Creating jobs

Small businesses are the gears that help make our economy run. They employ the majority of the American workforce and form the bedrock of many of our communities.  With unemployment at 9.8 percent, its common sense to look at what we in Congress can do to help create jobs through the small business sector. 

Economic policy-makers agree that at least 70 percent of new jobs will come from the small-business sector.  Even so, the President and Congress have focused on bailing out the big banks and big business instead of helping grow the real job creators in small business.  The paltry portion of the stimulus bill that was devoted to small business is a perfect example. An analysis by the tax staff of the Finance Committee found that less than one-half of 1 percent of the tax relief in the stimulus went to small business.  On top of that, the President’s budget would have the marginal tax rates on the small businesses that are most likely to expand go up as much as 20 percent.  The President’s health care plan carries heavy mandates on small business that could drive the already expected high marginal rates to the highest levels in a generation.  These are all the wrong signals to send to the engine of job creation:  small business.

Instead, Congress ought to foster an environment where small business can grow and create jobs.  I’ve introduced legislation that will fill the void in the policy making so far this year.  It focuses on small business tax relief.

My Small Business Tax Relief Act follows the extensive tax relief I got through Congress last year to help small business and individuals who’d been hit by the floods and severe weather in Iowa in 2008.

My pending bill would leave more money in the hands of small business owners so they can hire more workers, keep paying the salaries of their employees and make additional investments that lead to new jobs.  This bill would help create private sector jobs that will put people to work and help get the economy moving in the right direction again.