Harry Reid: How Can We Get Back to Creating Jobs?

AOL News - How Can We Get Back to Creating Jobs? "We asked Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his rival for the Nevada Senate seat, Sharron Angle, for their plans to turn this around."

Sharron Angle (R) did not respond to invitations to write an op-ed on this topic.

Harry Reid: Putting Nevadans Back to Work

(Oct. 7) -- After eight years of failed Bush economic policies, families in Nevada and across the nation are struggling. I know what that's like. I grew up in a home with no indoor toilet. That's why I've been working hard to help put Nevadans back to work and turn our state's economy around. While our economic recovery isn't moving as quickly as we would like, we've done a lot to help struggling Nevadans.

Nevada's economy is suffering so much largely because of the national economy. As that improves, so will things in Nevada. Tourism is our state's leading industry, and when it suffers our entire state suffers. To ease the impact I am working to build yet another industry in Nevada, clean energy. While the Recovery Act did important things, like cut taxes for 98 percent of Nevadans, it also made significant investments in clean energy. The Recovery Act delivered more than $300 million for Nevada's clean energy industry. This included financing for an energy transmission line between White Pine and Clark Counties to create a thousand new clean energy jobs.

However, because there's no better place to visit and spend money than Nevada, I'm also doing everything I can to strengthen our tourism industry. That's why when the state's largest employer, MGM, was having trouble finishing CityCenter, I stepped in and did what I could to save 22,000 jobs, and get the project completed. It was the right thing to do for those 22,000 people and Nevada's economy. I also led passage of the Travel Promotion Act, which will create as many as 6,000 jobs in Nevada and bring foreign tourists to Las Vegas, Reno, and Lake Tahoe.

We also passed the HIRE Act, which is giving tax breaks to small businesses to incentivize hiring and encourage employee retention. Because of this bill, 69,000 new hires in Nevada alone qualified for tax breaks, and Expedia recently announced they were hiring 130 employees in Nevada because of the HIRE Act.

I delivered $83 million in emergency education funding to protect 1,400 Nevada education jobs, solar tax credits that will create as many as 41,000 Nevada jobs, and helped secure a wind turbine factory in Southern Nevada that will create 1,000 permanent jobs and hundreds of construction jobs.

We also passed tax credits for small businesses to allow them to provide their employees with health insurance and use their savings to invest in their business and hire more employees.

We have a lot more work to do to create jobs and turn our economy around, and I'm confident that as we have in the past, Nevada will emerge stronger than ever.

I wake up each morning with the struggle of everyday Nevadans on my mind, and will never stop working to ensure that every Nevadan who wants a job can get one.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., the majority leader of the U.S. Senate, is running against Republican Sharron Angle in the 2010 elections.

Editor's note: Sharron Angle did not respond to repeated invitations to write an op-ed on this topic for AOL News.