Congressman Gerry Connolly assured a gathering of business leaders that with President Biden in charge, Virginians are poised to reap the benefits of the economic turnaround the U.S. has achieved despite some extraneous factors causing inflation.
The Democrat, bidding for his reelection in November from Virginia’s prosperous 11th Congressional District, was speaking at a fundraiser on the sprawling lawns of immigrant entrepreneur Rosemary Tran Lauer’s home in Herndon.
Connolly contended that President Joe Biden’s performance rating does not reflect the actual work he has done.
“I don’t know why Biden’s numbers are low … we had the highest growth rate in the economy last year since 1984, unemployment is 3.6 percent, in Fairfax County, it is 2.6 percent, we have the lowest claims of unemployment in American history, we had the largest number of job growth in his first year as president,” he said, contrasting the current state of the economy with the sagging scenario during the first year of the pandemic under Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump.
The lawmaker also credited the Democratic-controlled Congress for setting the path to economic recovery with a series of packages totaling more than six trillion dollars.
Connolly faces no primary competition this year and will go straight to the November 8 election to continue as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from the key state, where Republicans have made a huge comeback with the election of Governor Glenn Youngkin.
Republican hopefuls for the 11th District will hold a primary in May to decide who will be the party candidate for the November election.
While advocating the Democratic record on the economy, Connolly also noted that the U.S. has had the largest number of new small business startups in history at five million. He also backed the idea of shoring up the Internal Revenue Service, saying every dollar that is collected has a six-fold for the good of people.
The legislator also touted the largest infrastructure bill in American history under Biden as a stimulus for economic activity and its snowballing effect on businesses, transportation, and services for people.
Connolly was candid in acknowledging inflation as a problem affecting the American communities but ascribed it to extraneous factors including the supply chain obstacles that have hit the world during the global pandemic and the ongoing war in Ukraine. He said food and energy are the two major sources of inflation, accounting for 75 percent of the hike, and Russia and Ukraine happen to be among the world’s largest producers of food and energy.
But Republican Congressional leaders have blamed the Biden Administration for not doing enough to rein in inflation and energy costs.
The 11th District is spread over Fairfax County in Washington’s suburbs and is considered one of the richest places in the country with a mix of large corporate headquarters and small businesses run by a large immigrant population from Asian communities.
Rosemary Lauer, the host, welcomed Connolly and the attendees from diverse backgrounds in the affluent Herndon neighborhood and appreciated the Democratic commitment to diversity.
A prominent Vietnamese American entrepreneur in the area, Lauer also runs the Devotion to Children organization, providing access to quality educational and childcare programs for children aged six and under from families that cannot afford these necessities.
