A Pro-Growth Plan of Action for Jobs, Competitiveness, Freedom and Opportunity for Virginia
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Virginians’ vision of achieving the American Dream has been badly shaken by our struggling economy, falling home values, and a government that borrows $40 for every $100 it spends. America needs to get back in control of its own destiny. We are vulnerable to outside forces due to our dangerous levels of debt, burdensome taxes on job creators, and counterproductive energy policies.
While pessimism about our current state of affairs is understandable in these challenging times, we can restore confidence and the promise of opportunity for the next generation by taking the necessary steps now. We can once again make America a country where young people graduating from college are limited only by their imagination, hard work and ingenuity.
The Blueprint for America’s Comeback is a pro-growth plan of action to get our country back on course by focusing on jobs, competitiveness, freedom and opportunity.
- Making America Competitive for Job Creators. Key to America’s growth is reducing the U.S. tax on job-creating businesses – currently one of the highest in the world – to a competitive 20 percent. With this one policy change, America can begin attracting new investment and expansion in the U.S. and allow U.S. businesses, large and small, to raise wages and create over 5 million more jobs over the next 10 years. The Blueprint further helps the economy grow and create jobs with • a tax code that is more fair and simple, including a Flat Tax option for individual taxpayers; • new tools to put a check on overzealous regulators; and • a focus on educating and training Americans to compete for and succeed in the good-paying, high-skill, high-knowledge jobs of the 21st Century.
- Unleashing America’s Plentiful Energy Resources and Creativity. America can and should do more to conserve energy and apply our ingenuity to bring affordable alternative or renewable sources of energy to market. At the same time, let’s not forget that we have the most plentiful resources in the world right under our land and water. Reversing current counterproductive energy policies not only will put America on a path toward energy freedom, it has the potential to create over a million new jobs, add over two trillion dollars to the revenue side of the government’s balance sheet without raising taxes, promote national security and help preserve our quality of life which is being threatened by skyrocketing gas prices.
- Reining in the Over-Reaching, Over-Spending Federal Government. With the national debt at $14 trillion and growing at an alarming rate, America urgently needs to take control of our financial destiny. The Blueprint imposes the fiscal discipline of a Balanced Budget Constitutional Amendment on Washington, with Line-Item Veto authority, tax limitation, and taxpayer protection that limits spending to 19 percent of GDP. Under the Blueprint’s Paycheck Penalty Act, Members of Congress must complete work on appropriations bills on time in order to get paid. The Blueprint reverses the excesses of the Obama Administration, including repealing Obamacare and replacing it with personal, affordable health-care opportunities. The Blueprint further takes aim at wasteful Washington spending with • government management reforms modeled after recommendations of Virginia’s Blue Ribbon Strike Force; • a hiring freeze to stop the expansion of bureaucracy and help roll back federal spending to FY 2008 levels; and • expansion of the successful welfare reform model to Medicaid and other welfare programs such as food stamps. Recognizing that Medicare taxes and premiums cover only a little more than half the program’s actual cost, we must make needed improvements to preserve Medicare for current and future seniors and protect the program from going broke.
The path America is on today is dangerous and unsustainable; it will diminish our children’s future and their ability to achieve the American Dream. This Blueprint will change that trajectory and spark an American comeback with a competitive economy that is growing and creating jobs in a country that has so long stood for freedom and opportunity.
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