On Tuesday of this week, Obama’s Jobs Council met at the White House to discuss and propose ideas that are actionable, non-partisan and can get done quickly to better the job market and the economy. At the forefront of this discussion was corporate taxes, domestic drilling and environmental regulation reforms, naturally.
As the video from Fox News explains, this was the third report made by the jobs council to President Obama and apparently this time around focuses much energy on competitiveness in the global economy. Like other reports before, investment in education and the rejuvenation of manufacturing and energy were also targets of discussion. As stated in the report, the jobs council believes that “we need to be all-in on energy and production with more oil and gas drilling and more coal mining on federal land responsibly, while the nation transitions to cleaner energy sources.”
Obama’s stance on environmental regulations has become a bit hazy to some since he denied the EPA’s proposal a while back to increase rules on the ozone and the toxins that are being released into it. Obama is widely known as a supporter of the EPA and going green, but with election pressure from his Republican opponents claiming the EPA is out of control and arguing that environmental regulations currently in place are too costly for businesses, he’s had to bend a bit. What the jobs council really pushed for in their most recent report was the use of domestic fossil-fuel supplies in order to reduce our dependence and reliance on foreign imports and thus increasing our global economic competitiveness. “The Jobs Council recommends expanding and expediting the domestic production of fossil fuels – including allowing more access to oil, gas, and coal opportunities on federal lands – while ensuring safe and responsible development of those sites,” quotes the report.
Along with taking more advantage of our own domestic energy sources, the council wants to see less environmental regulations imposed on businesses. This is a dispute Spark News has covered extensively and it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. By doing so, the council believes that our competitiveness in the global market will increase and significantly better our economy and job market alike.
The other large topic of discussion between Obama and his jobs council was the proposed reform of the corporate tax rate and system. “The council urges Congress and the administration to begin work on tax reform immediately,” states the report. According to the council, the current corporate tax system is outdated and hindering both our global competitiveness and our workers. In order to better ourselves and position ourselves as a competitor, we must lower our corporate taxes to levels that are on par with international competitors. If you do your research, you’ll find that the tax system we currently have in place has not been updated or thoroughly assessed in 25 years. Surely, there needs to be some updates made seeing as though our job market, economy and overall way of life has changed drastically since the last time the system was overhauled.
While all of the topics and suggestions made by the council sound great and are finally a step in the right direction to cleaning up this mess we’ve made, none of them are likely to see any real action until next year after the election. Taking a firm stance on either of the arguments or making moves to reform could make or break an election for Obama and for him, that may be too risky.
SOURCE: FOX Business
IMAGE: American Progress
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