On the Issues

Jobs

Delawareans, like all Americans, have felt the effects of the current economic climate.

In New Castle County, Chris led efforts to attract new businesses and retain existing ones through marketing and outreach, working with business leaders to bring new and expanding companies to our area. As an associate of Delaware-based W.L. Gore, Chris was a part of the business development team that focused on growing the company’s expansion.

As Delaware’s Senator, Chris will press for new solutions that help companies create new jobs.  He will focus on four areas of job creation: restoring our innovative economy, assisting small businesses, growing our green economy, and rebuilding a viable manufacturing sector.

• Make the R&D Tax Credit Permanent
  In a recent study, the Government Accountability Office concluded that the research and development (R&D) tax credit fosters innovation and economic growth, while reducing businesses’ costs of new qualified research by between 6.4% and 7.3%. While Congress has renewed it almost continually for 28 years and has advanced proposals to make it a permanent part of the tax code, that is not enough.  We must make R&D tax credits permanent to help American businesses and end the uncertainty about their future.   
• Rebuilding America Tax Credit
  Offer a bonus research and development credit to companies that manufacture 50% or more of their products in the U.S. The bonus credit would be on a sliding scale, based on the share of the company’s total manufacturing output that is produced domestically. This proposal would reward companies that innovate in America and boost the U.S. manufacturing sector.
• Local Jobs and Innovation Centers
  The federal government today supports a large catalog of efforts by the U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA), Small Business Administration (SBA), Department of Energy (DOE), Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and other agencies to promote community and clean-economy development. Many of these services can be consolidated through new community centers for jobs and innovation, chartered to promote innovative, public-private job creation clusters and economic development. These “acceleration centers” would connect entrepreneurs to those with the resources to create new enterprises, and then connect these start-ups to opportunities provided through other Administration initiatives, such as the green economy programs and the National Export Initiative. These new centers also would connect job seekers with employment opportunities and training, and offer information and incentives for companies to locally in-source key components of their supply chains and workforce development efforts.
• Commercial Real Estate Loan Guarantees
  Use existing TARP authority to provide loan guarantees to healthy commercial real estate projects that are having difficulty finding long-term financing due to the credit crunch. The loan guarantees would be made through banks and would include a fee that would ensure a positive return for taxpayers. The guarantees would help stave off a potentially looming foreclosure crisis in the commercial real estate sector triggered by the inability of commercial developers to get credit.
• One-Time Infusion of $300 million for the USPTO
  Although I applaud Congress for passing a proposal to provide $129 million to the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), this will only help slightly with the 1.2 million backlogged patents due to staff shortages and chronic underfunding. The backlog imposes immense economic costs to businesses, reducing their ability to hire employees. If businesses are not getting their patents approved, it becomes more difficult to attract investors. In addition, small businesses are vulnerable to piracy while they wait for their patents to be approved. Increasing the number of patents will stimulate innovation, fueling economic growth and creating new jobs. The $129 million already committed is a start, but adding another $300 million in funding would better address this growing problem for Delaware's science based businesses.
• Establish a Fund to Encourage Green Investments
  Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) introduced the Investments for Manufacturing Progress and Clean Technology Act (the IMPACT Act) to provide aid to companies that need to raise capital to retool their existing facilities to compete in the green-energy market. Companies would apply for funding from a $30 billion manufacturing revolving loan fund to become more energy efficient, retool facilities, and retrain workers. Some estimate that the benefit for clean energy business would top $100 billion and create 680,000 manufacturing jobs over five years.
• Expanding Tax Credits for Advanced Energy Manufacturing
  The Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credit, created by the Recovery Act, provides an investment tax credit to cover 30% of new, expanded, or re-equipped energy manufacturing projects. Initial interest in the program ($25 billion) was ten times the available funding. Expanding this credit would create and preserve jobs in the critical clean-energy market.
  The Production Tax Credit provides money to renewable energy projects.  The Recovery Act modified it to provide direct grants in lieu of tax credits.  This change seemed to have great effect at spurring investment: the first four months of 2009 saw investment rebound to $3.6 billion, more than all of 2006 investments. Extending the cash grant fix of the Production Tax Credit through 2011 would stabilize the industry and preserve domestic manufacturing jobs.
• Create a “Green Bank”
  This federal “green bank” would provide a number of financing options, including direct loans, letters of credit, loan guarantees, insurance products and others. The bank is meant to assist promising technologies in moving from the lab into commercial demonstrations and markets. This bank could be seeded with $10 billion in existing loan guarantee funds already provided to the Department of Energy, although additional funds would provide greater benefit.
• Leverage Taxpayer Money for Clean Energy Projects
  Last year’s stimulus bill included $2.3 billion for promising clean energy projects. To qualify for the money, companies had put up 70 percent of a project’s cost in exchange for a tax credit equal to 30 percent. The idea was to use a relatively small amount of government spending to spur much more private spending. The Energy Department received requests for more than $10 billion in credits and judged about $8 billion to be worthy, but it had only $2.3 billion to spend so many qualified applicants got nothing. A bipartisan group of senators, including Senators Richard Lugar and Orrin Hatch, both Republicans, have since called for an expansion of the program.

Small Business

• Standard Home Office Deduction
  Create a standard home office deduction for home-based small business owners as an alternative to the current home office deduction. This would greatly simplify the tax code for many small business owners who now choose to forgo the existing credit due to its complexity.
• Clean Energy Export Promotion
  Create a $15 million clean energy export promotion fund aimed at helping small and medium-sized businesses find new markets abroad for innovative energy technologies. This would help leaders in clean energy, such as in solar and battery businesses, better navigate the bureaucracies and barriers erected by foreign governments to keep American competitors out.
• Federal Direct Loans to Small Businesses
  Create a temporary direct lending program, administered by the Small Business Administration, to offer direct, low-interest loans to healthy small businesses facing difficulties accessing credit. This would help to relieve the ongoing credit crunch for small businesses that otherwise have few options for credit.