
{"id":20964,"date":"2011-09-22T12:19:16","date_gmt":"2011-09-22T16:19:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=20964"},"modified":"2011-09-22T12:20:24","modified_gmt":"2011-09-22T16:20:24","slug":"the-general-assembly-should-act-now-on-jobs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2011\/09\/22\/the-general-assembly-should-act-now-on-jobs\/","title":{"rendered":"The General Assembly should act now on jobs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Bill Faison<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Last week when the legislature was in Raleigh, the Republican leadership wasted $150,000 of our taxpayer money to take up a referendum amending the state constitution when we should have enacted a jobs plan. This unprecedented wastefully expensive boondoggle is Republican partisan game playing for ultra-conservative votes and neither a necessary nor wise use of public money. The cost to bring legislators back to Raleigh is approximately $50,000 a day, too expensive for constitutional amendments that could have been taken up, at no additional expense, when we meet next year.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Unemployment is the 800-pound gorilla in the room. Almost a half a million folks are out of work in North Carolina. According to N.C. Employment Security Commission August data, 468,140 North Carolinians, 10.4 percent, are unemployed, up from 10.1 percent in July. Unemployment is worse in some metropolitan areas and in our already struggling rural counties. Unemployment generally hits minorities, youth and those with limited education the hardest.<\/p>\n<p>The shocking truth is that the Republican legislature passed a budget in June intentionally terminating 6,455 state employees and throwing away federal matching funds, which together are projected to cause almost 30,000 jobs to be lost in the private sector. The Republican legislature is not creating jobs; it is inflicting widespread job loss at a time when unemployment is already the toughest problem we face. They are part of the problem.<\/p>\n<p>We should put the legislature to work now solving the very real problem of unemployment and put people to work immediately. We are expecting more special sessions in September and November. Our jobs plan needs to be on the agenda.<\/p>\n<p>First, we need to cut the penny sales tax by 30 percent and put it in the budget. Lapsing the penny sales tax cost tens of thousands of private-sector employees and thousands of state employees their jobs. Putting it in the budget allows us to help each other get through these tough times and is broadly and widely supported by folks across the state who say, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153This is nothing; if it will save jobs, I want to help.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d People are willing to share a fraction of a penny to keep each other employed.<\/p>\n<p>We can fix this problem with the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153power of a painless penny.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n<p>Second, we can use tax incentives for small business to create 155,784 more jobs. Small businesses with fewer than 20 employees hire 640,210 people in our state. We need a tax-incentives policy aimed at the 155,784 little guys who make up 86.7 percent of employers and collectively hire 18 percent of the workforce. The legislature has passed numerous special provisions to bring and keep national companies, but no effort has been made to provide meaningful incentives that will motivate small businesses to invest in people. We can provide for small businesses by closing tax loopholes. The Department of Revenue found $5 billion in tax loopholes in 2005, which grew to $5.8 billion by 2009. It also found that 65 percent of regular corporations filing tax returns paid no taxes. We can close 40 percent of the tax loopholes and motivate small business to help solve the unemployment problem.<\/p>\n<p>The legislature should pass a tax-incentive package for small businesses that provides enough to fund a full-time position, and incentives for investment in infrastructure including technology, expansion and marketing. This type of tax incentive has the potential to motivate each small business to hire another employee, cutting our unemployment almost in half. <\/p>\n<p>We can fix this now. <\/p>\n<p><em>Rep. Bill Faison\u00c2\u00a0represents N.C. House District 50, which includes Northern\u00c2\u00a0Orange and Caswell counties.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week when the legislature was in Raleigh, the Republican leadership wasted $150,000 of our taxpayer money to take up a referendum amending the state constitution when we should have enacted a jobs plan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20964"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20969,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20964\/revisions\/20969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}