Senate Votes Unanimously To Repeal 3 Percent Withholding Tax

The voices of the Senate rang in harmony Thursday as the legislative body unanimously voted to repeal a law that would require government agencies to collect a 3 percent tax on payments made to individual contractors.

The 95-0 vote sends the bill to the House for final approval. President Obama has already said he would sign the repeal into law after a similar version passed the House in October. 

The House must reconsider a Senate version that includes tax incentives for businesses who hire unemployed veterans. The Vow to Hire Heroes Act is the first of three pieces of Obama’s jobs package to garner bipartisan support in the upper chamber.  

Under the act, companies that hire veterans who have been out of work for more than 4 weeks but less than 6 months would be eligible for a $2,400tax credit. A tax credit of $5,600 would be allocated to companies who hire veterans who have been looking for work for more than 6 months and would double if the potential employee suffers from service-related disabilities.  

The rare portrayal of bipartisanship is a victory for both Republicans and Democrats as they have struggled to see eye to eye on a number of issues. 

“It was not politics as usual,” said House Veterans Affairs Chairman Jeff Miller (R-Fla.). “As more and more of our servicemen and women come home, we need to ensure that they receive the homecoming they deserve, not an unemployment check.” 

President Obama released a statement applauding the upper chamber’s approval of the law and urged the House to act expeditiously in approval of the bill in the coming days.

“No veteran who fought for our nation should have to fight for a job when they come home, and I urge the House to pass these tax credits as well so I can sign them into law,” Obama said in a statement. “I also urge Congress to pass additional jobs proposals in the weeks ahead to help the millions of other Americans who are still looking for work.”

Senate Democrats Fight For Veterans' Employment

Senate Democrats Wednesday championed a bill to put veterans back to work, as the veteran unemployment rate reached 12.1 percent in October.

“These men and women, who have served our country, literally put their lives on the line, endured many, many long periods of separation from their families in order to protect our country - but the problem right now is that these veterans have a higher unemployment rate than our civilian population,” Kagan said.

Because North Carolina has the third largest military footprint in the country, this is an especially pressing issue for Kagan’s constituents.

Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) echoed Kagan’s sentiments and touted veterans skills and qualification that could benefit employers.

“These are individuals that possess enormous capability - great skills, the ability to complete very difficult assignments under the most excruciating pressure,” Casey said during a conference call with reporters. “Also that they have a discipline and a work ethic and a focus that you can rarely find in a broad cross-section of workers.”

Over the next two days, the Senate will look at the component of President Obama’s “American Jobs Act” aimed at spurring veterans’ employment growth.

Such a bill will provide a tax credit of up to $5,600 for hiring veterans and up to $9,600 for hiring wounded warriors. The bill will also implement a transition assistance program that will facilitate workshops for veterans meant to emphasize their skills that can be taken into civilian life.

Attached to this bill is another bill that Kagan is supportive of that will repeal the requirement that federal, state and local governments withhold three percent of federal contracts to ensure no outstanding tax links will be associated with that contract.

“If you withhold three percent out of a small business contract with the federal government, that will definitely have a significant impact on the cash flow to the small businesses,” Kagan explained.

While Veteran’s Day is only two days away, Kagan expressed hope that this bill will be passed by a bipartisan vote in time for the holiday.

“As we pause to honor our veterans and reflect on their sacrifices - we will do that on Friday- but getting them back to work truly needs to be a priority 365 days a year,” Kagan concluded. “There isn’t one veteran who should be standing in an unemployment line and I am going to fight for their jobs and their families just like they fought fought for our family and our freedom.”

White House Economist Warns Of Volatile Employment Numbers

Alan Krueger went right to work Friday as the official Chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, reminding Americans not to read to much into the latest employment figures. 

Krueger, whose nomination was unanimously confirmed by the Senate late Thursday night, said in a statement that, although new government data shows that the economy continues to grow, he remains wary the slow pace of recovery is keeping Americans out of work. 

“Despite adverse shocks that have created headwinds for economic growth, the economy has added private sector jobs for 20 straight months,” the statement read. “We need faster economic growth to put more Americans back to work.”

The 80,000 jobs added to the market in October is significantly lower than economists previously predicted. Most notably, the construction sector lost 20,000 jobs, a market Krueger said could have been remedied with the infrastructure bill that was rejected in the Senate earlier this week.

“The report underscores that one area that remains notably weak is the construction sector,” Krueger said. “That’s why it is disappointing that the Senate was not abele to proceed to the infrastructure part of the American Jobs Act.”

Though the nation’s jobless rate fell by a slim margin from 9.1 to 9 percent and the economy added 80,000 jobs, Krueger was adamant in reminding people that monthly figures can be subject to change. Initially, August’s report indicated that the economy added zero jobs. According to Krueger, the number of jobs added in August skyrocketed to 104,000 following a series of revisions. 

“The monthly employment and unemployment numbers are volatile and employment estimates are subject to substantial revision,” Krueger said. “This illustrates why the Administration always stresses it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”

Small Business Owners Endorse Piece Of Obama's Jobs Act

By Adrianna McGinley

The House Subcommittee on TARP, Financial Services, and Bailouts of Public and Private Programs questioned a small group of entrepreneurs on the financial burdens they are faced with and gathered their opinions on four pieces of legislation scheduled to be voted on in the House this week.

The Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act is one of the pieces that make up President Obama’s unified American Jobs Act. The legislation focuses on “crowd funding”, which allows small businesses to use the internet and social media to collect capital.

Subcommittee Chairman Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) said securities reform is long overdue, saying that the Securities Act and the Securities Exchange Act of the ’30s “have not been substantially updated since a gallon of gasoline cost 10 cents.”

“The ramifications of not modernizing our securities regulations have lead to registration and reporting requirements so onerous and costly that small companies have great difficulty raising capital,” McHenry said.

Eric Koester, CMO and Co-founder of Zaarly, an online marketplace for local buyers and sellers, said it is cheaper today to start a business than ever before, but entrepreneurs still struggle to gain access to capital. Koester said that Zaarly hired 30 new employees this year and “if I had the opportunity to hire ten more qualified engineers, I certainly would.”

“Our goal is to grow into those large mature businesses that can create thousands and thousands of jobs, so I think across the board any provisions that allow an increase of access to capital, an increased ability to attract and retain employees, and an ability to basically grow our business free of restrictions and limitations are helpful,” Koester said.

Koester asknowledged that immigration reform is also a necessary step to small business success, prompting Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) to announce her commitment to introduce legislation facilitating the visa process for foreign entrepreneurs.

“Improvements to immigration will be an important thing for us to be able to attract talent from around the world,” Koester said. “That’s one of the things that the United States has an incredible advantage at doing.”

Lonna Williams, CEO of Ridge Diagnostics, and Dr. Tsvi Goldenberg, CEO of eemRa, also testified before the committee, representing small businesses in the medical field.

Williams said a slow United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)has become another obstacle for entrepreneurs to overcome, saying a two and half year delay for first action from the USPTO prevented her business from publishing studies and technological findings that could have seriously impacted the medical field.

Rep. Frank Guinta (R-N.H.) emphasized the importance for the U.S. to facilitate capital access for small business in order to create jobs, especially in the medical field.

“There is a lot here that is shrinking in terms of access,” Guinta said. “Some of that is actually going overseas and those companies are being created overseas, and those jobs are being created overseas, and in [the medical field]…these are high paying, high quality jobs that we could be creating right here in America if the access to capital issue was addressed.”

White House Economist Touts Jobs Plan, Slams GOP

By Lisa Kellman

One of the White House’s top economic officials assailed congressional Republicans on Monday for refusing to support President Obama’s American Jobs Act.

In a speech at the National Economic Club in Washington, National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling called Obama’s $447 billion package the right medicine to help boost the nation’s ailing economy.

“We need a bold immediate jobs plan and a balanced plan for long term fiscal discipline,” he said.

The president’s plan includes a mix of tax cuts and spending provisions aimed mostly at helping the struggling middle class. Obama has proposed paying for the plan by raising tax rates on those making more than $250,000 per year and establishing a higher minimum tax rate for millionaires.

The bill has seen action in the Senate, but has failed twice with Republicans and a small handul of Democrats voting against it due to a proposed offset inserted by Senate Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) that would raise taxes on millionaires.

Sperling, who said that entitlement programs should also be tweaked in order to cover the cost of the plan, said that Congress has acted too slowly on bringing down the country’s 9.1 percent jobless rate.

“Unemployment is simply too high, the projections for near term growth too weak, the risk to the economy too elevated, the national crisis of long term unemployment too profound to sit on our hands and do nothing.”

The White House estimates that the president’s bill would create nearly two million jobs and would grow the economy by up to two percent.

During his speech, Sperling also accused Republicans of failing to propose a suitable jobs plan.

“They have not even come forward with an alternative plan that any top independent forecaster could possibly estimate as spurring growth to 1 to 2 percent next year or adding 2 million new jobs,” he said.

House Republicans, however, have blamed Obama and Senate Democrats for opposing a series of job creation bills that have passed through the lower chamber. GOP leaders say that the so-called “forgotten 15” would jumpstart the economy by undoing unnecessary regulations on American businesses.

“These bills are common-sense bills that address those excessive federal regulations that are hurting small business job creation,” said Rep. Bobby Schilling (R-Ill.) over the weekend.