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Congressman Dent has spent his life in Harrisburg and Washington living on the taxpayers’ dollar - never having worked for anything other than the government. I’ve spent mine in the real world, building businesses and communities and creating jobs.
The Lehigh Valley knows better than any place in America the costs of unfair trade and tax policies. We need to promote an economy that benefits those who work, and not just those with accumulated wealth.
We can do that with a fairer tax system, fighting for fair trade policies, getting rid of tax incentives to move jobs overseas, strengthening pensions and Social Security, and unwavering commitment to education, which has been the ladder into the middle class for millions of Americans.
The federal government should encourage economic growth through the support of small businesses. 96 per cent of all Pennsylvania firms with employees are small businesses, as are 98 per cent of American businesses.
Over the past decade, they have generated between 60 and 80 per cent of the net new jobs each year. We need to support small businesses, especially those engaged in the sciences and technologies, which produce innovative products and services necessary for us to compete in the knowledge-based global economy of today.
U.S. trade policies supported by Dent such as NAFTA and CAFTA encourage companies to outsource jobs to countries with weak labor standards. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that over a million U.S. jobs have been relocated since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed into law in 1993.
As the Lehigh Valley knows most painfully, the majority of those jobs were in manufacturing industries, but jobs were lost in every state and every industry in this country. I will not back down in Congress on trade policies that promote exporting American jobs.
Fixing our health care system will also make business more competitive, at home and around the world.
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On the Issues 
