Rep. Tim Scott Bursting the Beltway ‘Bubble,’ Letting Business In
The midterm Republican rout in Congress may seem like just yesterday, but one prominent freshman has packed more into his first 18 months on the Hill than some lawmakers do a few terms in.
Tapped for a leadership position from the minute he stepped into Washington, Rep. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), along with Rep. Kristi Noem (R-S.D.), was chosen to be a Class of 2010 liaison to the Republican House chiefs. He’s also on the Rules Committee and a member or co-chairman of 20 caucuses, including the conservative Republican Study Committee.
“Two arms simply aren’t enough when everyone’s pulling on them from different directions,” Scott told PJM, reflecting on this challenging yet productive and sometimes “painful” term.
“I enjoy the role of pulling people together while remaining committed to conservatism,” he added. “I’m having the time of my life in having to face some of the greatest crises that I didn’t even know were there.”
It’s included sponsoring more than 40 bills, including a resolution to rescind funding for ObamaCare and another to dial back National Labor Relations Board meddling in the workplace.
And it’s also included pulling together last Thursday’s Revitalizing America conference, which was open to the public and brought together business leaders and lawmakers to chat for more than seven hours about how to really put Americans to work and foster the entrepreneurial spirit.
Scott called the event a “smashing success.” Participants included House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), Steve Forbes, Carly Fiorina, Domino’s Pizza CEO Patrick Doyle, Honeywell CEO Dave Cote, House Republican Caucus Vice-Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), and Reps. Noem, Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), Tom Reed (R-N.Y.), and Phil Roe (R-Tenn.).
“So often we live in a bubble on this side of the Potomac and the bubble doesn’t always include the job creators,” Scott said, noting that he conducted quarterly CEO summits when he served in government back in his home state.
In addition to members who served on panels, other lawmakers wandered in throughout the day to hear the discussion that hopefully, said Scott, created that spark of understanding needed to craft business-friendly policies.
“I think we saw that,” he said.
It just so happened that his Hill event preceded by a day the release of May’s disappointing Labor Department numbers, showing much lower than projected job growth and an uptick in the unemployment rate to 8.2 percent.
And the week before meeting to discuss Revitalizing America, Scott met with the face of the American economy at one of his town hall meetings in Charleston.
“One of the great challenges is the number of job seekers has fallen off, as well,” Scott said. “There’s a way to play games with numbers before the election.”
He predicted that the Obama administration could tweak the unemployment to begin with a 7 by the time the presidential election arrives, only to bounce back up after November.
“I believe that’s where the administration is trying to drive us to, even if it’s an artificial number,” Scott warned.
Good idea and a good job at encouraging it to be brought forward. For too long, we have been unable to trust that those we elected and sent to Washington were honestly and honorably negotiating in our best interests. Thankfully, an explosive outburst of corruption and behaviors that do not reflect the greatness of our nation brought us to a critical need to flush out the old and replace them with new. We have been blessed with many great new members in Washington who are willing to stand together as a wall of concrete blocks to keep out corruption. It takes vigilance and seems thankless, but trust me when I say that WE APPRECIATE YOU and every effort you and your colleagues have made to preserve, protect and defend our republic.
We are praying for you and your efforts. Keep up the good fight. You are leading us into the future that our children and grandchildren will inherit. They deserve the best we can give to them.
Congressman Scott and Congressman West have been presented with most of the Sheiff Joe Arpaio criminal evidence that proves Barack Hussein Obama has been flaunting an April 27th, 2011 computer generated birth certificate, a forged selective service registration and a fraudulent SS# that was flagged by E-verify. I personally sent both Scott and West information concering these issues and they both refuse to deal with the criminal activity. It didn’t take them long to fall in line with the rest of the corrupt representatives. I have no use for men and women who seem to think that crime being committed by the POTUS should go unpunished. You would think that they would have had Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his lead investigator visit with them and explain the criminal evidence they have. Nothing but silence!!
Why would any black man join the CBC? By its very name it is a racist organization concerned about skin melanin and other collectivist dogma’s than with real values and the merit of personal character. Cl. West is a fool for joining. It’s akin to joining the NAZI party thinking that you would be able to change their minds to embrace equality and capitalism.
Maybe he is a follower of “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer”.
Maybe, but there is no need to. In fact, he ought to do the opposite to condemn publicly the immoral nature of the CBC. Good guys shouldn’t have to bow to any tyrants or their thugs.
because we must be segregated!!!!! next you’ll be wanting politicians and the media to quit labeling people as [insert ethnicity/religion] american and then all you would have is americans. how in the world do you expect our intellectually superior elites to rule us if we are not divided into as many subsets that they can think of to divide us?????
Just a thought. Otherwise I can’t much disagree with you.
Exactly. He’s not a fool, he just has a different approach. I agree with Scott’s approach, and I would have preferred that West had taken the same approach, but I’m sure not going to call him a sellout or a fool because of it.
Congressman Scott is an evangelical Christian and a product of the Tea Party. He has already been corrupted by the system known as the “good ole boys club.” He should be ashamed of himself, especially since he is a Christian and should be very sensitive to the criminal activity that Barack Hussein Obama is involved in. He has been made aware of all the evidence that has been collected by Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his lead investigator Mike Zullo. He refuses to act upon that information. He is no better than the one he replaced.
A wise man picks his battles. The birthplace battle has been LOST. I don’t like that, but it’s reality. Absent some HARD PHYSICAL PROOF (which Sheriff Joe does NOT have), it’s over.
I’m glad Mr. Scott is wise enough to see that.
I wonder if Scott will run for the GOP Senate nomination in 2014 against Lindsey Graham. Graham might be a good Republican Senator if he were representing a northeastern state, but he is not sufficiently conservative for SC.
I was thinking the same thing, if not 2014 against Graham, then maybe in 2016 when DeMint retires. I hope he takes on Graham, it’s time for him to go.
If Romney were smart, then Tim Scott would be the appointed replacement for VP Jim DeMint. SC has a sufficiently deep R bench to generate an opponent for Graham in 2014.
This was a well written article. One of the best I’ve read this year. Upon checking the bio at the end of the article I see why.
Re: putting US citizens back to work
Simply restoring and indexing incentives for US employers to fly in US citizen candidates for interviews, relocate new-hires (and retained) US citizen Employees as needed, and for investments in training newly-hired and retained US citizen employees would go a lot further than any bills we’ve seen proposed in congress over the last 10 years. The aim here is simply to neutralize the incentives that were created by congress since 1986 to bring in cheap, young, pliant foreign labor with questionable ethics… and that distored markets to encourage bodyshopping domestically rather than real hires.
i hate the public unions and I hate progressivism, socialism and all forms of collectivism.
corporatism is just another form of collectivism.
if Scott wants to impress me, he would have filled that panel with small, family-business owners.
but instead he filled it with other members of the Ruling Class.
i’m no Paulbot, but if this crap doesn’t stop (pretending corporatism is freedom as long as your guys run things) then i won’t have much of a choice.
regular marxists are idiots, a smart marxist IS a corporatist…