From the Dr. Arie Friedman for Illinois State Senate campaign…
Illinois lost another 16,183 jobs in August, according to figures released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and Illinois State Senate candidate Arie Friedman called the report “another call to action by state policymakers to repeal those ill-considered income tax hikes they passed last January.”
“What is it going to take to alarm our elected officials in Springfield?” asked Friedman. “The Democrats are not grasping the true meaning of Illinois’s steady drop in jobs. What will it take? Do they have to lose their own?”
Friedman, a pediatrician who lives in Highland Park, is running for the Republican nomination in the newly redrawn 29th District, a southeast Lake and northern Cook County district in which incumbent Sen. Susan Garrett (D) recently announced her retirement.
Friedman noted the August job-loss figure deepens a crisis touched off by January’s tax hikes. “From the time Gov. Quinn and his Democratic majority in the legislature voted in early January to increase personal and corporate tax rates,” said Friedman, “Illinois has lost a total of 105,423 jobs. Nothing has stopped the month-by-month job losses. In July, Illinois led the nation in lost jobs, when a total of 24,900 jobs vanished in just one month, the worst job-loss rate in the country for that month. Unfortunately, the trend continued in August.”
“It’s time for a change in Springfield.”
“We need a new prescription,” said Friedman, who called for “decisive action to stop the hemorrhaging. We must repeal those tax increases, cut spending, reform our public pensions and our civil justice system, and block implementation of the Obama health care plan in our state.”
“Only when we accomplish those reforms will the employers of this state find the confidence to add personnel,” said Friedman. “Until real actions are taken to right the ship of state, employers are simply acting rationally when they lay off workers or even pull up stakes and move their operations. I hate to say it, but it’s getting to be obvious!”
Friedman last week won the endorsement of Republicans of Wheeling Township. He is the only announced 29th District candidate in the March, 2012, GOP primary.
Dr. Arie Friedman and his wife Michelle are parents of five children. A graduate of the University of Chicago, he finished at the top of his medical school class at the University of Illinois Medical Center in 1998. He opened a pediatric medicine practice in Lake County in 2001. Before attending medical school, Dr. Friedman served in the United States Navy as a helicopter pilot. During seven years of active duty, Friedman flew SH-60B Seahawk helicopters out of Naval Air Station North Island, California, from which he deployed twice, including once to the Persian Gulf as part of Operation Desert Storm.