Rep. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawai‘i, on Wednesday blamed her Republican peers in Congress for creating election-season gridlock at the expense of Americans who need jobs.
“We should be concerned about families. Our families are suffering,” said Hirono, who is seeking the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawai‘i, during a day-long visit to meet with constituents on Kaua‘i.
“Instead, Republicans have said, ‘We don’t want to see Barack Obama re-elected,” she said during a stop at The Garden Island. “What we should do is focus on job creation.”
She named Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, D-Kentucky, as among those to blame for stalemates that led to “some of the crises,” such as the eventually successful fight to extend unemployment benefits and payroll tax cuts.
“It has to do with Mitch McConnell trying to make Obama a one-term president,” she said.
Without partisan gridlock, Hirono said she believed Congress would have been successful in pushing through more job creation bills. She said it took bipartisan support to pass the one bill that did make it to a vote before Christmas — a measure offering tax credits to employers who hire jobless military veterans.
“We have huge challenges in terms of job creation,” the congresswoman said. “We need to get people off the sidelines and back to work. We need to do more.”
Hirono said Congress must reauthorize the federal surface transportation bill and adopt new Federal Aviation Administration legislation to begin putting people back to work on infrastructure projects.
“We have tremendous infrastructure deficits,” she said, citing the need to repair or build roads, bridges, runways and schools. For Hawai‘i, efforts to bolster tourism also will be important, she said.
Long-term, Hirono said, Congress must find a way to make college more affordable and focus on innovative learning programs from pre-kindergarten through college.
Green jobs will make a difference in the islands’ employment outlook in the long run, she said, citing her recent visit to a solar farm on Kaua‘i.
“Some of it, (students) have to figure out themselves,” she said, citing the innovation that will be needed to create green jobs in the future.
“So I support programs like robotics, so (students) can think about being an engineer,” she said. “The creative spirit needs to be harnessed by our people, and I believe it can.”
Hirono was on Kaua‘i for a series of island “coffee talks,” meeting with local business owners at a business roundtable in Kalapaki and with members of the Hawai‘i Government Employees Association in Lihu‘e.
Her schedule includes a series of coffee talks on O‘ahu today, Friday and Saturday.
The campaign for Sen. Akaka’s seat, which is also being sought by former Gov. Linda Lingle, a Republican, could lead to the election of Hawai‘i’s first female U.S. senator, a possibility Hirono said would be welcome.
“Women have very different life experiences, and we need to be at the table,” she said. “I’m looking forward to that.”
