The Issues Jobs and Economy
Realizing Recovery: Chris’ Plan for Jobs and the Economy
- Chris
Inside Jobs & Economy
As Speaker of the House, Chris has a longstanding commitment to Connecticut’s working people, fighting hard to keep good jobs with good benefits in our state.
Opening Connecticut for business again.
Not only do we need to make sure we have the best-trained, best-educated workforce in the world, it’s critical that Connecticut be the very best place in New England to start a business and create new jobs. Chris has been at the forefront of legislative efforts in recent years to reduce the cost of healthcare and bring down our state’s sky-high electric rates, and to build transportation and education infrastructure, taking real steps towards making our state a better place to do business.
Targeting investments in the high-growth industries of the future.
Chris is committed to ensuring that the 5th congressional district is poised to compete in the regional and national economies for years to come. Targeted investments in the health care and life- and bio-science industries, like the expansion of the UConn Health Center which will create more than 16,000 jobs by 2037,1 will jump-start growth in the 5th district and reduce high unemployment in our cities. Similar down payments on high-speed and commuter rail improvements, especially in the metropolitan Waterbury and Meriden regions, will create thousands of good jobs while making critical upgrades to the area’s crumbling and outdated transportation infrastructure. Likewise, investing in green technologies like solar and wind production in the 5th will create sustainable jobs to anchor the district for the next century, as manufacturing did for the last century. Chris understands the critical nature of the assets that have anchored the region’s economy for centuries. Dairy farms like East Canaan’s Laurelbrook Farm represent an increasingly threatened – but still vital – sector of the economy and lifestyle of the 5th District. By renewing his commitment to local agriculture and open space preservation, Chris Donovan will make sure these farms are assets for generations to come.
As Speaker, Chris led the push for “innovation economics,” creating new and more streamlined opportunities for entrepreneurship and investment in new technology here in our state. He has championed investments in cleaning up brownfields to allow economic investment in these properties. Further, by fighting this session to protect a fully funded PILOT program for manufacturing and machine equipment, Chris renewed his commitment to the manufacturers that made the 5th District a powerhouse of economic growth and created a thriving middle class in Connecticut.
Investing in our state’s most important asset – our people.
Chris believes that in order to compete globally, Connecticut must have the best-educated, best-trained workforce in the world. That’s why he has led efforts in recent years to improve and expand Connecticut’s community college and technical high school infrastructure. By creating a real link between tech schools like Wilcox and Kaynor, higher-ed institutions like Naugatuck Valley Community College, and the needs of local businesses, Chris believes that we can give each and every one of our young people the skills and experience they need to compete in the 21st century job market.
Chris is firmly committed to raising the minimum wage so that workers and their families are able to meet their basic needs. If the federal minimum wage had kept pace with inflation since the 1960s, it would now be over $10 per hour. Instead, it is at $7.25 per hour and after a full year working full-time at the minimum wage, an individual will only earn about $15,000. As Chair of the Labor Committee, as Majority Leader, and as Speaker of the Connecticut House, Chris has successfully fought for 12 minimum wage increases and has proposed legislation this term to raise the Connecticut minimum wage to $9.25 over two years and then peg it to Consumer Price Index thereafter. In Congress, Chris will continue the fight to make the minimum wage a living wage, and remove it from the political arena by indexing it to the CPI.
There’s no doubt that families in Connecticut are hurting. As your representative in Congress, Chris will double down on his commitment to the middle class that made our state great. At this critical point in our nation’s history, cuts to investments in human capital are not the answer. Instead, we need to make the sort of smart, targeted investments in our people and our infrastructure that will grow our economy and provide newfound economic security for all, not the just the privileged few.
