Restore Our Free Market Economy
Tax Reform
President Ronald Reagan had it right. Lowering taxes and decreasing burdensome government regulation are keys to jump-starting a troubled economy. We cannot tax, spend and regulate our way to prosperity. That is simply a recipe for economic disaster. I believe in the concept of the Fair Tax (H.R. 25) which will replace all taxes with a national retail sales tax. And I have a hopeful vision that one day American families will not have to pay income taxes, and that rich and poor alike will be allowed to keep the money which they earn.
The Obama Administration is instead reaching deeper into your pockets, and projected to extend our national deficit by $9-trillion, greater than all prior deficits and administrations combined.
While serving in the Georgia State Senate, I adamantly opposed all increases in Georgia’s income tax, ad valorem tax, capital gains tax, property tax, motor fuels tax, estate/inheritance tax and sales tax (with the exception of Special Purpose Local Option Sales Taxes, approved by the voters in that particular county). While serving in the administration of Governor Zell Miller, we abolished Georgia’s sales tax on most food as well as prescription drugs. To highlight wasteful government expenditures, I created the “Georgia Stuck Pig Award” in 1999 to bring more attention to abusive uses of state taxpayer funds. Prior “Stuck Pigs” include the Georgia Department of Corrections spending $40,000 for “Holistic Stress Management” for prisoners, and the Georgia Department of Natural Resources expending $70,000 to build Duck Boxes on a South Carolina Lake.
The U.S. Congress takes spending excess to entirely new and almost obscene levels, which we are attempting to document and share with Georgians each week in our campaign newsletter, Your Weekly Dose of Common Sense, and its regularly featured “Squeal of the Week.” Unfortunately, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, as well as the Obama White House are providing us with an ample supply of material.
Economic Development
There is simply nothing more important to turning around our economy than creating jobs. Growing employment means more home ownership, stronger consumer confidence and better futures for our children. Up until 2008, Georgia had been a perennial leader in terms of annual job creation. To jumpstart that economic engine, we should provide tax incentives for large and small businesses to hire and create full time positions. If business owners are willing to put their money and capital at risk to grow our economy, then I believe they should be rewarded.
While serving as State Senate Majority Leader, I helped craft and pass into law several of Georgia’s current economic development, job creation and job training programs.
Our challenges are greater now, and the lack of access to capital is making it harder for employers to hire and expand their businesses, but with the right leadership and a pro-business tax policy and regulatory environment, we can have our economy growing again. Texas has remained a leader in job creation while lowering taxes. The state has no income tax, and abolished its tax on capital gains. Along with other business-friendly policies, Texas is weathering this recession much better than most other states.
Fiscal Responsibility
Current projections for growth in our federal deficit over the next decade, continuing current government spending levels, will cause $9 trillion in new deficit spending. In addition to saddling our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren with enormous debt, this could have the short term impact of causing a jump in interest rates, and could quite possibly bankrupt our nation. We simply must reduce the out-of-control spending in Washington.
I support a Constitutional Amendment requiring the U.S. Congress to annually balance our federal budget. This is possible with sustained economic growth, and did occur with a Republican Congress and Bill Clinton in the White House without raising taxes. This will however require a discipline that Congress is not accustomed to, and in effect return Adult Supervision to Capitol Hill. It will require the elimination of earmarks, billions in special projects and bureaucratic spending on wasteful or duplicative federal government programs. The easiest place to start might be an across the board freeze at current spending levels…with an agency by agency Zero-based budget review to justify any expenditure in the following year’s budget.
Reducing the federal budget will not come without some pain. Georgia for years benefited from the presence of 14 major military installations representing all branches of service. The Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC) recommended the closure or down-sizing of several of those missions and installations, and the effected communities are still feeling the impact. That said, we cannot seek more effective and efficient government, with lower taxes and less regulation, without being ready and able to accept a smaller federal government less active and visible in our daily lives. When I began my service as Senate Floor Leader to Republican Governor Sonny Perdue, he entered office with an initial projected budget deficit of $600-million. It was not painless, but we made the cuts and that year’s budget, spending within our means as Georgia’s State Constitution already requires.
The Right to Work/Organized Labor
Georgia is a proud Right to Work state. Our right to a secret ballot is as constitutionally protected as freedom of speech or the freedom to own a firearm. America’s labor unions want to abolish the secret ballot in union elections because they simply often cannot win with the secret ballot. They want to change the rules to change the potential outcome. Pending legislation in Congress, the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), would substantially strengthen the hand of labor unions to organize companies and work forces of businesses large and small. It should be noted that the largest segment of the U.S. economy which is currently Unionized are federal, state and local government employees. This has given us models of efficiency such as Amtrak, the U.S. Postal Service and the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization.
The track record of labor unions regarding intimidation and threats to non-union supporters is lengthy and well documented. The relative weakness of labor unions in Georgia has been a key factor in our economic strength and successes for more than two generations. A recent case in point was the increased unionization of film and video production in the late 1990s in Georgia. That change almost killed film and television series production here, and cost the state several network series…due to the increased costs of labor and production. Now, nearly a decade later, a much less union work force, with just as much talent as their union-brethren, are again attracting millions in investment and hundreds of temporary and permanent jobs to production centers run by Tyler Perry, Turner Productions and other studios and independent film producers.
My mother is a retired Georgia school teacher but not a member of the Georgia Association of Educators (GAE), and my sister is a nurse but never joined any healthcare unions. They have both witnessed up close the pressure to join unions, pay dues and support organizations which they do not believe in. Though I am glad they had the strength to make their own choice, I do not want to make things any harder on thousands of Georgia teachers and health care professionals who share the same opinion.
Energy & Alternative Energy
Recent innovations in technology and geologic discoveries have identified untapped supplies of natural gas, oil and shale oil here in North America, as well as on the eastern seaboard, Gulf and Pacific Coasts. Unfortunately, one of President Obama’s first Executive Orders following his swearing-in was to restore the ban on new exploration and off-shore drilling miles off-shore and at the edge of our continental shelf. Interestingly, the President and this Congress have chosen to invest billions in new oil exploration in Brazil???
The U.S. must end our dependence on foreign oil. I strongly support legislation to allow drilling and production of American-made energy in the arctic coastal plan and our outer continental shelves. New sources of traditional domestic energy production (including coal, natural gas, nuclear and shale oil) combined with newer alternative and sustainable clean energy technologies and increased energy conservation will ALL contribute to stabilizing our economy and reducing the costs of energy. Energy costs are imbedded in everything which we buy and consume. And again, the current Administration and Congress are heading in the wrong direction. Current budget projections call for $600-700 BILLION in new revenue to come from taxing carbon emissions and those individuals and industries which create them. These range from farmers to your local electric co-op or power company to General Motors. While a Cap and Trade bill can generate such revenue, the European Union is already moving away from this flawed model which they piloted and championed. The reality is that these energy costs will then be embedded in the costs of goods…from the pound of bacon or ground chuck, to your power bill…to your next car.
We should use tax credits and incentives for businesses and consumers who invest in using alternative energy, energy conservation and recycling programs. Georgia will add additional nuclear energy production capacity at Plant Vogtle. Currently nuclear power provides 15-20 percent of Georgia’s energy supply. Nuclear generation produces NO carbon emissions, and once licensed and constructed is by far the cheapest available kilowatt to produce. The south has been an innovator and leader in several areas of alternative energy production including: bio-mass and bio-diesel, cellulosic ethanol, clean coal/carbon sequestration, coal gasification, methane capture and conversion and the liquification and storage of natural gas. We should be crafting legislation and tax policy to create and support a broad array of energy sources, and reward those who invent, patent and establish technology which makes these alternative sources reliable and affordable.
While serving as a State Senator, I worked to strengthen Georgia’s Public Service Commission, deregulate the natural gas industry, hold the line on motor fuels taxes, expand access to broadband technology and allow Georgia’s public and private electrical utilities to invest in and improve their transmission infrastructure and reliability. Georgia energy costs remain 15-20% below the national average, and Georgia also has the lowest or second lowest gasoline fuel tax per gallon in the nation, despite several unsuccessful attempts to raise the motor fuels tax in Georgia during the past decade.
Transportation
For much of the last decade we have not adequately invested in metro Atlanta and North Georgia’s transportation infrastructure. Traffic congestion around metro Atlanta easily has the potential to halt metro Atlanta’s economic growth engine, which feeds and supports the economy of North Georgia. If the U.S. Congress and the Georgia General Assembly don’t adequately fund and improve transportation congestion within the next five years, Georgia’s growth is likely to stall and fall back among the pack among other Southern states.
As State Senate Majority Leader, I fought to hold the line on gas tax, new toll roads, and the disproportionate expenditure of road construction dollars to areas of the state without the traffic needs to support them. I was a supporter & sponsor of legislation to finalize the Blue Ridge Parkway, northern extension of I-575, and a supporter of a non-elevated road bed to improve the Georgia Highway 120 corridor to serve as an east/west connector for north Georgia and intra-state trucking (keeping thousands of trucks and tons of trailers off of I-285).
The Georgia Department of Transportation, traditionally a ‘highway’ agency, needs to expand its mindset and mission to include passenger rail, greater use of HOV lanes, mass transit and even bike paths. Again, local leadership plays a key role here as many communities in Georgia and elsewhere have flourished around the return of passenger rail, or something as comparatively inexpensive as the Silver Comet Trail, which runs from Cobb County to Anniston, Alabama, along an abandoned rail corridor. To maintain our transportation pre-eminence, the state of Georgia may well need to take a more active and deliberate role at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, as well as move forward with long discussed plans to construct a multi-modal transportation facility in the ‘gulch’ of downtown Atlanta, near the former headquarters of Norfolk/Southern Railway. I am also a supporter of commuter rail, such as the proposed “Brain Train” from Athens to Atlanta, as long as the benefiting communities, as well as the passengers riding these trains, are willing to supply the bulk of the operating revenue, and not look to the state or federal government for long-term, ongoing operating subsidies.
Ownership/Foreclosure
As a banker and mortgage banker, I know all too well that most Georgia families’ primary asset and wealth is tied up in their home. Home ownership remains critical to fulfilling the American dream. The current mortgage crisis and its broader implications for the financial markets cannot be fixed until we first stabilize real estate markets and prices. I support Senator Johnny Isakson’s proposal to extend a $15,000 tax credit to ALL HOME BUYERS into the 2010 budget and calendar year. The current $8000 credit applies only to first time home-buyers, and will expire in December of 2009.
Working with lenders large and small, the federal government should inventory and assist in marketing foreclosed properties and toxic real estate assets to move them back into private hands and off the taxpayers back. This is how the Reagan administration dealt with the collapse of the savings and loan industry in the early and middle 1980s. As a banker, I also know we have to get the credit markets working again, banks cannot make money solely on credit card portfolios and the spread between prime interest rates and what they pay pass book savings and checking accounts. Lending money and extending credit is the way banks make money. Georgia has been labeled the epicenter of banking industry collapses in part because many of our smaller and newer banks were overly dependent on real estate and commercial development in their loan portfolios. Though a high rise or new hotel might be exciting, typically small businesses and homeowners are a safer bet. Unfortunately the Clinton Administration made Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into America’s home lender, removing that safe and stable lending portfolio from the reach of many smaller and newer community banks.
The longer the flood of foreclosed properties continue unabated into the marketplace, the longer overall real estate housing prices will remain flat or depressed. As with the Resolution Trust Corporation liquidation of S&L assets in the late 80s, the FDIC, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and HUD should schedule a massive sale and auction of these assets later this year or in early 2010, also making these purchases eligible for the aforementioned tax credit. Until these ‘toxic assets’ are off the books, and again appreciating in value the traditional home-buying market and standard increases in property values will remain influx. The almost complete shut-down of the home-building industry will also allow for demand to ‘catch up’ with supplies of new and existing housing, which will also have an upward impact on home values and pricing. This real estate pricing recovery have the additional benefit of increased resale prices, improved property tax values and revenues to local governments and overall increased economic wealth and savings among American families.
