Senate Confirmation Hearing for Secretary of US Commerce Department

On Tuesday, June 21 2011, a Senate confirmation hearing took place to confirm Bryson as the next Secretary of the Commerce Department.

Although both political parties agree that Bryson is fully qualified for the job and has an impressive record, Bryson's nomination has become a political pawn in a dispute over several trade treaties and a jobs training program. There is no need to go into detail as the reader can guess who's on who's side.

The sad fact is that both the trade treaties and the confirmation of Bryson are needed as soon as possible. Not that I'm expecting any better behavior from our politicians. Political bickering over ideologies is an integral part of any multi-political party democratic government.

John Bryson's impressive career details can be found at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bryson

Bryson's assured the Republicans that his primary goal is jobs and not the environment. He also assured the Republicans that President Obama made his tasks extremely clear to him.

For those who are interested, here is an description of the responsibilities of the Office of the Secretary of the US Department of Commerce:

http://www.commerce.gov/os

And here is the official web site of the US Department of Commerce

http://www.commerce.gov/

The US Department Of Commerce plays a vital role in the economic recovery. Needless to say, the nomination of a new Secretary is very important.

The US is importing more than it is exporting. This issue must be addressed.

One of Bryson's objectives will be to double exports by 2015 and represent US business in other nations.

Of course, along with the task of increasing jobs comes the important balance between environmental concerns, government regulations and productivity. Many questions were asked regarding Bryson's position on environmental controls and government regulations including his views about the National Labor Relations Boards recent legal actions against Boeing. Basically Bryson sided with industry on all these issues.

A wide variety of topics was brought up during the confirmation hearing. Here is a summary of those topics:

President Obama needs people with business experience.

Regulation reform is needed in every area.

The high costs of interpreting and implementing regulations affect the costs of energy. Regulations must be easy for firms to understand. This is true for all industries, not only energy.

Other impediments are the Cap and Trade limits on green house gases and the corporate tax rate.

Ocean acidification is detrimental to our fishing industry. Fishing is an old way of earning money in the Northeast. Loosening regulations is vital to the fishing industry.

There are a wide variety of reasons not to risk a business investment in the US. One of the reasons mentioned is other nations are more lenient about air pollution from chimney stacks than the US.

The deficiencies in the visa programs and immigration laws are affecting the US tourist programs.

The workers need retraining in skills that are needed by firms. We need more better paying jobs and more skills. Less Internet in some areas access impedes job creation. Broadband is a location of much commerce. We can't perform tasks that would encourage firms to create more jobs without more government revenues.

Here are my comments:

We should not eliminate regulations that protect our environment simply because other nations are less concerned about their environment. That action would be foolish and while it may bring more jobs to the US, the long term costs of less regulations would be our health and our children's health as well as our food supply and our children's food supply. The consequences would affect future generations as well as our own.

The regulations should be easy to understand. Each regulation must be evaluated not only for it's effect on businesses but also for the protection it provides to our environment, our people and their health. Leaning to one extreme or the other is unacceptable. There must be a balance between protection and profit.

The NLRB's legal action against Boeing for allegedly retaliating against the union workers should not be judged until after the a verdict is given and all the evidence in known. To ignore the laws forbidding retaliation against workers would be a major setback that would only make unions more desirable in every workplace.

The differences in costs of regulations in each country should have been considered when the trade agreements were formed. Our workers and our environment should not have to pay the cost of this apparent oversight by the US negotiators of past and present trade agreements.