U.S. CONGRESSMAN BILL JOHNSON Proudly Representing Eastern and Southeastern Ohio

The economy is improving dramatically and numbers from the area prove it, though national news stories choose not to reflect the numbers.

That was the word from U.S. Rep. Bill Johnson, R-Marietta, to members of the Steubenville Action Council of the National Federation of Independent Business during breakfast at Froehlich’s Classic Corner downtown Tuesday morning.

“Get our spurs on and saddle up because it’s going to happen,” Johnson said of the potential boom in the area that will result from the ethane cracker in Monaca and the one planned in Belmont County.

He recited a litany of statistics of growth in the Steubenville area:

¯ Unemployment in January 2011, 13.6 percent; in January 2017, 9.3 percent; end of April, 5.8 percent.

¯ Economic growth nationally at 4.1 percent.

¯ The national unemployment rate is the lowest in two decades and the lowest women unemployment rate since the statistic began to be recorded.

“What you are seeing on the national news is a farce. It’s just inaccurate. Where we are today, if you listen to the news, you’d conclude the wheels are falling off our country and we can’t find our way in the dark,” he said.

He said when Americans are allowed to flourish, innovation flourishes. He noted Americans invested in the 100 or so years after the Civil War, the lightbulb, the energy grid, changed manufacturing, made the automobile and the internal combustion engine the basis of the industrial world, developed nuclear energy, nuclear weapons, aviation, space travel, reached the moon, developed internal organ transplants, communications systems and technology, all while fighting two world wars and wars in Korea and Vietnam.

Edison, Henry Ford and the Wright brothers didn’t ask for federal permission or federal funding to invent the light bulb, improve the automobile or invent the airplane, Johnson noted.

He introduced a bill to change the way gaps in the broadband infrastructure in the nation are mapped.

He said the FCC is using census tract data and considers one access point in a census tract as accessible.

However, rural census tracts can cover massive geographic areas compared with urban areas. The bill would put the mapping into the Department of Commerce and enable future action on expansion in rural broadband systems.

He noted without broadband, areas of the nation are cut off from developing new business or students being able to do their homework or research.

He noted Elon Musk found a way to launch reusable rockets when NASA couldn’t, an example of business flourishing when left to its own.

He said the full impact of tax reform will be felt when 2019 returns are filed. Small businesses will see the average effective tax rate fall from more than 40 percent to less than 30 percent, not including personal taxes that are lessened on employees.

“It means more to put back into your business and better care for your employees,”he said.

Johnson said it’s too late for health care reform in the current session, but Congress isn’t done.

“Of all the costs driving the national debt, health care is the biggest part. If we do not do something to stymie the expansion of Medicaid, it will cost $1 trillion a year by 2026. Medicare will be bankrupt by 2026. There won’t be money to make reimbursement payments, and then there will be a big problem,” he said. “That’s only eight years from now. That’s scary.”

He said with those numbers facing the nation, it is true that Republicans want to change Medicare and health care.

“We want to fix it, reform it, save it,” he said.

With 10,000 baby boomers going onto the Medicare rolls every day and the birth rate too low to fill the aging and retiring work force, solutions must be found. He said immigration reform would help if a merit-based system could be implemented to allow for about 1 million legal immigrants to fill the void.

“We don’t have a future generation coming up to replace our work force,” he said.

During the meeting, Dr. Michael Ross was named chair of the Steubenville NFIB Action Council.

Roger Geiger, NFIB Ohio executive director, discussed state issues. He said Ohio needs four steps to make its unemployment system solvent:

¯ Cutting the 26 weeks of unemployment to 20, possible in today’s economic environment. The coverage originally was about seasonal layoffs. He noted Michigan has cut to 20 weeks and has the same kind of seasons as Ohio.

¯ Ending dependency coverage so that workers from the same job receive the same benefit when laid off. He said Ohio is one of fewer than 10 states with dependency coverage.

¯ A freeze on cost of living benefit raises until the system is solvent.

¯ A raise in the taxable wage base from the first $9,200 earned to the first $11,000, which would put Ohio midpack in the nation.

He said Ohio is one of a handful of states without a solvent unemployment system. Ohio paid back a $3 billion federal loan during the last national economic crisis, but he said without a solvent system, it would need to borrow again if another downturn occurs.