[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 25 (Wednesday, February 16, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S793-S796]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
By Ms. Collins:
S. 361. A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide
tax relief for small businesses, and for other purposes; to the
Committee on Finance.
Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, Americans are resilient. Throughout our
Nation's history, we have stood up to every challenge and we have stood
together. At this moment in history, we face the challenge of
recovering from the worst economic recession since the Great
Depression. Through no fault of their own, too many Americans have lost
their jobs and continue to struggle to find work in this tough economy.
Putting Americans back to work is the key to economic recovery and must
be the No. 1 goal for this Congress.
Today, I offer my own seven-point plan to help us reach that goal.
This jobs plan recognizes that small businesses are America's job
creators and, thus, our efforts must be targeted toward helping small
businesses start up, grow, and prosper.
In Maine alone, we have 141,000 small businesses. During the past
decade, America's small firms have created about 70 percent of all new
jobs. But far too often Congress directs Federal policies and attention
toward those businesses deemed too big to fail. Instead, we must
redirect our efforts toward those small businesses that are too
entrepreneurial to ignore.
The plan I am introducing today is based on extensive conversations I
have had with small business owners and workers throughout the State of
Maine. It also represents a great deal of hard work by my staff.
While each State has its own particular opportunities and challenges,
the fundamentals of a jobs-oriented economic recovery are similar
everywhere. As I illustrate my seven-point plan with examples from my
home State of Maine, I believe the Presiding Officer and my colleagues
will recognize similarities in their own home States.
First, my plan to build a 21st century economy begins with building a
21st century workforce. America's greatest asset is its people.
Ensuring that American workers get the education and job training they
need to compete in an increasingly global economy must be a top
priority.
My plan amends the Workforce Investment Act to place special emphasis
on job training programs that assist our manufacturing industry. I am
tired of seeing so many manufacturing jobs leave my State and our
Nation to go overseas. It is important we have a strategy to work with
manufacturers, to work with local community colleges and universities
to develop the manufacturing base curriculum, job training
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programs, and research opportunities to ensure this generation and the
next have the education and skills for the jobs of today and tomorrow.
Some of those manufacturing jobs are gone forever. But others are
coming online, and America must lead and Congress must support targeted
funding to help provide the resources for this education and training.
In addition, we must provide workforce development assistance to
those communities harmed as a direct consequence of the closure or
realignment of military installations.
For example, the State of Maine is expected to lose more than 6,500
military and civilian jobs following the decisions made by the Base
Realignment and Closure Commission in 2005. We are losing the Brunswick
Naval Air Station in our State. There are many other States, including
Illinois, Missouri, and New Jersey that are facing similar losses. In
Virginia, nearly 40,000 jobs will be lost. In such cases where
decisions made at the Federal level directly affect local employment,
we have a special obligation to make sure displaced workers have the
training and education they need to find new employment in their
communities. After all, these communities have structured their
economies to support military operations for decades, in many cases.
Now that that lynchpin of the local economy is being pulled out, surely
we have an obligation to help with the adjustment. My plan would
redirect Economic Development Administration funds--EDA resources--to
those communities most harmed by these decisions.
Targeted Federal funds can also be a catalyst for new economic
opportunities. For example, I worked to secure one-time funding for a
radiologic technician training program at a Maine community college.
This program had broad support from local hospitals and from the
college, but they simply couldn't afford the expensive equipment to get
the program under way. With that one-time Federal investment, the
program is now completely self-sustaining, and it produces between 18
and 20 graduates a year. Job placement has been 100 percent, with
graduates earning starting salaries of about $40,000 a year. I am sure
similar targeted job training success stories can be found in every
State, and we ought to build on them.
We must also fix what has not worked as well as it should. Government
agencies must provide more efficient and productive services to the
American people. The Department of Labor, for example, should reduce
paperwork and redtape associated with Federal job training programs.
The Department should identify ways it could cut costs by working more
closely with other government entities, such as the Department of
Education, and with the private sector. The best programs I have seen
at community colleges, for example, combine some job training funds
with commitments from private employers to hire the graduates and to
help shape those job training programs so we are training people for
the jobs that exist or that are going to exist.
The second part of my plan would encourage innovation in Maine's
natural resource-based economy. Nowhere is there greater potential than
in energy. I want the United States to lead the world in developing
renewable energy technologies, and that is going to require significant
private and public investments to develop this technology and to make
its deployment affordable. For example, deepwater offshore wind has
enormous potential to help us meet our Nation's electricity needs, and
it presents an exciting opportunity to create thousands of much needed,
good-paying, and sustainable green jobs. Estimates show that the
development of just 5 gigawatts of offshore wind off the coast of
Maine--and that is just a fraction of the overall potential--could
power more than 1 million homes, attract $20 billion of investment, and
create more than 15,000 green energy jobs that would be sustained over
30 years.
Deepwater offshore wind is the key transformative technology that
America needs in order to compete globally. Europe, China, Japan--our
technology competitors--continue to make far larger investments in
offshore wind R&D than we do. I am proud of the work of the University
of Maine and the DeepCwind Consortium private sector investment to
deploy loading wind turbines, which would be the first of its kind in
the world, placing the United States in a position to lead in deepwater
offshore wind technology.
Federal investments in programs to spur the advancement of deepwater
offshore wind is an investment in America's future. Federal and State
seed funding is expected to yield up to $4 billion in private sector
investment over the next 10 years in Maine alone. With these
investments, Maine is well positioned to be a global leader in this
promising source of alternative energy. We must not lose these jobs to
China, as has increasingly occurred with solar technology. Let's not
let it happen with deepwater offshore wind technology.
We must also do more to promote agricultural exports. I know this is
an issue of great interest to the Presiding Officer. In Maine,
blueberries, potatoes, and lobster help create and sustain jobs in our
State. Every $1 billion in agricultural exports supports 12,000 jobs.
Therefore, increasing exports of our agricultural products could play
an important role in reviving our economy. Boosting support for the
Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agricultural Services will help
promote our homegrown natural products abroad. This effort to increase
agricultural exports could be paid for by strengthening our effort to
curtail wasteful agricultural subsidies, such as payments to very
wealthy corporate farmers who, frankly, do not need Federal assistance.
The corn-based ethanol tax break is another example of an
extraordinarily expensive subsidy, costing taxpayers some $6 billion
annually, and which has produced a host of problems from higher grain
prices to impaired engine performance. We must reevaluate all programs
that have not performed as promised and then reallocate their funding
to job-creation initiatives and to deficit reduction.
Third, we simply must do more to encourage job creation and
investment by small business. My plan includes a series of tax reform
proposals targeted at these engines of job growth. The tax package
agreed to by Congress and the President in December included a 2-
percent cut in the employee portion of the payroll tax, but no cut was
provided for the employer portion of the payroll tax.
With unemployment stuck above 9 percent for 21 consecutive months, we
must do more to encourage businesses to hire. When I talk to small
businesses, they tell me this is something we can do that would
directly reduce the cost of hiring and encourage them to bring on more
workers. My proposal includes a 2-percent reduction of the employer
portion of the payroll tax on the first $50,000 of payroll for 1 year.
This reduction in the employer portion of the payroll tax is estimated
to lead to the creation of 1.4 million jobs. This will work.
As with the employee-side payroll tax relief we passed in December,
my proposal would require the Treasury to reimburse the Social Security
trust fund using general revenues. Again, the cost of this payroll tax
relief can be offset by eliminating the ethanol and other wasteful
subsidies and by implementing budget cuts for discretionary spending.
There are other provisions in my bill that are targeted toward small
businesses. For example, section 179 is a provision of the Tax Code
that small businesses have found to be very helpful. It allows them to
immediately expense equipment purchases rather than depreciate those
purchases over many years.
I also propose making permanent the tax provision allowing
restaurants to depreciate equipment over 15 years rather than 39\1/2\
years. Think about it. If a restaurant is only renovating once every 40
years, that is not going to be very feasible or attractive to its
patrons.
The plan would also reduce the depreciation periods on commercial and
residential buildings to 15 years to encourage investment and jump-
start the economy. We did that back in 1981, and it worked.
My fourth point is one that some small business owners, I know, would
put at the very top of the list of what we should do; that is, we need
to reduce the redtape that ties them in knots. Let me provide an
illustration.
We need to make sure Federal regulations do not impose an unnecessary
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burden on job creation. The EPA has proposed a new regulation known as
the boiler MACT. This rule, as originally proposed, could cost Maine
businesses $640 million to comply with, despite the fact there are less
costly approaches to deal with boiler emissions. It also has Federal
agencies working at cross-purposes. Here we have the Department of
Energy trying to encourage the conversion to biomass boilers at the
same time the EPA is putting burdensome new regulations on them.
The result in Maine was the Department of Energy awarded one Maine
high school a $300,000 grant to help buy a new wood pellet boiler to
reduce the school's use of fossil fuels. But because EPA's proposed
regulations would have greatly increased the cost of that boiler, the
school board ended up turning down the grant. This is an example of
where the right hand did not know what the left was doing.
My point is that Federal agencies should take into account the impact
on small businesses and job growth before imposing new rules. Thus, my
plan contains several provisions to help reduce onerous regulations and
cut redtape.
First, it requires Federal agencies to analyze the indirect costs of
regulations, such as the impact on job creation, the cost of energy,
and consumer prices.
Second, it obligates Federal agencies to comply with public notice
and comment requirements and prohibits them from circumventing these
requirements by issuing unofficial rules as ``guidance documents.''
Third, it creates a mechanism to protect small businesses from
onerous penalties the very first time they fail to comply with a
paperwork requirement as long as no harm comes from that failure. If it
is an honest, first-time mistake that causes no harm, why do we want to
slap that small business with a heavy fine? That does not make sense.
The fifth point in my plan is aimed at our transportation policies.
Getting raw materials to the factory or farm and finished products to
market quickly, efficiently, and safely must be a priority. But the
inconsistent and inequitable Federal policy on truck weight limits on
interstate highways provides a telling example of where we are doing
the opposite. The consequences are particularly acute in Maine.
I have spoken on this issue many times, so I am going to briefly
describe it. Maine's businesses and trucking firms are currently at a
competitive disadvantage because Federal law prohibits the heaviest
trucks from using Federal interstates and instead diverts them to
downtown streets and secondary roads. This means, for example, that
nearly 260 miles of nonturnpike interstates that are the major economic
corridors in my State are off-limits. Yet these same trucks are
permitted on many Federal interstates in New Hampshire, Massachusetts,
parts of New York State, and neighboring provinces in Canada. That
makes Maine and Vermont an island of noncompetitiveness. It just does
not make sense. The heaviest trucks belong on the roads built for them.
In 2009, I authored a law to establish a 1-year pilot project to
allow trucks weighing up to 100,000 pounds to travel on Maine's Federal
interstates. This project was an enormous success. It helped to
preserve and create jobs because it allowed our businesses to be more
efficient. It lowered fuel costs. It resulted in fewer carbon
emissions, and it made our roads safer. Working with Senator Leahy, I
am trying to make this permanent.
Point No. 6: We must invest in America's future. Research and
development investment is critical to the breakthroughs we need to keep
our economy competitive and to create good-paying jobs. The R&D tax
credit provides an important incentive, but it needs to be updated so
more companies can benefit from it. And there needs to be more
certainty. Just having that tax credit from year to year discourages
the kind of long-range planning and investment companies need. My plan
includes a 5-year extension of the R&D tax credit. That is likely to
happen, but by doing it year by year we create all these disincentives
for investment.
Finally, the seventh point in my plan would help expand opportunities
for small businesses and farmers to do business with the Federal
Government. We need to help our small businesses, our farmers tap into
markets they have not previously explored. As the former head of the
New England Small Business Administration, I know how essential this
drive for new markets is for job creation and for our economy.
One approach we are going to take is my Washington and State offices
are going to redouble their efforts to help small businesses reach the
Federal Government because the Federal Government is the largest
consumer of goods and services in our country. I know that disturbs a
lot of Americans right now, and it shows the size of the Federal
Government. The fact is, the Federal Government purchased more than
$535 billion worth of goods and services in this past fiscal year. Some
23 percent of that spending is directed to small businesses, and last
year the value of Federal contracts to small businesses in my State
alone was more than $250 million. If we can expand the opportunity for
small businesses to do business with the Federal Government, that is a
brandnew market for their products and services.
Last year, along with my colleague, Senator Snowe, and in conjunction
with the Department of Defense Northeast Regional Council and the Maine
Procurement Technical Assistance Center, I sponsored a small business
matchmaker conference that brought together government agencies and
prime contractors with our small business community to match up the
purchasing needs with goods and services. It was a 3-day conference in
south Portland. It was a tremendous success. We had about 385 small
business owners and representatives from 135 government agencies and
prime contractors looking to subcontract work meet face to face, sit
down, exchange ideas.
Let me give an example of a successful connection that was made. A
representative of a $2 billion aerospace company sat across the table
from the owner of a 40-employee Maine machine shop with experience in
very high quality, high-end custom work. That first meeting led to a
significant business relationship that continues to grow.
I note that at our conference in south Portland, our total number of
registrants was 597 people, and that just shows how eager our small
businesses are to expand their customer base.
One great benefit of the matchmaker approach is instead of a small
business working for weeks or even months to try to find the right
person in the vast government bureaucracy or the right prime
contractor, our entrepreneurs merely need to sit down across the table
with them. It is direct, effective, and efficient.
But, obviously, it is not easy to do business with Uncle Sam. The
rules and regulations are often strict, cumbersome, and unfamiliar.
That is where our offices can help.
My plan also calls for Congress to work harder to open the Federal
marketplace beyond the Washington beltway to entrepreneurs in every
State. That will benefit our job creators and the American taxpayer
because there will be more competition.
The struggling economy has challenged our Nation's entrepreneurial
spirit, but that spirit remains strong in Maine, in your State of New
York, Madam President, and across the Nation. We will recover from this
deep recession, but the recovery depends on the right policies in
Washington to encourage the innovative and bold job creators of
America. That means helping our small businesses start up, grow,
prosper, sustain, and create good jobs.
My seven-point jobs plan offers a straightforward path forward for
Congress to lead rather than impede job creation at this critical
juncture in our history and in our recovery.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that letters of support be
printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Small Business &
Entrepreneurship Council,
Oakton, VA, February 16, 2011.
Hon. Susan Collins,
U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC.
Dear Senator Collins: The Small Business & Entrepreneurship
Council (SBE Council) and its members across the nation
appreciate and support your proposed ``Seven Point Plan for
Growing Jobs Act.''
As you are aware, entrepreneurs, small businesses and the
overall economy have been suffering due to uncertainty and
rising
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costs when it comes to federal tax and regulatory measures.
Your legislation's sections on small business tax relief and
regulatory reform thankfully would provide some relief and
clarity.
For example, making permanent the expanded expensing levels
for capital expenditures made by small businesses would be a
plus for investment, creating jobs, and boosting incomes.
In addition, the repeal of the 1099 reporting requirements
included in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act--
i.e., that businesses must issue 1099 forms to all vendors
for goods purchased exceeding $600--would remove a big,
looming paperwork burden for the small business community.
In addition, the measures to improve upon the federal
government's regulatory process are most welcome, including
the requirement that agencies submit a cost-benefit analysis
for each significant regulation, that this process be open
and more transparent to the public, and that small businesses
be given opportunities to seek waivers of penalties for
first-time, non-harmful paperwork violations.
These are positive tax and regulatory reforms that will
help small businesses in their ongoing struggles to deal with
the otherwise mounting burdens from government.
Thank you for your leadership Senator Collins. SBE Council
looks forward to working with you to ensure this important
legislation is advanced into law.
Sincerely,
Karen Kerrigan,
President & CEO.
____
National Federation of
Independent Business,
Washington, DC, February 16, 2011.
Senator Susan Collins,
Dirksen Senate Office Building,
Washington, DC.
Dear Senator Collins: On behalf of the National Federation
of Independent Business (NFIB), the nation's leading small
business organization, I am writing in support of the Seven
Point Plan for Growing Jobs Act. Your bill would help to
support a small business recovery by addressing two of their
most important problems--taxes and regulations.
Small businesses account for about two-thirds of the net
new jobs created, but they continue to struggle. The most
recent monthly NFIB Small Business Economic Trends (SBET)
Survey, found that small business confidence was up slightly,
but still below prerecession levels and not improving fast
enough to support meaningful job creation. While sales
continues to be the number one problem facing small business,
second and third in the survey are taxes and regulations.
The Seven Point Plan for Growing Jobs Act provides both
short-term and long-term tax relief for small business.
First, the bill would build on last year's payroll tax cut
for employees by providing an equal reduction in the portion
of the payroll tax paid by employers. Payroll tax relief will
help to reduce the cost of hiring, making it less expensive
for small businesses to retain and add new workers.
Over the last few years, capital expenditures have been at
or near an all-time low in the SBET survey. To address this,
the bill includes permanent investment incentives that will
help small businesses cover the cost of new investments as
they recover from the recession. Specifically, the bill would
make permanent the increased and expanded section 179
expensing provision and shorter depreciation periods for
business properties such as restaurants and retail spaces, as
well as commercial buildings.
The proposal would also repeal the expanded 1099 reporting
requirements included in the Patient Protection and
Affordable Care Act (PPACA), reducing the tax-filing burden
on small businesses. Based on an NFIB Small Business Survey,
tax paperwork is already the most expensive paperwork burden
placed on small business by the federal government and the
new 1099 requirements would increase this cost dramatically.
The Seven Point Plan for Jobs Act also provides important
regulatory reforms for small businesses. It allows for a
reduction or waiver of penalties on small businesses the
first time the business makes a non-harmful mistake on
paperwork. Because the paperwork burden often falls on the
small business owner--and because small businesses do not
have dedicated compliance staff--this relief for innocent
mistakes is most welcome.
The bill also provides agencies the ability to better
analyze both direct and indirect costs and benefits, which
will give the public more accurate information on the
economic impact of proposed rulemakings. In addition, the
bill requires agencies to treat guidance documents for
significant rules as the enforceable standards they are. With
this measure, small businesses and the public will have a
greater input on these important documents.
Again, thank you for introducing this important
legislation, which will help small business and support a
meaningful economic recovery and job creation. We look
forward to working with you.
Sincerely,
Susan Eckerly,
Senior Vice President, Public Policy.
______