As the Oregon Legislature begins its special session this last Monday just after the passage of measures 66 and 67, lawmakers intend to concentrate on economic recovery issues which cannot wait until January 2011, such as job creation, secure financing or to extend loans or grants to in-state companies that hire Oregonians to fill new jobs and an additional six weeks extension of unemployment benefits to 18,600 jobless whose benefits are about to expire.
"The two dominant areas of focus of this special session are one: jobs, and two: helping families that have been hit by this economic crisis,” said House Speaker Dave Hunt, D-Gladstone.
Roughly 215,000 Oregonians receive a weekly unemployment check in December which makes the statewide unemployment rate average at 11%.
"Clearly, we have a large number of people in our state who are hurting and have been out of work for a long time," said Sen. Diane Rosenbaum, D-Portland, who chairs the committee."
like DUH!
"Duke Shepard, of the Oregon AFL-CIO, said unemployment runs as high as 35 percent among some of his member groups. "People have been looking for work for more than a year and just have run out of benefits."
isn't it interesting that if it hadn't been for sleepy Ted "tax and gouge me" Kulongoski wanting to call a special session to reduce the kicker, these guys would not be back in this "special session" to talk about the economy, which is something that they should have been focusing on during the regular session.
But instead, all we heard was the Legislature's focusing on issues such as designating the Dungeness crap as the state crap, the cell phone ban, raising taxes and how bad the state governments financial situation woes are and very little regarding the current recession.
I can't help but think that the Oregon Legislature finally wanting to seriously look at the recession is based on the rumors of the financial effect of measures 66 and 67 which is also a retroactive tax which is forcing some businesses to seriously think about either laying off people and/or leave the state altogether along with rumors coming from other states such as Chicago Mayor Daley who according to the Sun times considers "Oregon's tax blunder spells opportunity for Chicago" as he tries to entice Oregon businesses to relocate.
Unfortunately, I feel that the current session of the Oregon Legislature although I am very happy to see them FINALLY focusing on this recession, I think it's too little too late.
The damage is done.
2 comments:
HB 3613.
Ban on plastic bags.
And the big question, is any of this constitutional?
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The only way Oregon is going to improve economically is to cut taxes, spending, and regulations. Does that sound familiar? It should, because that is what the Federal government needs to do also. The legislature spends money that we do not have on services we do not need. If we need a "Rainy day" fund, put it in the budget and cut somewhere else. During to 2007 legislative session, Oregon had all this extra money so it found places to spend it on and grow the government. Two years later, things are in the cellar but does the legislature cut programs they started in the last legislature? No way, they raised taxes. Anybody with any brains knows not to raise taxes in a recession. The state government needs to go on a diet and cut out spending. They also need to stop making laws that intrude on our rights. The Oregon government needs to quite trying to solve everybody's problems. We need to let the Oregon pioneer spirit grow and prosper.
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