Doheny Hits Owens on Jobs
| PLATTSBURGH — Congressional challenger Matt Doheny says the newly released national unemployment figures are proof that Bill Owens has not lived up to his campaign pledge to create jobs.
“You can feel the anger and frustration across this district,” Doheny said. “We haven’t arrived at this point by accident. Policies were developed, pushed through Congress and implemented. They have been the wrong policies, yet Bill Owens continues to support them.” Figures from the U.S. Department of Labor for September show the national unemployment rate at 9.6 percent, and those who are underemployed at 17.1 percent, up from 16.7 percent in August. The Labor Department says 95,000 jobs were lost in the economy in September. Owens, a Democrat from Plattsburgh, won the seat in the 23rd District in a special election last year, largely touting a platform of job creation and economic development in the North Country. Doheny said Owens needs to answer the question: “Where are the jobs—” Bill Owens has voted with (House) Speaker Nancy Pelosi 93 percent of the time,” Doheny said. “He has supported more than $1 trillion in spending in just 12 months. Yet the needle of recovery still hasn’t moved.” Owens’s camp said he has worked to create jobs his whole career in the private sector and that Doheny’s record on job creation as a Wall Street investor leaves a lot to be desired. “On Nov. 2, voters in the 23rd District will have a clear choice between Bill Owens, who has spent decades working to bring over 2,000 jobs to Upstate New York and who has led the charge to end tax breaks for companies who ship jobs overseas, and Matt Doheny, who spent years on Wall Street firing 500 American workers while giving millions in bonuses to executives, and who has pledged to protect those very same tax breaks for companies that send American jobs abroad,” Owens’s campaign spokesman Clay Schroers said. |