Drawing together elements from President Barack Obamas jobs plan, the Presidents Council on Jobs and Competitiveness and ideas from congressional Republicans and Democrats, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio reached out across the aisle Tuesday and teamed up with Democratic U.S. Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware to introduce the American Growth, Recovery, Empowerment and Entrepreneurship Act.
The AGREE Act covers a number of areas, including eliminating some taxes on small businesses. The legislation would also extend the research and development tax credit until 2013, make the Alternative Simplified Credit permanent while increasing it from 14 percent to 20 percent, and create a research credit to encourage manufacturers to hire more workers.
The AGREE Act would also create a tax credit for veterans that would come to 25 percent of the cost to establish a franchise up to $100,000. Rubio and Coons also looked to provide five-year exemptions for businesses that go public from Section 404(b) of Sarbanes-Oxley. The senators also looked to end the per-country limit of employment-based visas while increasing the number of family based visas per country.
The American people deserve solutions to create jobs, not more Washington gridlock and excuses, Rubio said in a statement released Tuesday.The AGREE Act is a meaningful step to find common ground and create a better environment for job creators to start businesses or expand existing ones. This kind of effort will be a real test of whether Washington has enough people who arent just willing to say they will work to find common ground but will actually prove it through their actions.
The AGREE Act is a genuine bipartisan effort to put politics aside and come together on real job-creating measures that will help put Americans back to work, said Coons, who defeated Republican candidate Christine ODonnell, a favorite of the tea party movement, in 2010 to win the Senate seat that Joe Biden held for more than three and a half decades.
We can dwell on the partisan politics that have gridlocked this body and this town for much of our first year in office, or we can look forward and find ways we can work together to help Americans confront this jobs crisis. We need to help our businesses grow and create jobs, and thats what the AGREE Act is designed to do. I look forward to working with Senator Rubio to build support for the AGREE Act and help it become law.
Steve Case, the CEO of Revolution LLC who sits on the President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, had warm words for the measure.
From the White House to the halls of Congress, there's a growing recognition that the best way to jump-start job creation and ensure America's long-term economic competitiveness is to improve the environment for entrepreneurs to start new firms and expand existing ones, Case said. I commend Senators Coons and Rubio for coming together to introduce the AGREE Act, an important step in the right direction for helping entrepreneurs create jobs and build significant companies here in the United States.
The two senators made the case for their proposal at Politico on Tuesday, writing in an essay that their legislation advances the parts of the various jobs plans that both parties agree on, while not touching on the differences that remain between the White House and the Democratic-controlled U.S. Senate on one side and Republicans controlling the U.S. House on the other.
Reach Kevin Derby at kderby@sunshinestatenews.com or at (850) 727-0859.
