State Democrats are Clueless When It Comes to Job Creation

Peter Barca, state assembly minority leader, has complained that the GOP is not pushing a jobs bill at this point in time. He has simply demonstrated he has no clue on how to create jobs.

His website laments that the GOP passed on wind energy and tax incentives to reorganize the unemployment line to give preference to long-term unemployed. These are similar to things proposed by Obama in his so called “Jobs Bill” and the failed stimulus of 2009.

Spending on wind power is not a jobs program. It is a bad energy policy and should be debated as such. Obviously, a state jobs bill should not be a spending program, as that was a proven failure in 2009. I know Democrats have to try to claim it worked to prevent a greater disaster, but I think people know better. The stimulus was just a way to pay off Democrat supporters. Government can’t create jobs with wasteful spending. To create jobs, government must create a good climate for business. I am quite sure Barca will not support what needs to be done to improve the climate for jobs in this state.

I would propose three important things could be done to create jobs in Wisconsin. We need stability, corporate tax reductions, and more regulation reform.

First, Democrats could help to create stability. In the last year, Wisconsin went from being ranked 42^nd to 28^th for the best states to do business, because of the changes made by Scott Walker and GOP. But with constant recall elections we are sending a message that it is not clear whether Wisconsin will continue heading in the right direction. It isn't clear if the state will be rolling back the collective bargaining power limits, legal reform, and regulatory reforms that generated our improvement in the rankings.

It's too much to ask Democrats to support those changes, but they could create stability by not pushing recalls. This would give confidence to businesses, since it is likely that as time goes by most people will see the benefits of the changes and realize Scott Walker was right. This would also give time for legislators to work on our issues instead of being in constant campaign mode. There is a good reason not to have  one-year terms of office.

The second thing would be to cut corporate taxes and top personal income tax rates that hit job creating small businesses. Combined reporting should be completely gone because it encourages employers to leave Wisconsin, and signals to other potential employers to stay out.

Then, we need to lower our rates to around 6.5% to 7%. Over the long term, lower tax rates will collect more money from the people with jobs staying in Wisconsin and people with jobs created in Wisconsin. Also, high taxes push profits to other states since it is easy to move profits to lower tax states, as Illinois is going to find with their “temporary” tax increase. This would also require cutting spending, which would likely result in cutting state workers, so it might be better to eliminate combined reporting now, and schedule the tax rate drop for 2013 along with downsizing of the state government.  Again, I would not hold my breath for Peter Barca to support this kind of jobs bill. 

What could be done now is more regulation reform. The best example is the most obvious way to create jobs right now, which is to work together and allow mining of iron ore in Wisconsin. This is not a theoretical way to create jobs. We have a company that wants to create these good paying jobs and likely union jobs. But on that last part, Democrats don’t care about helping private sector union jobs, unless they are big contributors to their campaigns. Even then, Democrat polices are bad for more manufacturing, mining, and energy jobs.

Both parties should be able to work together to ensure reasonable protections to the environment, but make regulation changes that will allow the state to get these mining jobs. Democrats have complained about their lack of input, but here is a chance to work with GOP to get this done. Another example of needed regulation reform to improve the business climate in Wisconsin is the wetlands reform ideas proposed by Scott Walker

The only way Wisconsin can improve job creation is to improve our business climate. Peter Barca and the Democrats should at least do their part by helping to create stability and confidence in Wisconsin, and work to get the mining jobs instead of working to block them. The obvious reality is that these those two ideas are the best things we can do, until the best jobs program is implemented, by firing job killing experts Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and his friends in the US Senate.