Jenkins visits Fort Scott, gets feedback

United State Rep. Lynn Jenkins, R.-Kan., visited Fort Scott Thursday to get a feel for what going on in the district she represents.

Jenkins visited the Fort Scott Area Chamber of Commerce Coffee at Shelter Insurance, then toured Fort Scott Community College and made a stop at the Fort Scott Rotary Club Loaded Potato Feed before heading off to the next location. All along the way, Jenkins stopped to answer questions from community members and business owners about job creation and the nation's economy.

"We know times are tough right now and a lot of people are looking to Washington for some answers and some relief," Jenkins said. "Certainly at the [Fort Scott Area Chamber of Commerce] Coffee was a wonderful opportunity to hear from a wide range of individuals in different businesses as to how the economy is affecting them and [the] community."

At the top of the list of concerns, Jenkins said was job creation. She said many people express that increasing taxes, regulations, and federal spending is not going to help the situation in Bourbon County.

"That is a message I need to hear," Jenkins said. "Kansas in general, and to some extent Bourbon County, have been insulated from the extremely high unemployment rates ... We are still obviously suffering."

Jenkins said her time in Fort Scott was very informative and that she hopes to take the comments and concerns of the community back to Congress.

"This has been a great opportunity for me to get some feedback as to how things are going here in Bourbon County," she said. "We'll take that back and hopefully get to work on some real solutions."

According to Jenkins, Congress has a lot of work to do. She said they are working on issues such as job creation, the economy, healthcare reform, energy, and financial regulatory reform.

"All that is really left over from last year's agenda," she said. "That's not even looking at what we scheduled to tackle this year which is No Child Left Behind and immigration reform.

A large part of the work to be done in Congress is to address the issues that were not fixed with the first stimulus package which passed a year ago. Jenkins said it promised to create jobs and hold unemployment rates down and that it did neither.

"We saw that play out last year as a lot of money was spent without any job creation or economic stimulus," she said.

Prior to leaving for the winter holidays, Jenkins said, the United States House of Representatives passed a similar stimulus packages -- which she did not support -- known as "Son of Stimulus." She said it is a weakened version of the first stimulus package and it still does not address the problems. The package is now in the U.S. Senate and Jenkins said it probably will not be passed.

"While [the U.S. Senate] agreed to the stimulus package last year I think they were more thoughtful in their approach and realized it didn't do what it was promised to do ... I think they are going to go back to the drawing board and come up with some ideas that actually create jobs," Jenkins said.

Jenkins also addressed the topic of healthcare while visiting Fort Scott. She said Congress is still working on healthcare reform. She said the election of Senator Scott Brown in Mass., which caused the Democrats to lose the majority in Senate, was responsible for the derailment of the reform plan which some viewed as a "governmental takeover."

"That really changed the dynamic and the debate because they now longer could shove through a bill that didn't have the support of the majority of Americans," she said.

Jenkins said she hopes to see a plan in place which implements incremental changes to reduce the cost and allow people with pre-existing conditions to have adequate coverage.

"I think we are less likely to make a mistake if we do it on a more incremental basis," she said.