Tag Archives: Tax Reform

Republicans focus on job creation, abstinence education and tax reform

The Protecting Jobs From Government Interference Act

Rep. Tim Scott
Rep. Tim Scott

Limits on the NLRB = pro-jobs bill.

Excerpt:

In response to a series of controversial decisions by the National Labor Relations Board, the House of Representatives passed a bill curtailing the power of the NLRB Thursday afternoon.

The Protecting Jobs From Government Interference Act, H.R. 2587, passed the Republican-controlled House by a vote of 138-186. The bill would prohibit the National Labor Relations Board from ordering any employer to close, relocate, or transfer employment under any circumstance.

The NLRB has been the target of Republican ire since the board filed a complaint against Boeing in April for opening a plant in South Carolina, a right-to-work state. The NLRB said Boeing was punishing workers in Washington state with the decision.

Since then, the NLRB has handed down a spate of pro-union rules that have infuriated labor critics and Republican lawmakers.

Republican legislators say the board shouldn’t have power to dictate where private businesses locate. Union advocates claim the bill would strip the board’s ability to enforce labor laws.

The bill was sponsored by Republican Rep. Tim Scott of South Carolina and introduced in July.

“Today’s vote is important for our entire nation, as well as for my home district in South Carolina, where the NLRB is currently pursuing an agenda which, if successful, would kill thousands of jobs,” Scott said in a statement. “By removing the NLRB’s ability to dictate where private industry creates jobs, we are preventing an unelected, Presidentially-appointed government board from pitting state against state, inserting themselves into the business decisions of private companies, and scaring away investment in our nation.”

Scott has also introduced a bill rolling back several other rules recently passed by the NLRB.

By the way, I’ve been informed that something like 40% of union members vote Republican. It’s not the union members who are bad, it’s the unions. Imagine how those people feel about having dues taken out of their salaries to fund left-wing causes?

Abstinence Education Reallocation Act

Rep. Randy Hultgren
Rep. Randy Hultgren

From Life News.

Excerpt:

Newly-proposed legislation in Congress would restore federal funding for abstinence education as the Obama administration continues to discriminate against grants to programs that promote abstinence over sex education.

Recently, the Department of Health and Human Services announced new funding opportunities for initiatives on the subject, but included a caveat that grants would no go to agencies promoting abstinence education. Applicants for the FOA must include a written statement, according to a National Catholic Register report, that abstinence education is not part of the program, because the Obama administration considers it an  “unallowable activity.”

Organizations receiving funding under the program must make a “commitment to not use funds for unauthorized activities, including, but not limited to, an abstinence-education program.” Some $75 million has been authorized under the Claims Resolution Act of 2010 for the programs.

[…]On Tuesday, legislation was announced on the floor of the House of Representatives that could change this and restore funding for abstinence education. The Abstinence-Centered Education Reallocation Act, sponsored by Rep. Randall Hultgren, an Illinois Republican, is a bill that will put a priority on the sexual risk avoidance message found in abstinence programs.

Abstinence education isn’t just about STIs, it’s about love and marriage. Marital stability is stronger when single men and women avoid premarital sex.

Pro-growth Tax Reform

This one is part of Paul Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity” plan. This time he is explaining his 3-step plan to reform the tax laws to promote job creation.

Here’s the transcript of the video above:

America’s economy has been hit really hard. A lot of people have lost their jobs. More borrowing and spending and higher taxes are not going to bring jobs back to America. The last thing we need to be doing is to complicate job creation in America with this complicated tax code that we have today.

A tax code should be fair, competitive and simple, and the US tax code fails on all three counts.  Here are common-sense ideas we’ve advanced before…ideas that have bipartisan support.

First, we have to make our tax code fair.

It’s full of deductions, credits and special carve-outs – otherwise known as “loopholes” – that let politically-connected companies avoid paying taxes. Every dollar that businesses spend lobbying for a better tax deal, is a dollar they’re not spending on making a better product.

And, since every dollar hidden in a loophole doesn’t get taxed – politicians make up for this lost revenue by increasing overall tax rates. So we need to close these loopholes.

But if we just close loopholes, then our federal corporate tax rate is 35 percent, which is really high.

Add in state and local taxes, the rate climbs to 39.2 percent – the second highest tax rate among developed countries.

On top of sending almost 40 cents out of every dollar earned, straight to the government, businesses pay investment taxes, payroll taxes, and a handful of other taxes our government makes job creators pay.

In the 21st century global economy – and when American families need jobs – this approach just doesn’t make any sense.

We need to make our tax code competitive.

The budget we passed in the House of Representatives calls for closing the loopholes and lowering the rates.

The President’s bipartisan Fiscal Commission proposed something similar.

Its plan would reduce the corporate tax rate to as low as 26 percent, and to lower the top individual rate that many small businesses pay to as low as 23 percent.

So if we lower tax rates, does that mean the wealthy pay less in taxes? Not if we do it by closing loopholes. Because the people who use most of the loopholes are those in the top tax brackets. For all the money that’s parked in these tax loopholes, all that money’s taxed at zero. Take away the tax loophole; lower everybody’s tax rates – that money’s now taxed. But its taxed at a fair more simple, more competitive way so the small business men and women who are out there striving and competing have a better tax rate so they can compete in this global economy.

Third, let’s make the tax code simple.

All together, individuals and businesses spend over six billion hours and 160 billion dollars, every year, just trying to understand and comply with the tax code.

Let’s simplify the code, not just by closing loopholes, but also by decreasing the number of different tax brackets taxpayers fall in.

Fewer brackets, along with lower individual rates, will make the tax code less complicated, and let more people keep more of the money they earn.

There’s a reason this approach has attracted bipartisan support: It’s Fair, It’s Competitive, and It’s Simple.

America’s been knocked down before. We’ve had tough recessions before, and we know that the secret to growing jobs and prosperity in America are through the ingenuity and the hard work of our businesses – of our small businesses, of our large businesses, of job creators. We don’t want a tax system that rewards people for coming to Washington and getting special favors. We want a tax system that rewards Americans for hard work, risk taking, entrepreneurship , investment and innovation. These are the kinds of things that have made America great in the past. And these are the kinds of ideas the we’re going to need if want to grow our economy in the future and compete in the 21st century global economy.

Imagine if the United States were the best place for companies to do business. Imagine the job growth that would stimulate.

Marco Rubio’s amazing maiden speech in the US Senate

Florida Senator Marco Rubio
Florida Senator Marco Rubio

Human events reported on Florida Senator Marco Rubio’s first speech on the floor of the US Senate today, and it was AWESOME. (H/T Kathleen McKinley)

Full story:

Freshman Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio delivered his maiden speech on the floor of the Senate yesterday and it was a speech all GOP presidential contenders should watch.

It was the best speech of the 2012 presidential cycle, except the person who delivered it has all but ruled himself off of the 2012 ticket on numerous occasions.

The GOP presidential field has been criticized for not having passion or conviction, and Rubio’s speech lit up the normally staid Senate chamber to the extent that this is possible. It had a clear argument, an emotional arc, personal tie-ins, and was delivered with conviction. Too often, even in the GOP, politicians talk about American exceptionalism as if it is an academic exercise.

Not Rubio.

Rubio owned it, his words personified it, and his speech was delivered in a way that led one who was watching to to think Rubio was humbled and still awed at America’s exceptional past and promise.

As Republicans learned in 2008, words and stories matter. It draws a public who does not get caught up in the drudgery of modern American politics in to care about the democratic process.
Add in the fact that Rubio is young and a minority, which are the two groups Republicans do most poorly with, and the speech and the messenger become even more dynamic, compelling, symbolic and important.

Rubio said he came “from a hard working and humble family” that “was neither wealthy nor connected,” but that he “grew up blessed in two important ways:” He had a strong and stable family and was born in America.

He realized that “America is not perfect” and “ti took a bloody civil war to free over 4 million African Americans who lived enslaved … and it would take another hundred years after that before they found true equality under the law.”

Rubio then movingly talked about how people who came to give their children a better life contributed to an “American miracle.”

He spoke of how a “16-year-old boy from Sweden, who spoke no English and had only five dollars in his pocket, was able to save and open a shoe store,” and “today, that store, Nordstrom is a multi-billion dollar global retail giant.”

He spoke of a “a young couple with no money and no business experience decided to start a toy business out of the garage of their home, and, “today, that company, Mattel, is one of the world’s largest toy manufacturers”

He spoke of the “French-born son of Iranian parents created a website called AuctionWeb in the living room of his home,” and, “today, that website now called eBay stands as a testament to the familiar phrase, ‘Only in America.'”

Rubio then talked movingly of the American dream and personified it by putting faces on the dream.

He said it was “story of the people who cleaned our office last night” who work hard so they can send their kids to college.”

He said it was “the story of the people who served your lunch today” who “work hard so that one day their children will have the chance to own a business.”

He said, in a reference to his father, the American Dream was also the “story of a bartender and a maid in Florida, whose son now serves here in this Senate, and who proudly gives his testimony as a firsthand witness of the greatness of this land.”

He then pivoted and said while “most great powers have used their strength to conquer other nations” America “is different” for America, “power also came with a sense that to those that much is given, much is expected.”

Rubio said that America’s greatness can be found anywhere in the world, “when someone uses a mobile phone, email, the Internet, or GPS” or “when a bone marrow, lung or heart transplant saves a life.”

Rubio then talked about how he “grew up in the 1980s, a time when it was morning in America” and that the 1980s, like the American century, faced challenges and triumphs but it was a “century where American political, economic and cultural exceptionalism made the world a more prosperous and peaceful place.”

He spoke of how the country is headed toward the wrong direct and that “we do stand now at a turning point in our history, one where there are only two ways forward for us. We will either bring on another American century, or we are doomed to witness America’s decline.”

Rubio said that since “every single one of us is the descendant of a go-getter,” “of dreamers and believers,” and “of men and women who took risk and made sacrifices because they wanted to leave their children better off than themselves” that “we are all the descendants of the men and women who built the nation that changed the world” whether “hey came here on the Mayflower, a slave ship, or on an airplane from Havana.”

Rubio then quoted John F. Kennedy about how America is the “watchmen on the walls of world freedom” and asked if America declined, “who will serve as living proof that liberty, security, and prosperity are all possible together,” or “lead the fight to confront and defeat radical Islam that “abuses and oppresses women, has no tolerance for other faiths and seeks to impose its views on the whole world,” or stand up for children who “are used as soldiers and trafficked as slaves?”

Rubio asked, if America declines, “who will create the innovations of the 21st century?”

He answered that nobody will because “there is still no nation or institution in the world willing or able to do what we have done.”

“Now, some say that we can no longer afford the price we must pay to keep America’s light shining,” Rubio said. “Others say that there are new shining cities that will soon replace us.”

“I say they are both wrong,” Rubio emphatically said because the world “still needs America,” “still needs our light,” and “still needs another American century” and “with God’s help, that will be our legacy to our children and to the world.”

You can watch the video here. The full transcript is here. READ THE WHOLE THING if you can’t watch the video.

You’ll recall that this blog has been a strong supporter of Marco Rubio since the day he announced his candidacy. He, along with Michele Bachmann, Paul Ryan, Allen West and Jim Demint, are my favorite Republicans. I’m probably forgetting some, but those are the ones that come to mind. I think if I had to choose someone who best matched my views across the board, that would be Michele Bachmann. But Marco Rubio best matches my personal story, and my opinion of the United States of America.

Here’s my post on the day he won the seat: Marco Rubio wins Florida Senate race – first tea party senator!

And here’s my post on the day he announced he was running: Conservative Marco Rubio announces for Florida Senate seat.

He will be a great Senator. And some day, maybe he’ll be even more. IFYKWIMAITYD.

 

Sue Myrick interviews Paul Ryan about his Roadmap for America

I love Sue Myrick! And Paul Ryan is very passionate about these ideas.

Video:

These are the best ideas out there.

I know some of you will want to see him fight, so here he is fighting:

More from CNSNews: Rep. Paul Ryan: Obama’s New Budget Will ‘Literally Crash the U.S. Economy’

Excerpt:

Ryan pointed out that the Government Accountability Office recently reported that the federal government already faces a “fiscal gap” of $76 trillion, meaning that over the next 75 years the cost of the benefits promised in federal entitlement programs exceeds the tax revenues expected to pay for those benefits by that amount. That works out to almost $250,000 for every single American and about $650,000 for every American household.

The new debt President Obama plans for the federal government to incur over the next decade would come on top of this existing $76 trillion “fiscal gap.”

“All those unfunded liabilities, all that debt I’ve been telling you about, is before you pass this budget,” said Ryan. “That’s if we don’t pass the budget. If we pass the Obama budget, it just gets worse. He doubles the debt in 5 years and triples it in 10.”

The federal government currently divides its total debt into two categories: debt held by the public and debt the government owes to itself because it has borrowed and spent money taken out of the so-called Social Security and Medicare “trust funds.”

“Under the President’s budget, debt held by the public would grow from $7.5 trillion (53 percent of GDP) at the end of 2009 to $20.3 trillion (90 percent of GDP) at the end of 2020,” says the CBO report on Obama’s fiscal 2011 budget. “As a result, net interest would more than quadruple between 2010 and 2020 in nominal dollars (without an adjustment for inflation); it would expand from 1.4 percent of GDP in 2010 to 4.1 percent in 2020.”

Our children are doomed – unless Obama and Democrats are kicked out in the next election. We’re being governed by spoiled little rich kids who have no idea how bills are paid.