EVERETT — Getting the U.S. economy back on track boils down to creating jobs, controlling health care costs and addressing the federal deficit, U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee told Economic Alliance Snohomish County members at the group’s annual federal issues update on June 9.
Inslee touched on t
he region’s energy innovations and Boeing’s success in landing the U.S. Air Force’s refueling tanker in the second round of bidding, but much of his talk focused on the economy and education.
Congress needs to set aside its partisan distractions and concentrate on three things, Inslee said: “Jobs, jobs and jobs.”
State government needs to do likewise, the 1st District Democrat said. He told about one biotech company that was lured to Georgia with a call from that state’s governor.
“It’s something we need to think about,” he said. “We’re in a competition for business recruitment” with every other state.
Washington state’s education system also needs attention, Inslee said, because its colleges and universities aren’t producing enough graduates with degrees in high-tech fields. While the state ranks fifth nationally in the number of high-tech jobs, it sinks to 45th in the number of high-tech degrees it grants.
There’s no reason the public shouldn’t expect that schools produce the sort of graduates that employers demand in an evolving job market, he said.
“I’m committed to that,” Inslee said.
He advocates an overhaul of the state’s education system to address that shortcoming and the state’s 33 percent high-school dropout rate.
“We as a state need to say that’s inexcusable,” Inslee said. “We need to have a 90 percent graduation rate.”
He said the Everett School District shows what can be done in a relatively short time. It has increased its graduation rate from 54 percent to 84 percent in the last five years.
Any new jobs and a smarter workforce are moot unless the country addresses rising health-care costs, which are squeezing business owners and government alike.
“That ‘PacMan’ is eating through the heart of state government,” Inslee said, relating the health-care cost curve to the 1980s video arcade game.
On the federal level, Congress has to find a bipartisan way to deal with the deficit, which is “clearly a drag on economic development,” Inslee said.
Asked by Bob Galteland of the Reid Middleton engineering, planning and surveying firm about the prospect of Congress passing a 2012 budget on time, Inslee was blunt. He said no consensus has emerged on how to address the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Bush-era tax cuts, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the Medicaid prescription drug benefit and overall medical costs. Any discussion on reducing those deficit drivers will have to include defense spending, health-care costs and revenue sources, he said.
“Everyone has to come together a little bit,” Inslee said. “Wise minds will come to their senses.”
Snohomish Mayor Karen Guzak asked about eligibility for federal funding for commuter rail service. Snohomish is the northern terminus of the Eastside rail corridor to Bellevue and she said there’s interest in establishing commuter passenger service between Everett, Snohomish and Monroe.
Rail “is a tremendous economic jewel for us,” Inslee said.
He’s spoken to Federal Railway Administration officials and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood about tweaking the definition of high-speed rail corridor so that feeder lines such as the ones Guzak envisions could qualify for hundreds of millions of federal dollars that many Republican governors have rejected.
“LaHood gets this,” Inslee said.
As for his “friends across the aisle” in the Republican Party holding a vote on increasing the federal debt ceiling hostage to their own ideological issues, Inslee said, “This is not the place to have that debate.”
Kurt Batdorf: 425-339-3102, kbatdorf@scbj.com.
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