Issue Position: Jobs - Jobs - Jobs!!!

Issue Position

There is no doubt that EVERYONE in this district has been impacted by the lack of jobs.Even though the unemployment rate has slightly lowered from what it was a year ago, here in the 13th Congressional District (8.9%) we still stand above the National Unemployment rate (8.1%). What's even more devastating is the impact on our African American citizens, where unemployment runs as high as 15.1%. The economy these past 4 years have caused an enormous increase in people seeking unemployment benefits and welfare subsidies.

Granted, the public sector (aka Big Government) cannot "create" jobs that are sustainable, since the money for those jobs come from us - the citizens - through taxation. The need is to create jobs in the private sector. This means creating a beneficial environment for those with the means to launch new businesses and grow existing ones to invest in them, thus creating jobs, rather than penalizing them with more and more regulations and taxes.

It's simple really. For a business, taxes and such is a must pay - or you get shut down. When you pay bills, you have to pay the utilities, or you lose your electricity, your water, your gas. You will cut back in other areas of your life when you are short or running lean on funds, to make sure those necessities get paid. The same thing happens in a tight and difficult economy with businesses. When heavier regulations and taxes come to bear when revenue is short, businesses will cut back in other areas to make sure those taxes are paid. Unfortunately, that means cutting jobs.

So when you hear Democrats and our President speak of taxing the rich, they are talking about cutting jobs. An estimated 80% of our workforce is employed by small businesses. These are not mega corporations. The owners fall into the income levels that they seek to tax more, and that directly affects their bottom line. You can only shift so much of that tax burden to product or service pricing, because then you start to lose customers due to higher pricing. These owners have to cut jobs.

The answer here would be to back off of the regulations and taxes to businesses. Keep in place regulations that ensure public safety, but there are some pretty outrageous regulations that have no bearing to public and consumer safety, and were created by politicians clueless to the industry or seeking to make their special interest groups happy. Our nation has one of the highest corporate tax and individual tax rates in the world. If we were to cut our corporate tax rate in half, counter-intuitive as it seems, our nation would see a huge growth in business growth, job growth, and tax revenues would actually grow higher.

We should also allow a three day "holiday" for corporations with international branches to be able to move their off shore cash assetts to the United States, tax free. Yes - tax free. They already paid taxes on them in the countries they were doing the business in, and by allowing them to re-patriate those funds to the US, they can use them to re-invest and thus create jobs.

Finally, I propose a project that marries the public sector and private sector in an attempt to stimulate new business launches and job growth, without it costing the tax payer a single additional dime. The project will identify qualified candidates who are on welfare or unemployment, and enter them into a one year mentor/training program. This program will prepare them to become business owners, providing them skills in business management, human resources, marketing, etc. The end goal would be to help them launch their own business at the end of the one year training period.

All of the mentors and trainers in the program will be private sector volunteers. Why would they do so? Because they will be given tax breaks and incentives for their business for participating. At the end of the year, the trainees will create a business plan. At this point, angel investors and venture capital companies will step up, also from the private sector and being offered tax breaks and incentives, to help fund these new business launches. These new business owners will be required to hire 50% of their staff from welfare and unemployment rolls, and will receive already existing federal incentives to train them.

This is a win-win-win all around. Private sector is given tax breaks and incentives for helping build up other businesses and creating new sources of jobs. Trainee candidates are given a rare opportunity to lift themselves up out of poverty, as well as help give hope to others through hiring to fill new jobs. And the American tax payer wins because no additional dollars were spent to run the program, and as the first wave of businesses get launched and start working, our welfare and unemployment rolls will begin to shrink, thus lessening the burden on the American tax payer.

Source