Quotes from Elaine Chao

The expenses of complying with Washington's torrent of mandates and regulatory overreach are costing American workers jobs and income growth.

We have many rules and regulations that can be sometimes confusing and complicated. By reaching out to the employer community and educating them on what their responsibilities and obligations are to their work force, that, along, with strong enforcement, is the best way to protect workers.

To maintain their own competitiveness, workers need to attain and stay current on the qualifications needed to advance in a constantly evolving economy.

Most private sector workers can only dream of getting the generous lifetime pension and health benefits typical of government service.

European-style interventions to which the Obama administration is inclined will not make America more competitive in the world-wide economy. Such policies will not increase growth, will not decrease unemployment, and will not increase wages for workers.

If we did not have Obamacare, we could've addressed the healthcare crisis in a comprehensive but segmented fashion - meaning that we could have promoted a health savings plan. We could've pushed for tort reform, which added so much more cost to healthcare.

There should be an immediate moratorium on federal regulations that endanger jobs.

I'm the first secretary of labor in the 21st century, and the competitiveness of the American work force and the modernization of decades-old regulations have been among our top priorities.

Smoot and Hawley ginned up The Tariff Act of 1930 to get America back to work after the Stock Market Crash of '29. Instead, it destroyed trade so effectively that by 1932, American exports to Europe were just a third of what they had been in 1929. World trade fell two-thirds as other nations retaliated. Jobs evaporated.

Americans did not suffer alone. World trade overall fell two-thirds in the first few years of the Depression.

Every person - we want to make sure that every person who wants a job will indeed get one.

As tough as it is for many college graduates to get their planned careers on track, it could be worse: They could be trying to find a job without a college degree.

For any trade deal to move forward, there has to be agreement.

President Obama has been admirably pro-trade in public remarks, but there has been no progress in moving any new free trade agreements to expand exports abroad and create jobs at home.

The majority of the new jobs being created require higher skills, more education.

Deep in the heart of Kentucky's rugged Eastern Mountain region, there lives a woman who has fascinated and inspired me for two decades. She is known locally these days as 'Mayor Nan' - the octogenarian chief executive of Hazard and advocate for its 5,467 residents.

For significant job creation to occur, prospective entrepreneurs and current business owners must not fear the future or be under assault from their own government in the present.

Even when America's economy has been by all measures healthy and the unemployment rate low, some businesses suffer or fail and lay off workers. But nearly always, a simultaneous and even greater burst of new jobs has been created to offset the jobs lost - millions of new jobs every year.

The ingenuity and creativity of the private sector is essential to meeting American's needs for a skilled work force.

The borrow-spend-and-centralize agenda that has been so destructive to job creation elsewhere in America has been a gravy boat inside the Beltway.

Government at all levels has kicked the fiscal can down the road for far too long.

The Obama administration's zeal to not 'waste a good crisis,' as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton put it, has been stunning even for Washington insiders to behold.

The greatest job creation is driven by entrepreneurs and young businesses, so they merit special attention.

While there have been news reports of recent college graduates living with their parents because they have been unable to find a job paying a salary sufficient to move out, their near and long-term career prospects remain far brighter than for those without a college degree.