush Administration in late 2008 onward, and showed that the stimulus bill slowed the growth of unemployment.
"This is not too different than what happened in the Great Depression, if you look at the fractional job loss that was happening," he said. "And if this had simply continued for another year, then by January of 2010 we would have been looking at something like 20 percent unemployment."
He added, "I think the idea that nothing that we did worked is not really borne out by the actual numbers."
Foster also addressed the deficit, showing the historic trends as a percentage of the country's gross domestic product (GDP) since the beginning of the Reagan administration. The exception of the trend was the second term of the Clinton administration, when the nation saw a surplus. He said he voted against the Democrats' budget last year.
"The budget is a one-year plan, and also a 10-year plan," Foster said. "We have needed for a while a 10-year plan to pay down the debt - not simply stop growing it, but actually pay it down. And that's what was missing. The Obama plan... simply went back to something where the deficit would be four percent of GDP every year. We have to go back to the Clinton years where we were actively paying it down."
On the issue of health care reform, Foster said whatever plan Congress goes with, he does not want it to impact small businesses.
"I am very concerned to make sure that when we pass anything regarding health care, that it not place an undue burden on small business," he said. "Because they are the lifeblood of our economy."
During a question-and-answer session following Foster's presentation, Dean Fisher, co-owner of Carstar in Yorkville, asked Foster how Congress could vote in favor of health care reform when polls show that the majority of voters are against it.
However, Foster said the opinion varies on health care reform depending on how the questions are phrased. For example, he said if a person is asked about "Obamacare," they will give a negative response, but if asked about reform that would help those who are uninsurable, they would give a positive response.
"If you describe it with a negative name, you get a negative response; if you describe it with the facts, you get a positive response," he said. "Somewhere in between is the true point of view on this."
Foster said that most likely what will happen with health care reform is that there will be passage of "smaller provisions" that are "more popular" instead of trying to approve an entire package.
For example, one provision, sponsored by Rep. Steve Kagen of Wisconsin, would be price transparency, which requires that hospitals and other health care providers post drug prices online.
Republicans criticize
stimulus funding
In a press release Tuesday, the National Republican Congressional Committee ripped Foster's support of the stimulus bill, stating that unemployment in Illinois is worse now than it was when Obama took office.
Tom Erickson, NRCC spokesman, said, "After spending $787 billion on this so-called 'stimulus package,' the only thing Congress has to show for it is an unacceptably high unemployment rate. How can Bill Foster sit there and say the stimulus package was a success when there are more Illinoisans out of work than there were one year ago?"
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