Columns

By Congressman Robert Hurt

This past week in Congress we continued to focus on cutting spending and reducing unnecessary regulations to help create a better economic environment for job growth.

    It looks as though the 2012 presidential election just isn’t shaping up the way conservative Republicans had hoped. Here we are nearly into April, and still, not a single Republican has officially announced.

    The year before the election is always the time when campaigns form their initial committees, hire staff, and begin to raise money. Not to mention the all-important task of mapping out a specific strategy for winning the nomination.

he Fifth Congressional District in Virginia is already a monstrosity that stretches from Danville to Charlottesville, but a draft plan for the commonwealth’s new districts released last week reeks of gerrymandering and protectionism that borders on the absurd.

More than 90 percent of all American employers are small businesses and they generate approximately 70 percent of the new jobs created in the United States each year. 

Small businesses are crucial to the American economy and account for a significant majority of new product ideas and innovation.  Small business owners across the country want to invest in their firms and hire new workers, but instead they are bracing for costly government mandates and regulations.