Winner, Colleagues Propose New Jobs Plan

Albany, N.Y.–State Senator George Winner (R-C-I, Elmira) has joined his colleagues in the Senate Republican conference to propose a new strategy that they believe has been overlooked as a way to help New York strengthen its economy, lower taxes, and begin to create thousands of jobs across upstate New York.

“Albany’s current leaders have failed over the past year to recognize the importance of economic growth as one fundamental way to effectively find a way out of this fiscal and economic crisis.  They’ve tried to tax and spend their way out of it, and it hasn’t worked.  It’s been a disaster,” Winner said.  “Less state spending, lower state taxes, and the elimination of job-killing state regulations need to be a part of this debate.”  

The Senate Republican jobs plan is being released one week after New York Governor David Paterson unveiled a $134-billion state budget proposal that calls for a wide range of spending cuts, particularly in the areas of education and health care, but that also includes approximately $1 billion in state tax and fee increases.

Winner and his colleagues have unveiled a new job creation strategy that includes proposals to:

-- establish a permanent, Constitutionally mandated cap on state spending that would limit year-to-year spending increases to no more than four percent, a move that Winner said would have saved state taxpayers more than $13 billion if it had been in place over the past five years;

-- establish a new Job Creation Tax Credit offering businesses, manufacturers, and other private-sector employers a refundable tax credit of up to a maximum of $5,000 for every new job they create.  The tax credit would be recurring for three years and would only be provided for new jobs that expand total payroll, equal to the amount of tax withholding for each new job.  For example, a new job paying $30,000 would provide an employer with a tax credit of about $1,150;

-- enact a five-year moratorium on any new taxes or fees on small businesses, manufacturers, and farms, eliminate the existing corporation franchise tax for small businesses, and more quickly phase out last year's personal income tax increase for small businesses; and

-- enact a five-year moratorium on any new, state-imposed business regulations and red tape, together with the creation of state-level commission to identify state rules and regulations that continue to stand as obstacles to sustained economic growth and job creation.

A report from the Tax Foundation last fall ranked New York’s business climate as the second-worst in America. 

Winner said that has to change.

“New York is widely viewed as a business unfriendly state.  That directly hurts our workers and their families, and entire communities,” said Winner.  “It has to change.” 

"Small business is the engine that drives most job creation in our economy--and that will grow us out of this economic mess.  Lowering New York's second worst in the nation business tax climate and cost of doing business is really what small business needs to survive and grow, and that's exactly what this job creation plan will do.  The proposal put forth today by the Senate Republican Conference is the right recipe for expanding our economy and deserves bipartisan support in both houses of the Legislature," said Mike Elmendorf, New York State Director of the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), New York's leading small business advocacy association.  

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