A Pro-Growth, Pro-Jobs, Pro-Energy Independence Agenda For Congress

Instead of $300 billion in new liabilities for the American taxpayers, Congress should take action on the following:

Zero capital gains tax - Countries without taxes on capital gains, such as China, Singapore, and Taiwan, are magnets for global investment. Economists like Alan Greenspan have called for removing capital gains in order to see increased economic growth and American competitiveness in attracting foreign direct investment and international corporations.

Repeal Sarbanes-Oxley - After the devastating crash of Enron and WorldCom, Congress rushed to pass a law to alleviate panic. Instead of enacting reform measures that would reasonably prevent fraud, they passed a burdensome, accounting mess. Sarbanes-Oxley is a disproportionate burden for small businesses and start-ups, and has forced many companies to move from New York to London.

Allow 100% annual expensing for small businesses - Small businesses create 7 out of 10 new jobs in America and account for more than half of the output of our economy. One hundred percent annual expensing would give small business more money to invest in new technologies, like computers and machinery, to improve worker productivity. Likewise, it would allow business to hire more employees.

Move to break up and privatize Freddie and Fannie - Corporate greed at Freddie and Fannie fueled subprime mortgage loans. Because subprime mortgages carried higher risk, they also offered a higher interest yield that gave executives an increased profit share. Given the government sponsored enterprise, they had lower capital requirements, and were implicitly backed by taxpayer dollars in the case that these assets should crumble. These institutions should be prevented from offering more subprime mortgages, and we should move towards privatizing them.

Provide a comprehensive plan to keep Americans in their homes - The summer's housing bailout bill gave $300 billion to renegotiate mortgages with homeowners, but forced lending institutions to take an immediate 10% cut in profit, giving little incentive for lending institutions to participate. The government could instead offer a no-interest loan to homeowners who are current on their mortgage payments and work with their lending institution to renegotiate their mortgages into a 6% fixed interest, 30-year loan. We should help those homeowners who have acted in good faith keep the keys to their homes.

Move towards long term investment strategies - Congress should look to investing in the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation to foster innovation and make America the most competitive market for research and development.

Develop an all-of-the-above energy policy - Imagine if we invested a fraction of the billion dollar bailout into developing, for example, more nuclear power and coal-to-synthetic natural gas technologies and infrastructure. We should continue to advance clean coal, biofuels, wind, solar, hydrogen, and natural gas technologies. Further, we should increase exploration and development of our own resources offshore and in oil shale, so that we are not defenseless against any energy cartels.

We should repeal all congressional money given to ACORN - ACORN is under investigation in a dozen states for voter fraud. We cannot afford to be subsidizing an organization that operates under the façade of providing community development and low-income housing, while it has a record of fraudulent activity. See this CNN report about ACORN voter registration fraud in Indiana, where ACORN provided 5,000 new voter registration cards. Indiana authorities started reviewing them and found that the first 2,100 were all fraudulent.