For Immediate Release: January 22, 2010
Office of U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina)
Contact: Wesley Denton (202) 228-5079
DeMint on Record SC Unemployment: “Enough is Enough”
Wasteful stimulus spending has failed, time for broad-based tax cuts that are prove to create jobs and spur investment
Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina), chairman of the Senate Steering Committee, made the following statement after South Carolina Employment Security Commission reported the state’s unemployment rate has jumped to a new high of 12.6%, with over 273,000 South Carolinians out of work.
“Enough is enough; It’s time to stop the failed stimulus and instead enact immediate broad-based tax cuts that are proven to fuel real job-growth,” said Senator DeMint. “Instead of taking money out of our economy to be wasted by Washington politicians on special interests, we should let taxpayers keep more of their own money to spend, invest, and create jobs.”
“I introduced the American Option Jobs Plan last year to put dollars and decisions back in the hands of families and businesses. People in South Carolina and across the nation have seen through the false promise that Washington can fix everything by new spending or a new bureaucracy. America became the most prosperous nation in the world because of a limited government and free markets that allowed people and businesses to succeed. Washington must stop choking our prosperity with high taxes, spending and debt.”
According to a study by the Heritage Foundation earlier this year of Senator DeMint’s “American Option” Jobs Plan, South Carolina would have gained an additional 6,956 jobs in 2009 and 28,262 jobs in 2013. An average South Carolina family of four could have expected their personal income to increase by $1,153 in 2009 and by $3,864 in 2013.
Full summary of DeMint’s “American Option” Jobs Plan
The “American Option” Jobs Plan would:
• Defuse the 2011 tax bomb: Stop tax increases set to hit the economy in 2011.
o Permanently repeal the alternative minimum tax once and for all;
o Permanently keep the capital gains and dividends taxes at 15 percent;
o Permanently kill the Death Tax for estates under $5 million, and cut the tax rate to 15 percent for those above;
o Permanently extend the $1,000-per-child tax credit;
o Permanently repeal the marriage tax penalty;
o Permanently simplify itemized deductions to include only home mortgage interest and charitable contributions.
• Long term, broad based tax cuts for American families and businesses.
o Lower top marginal income rates – the one paid by most of the small businesses that create new jobs – from 35 percent to 25 percent.
o Simplify the tax code to include only two other brackets, 15 and 10 percent.
o Lower corporate tax rate as well, from 35 percent to 25 percent. The U.S. corporate tax rate is second highest among all industrialized nations, driving investment and jobs overseas. Lowering this key rate will unlock trillions of dollars to be invested in America instead of abroad.
o This is not only good economic policy, but a matter of fairness. No American family should be forced to pay the federal government more than 25 percent of the fruits of their hard labor.
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