DeMint visits Timken, honors Peeler on economy tour

Senator Jim DeMint (R S.C.) addressed a crowd of local business leaders at The Timken Company’s Gaffney Bearing Plant on Monday afternoon as part of his “South Carolina On the Move” tour. U.S. Senator Jim DeMint stopped at The Timken Compa-ny’s Gaffney Bearing Plant on Monday as part of his “South Carolina On the Move” tour to speak with local business lead-ers and present an award.

“I’m here today for a little give and take with you,” DeMint said. “But I also want to give you an update on my first seven months in D.C. There is a lot of opportunity here in Gaffney, between the Upstate and Charlotte. We in Washing-ton want to know what we need to do to help this area of South Carolina grow.”

DeMint spoke to an audience populated with many local busi-ness moguls including Pat Emrich of Nestle, Mark Propst of The Timken Company and John Claterbos of Freightliner Custom Chassis.

Most of his comments at the town hall-style meeting focused on business.

“There has been a lot of talk about trade issues and trade agreements here in the Upstate,” DeMint said. “But trade can only be good for America. Rather than focus on that, we need to address attract-ing businesses to the United States and making it easier for those that are already here to expand and grow here. We need to address the cost of energy, taxes and the cost of health-care.’

The senator went on to explain some of the new bills passed in Congress this year.

“We have passed an energy bill which the president has signed into law today that will make some important changes,” he said.

“We’ve initiated bankruptcy reform, where a person can’t take out a credit card, run up a huge debt and then just declare bankruptcy to escape. We’ve passed a bill that includes class action lawsuit reforms to help reduce the number of suits against businesses.”

For DeMint, healthcare was another issue on the minds of businessmen.

“We also need to address the rising costs associated with healthcare in our country,” he said. “The cost of healthcare isn’t increasing that fast, the cost of insurance is. It’s because only about 25 percent of Amer-icans are covered by private insurance. Another 50 percent are on some kind of govern-ment program, and 25 percent simply don’t pay. The way the system works we make it almost impossible to have pri-vate insurance.

“I’d like to see every Ameri-can with a portable health insurance policy they can take with them from job to job and that you pay for services. Some say that won’t work in health-care, but look at laser eye sur-gery. It was very expensive, but since it isn’t governed by insur-ance, the price has come down.”

DeMint also used the time to present an award to state Sena-tor Harvey Peeler and Spartan-burg Technical College Presi-dent Dr. Dan Terhune for their work in helping to develop a branch campus of Spartanburg Tech in Cherokee County.