Reese aims for creating jobs through small businesses

Reese

MELISSA MACKEY

Staff Writer

Columbus-based attor­ney Jim Reese will focus on cre­at­ing jobs through small busi­nesses if elected to the 12th Dis­trict of the U.S. Congress.

Reese, 33, squares off against fel­low Demo­c­rat and Mans­field native Doug Litt in the March 6 pri­mary in an effort to take 12-year incum­bent Pat Tiberi’s seat.

An attor­ney with Bog­art and Reese, a small law office, Reese is a new­comer to the polit­i­cal scene, as he has been work­ing and prac­tic­ing law since 2008, he said. His office deals with con­sumer bank­ruptcy, Amer­i­cans with Dis­abil­i­ties Act dis­crim­i­na­tion and employ­ment law.

“I have an eco­nomic plan that will only work if imple­mented at the fed­eral level,” Reese said. “It’s for spe­cific and narrowly-focused leg­is­la­tion to increase the avail­able credit to small busi­nesses and cre­ate jobs. My plan will do so with­out rais­ing the deficit or rais­ing taxes.”

Reese’s plan deals with the $700 bil­lion bank bailout in 2008 and lend­ing out that money to small busi­nesses, so they can expand, inno­vate and hire local work­ers on Main Street, he said.

While some of the bailout money was used to pay out bonuses, some of it was allo­cated to pur­chase U.S. trea­sury bonds, Reese said.

“So we, as cit­i­zens, are pay­ing banks inter­est on the zero-percent inter­est loan that we gave them,” he said. “That is a trav­esty, so my plan forces those banks to lend that money, instead of hoard­ing it.”

Reese’s plan would invoke the accel­er­a­tion clause in the bailout loan doc­u­ments, which would give the banks the option of pay­ing off the loan or allow­ing the inter­est rate to increase, much like a credit card bill or lend­ing out the money to small busi­nesses with a rea­son­able credit score, he said.

“Small busi­nesses revi­tal­ize the econ­omy,” Reese said. “They pay local taxes, local rent and hire one, two or three peo­ple, even if it’s just push­ing a broom. We can over­come the reces­sion help­ing small busi­nesses hire peo­ple one, two or three at a time … By lend­ing out money to small busi­nesses, we ensure that jobs are not out­sourced and that prod­ucts are made in local economies through­out the dis­trict and the country.”

Reese also doesn’t believe that Amer­i­can man­u­fac­tur­ing is gone, he said.

“We keep hear­ing that Amer­i­can man­u­fac­tur­ing is gone,” Reese said. “I believe that’s a lie. We did not become No. 1 in the world because we shuf­fled around other people’s money well. We invent and make the best stuff. I am sin­gu­larly focused on bring­ing that back — inno­va­tion and man­u­fac­tur­ing in Amer­i­can hometowns.”

Reese is a grad­u­ate of Hills­dale Col­lege in Michi­gan with a degree in Amer­i­can stud­ies (a dou­ble major of Amer­i­can his­tory and polit­i­cal eco­nom­ics) and a minor in music. He worked his way through Cap­i­tal Uni­ver­sity Law School, grad­u­at­ing in 2004.

Reese is mar­ried to Nancy, and they have a 5-year-old son and are expect­ing another baby.

Posted by Melissa Mackey on Feb 14 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.