Cory Booker on Corporations Mayor of Newark; N.J. Senator

SOAR Act: $25M for Startup Opportunity Accelerator

The Growth Accelerator Fund helps companies to find new connections, new routes to investment, and new ideas and strategies to achieve their full potential. The SOAR Act also gives special consideration to applicants serving women and minority business owners.

"This program will stimulate our nation's entrepreneurial energy and spur economic growth in untapped areas," Sen. Booker said. "Over the past 17 years, the number of women-owned businesses in New Jersey has increased more than 48 percent and I'm looking forward to seeing that growth continue," Sen. Booker added. "With the SOAR Act, we'll be able to increase investments made in promising entrepreneurs."

Lower corporate tax rate & close loopholes

• Lowering the corporate tax rate: We must streamline the tax code and lower the statutory corporate rate, which at about 40% is the highest among all peer countries. [We should] reduce the corporate tax rate to near 28%.
• Eliminating misdirected corporate loopholes: The U.S. corporate tax code is teeming with tax breaks, loopholes, and exemptions. Companies take advantage of these special carve-outs to pay much less than the official corporate tax rate--and often pay nothing at all.
• Under our current system, these practices may be perfectly legal, but they aren't fair.

Government procurement should promote women-owned business

I will follow the lead of the many courageous women who have helped achieve the progress we have made, and will do all I can to support their efforts to build a country in which gender does not impact how much you bring home in your paycheck, to what extent you control decisions about your health, or how far you're likely to go in your career.

Fund minority businesses with KIVA microloans

So, from technology innovations to innovations around everything, things we have done in Newark, I hope to help inform federal policy. But from day one, I want to be helping folks around New Jersey in very pragmatic ways to get the support they need to start a business.

Attacks on private equity "nauseating"

Booker has, it is true, raised plenty of money from Wall Street over the years. Of the $8.6 million he's raised for his Senate campaign, $531,000 came from the financial industry. This is hardly unique for a Democrat from New Jersey, a solidly blue state where many financial firms are headquartered. Booker's campaign has also drawn $700,000 in donations from Silicon Valley. The ties go beyond campaign support: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has donated $100 million to improve Newark's schools.

Corporate campaign donors also helped rebuild Newark

His connections have certainly helped get Newark back on its feet. This becomes clear as we drive down Bergen Street: After the riots, it became an alley of boarded-over storefronts and vacant lots. With new business investment, the area is showing signs of life, albeit of a more suburban kind: There's an Applebee's, an AutoZone, and a multiplex, which Booker was intent on siting close to the sidewalk, to encourage pedestrian traffic.

Predatory lending & unchecked avarice destabilized economy

We also must pull from our highest ideals of justice and protect against those ills that destabilized our economy--like predatory lending, over-leveraged financial institutions and the unchecked avarice of the past that trumped fairness and common sense.

Supports Women, Minority and Small Business Assistance

Restrict corporate use of consumer mandatory arbitration.

Excerpts from Letter from 35 Senators to the CFPB: We write to commend the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) for its proposed rule to limit the use of mandatory, pre-dispute ("forced") arbitration clauses in consumer financial product and service contracts. Every day, Americans across the country are forced to sign away their constitutional right to access the courts as a condition of purchasing common products and services like credit cards, checking accounts, and private student loans. Binding arbitration is a privatized justice system that studies show consistently produces results that favor large corporations and offers no meaningful appeals process. As a result, consumers are left without redress, and companies are unaccountable for their unscrupulous behavior.

Opposing freedom argument: (Cato Institute, "ATLA monopoly," May 2002): The trial lawyers new goal is to tighten their monopoly grip on the court system, and prevent the rest of us from choosing a more efficient means of resolving our disputes. Arbitration is simply private court. Lawyers with a vested interest in a monopoly court system are trying to stop the arbitration business from developing. But there's nothing forced or mandatory about it. Contracts are the result of choice. People should be free to choose for themselves what contracts to make and what rights to give up.

Opposing economic argument: (Heritage Foundation, "The Unfair Attack on Arbitration," July 17, 2013): Any study by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau should examine whether a limit on arbitration would:

• Drive up the costs of consumer products;
• Decrease the ability of consumers or businesses to pursue claims, particularly low-value claims;
• Increase the volume of frivolous litigation filed just to obtain settlements; and
• Decrease the availability of consumer products.