Sipprelle Outlines Pro-Jobs Agenda

Princeton, February 1, 2010 – “For too long the professional politicians in both parties have made fueling the partisan divide a priority and feeding the American public’s appetite for new ideas and real solutions an afterthought,” said Sipprelle. “Today, I offer citizens who share my frustration with the current state of government and politics a new way forward.”

A Pro Jobs Agenda Grounded in Smart Investment

The Problem: A Full-Blown Jobs Crisis
America is in a jobs crisis that goes far beyond the statistical unemployment rate of 10%. Considering that America must create 125,000 jobs per month merely to accommodate new workers entering the labor pool underscores the severity of our labor market challenges. Finding work for the nearly 8 million people who have lost their jobs since the recession began equates to a total requirement of 15 million net new jobs over the next five years, while the average pay for the bottom 80% of the still-employed is only $33,000. These metrics represent a very dangerous foundation for a prosperous democratic society. Many of the jobs that have been lost will never return due to the effects of outsourcing and the collapse of domestic manufacturing. In the span of a decade the world’s labor pool has roughly doubled as the Soviet bloc, China, and India have moved from largely closed markets to skilled and globally competitive players in the flow of goods and labor. Make no mistake, our challenges are entirely new and we must craft entirely new approaches to address them, or face the consequences.


Short-Term Solutions: Take Decisive Action
The road to a sustained job recovery will need to address both the near-term policy uncertainties crimping the expansion of private sector payrolls, as well as the serious secular challenges that arise from a globally competitive labor glut. These problems require bold and innovative solutions.

Get our Fiscal House in Order.
The first step required for healing in the job market is to remove the chokehold of policy uncertainty being created by our revenue-starved government. Faced with the threat of higher costs for energy, regulation, taxes, and healthcare, employers are deferring hiring decisions as long as possible. Halting all new threats to the corporate cost structure along with tangible steps to reduce our fiscal imbalances would dramatically improve the disposition to hire.

Suspend the Capital Gains Tax on New Ventures.
A second action that would create new jobs immediately would be to create a special zero capital gains tax rate for investments in new companies, with a minimum holding period requirement of five years. This incentive for risk taking would unleash a torrent of venture capital investment in the jobs and industries of the future, with a positive impact on tax revenue since the new workers thereby employed would be net contributors to income tax receipts. Regulatory relief from the onerous Sarbanes-Oxley costs burdening small business would further aid startups and innovation.

Stop the Flow of Illegal Immigrants.
A third step required to stabilize the employment markets is a comprehensive effort to reduce the mass influx of illegal low-wage labor from abroad combined with a commitment to employer sanctions for employing undocumented workers. There is ample evidence to suggest that our inability to control illegal immigration has permanently elevated the unemployment rate of our native-born poor, has capped the growth of working class wages, and has impaired America’s rich historical legacy of upward assimilation of our working class. We must establish responsible standards for legal immigration, recognizing the vital contributions of our immigrant heritage, and then we need to enforce these standards strictly. Finally, we should facilitate the path to citizenship for foreign-born science, math and engineering graduates of US universities, rather than sending them home to compete against us.



Long-Term Solutions: Build a New Technology Century
We need to build a new technology century by engineering a boom of high-paying jobs that accentuates our nation’s inherent strengths and competitive advantages, while also rethinking some of our long-established practices. America needs to rediscover its commitment to basic research and reclaim its historical position as the world’s laboratory for the jobs and the industries of tomorrow.

Incentivize Entrepreneurship.
Put our trust back in the ingenuity of the American people by embracing common-sense capitalism. Encourage venture risk-taking by exempting new start-ups from capital gains taxes. The businessmen and women who will solve America’s renewable energy dilemma and find cures for our healthcare ills are walking America’s streets today.

Utilize Technology to Reduce Healthcare Costs.
Use government’s purchasing power as the largest buyer of healthcare to force the construction of a digitized healthcare information superhighway. Digitizing and consolidating health records, insurance billings, and medical information could dramatically enhance efficiency, accuracy, communication and quality of care while lowering costs and creating new jobs.

Expand Broadband & Wireless Capabilities.
Streamline the local regulatory bureaucracy to accelerate a build-out of wireless access points and fiber rights-of-way. The sale of these fiber and wireless rights to commercial providers could provide a significant source of revenue, while creating the crucial bandwidth required to support an exponential expansion of broadband and wireless applications and services.

Invest in Medical Research.
Unleash the promise of medical research to accelerate disease discovery and regenerative therapies, which could dramatically lower healthcare costs while improving quality of life. Support regulatory reforms that would accelerate the development and approval of new therapies. Consider targeted investment funds at NIH to jump-start research labs and public-private collaborations.

Encourage Responsible Energy Consumption.
Arm energy consumers with the information they need to make more responsible consumption decisions by requiring utility monopolies to install time-of-use meters that would make consumption costs transparent and lead to significant reductions in peak energy consumption costs.



Long-Term Solutions: Rethink Education
America is earning a very low return on our vast education spending, which graduates a workforce increasingly unprepared for the realities of today’s job market. Since the 1970’s, inflation-adjusted federal spending per pupil has tripled, with a negligible impact on student performance. It is time for some bold new approaches.

Break the Government Education Monopoly.
At the primary education level, we need to break the government monopoly by increasing the positive benefits that flow from educational choice. We should withhold discretionary federal education dollars from states that block the creation and growth of charter schools. Primary school curricula should embrace a robust experimentation that places an increased emphasis on math and science and the skill sets required of a modern workforce.

Enhance Citizen Ownership of Education.
Government should rethink its funding of education through its present mechanisms in favor of tuition support granted directly to students and families. This approach would create an informed consumer of education that shops competitively for learning options which directly serve their needs, including vocational and technical training that might directly benefit employability and professional growth. Accountability and transparency will reinvigorate America’s education infrastructure and allow us to end ineffective federal programs while making the remaining ones more effective.

Level the Educational Playing Field.
Roll back the credentialing elitism of the expensive four-year college degree, which favors the upper class, limits workforce competitiveness and often adds questionable value to prospective employers. A more efficient and fairer system would evaluate prospective employees on the basis of national examinations which would test the skills they will actually need to succeed in their jobs. Enhanced academic efficiency through vocational training and online learning would produce a workforce more directly suited to the requirements of our modern economy.

Emphasize Vocational Schools.
A free market in education would also encourage increased workforce adaptability and a greater respect for craftsmanship professions like mechanics, computer technicians, electricians, and highly-skilled manual laborers, all highly-compensated professions where workers are in short supply. These jobs also have the benefit of being impossible to outsource overseas.