DETROIT -- House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland had a simple message for Michigan Democrats at the annual 2010 Jefferson Jackson Dinner Saturday night: if voters get the fact that the economy the Republicans ran into a ditch is slowly recovering and finally headed in the right direction, Democrats will do well in November.
"We need to ask them, do you want to elect a party that is turning the economy around, or do you want to vote in a party that created the worst recession since the Great Depression," Hoyer said. "Don’t let them forget that."
Hoyer said in the last month of the Bush Administration in January 2009, 779,000 jobs were lost, but the economy grew by 162,000 jobs last month. He also said don’t let voters forget Bush took a $5.6 trillion budget surplus and turned it into record deficit.
"The worst recession since the Great Depression; that’s what was on the plate for Barrack Obama and the Congress," he said. "The Republicans presided over the largest redistribution of wealth in history."
Michigan always feels any downturn in the economy first, feels it the hardest and comes out of it the slowest. Hoyer praised Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm for her work under such trying circumstances.
"Globalization hits us harder than any other state because we have so many manufacturing jobs," Granholm said. "The next person elected to this office, who ever they many be, does not have a magic wand either."
U.S. Carl Levin, D-Detroit, spoke about the pending financial reform legislation currently in the Senate that would try to prevent future economic crises by tightening government oversight of financial firms, regulate the complex derivatives market for the first time, create a new agency to protect consumers in the financial marketplace and grant the government broad new powers to seize and dismantle huge financial firms on the brink of failure if their collapse would threaten the economy.
Like the Republicans siding with insurance companies and trying to block health insurance reform, they are now protecting Wall Street, and in fact, we are hearing the same old crap from them, like "scrap the bill and start over.
"We’re going to put a cop back on the beat in Wall Street,” Levin said. “That disgusting greed put so many people out of their jobs and their homes and almost wrecked the economy, but we’re going to hold people accountable.”
Everybody on the panel had praise for U.S. Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Menominee, who has received obscene and threatening phone calls and faxes for his vote on the historic health insurance reform bill, and he has chosen not to run for reelection.
“He stood up for his principals, but he also did the right thing at a very angry time in this country,” Hoyer said. “I called him many times to ask him to run again. We need him and the country needs him, but I respect his decision.”
