‘Export goods, not jobs,’ Senate hopeful says in Valley

By DAVID SKOLNICK

skolnick@vindy.com

BOARDMAN

If elected to the U.S. Senate, Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher said he’ll work to eliminate incentives for companies that ship jobs overseas and also work to enforce trade laws.

Fisher, a Democratic candidate for the Senate, visited the Yankee Kitchen in Boardman on Friday to tout his plan.

He also discussed a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute and Policy Matters Ohio that claimed the state lost 91,800 jobs from 2001 to 2008, when Republican George W. Bush served as president.

Fisher began his term as lieutenant governor in 2006.

In addition to Bush, Fisher said Rob Portman, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, is responsible for the job loss. Portman served as a congressman from 1993 to 2005. He left in May 2005 to serve one year as Bush’s U.S. trade representative, and then served as the president’s director of the Office of Management and Budget from May 2006 to June 2007.

“Ohio should be exporting goods, not jobs,” Fisher said. “Portman has spent two decades in Washington supporting trade policies that encourage companies to ship jobs out of Ohio. That kind of failed policy runs up our trade deficit and turns its back on Ohio’s 6 million highly-skilled workers.”

Fisher said Portman made it “easier for companies to leave the United States and pushed the tax break for the rich” while in Washington, D.C.

In response, Jessica Towhey, Portman’s spokeswoman, said, “Lee Fisher must have amnesia. How can he pat himself on the back when the state has lost 433,000 jobs in the last three years while he was” lieutenant governor and head of the Ohio Department of Development?

Fisher resigned from the DOD job about a year ago to concentrate on his Senate bid.

“Instead of blaming others, he needs to answer for his own record, which is a record of jobs loss, failure and misery for working families,” Towhey said.

Fisher said trade agreements and lax trade enforcement with Bush and Portman in charge caused serious economic problems.

“Any reasonable person would know the reason [the recession] happened,” Fisher said. It’s “because of the policies of the George Bush administration that dug the deepest economic ditch” most Americans have ever experienced.

Fisher will face Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner in the May 4 Democratic primary. Fisher never mentioned Brunner, focusing his attention on Portman during Friday’s campaign stop.