Rep. Cory Gardner Tells Constituent Concerned About Outsourcing To Just Find A New Employer

Matt Finkelstein reports on a tete-a-tete between Rep.Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) and one of his constituents that evidently went down at a Monday town hall meeting. In the exchange, the constituent expresses her concern that she might lose her job to outsourcing that's aided and abetted by tax-break incentives. Gardner's solution? Find another job!

CONSTITUENT: But what about my job? I want to keep it. Not new jobs. I want to keep my job.

GARDNER: Well, make sure that your business is successful. We need to make sure that we're —

CONSTITUENT: They're successful by training those Vietnamese and I want to learn. They make me work 45 hours a week and they don't pay for training anymore. They used to pay for two weeks of training every year. They quit paying for training three years ago. But they're training — they're giving these people technology, they're giving them what I want to know, and I don't have time to learn.

CONSTITUENT 2: And they get tax incentives to do it.

GARDNER: To go back to the question, if that company can succeed, I would hope that they would share their success with you. If they are not, maybe that's not a great company to work for.

The unemployment rate is over 9 percent, and there are currently five job seekers for every job opening, but, yeah, now is a great time to get glib about changing employers.

Mitt Romney says that "corporations are people" and Ezra Klein reliably informs us that as far as U.S. law is concerned, this is true. So what sort of people are corporations? Well, they are people whose "profits hit an all-time high at the end of 2010." And evidently, they're also people who hate their country.

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Comments

[truth and wisdom]

03:18 PM on 08/20/2011

For those Coloradans who want to watch the entire Cory Gardner town hall meeting in Loveland, Colorado, you can access it at FreeRangeLongmont.com http://www.freerangelongmont.com/2011/08/08/gardner-loveland-town-hall/

[getoffmedz]

06:23 PM on 08/17/2011

Congressman Cory Gardner is clearly arrogant, out-of-touch and mean spirited.

Your typical current Republican.

Whatever happened to the real Republican Party?

[ElleKaye]

01:02 PM on 08/14/2011

As the gentleman says, all he is left with is the HOPE that the out-sourcing corporation will share its' wealth with the country. HOPE? Really? HOPE?
HOPE doesn't feed the families in your district. JOBS do. Besides, it sounds suspiciously like a dastardly democratic political theme!

BTW Coloradans, listen to this fella carefully. Every time he says "but", he is negating everything that he said in the first part of his sentence. It means nothing!

Come to think of it, that's what he's saying to every "concern" people seem to have.

[MyFatCat]

12:18 PM on 08/14/2011

Now there's a man willing to stand up for his constituents, as defined by the all--too-aptly named Citizens United decision. After all, corporations are citizens with more money! A "constituent" is just a fraction of a citizen, eh?

[getoffmedz]

06:24 PM on 08/17/2011

A mere fragment.

[Squidwoman]

05:14 PM on 09/06/2011

ccording to Mitt, "corporation ARE people".

[rockymtngma]

09:18 PM on 08/13/2011

All you out here in Colorado District 4 who voted for this man: Are you proud of his position? Do you think he'd care if it were your job that was being sent overseas? And if sending jobs overseas isn't something you support, whom do you think he really represents?

[Nancy Tungston]

04:40 PM on 08/13/2011

Aren't we lucky here in Larimer County, Colorado. No wonder Cory Gardner never has meetings with his constituents. We ask questions that point out he is not representing us, he is representing big corp. who spend their money overseas. His big plan for increasing jobs is to give businesses yet another tax break on interest earned on savings accounts. He thinks they will use that savings to hire more Americans. I don't know if he is the one being bam-boozeled by big corp. or if he the one trying to swindle the good folks of Larimer County. Anyone paying attention knows that the only tax break that could possible lead to a creation of an job is the tax break that is given for a direct creation of a full time, livable wage with benefits, job for an American living in the US. And, it must be full time/livable wage/with benefits or it's just depressing the American economy even more. We tax payers are already supplementing the huge group of working-poor created by Wal-mart, we don't need more of that type of employment.

[ElleKaye]

01:27 PM on 08/14/2011

Then, beware the rhetoric of politicians from Texas, the bottom-feeding state that has the highest rate of minimum wage, non-benefited jobs in the country. But the For Profit Prison industry is thriving. Paying inmates .22 per hour guarantees they can drain food industry contracts from the non-prison companies, but they have a guaranteed supply of workers. Hey, if it works in Texas, it will work for Colorado. Education must be seriously curtailed, since it only leads to productive lives. Drop-outs provide the best source for controllable employee costs. Drugs, guns and poverty keep big business thriving. If it works in Texas, it will work in Colorado. Abortions? They may be legal, but that doesn't mean they have to be available. The Big Defense Industry needs those babies to grow up to be cannon-fodder. It's worked for Texas; it should work for Colorado.

[SETexasLib]

04:06 PM on 08/13/2011

shhhhhh

[Cory111]

11:12 AM on 08/13/2011

Hum, could it possibly be we are more interested in hitting Mars then spending money on our kid’s education?
Where are our trade schools or have we developed a society that finds getting ones hands dirty is not the way to go?
Education is the only way to go and that does not mean one needs a college education to find the American Dream.

[MyDogs4Ever]

07:31 PM on 08/13/2011

You are so right! And often, a college education is not the right way to go for many kids. If we are all the same and can all have the same "american dream" with that college education and the same white collar career then why on earth do we have SAT scores? Will we EVER be willing to pay our service industry workers living wages, probably not, but we certainly want them cleaning up our messes and judge them when they can't feed their families.

[Cory111]

11:05 AM on 08/13/2011

Look to see who is behind the money, then boycott everything they make.

[SETexasLib]

03:49 PM on 08/13/2011

Amen. Koch brothers. Angel Soft toilet paper, Brawny paper towels, Mardi Gras napkins, Quilted Northern Toilet paper,Soft'n Gentle toilet paper, Georgia-Pacific, INVISTA.

www.ALECexposed.com Take a close look. They write the templates for laws that take away women's rights and the rights of the poor to sue for legitimate damages.They have nine task forces involved in making and passing laws designed to profit the rich at the expense of the poor. Some might call it class warfare, to them it is simply keeping the undeserving in their place.

So your favorite conservative doesn't even have to think any more. He just takes these and fills in the blanks to reflect the state he is elected in.

[rockymtngma]

09:21 PM on 08/13/2011

F & F.

[laurieanichols]

08:53 AM on 08/13/2011

These surreal moments are getting to be too commonplace for my taste. If someone could gather up all the video from these town hall meetings throughout the country and simply play the GOP lawmakers interactions with their constituents, I think that it would be a season long's worth of a blooper reel. At least we would get some entertainment value for all our misery at their hands. I'm surprised the constituent didn't tell him that pretty soon he'd be looking for another employer and to start primping his resume. Speaking of which, if Rep. Gardner did get unemployed he'd probably simply go through the revolving door that exists in D.C and get a job with his lobbyist buddies. It simply stinks to high heaven.

[herbertpop]

12:32 AM on 08/13/2011

Fire him!

[eenp718]

09:23 PM on 08/12/2011

This representative needs to be removed from office. The current laws "Do-Not" penalized this women's employer from going oversea's. Her employer should have taxes reduced and the competitors taxes increased threefold as a penalty for moving out of this country. All of these companies moving jobs overseas should pay all of the taxes we need as revenue income for our budget.

[truthocentric]

08:41 PM on 08/12/2011

Un-freakin' believable, his re-election's a shoe-in!

[ljmck]

04:04 PM on 08/12/2011

Really? I get censored for calling a certain political party (as a group) bullies? Maybe the moderators need to reread the definition of ad hominem?

I abhor censorship. Can I say that?

(We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still. ~John Stuart Mill.)

[ljmck]

03:44 PM on 08/12/2011

Find a new job (Gardner). Corporations are people too (Romney). We should be submissive to our husbands (Bachmann).

Are these planks in the Republican platform? Disdain for ordinary working men and women is in? Corporations are their main concern? Setting women back half a century is okay with them?

They are writing the scripts for Democratic campaign advertising in the coming elections.

Politically, I welcome their statements, because this is what they act on, and we should make that clear to everyone, but the underlying beliefs that generate such comments are abhorrent and do not bode well for this country.

When you think about it, any one of those statements could have come from the Bush administration. Do we really want to repeat that disaster?

[pappyvet]

03:11 PM on 08/16/2011

yes LJMCK, very well said. If money is now free speech, why would any American want to deny so much of it to so many?