Newsletter - The President's Jobs Tour

Statement

Friends,

Last Thursday, President Obama visited the city of Mooresville for his "Middle Class Jobs & Opportunity Tour." While I believe there is no better place than right here in our North Carolina backyard to see first-hand the need for a thriving middle-class, the President's plan for economic growth runs contrary to its end goal.

In order to empower our hardworking citizens and create jobs, we must decentralize power and decision-making, and unleash community-generated solutions that don't involve government intervention and roadblocks. As you know, my top priority is getting folks back to work and revitalizing our economy for long-term growth and sustainability. The uncertainty in healthcare costs, energy prices, and taxes and regulations are holding small businesses back from expanding and hiring new workers. Lenders won't lend, buyers won't buy, and employers won't hire until they have certainty gained by confidence in our financial institutions.

Two of the most prevalent pieces of our unemployment crisis are over-taxation and excessive regulation. Americans spend 7.6 billion hours every year preparing their taxes and are aided by an army of nearly 1.2 million paid tax preparers. This degree of difficulty is unnecessary and unfair, particularly for individuals and the 75% of small businesses that file as individuals, who are often faced with greater complexity in the filing process and higher rates than their corporate counterparts. I am committed to making taxes simple, flat, and fair for everyone.

Coupled with taxation, regulations stifle growth and reduce the take home pay of hardworking taxpayers. For individuals and families, comprehensive federal tax reform would put $2,000 back in our pockets at the end of the year. This would allow the family to make the necessary repairs to their car, allow a mom to buy her daughter a computer for college, or enable parents to pack up their kids and vacation at one of North Carolina's fine beaches. For small businesses, this would encourage growth that would be felt throughout our neighborhoods. New businesses are restricted from getting off the ground because they are forced to comply with rules that go so far as to tell them what type of light bulbs to use. The small businesses that do survive are then forced to spend annually between $18 and $19 billion on tax compliance costs. This means more money spent on overhead and less on employees. If every small business could afford to hire one new employee, unemployment would drop to 5%.

In addition to reforming our tax code and reducing the amount of government regulations, we need to adopt an all-of-the-above domestic energy policy. This approach would create new jobs, generate new tax revenue, and reduce our dependence on energy from unfriendly sources. Approving construction of the Keystone XL pipeline will create at least 20,000 new, real U.S. jobs with the potential to create 100,000 more indirect jobs. I believe that by getting North Carolina into the energy business, we can create a jobs boom in our state like we've seen in North Dakota and Pennsylvania.

Finally, we must repeal Obamacare. This health care law alone has 20,000 pages of job-killing regulations. By allowing insurance companies to compete across state lines, offering grants for states to set up high-risk insurance pools, allowing tort reform, and helping the uninsured population purchase health insurance by creating tax credits, we will lower the cost of health care, improve access and encourage job growth to keep people in the workplace.

Obamacare will impose 20,000 pages of new regulations.
The stack is over 7ft. tall.

The President's visit was an attempt to make you believe his ideas are fresh, but after four years, it's clear his plan has failed. It's time to get some fresh ideas in Washington that empower our citizens, protect our freedoms, or embrace our entrepreneurial spirit. I stand ready to work with the President on real economic reform to create jobs right here at home.

Until next week,

Richard Hudson
Member of Congress (NC-08)

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