In a visit to a Carnegie-based steel service center on Wednesday, the leading Republican in the U.S. House decried the Biden administration’s economic policies and COVID-19 mitigation measures, saying they’ve harmed businesses and led to worker shortages across the country.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy joined U.S. Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, R-Peters, on a tour of Beaver Steel Services and a roundtable with business leaders, coming away with the same critique of Democrats that he’s expressed for months: that their spending, taxing and regulations have made it harder for businesses to operate and made rising inflation a new reality.
“The government is competing with business, making an encouragement to stay home instead of getting back to work, which is causing inflation,” Mr. McCarthy told the press after his tour.
It’s an argument that many top Republicans have used to say the Biden administration is prolonging the impacts of the pandemic by incentivizing people to stay unemployed and providing generous unemployment sums.
But federal unemployment benefits — including $300 per week supplementing state aid — ended recently, and economists Peter McCrory and Daniel Silver of J.P. Morgan found “zero correlation,” at least so far, between job growth and state decisions to drop the federal unemployment aid in a report last month.
Still, it’s true that the economy is facing a crossroads as employers post job openings at record-high numbers, while millions more Americans are unemployed now compared to just before the pandemic a year and a half ago, according to Labor Department statistics. As a result, companies that are short-staffed fear they aren’t able to capitalize on an increase in consumer demand, limiting economic growth.
In an interview with the Post-Gazette after the event, Tony Treser, president of Beaver Steel Services, said his company — which processes steel into sheets and is a wholesale distributor to HVAC contractors who make duct work — is finding it hard to get labor.
“We need the government to stop incentivizing people not to work,” Mr. Treser said.
Compounding the labor shortage, Mr. McCarthy said, is President Joe Biden’s new vaccine mandate on workers at businesses with more than 100 employees on the payroll. He said the mandate will lead to more people not coming to work, resulting in less supply and rising costs for consumers.
Mr. McCarthy said the government should be providing information to people about the benefits of the vaccine and offering incentives — not punishments.
Although members of his party haven’t always encouraged the vaccine, Mr. McCarthy said he believes in science and believes in people getting the vaccine — that letting people have that choice is the right thing — but that officials can continue to encourage vaccinations while keeping the economy open.
“We’ve watched that for those who have been vaccinated … you have a greater chance of being struck by lightning than having to go the hospital if you’re vaccinated,” Mr. McCarthy said.
Mona Pappafava-Ray, CEO of General Carbide, said at the event that her family owned business was having trouble last week trying to fill 50 open positions — which was before the vaccine mandate was announced. As soon as it came down, employees threatened to quit, she said. She called it “incomprehensible” that the government would force employees at private companies to adhere to such a mandate.
Julian Routh: jrouth@post-gazette.com; Twitter: @julianrouth. The Associated Press contributed reporting.
First Published: September 15, 2021, 11:14 p.m.
