Paul Ryan on Corporations Republican nominee for Vice President; U.S. Rep. (WI-1)

Raising corporate tax will cost us 710,000 jobs

BIDEN: 97% of small businesses make less than $250,000. What they count as small business are hedge funds that make $800 million a year, because they're passthrough.

Stimulus was political patronage & corporate welfare

You, the American people, were cut out of the deal. What did taxpayers get out of the Obama stimulus? More debt. That money wasn't just spent and wasted, it was borrowed, spent and wasted.

Lower corporate tax rate to improve global competitiveness

Fannie & Freddie are failed experiment in corporate welfare

While under conservatorship, CBO estimates that Fannie and Freddie could cost taxpayers $335 billion. Corporate-welfare arrangements like the GSEs socialize risk by shifting losses to the taxpayers, but allow profits to accrue to management, bondholders and Wall Street institutions that trade mortgage-backed securities. On their current course, the GSEs represent a failed experiment in corporate welfare and the largest bailout of financial institutions in recent history.

THE SOLUTION: Privatize the business of government-owned housing giants.

Dodd-Frank reforms intensify too-big-to-fail problem

Although the bill is dubbed "Wall Street Reform," it actually intensifies the problem of too-big-to-fail by giving large, interconnected financial institutions advantages that small firms will not enjoy.

While the authors of the Dodd-Frank Act went to great lengths to denounce bailouts, this law only sustains them, by drawing on taxpayer dollars to bail out the creditors of large, "systemically significant" financial institutions. The expected cost for this new authority is $33 billion.

25% top individual rate and top corporate tax rate

The Solution: Simplifying the Tax Code and Promoting Job Creation and Economic Growth
• Reject the President's call to raise taxes
• Consolidate the current six individual income tax brackets into just two brackets of 10 and 25%
• Reduce the corporate rate to 25%
• Repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax
• Broaden the tax base to maintain revenue growth at a level consistent with current tax policy and at a share of the economy consistent with historical norms of 18% to 19% in the following decades
• Shift from a "worldwide" system of taxation to a "territorial" tax system that puts American companies and their workers on a level playing field with foreign competitors and ends the "lock-out effect" that discourages companies from bringing back foreign earnings to invest in the US.

8.5% Business Consumption Tax instead of taxing profit

Voted YES on workforce training by state block grants & industry partners.

Supporting Knowledge and Investing in Lifelong Skills Act or SKILLS Act:
• Reauthorizes appropriations workforce investment systems for job training and employment services.
• Requires a plan describe:
  1. strategies and services to more fully engage employers and meet their needs, as well as those to assist at-risk youth and out-of-school youth in acquiring education, skills, credentials, and employment experience;
  2. how the state board will convene industry or sector partnerships that lead to collaborative planning;
  3. how the state will use technology to facilitate access to services in remote areas;
  4. state actions to foster partnerships with non-profit organizations that provide employment-related services; and
  5. the methodology for determining one-stop partner program contributions for the cost of the infrastructure of one-stop centers.
• Repeals title VI (Employment Opportunities for Individuals with Disabilities)

National League of Cities op-ed, "H.R. 803 fails because it would:"
1. Undermine the local delivery system that has been the cornerstone of job training programs
2. Establish a program that is based on political boundaries (states) rather than on economic regions and local labor markets, or the naturally evolving areas in which workers find paying work
3. Eliminate a strong role for local elected officials but require that they continue to be fiscally liable for funds spent in their local areas
4. Change what was once a program targeted to those most in need--economically disadvantaged adults and youth and special population groups like veterans, migrant farm workers, and low income seniors--into a block grant to governors
5. Contribute to the emerging division between those American's who have the requisite skills to find employment and those who do not.

Voted NO on letting shareholders vote on executive compensation.

Corporate and Financial Institution Compensation Fairness Act: Amends the Securities Exchange Act to require that any proxy for an annual shareholders meeting provide for a separate shareholder vote to approve executive compensation for named executive officers. The shareholder vote shall not be:

1. binding on the corporation
2. construed as overruling a board decision, or as creating or implying any additional fiduciary duty by the board; or
3. construed as restricting or limiting shareholder ability to place executive compensation proposals within proxy materials.

Proponent's argument to vote Yes:Rep. BARNEY FRANK (D, MA-4): The amount of wages is irrelevant to the SEC. What this bill explicitly aims at is the practice whereby people are given bonuses that pay off if the gamble pays off, but don't lose you anything if it doesn't. That is, there is a wide consensus that this incentivizes excessive risk.

Opponent's argument to vote No:Rep. SPENCER BACHUS (R, AL-6): True, the first 6 pages of the bill give the owners, the shareholders, a non-binding vote on the pay of top executives. But then come the next 8 pages, the switch, which gives the regulators the power to decide appropriate compensation for not only just top executives but for all employees of all financial institutions above $1 billion in assets and all without regard for the shareholders' prior approval. So under the guise of empowering shareholders, it is, in fact, the government that is empowered. And, finally, on page 15, the bill designates those same government entities which regulated AIG, Countrywide, and collectively failed to prevent the worst financial calamity since the Great Depression. This bill continues the Democrat majority's tendency to go to the default solution for every problem: create a government bureaucracy to make decisions better left to private citizens and private corporations.

Voted YES on more funding for nanotechnology R&D and commercialization.

Proponent's argument to vote Yes:Rep. NYDIA VELÁZQUEZ (D, NY-12): We need jobs that cannot be shipped overseas and will not evaporate in the next cycle of boom and bust. But those jobs aren't going to appear out of thin air. They need to be created. By expanding existing industries and unlocking new ones, H.R. 2965 will generate the jobs we need. Job creation is the primary goal of R&D. But in order to generate new positions, we have to first develop new industries. Commercialization is critical to that process.

Opponent's argument to vote No:Rep. ED MARKEY (D, MA-7): I must oppose this bill because I have serious concerns about allowing SBIR awards to go to an unlimited number of businesses owned or controlled by venture capital (VC) firms. The SBIR program, responsible for over 60,000 patents, has always focused on innovation from truly small businesses for whom commercial capital market funding is typically not an option. However, with the change made in this bill, the SBIR program would be wide open to applicants that already are well-capitalized due to VC participation, crowding out the small businesses that have been the focus of the highly successful SBIR program.

While I support VC participation in the SBIR program, enabling an unlimited amount of large VC majority-owned firms to qualify for SBIR funding calls into question whether this program, intended for genuinely small businesses, is, in fact, still focused on these firms.

We should do everything in our power to strengthen small businesses that generate 70% of new jobs in our country. H.R 2965 does not do enough to ensure that small businesses are the focus of the SBIR program, and therefore I cannot support the bill.

Voted YES on allowing stockholder voting on executive compensation.

Proponents support voting YES because:

We should not deprive the public, the stockholders, from being able to do anything meaningful once they find out about scandalous levels of executive compensation or board compensation. Everyone talks about the corporate board as the remedy. But the board is often a part of the problem, being paid huge amounts of money for showing up once or twice a year at meetings.

Give the stockholders a meaningful remedy. Once you get the mandatory disclosure put in place by previous legislation, we are saying the stockholders should be allowed to have a referendum on that and not have a runaround by the board.

Opponents support voting NO because:

This vote is based on mischaracterization--it is an unnecessary amendment. The opportunity for these kinds of votes already exists within the structure of corporate governance right now. A good company from Georgia, AFLAC, went ahead and already has these nonbinding shareholder votes. But there is a difference between having individuals in the private sector, shareholders and individuals outside of the mandating of government to have it occur and have government come in with its heavy hand and say, this is exactly what you need to do because we know best. Our constituents know better how to act and how to relate to corporations than Washington.

Voted YES on replacing illegal export tax breaks with $140B in new breaks.

Voted YES on Bankruptcy Overhaul requiring partial debt repayment.

Rated 93% by the US COC, indicating a pro-business voting record.

Whether you own a business, represent one, lead a corporate office, or manage an association, the Chamber of Commerce of the United States of AmericaSM provides you with a voice of experience and influence in Washington, D.C., and around the globe.

Our members include businesses of all sizes and sectors—from large Fortune 500 companies to home-based, one-person operations. In fact, 96% of our membership encompasses businesses with fewer than 100 employees.

Mission Statement:

"To advance human progress through an economic, political and social system based on individual freedom, incentive, initiative, opportunity, and responsibility."

Repeal ObamaCare reporting requirements for small business.

A BILL To repeal the expansion of information reporting requirements for payments of $600 or more to corporations. Section 9006 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and the amendments made thereby, are hereby repealed; and the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 shall be applied as if such section, and amendments, had never been enacted. [This is the first attempt at dismantling ObamaCare by pieces, as opposed to H.R. 2 which dismantles ObamaCare in whole. The proposed section of the ObamaCare law to be repealed appears below. --OnTheIssues editor].

SEC. 9006. EXPANSION OF INFORMATION REPORTING REQUIREMENTS.
• The Internal Revenue Code of 1986 is amended by adding at the end the following new subsections:
• APPLICATION TO CORPORATIONS. The term 'person' includes any corporation that is not an organization tax-exempt.
• REGULATIONS. The Secretary may prescribe such regulations as may be necessary to carry out the purposes of this section, including rules to prevent duplicative reporting of transactions.
• EFFECTIVE DATE. The amendments made by this section shall apply to payments made after December 31, 2011.

Rated 14% by UFCW, indicating a pro-management voting record.

The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) is North America's Neighborhood Union--1.3 million members with UFCW locals in all 50 states, Puerto Rico and Canada. Our members work in supermarkets, drug stores, retail stores, meatpacking and meat processing plants, food processing plants, and manufacturing workers who make everything from fertilizer to shoes. We number over 60,000 strong with 25,000 workers in chemical production and 20,000 who work in garment and textile industries.

The UFCW House scorecard is based on these key votes:
1. (+) Extension of Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA)
2. (+) H. Am. 877 Bishop Am. to HR 3094, penalties for lawsuits against unionization
3. (+) H. Am. 880 Jackson-Lee Am. to HR 3094, preventing delays in union votes
4. (-) Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act, freezing public salaries
5. (-) Regulation from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act, for less corporate regulation
6. (-) Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act
7. (-) Workforce Democracy and Fairness Act, letting CEOs fire union organizers