Creating Jobs for Ohio

Right now, our most important priority is putting people back to work. Not next year, but next week.

After meeting with experts and voters, and following our ideas page on the website, today I unveiled my comprehensive plan to start creating jobs in Ohio and America right away in a major address at the City Club of Cleveland.

This plan has so many of the ideas that are going to help dig us out of the economic ditch — I hope you'll check it out:

Click here to see the plan at FisherForOhio.com.

I've made creating jobs the centerpiece of my campaign for Senate, and I'm proud to be offering the most comprehensive jobs plan of any candidate in the race.

Together, we need to do what America has always done when facing great challenges. We need to come together as one people, reinvent ourselves, and lift up the middle class.

The same people who shape steel to make cars can shape steel to make wind turbines.

The same people who program machines to build car parts can program machines to build parts for solar panels.

But if we elect Rob Portman, the same person whose choices under George W. Bush placed us in the deepest economic recession of our lifetimes, we will only dig ourselves deeper.

I am calling for a job creation tax credit that would provide up to twice the cost of the federal payroll tax for every new hire, which studies estimate will help us create up to 5 million new jobs over the next two years.

Next, we must reform the way stimulus dollars are being spent to re-route all remaining stimulus funds into infrastructure and home weatherization projects that will have an immediate impact in putting people back to work.

The response from Washington during this crisis has been unacceptable. They bail out banks with taxpayer dollars but don’t require them to start lending to responsible small businesses and entrepreneurs who’ve never missed a payment in their life.

For too long, the policies coming out of Washington have favored Wall Street and their army of lobbyists.

We must once and for all end the tax breaks that allow companies to freely outsource American jobs. While we must engage in the global economy, no longer should companies be allowed to defer paying U.S. taxes on overseas profits while hardworking Americans struggle to make ends meet.

It's time we tear down unfair trade barriers to American exports by enforcing our trade laws.

For Ohio’s economy to recover and thrive, we can’t just level the playing field, we must make our state the hub of America’s clean energy economy.

I am calling for extending the advanced energy manufacturing tax credit to cover 30% of all new or expanded clean energy manufacturing projects such as wind, solar and advanced batteries.

By expanding this credit, we will be leveraging every private dollar we can for investment in clean, renewable energy and taking advantage of our best resource — our skilled workers.

The hard truth is that we also have to provide basic economic security to families, particularly those at risk of losing their homes, if we want recovery to take hold.

And let there be no doubt: we need to give bankruptcy judges the power to modify mortgage payments or lower the principal, to match a home’s reduced value.

Let’s be clear: this will mean no more of a loss for the lender than if the foreclosed home was sold at present market value through foreclosure auction. The fundamental difference, however, is obvious — it will keep families in their homes and stabilize the housing market and our neighborhoods.

Click here to see my full plan at FisherForOhio.com!

To fix this national economic crisis, we have two choices: we can choose the past and go back to the same Washington policies and the same Washington people who have voted for policies which left Ohio in its current situation. Or we can choose the future and work together to build a more promising future for Ohio.

To achieve that nation, it will take confidence, optimism, and vision. And it will take transformation.

Like you, I believe in America and Ohio. And I believe that Ohio can lead America in this transformation.

I want to be a new voice in Washington and fight for the kind of America and Ohio that believes in you. And I look forward to working with you to make that a reality.

Learn more about Lee Fisher's campaign at www.FisherForOhio.com and sign up for text message updates by texting JOIN to FISHER (347437)