Economic Development

Too many people in Maine, and around the country, have lost their jobs through no fault of their own.

Putting people back to work is the key to economic recovery, and one of Senator Collins’s top priorities is working together, on a bipartisan basis, to adopt pro-growth economic policies aimed at creating jobs.

With this goal in mind, Senator Collins has offered several important bills in the past year. These include the “7-Point Plan for Growing Jobs Act,” the “Clearing Unnecessary Regulatory Burdens Act” or “CURB Act,” the “Regulatory ‘Time-Out’ Act,” and the bipartisan “Jobs Creation Act,” which she coauthored with Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO).  These bills propose the following:

Tax Relief:

Payroll tax relief for employees and employers: Extend the employee-side of the social security payroll tax at 4.2 percent through 2012, and provide employers with a similar reduced rate on the first $10 million of employer payroll.

High Tech Small business tax credit: Provide a 25 percent tax credit for investments in new high-tech small businesses headquartered in the United States.

Extend Expiring Tax Provisions to Create Jobs: Extend important tax provisions such as 100 percent Bonus Depreciation, the R&D Tax Credit, and 15 year Restaurant and Retail Depreciation.

Transportation and Clean Water:

Support Transportation Infrastructure: Provide $10 billion to capitalize state revolving loan funds for transportation infrastructure, and an additional $25 billion in funding for highway and bridge programs. 

Restore Funding for Clean Water Infrastructure: Provide $800 million in additional funding for critical clean water and sewer infrastructure programs.

These tax and infrastructure programs are fully paid for in the Collins-McCaskill bill.

Cutting Red Tape

Providing Relief for Manufacturers from EPA’s Onerous “Boiler MACT” Rules: Give the Environmental Protection Agency the time it requested to develop the data needed for achievable rules, and give manufacturers the time needed to comply with these very complex and expensive rules to avoid the lost of thousands of jobs.

Cost Benefit Analysis and Good Guidance Practices: Require federal agencies to analyze the costs and benefits of new regulations, and to comply with public notice and comment requirements.  Also provide relief to small businesses seeking waivers from penalties the first time they fail to comply with paperwork requirements, as long as no harm comes from that failure.

A “Time-Out” from Regulations that Discourage Job Creation: Provide a one-year “time-out” from new rules that would have an adverse effect on jobs or our ability to compete internationally.

Investing in a 21st Century Workforce

Consolidating Duplicative Federal Job Programs: Requires OMB to study the effectiveness of the 47 different job training programs currently run by the federal government, and make recommendations for consolidating these job training programs under a single agency.

Cluster Development: Support “cluster development” programs at the state and local level to identify the competitive advantage of a region, and to train the skilled workers needed to build on those competitive advantages.