CREATING JOBS IN AMERICA

American workers are the best-trained, most technologically advanced, and hardest-working in all the world. Our ingenuity and entrepreneurship have delivered us to the pinnacle of economic excellence and cemented our status as the world’s only remaining superpower. At the same time, our employers – particularly our manufacturers – are experiencing pressure from foreign competitors like never before.

I have authored An American Jobs Agenda to promote initiatives Congress and the Administration should follow to help our manufacturers create jobs and compete on a more level international playing field. Several of the initiatives have already been implemented, but many are still outstanding. I will continue to pursue this agenda to create jobs in northern Illinois and strengthen manufacturing in America.


An American Jobs Agenda

1. Health Care Security – Soaring health care costs escalate the cost of doing business in the United States and are the #1 concern of American business owners. Job growth cannot flourish until we reduce these surging health costs. I support legislation to create Association Health Plans, which allow small businesses to band together to get group insurance at discount rates; modern medical liability laws; expanded Health Savings Accounts; and other health tax credits/deductions to encourage the uninsured to purchase health insurance

2. Bureaucratic Red Tape Termination – America leads the world in regulatory costs – totaling $843 billion annually from the federal government alone. Congress and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) must require sound science for all new regulations and repeal or amend indefensible older ones. OMB is leading by example in seeking public comment on modifying or terminating unsound regulations that unduly hurt the U.S. manufacturing sector. We should amend the Regulatory Flexibility Act to further empower the Small Business Administration’s (SBA’s) independent Office of Advocacy to challenge proposed regulations that unduly harm or burden small businesses. We also need to change the “gotcha” culture of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) by passing common-sense reform bills that would allow small businesses longer than 15 days to contest OSHA citations if they miss the deadline because of an innocent mistake or for a good reason.

3. Lifelong Learning – Precarious job prospects discourage Americans from planning careers in manufacturing and information technology. Education must be transformed into a process of lifelong learning. Education doesn’t end after graduation from high school or college. The costs should be offset by tax deductions or credits, as appropriate. Reauthorization of the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act is also critical to maintaining America’s competitive edge, which emphasizes challenging work in a coordinated curriculum in the subject areas of math, science, and technology.

4. Trade Fairness and Opportunity – Many of our trading partners impose myriad tariff and non-tariffs barriers on our exports. Our businesses must have reciprocal access to foreign markets through negotiating market-opening agreements such as the various free trade agreements with Chile, Singapore, Australia, and Morocco. We must also enforce our trade agreements while holding foreign governments accountable for their illegal practices, including ending currency manipulation, piracy and illegal subsidies. Specifically, we must aggressively target India and China, the source of much “offshoring,” for not following trade laws. I recently co-authored legislation, HR 782, that would allow the United States to slap countervailing duties on any foreign country misaligning its currency. Finally, we should look inward to change our own counterproductive trade policies, including modernizing our export control laws (I recently created the Congressional Export Controls Working Group); our restrictive visa policies; and the growing tendency of our government agencies to procure more and more goods and services from abroad.

5. Tax Relief and Simplification – We must have a tax policy that rewards companies for keeping operations in the U.S. We also must make the President’s tax cuts permanent. Most small businesses pay their taxes at the individual rate (not the corporate rate). They will face a tax hike if we fail to extend the President’s marginal tax rate cuts. Small businesses also must endure the job-destroying estate or “death” tax until it is repealed for good. Finally, we must strive to make the tax code simpler and less complicated to understand. When the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) recently allowed business owners to use the standard mileage reimbursement rate for up to four vehicles (from one), it helped over 800,000 businesses save 8 to 10 million hours in record keeping burdens.

6. Energy Self-Sufficiency and Security – Energy costs are skyrocketing, driving up business costs in a variety of ways. We must get rid of our dependency on foreign oil and start finding solutions through domestic drilling and alternative energy sources. Congress should continue to pass energy bills that encourage environmentally sound development and conservation to help bring down energy costs.

7. Research and Development – We must document where the federal government is investing its manufacturing R&D money. There are hundreds of programs using federal R&D money, but no one knows who is researching what, which leads to duplicative efforts and wasteful spending. We need to provide more coordination across government agencies to encourage productive research and fiscal responsibility. Congress should also make the R&D tax credit permanent and governments must prioritize funding for the most promising technologies of the future (such as nanotechnology, biotechnology, and miniaturization). The 21st Century Nanotechnology R&D program, authorizing $3.4 billion over the next four years, was a good start.

8. Ending Lawsuit Abuse and Litigation Management – America is the most litigious society in the world and many companies and service providers are leaving because some juries think businesses have an unlimited source of wealth. We need to have product liability reform that has a limit on how old a piece of equipment can be before the time to sue ends. We also need to have medical liability reform in order to keep doctors practicing medicine.

9. Improve Access to Capital – Small businesses, particularly small manufacturers, continue to have difficulty in accessing capital. Congress fully reopened the SBA’s 7(a) program in 2004 by passing HR 4062 that freed up an additional $3 billion in lending to small business. Also, the IRS should allow small businesses to place up to 20 percent of taxable income into a tax-deferred savings account for each of the first five years of operations until capital flow has typically stabilized for a new business. I recently introduced legislation that would give tax incentives to angel investors who invest capital in small businesses.