“The most important task of the next governor is ensuring that businesses can create jobs for struggling and anxious Minnesotans. We must allow job creators in the private sector to do what they do best. Minnesota has an extraordinary history of entrepreneurial innovation and business success. But continued economic success has been hampered by the high costs, regulatory impediments, and indifference of state government. Unfortunately, state taxes and regulations discourage many businesses from expanding here or starting a new business in the first place. In this tough economy, business owners and their employees are in survival mode.”
— Tom Emmer
Tom Emmer’s Job Creation Agenda calls for reducing three major taxes: expanding tax credits and exemptions; reforming public education for long-term competitiveness; and reforming the state government’s regulatory processes and bureaucracies to lessen the burden on businesses and investors.
Today, burdensome state government has crippled our business environment resulting in the loss of our greatest resource – our people. The state’s largest employers are now the State of Minnesota, our public university systems, and the federal government.
As a small business owner for the past 13 years, I understand the challenges, frustrations and fear Minnesotans are feeling during this challenging economic time because I have experienced them first hand. Rising taxes, decreasing value, and redundant business mandates and regulations have hampered the entrepreneurial spirit that has been the hallmark of our state for so many decades.
We need policies in Minnesota that once again place jobs as our highest priority and allow businesses to investment in future growth. We need reform to encourage a strong business economy and create jobs. This reform needs to reach every corner of our state, into every industry and every business large and small so that we can achieve a technological, industrial, and agricultural business renaissance here in Minnesota.
Make no mistake, government cannot create the jobs we need to turn our economy around, but private business people can.
Our proposed tax relief measures received bipartisan support in the legislature and were endorsed by the 21st Century Tax Reform Commission in its 2009 report. Small and large companies alike will benefit from two of the three tax cuts in our plan, ensuring benefits to the broadest range of Minnesota employers.
Minnesota has an even bigger problem than the next state government budget deficit – we have a job creation deficit. The Emmer Jobs Agenda and budget plan puts the right priority in place: getting more Minnesotans back to work.
