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Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Guest Post by U.S. Senate Candidate Bill Binnie

As a successful businessman, I watched as the "old-guard" Washington politicians tried to fix our economy with a spending binge. I knew it wouldn’t work. And it hasn’t. The big spending “stimulus” package didn’t turn our economy around; it didn’t spur growth, it didn’t give hope to the jobless. Americans deserve policies that do work.

As someone with plenty of experience in the real-world economy, I know what does work. Our prosperity flows from certain key economic principles: fiscal responsibility, free markets and limited government. We need policies that will lower taxes, make government more efficient and eliminate wasteful spending. In short, we need common sense business policies. More importantly, we need to create jobs – good jobs, at good wages.

Fixing our economy won’t be easy. It will require a lot of hard work and a lot of tough decisions. It will also require having leaders in Washington who understand the real-world economy. And that’s why I am running for the US Senate.

As a businessman, I know how to make tough decisions; I know how to balance a budget; I know how to create jobs. And I will use my skills in the US Senate to make a difference. If you support my vision for America, please join my campaign. For more information, please visit: www.binnie2010.com.

8 comments:

  1. Glad to hear that there is actually a politician that is for less government. A rare commodity in this world of politicians that seem to only be out to do what is best for themselves...and not for their constituents.

    Mr. Binnie, What is your take on health care reform? That's a big issue for me.

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  2. When you use statements, more so if they are true, such as "Fixing our economy won’t be easy. It will require a lot of hard work and a lot of tough decisions. It will also require having leaders in Washington who understand the real-world economy." it scares the Lib-Left and fires up their determination to eradicate Conservatives using the name "Republican". Please learn from their example,and use their tactics in hopes of retrieving some of the "middle roaders".

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  3. Senate candidate Binnie is saying the right things regarding "what" needs to be done. However, he is light on specifying "how" he intends to do it. For example, if he wants to cut taxes, how will he cut spending, how will he eliminate wasteful government bureaucracies, how will he pare back entitlement programs, etc.?

    Where are the specifics? I'm fed up with politicians saying all the right things and doing all the wrong things, or doing nothing, after they are elected.

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  4. I love your message, Bill, but I am concerned about the government "creating" jobs. As far as I can see, the government can only rob jobs from the private sector. Since everything they do is mummified in red tape, there are many more government jobs than are needed to accomplish the same tasks. The only way I can see to "create" jobs is to remove the chains of regulation from most private companies since the regulation usually favors large corporations. This, in turn, would bring more competition and better quality commerce.

    It's interesting that these large corporations (e.g. food industry) have created big messes (e.g. food safety), then "help" to shape the regulation designed to clean it up. Then the small businesses (e.g. small farmers) are left paying a large proportion of their receipts on compliance. The large corps pay a smaller proportion of their receipts, but end up getting around the regulation. Then the liberals demand more regulation. Real competition would solve the problem without the wasted resources that the regulations require. In my example, imagine how many hungry people could be fed without all that waste...

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  5. Well, Federal taxes are already at the lowest level since 1950, so the many tax cuts since 2001 have drastically cut taxes.

    And not a single tax hike since 1993, a tax hike that was predicted to result in a recession. And didn't.

    The tax cut in 1997, a tax cut promoting short term churning of assets by lower the tax rate on capital gains, likely helped promote the NASDAQ bubble - hey, buy some tech stock and sell it in a few months and make more than working and pay half the income tax and no FICA tax - labor is for fools, just be a capitalist and pump and dump.

    The 2001, 2002, 2003 tax cuts killed more jobs than the NASDAQ bubble popping. But the massive spending on the rush military equipment design and build as Iraq killed troops equipped for a war in Europe instead of an urban insurgency, plus building multiple US bases in Iraq with US labor and materials, were huge stimulus spending projects. Let's remember the 2008 tax cuts that Bush demanded which preceded four million job losses.

    But the history of tax cuts killing jobs is well illustrated by the 16 months of job losses following the 1981 tax cut. Yeah, Volcker gets blamed for that, but he had been tightening money for two years. Reagan's budget deficits were exceptionally high for peace time; might all that Federal borrowing to fund the increased deficit drive up interest rates and starve the private sector of credit?

    The economy turned up when Reagan agreed to hike taxes and increase spending, with the first action being highway spending.

    The problem with the 2009 stimuus bill was the wasted tax cut that cost the budget about a quarter trillion in tax revenue, and stimulated job creation just as well as the 2008 and 1981 tax cuts.

    Federal tax revenues today are down 25% since 2000 when they were more than 20% of GDP; today they are under 15% meaning the people and firms have 5% more money "to spend more wisely than government". Some data:
    Fiscal Total Revenue-fed
    Year $ bln 2005
    2000 2284.86
    2001 2196.84
    2009 1917.81
    2010 1941.29 (est)

    The economy and population is larger, but tax revenue is lower!

    Fiscal Total Revenue-fed
    Year $2005 per capita
    2000 8097
    2001 7706
    2009 6247
    2010 6284

    $1700+ less taken in Federal taxes per person now than in 2000 which is supposed to be $1700 per person creating jobs in the private sector. Right??

    I'd rather be back in the 90s paying those crushing Clinton taxes and have the high employment rate that came from the government research driven economy: computers, super computers sequencing the human genome, the internet, wireless.

    The private sector seems to find things other than financing gas guzzlers and housing to be too long term and risky. The tax cuts promoted the pump and dump real estate speculation bubble; if you invest in capital for its long term return on investment, you will buy and hold for years or decades and not need reduced short term capital gains taxes; those are only of use to those doing pump and dump.

    All I read in the post above is more of the Reagan and Cheney-Bush free lunch promises. Cheney took from the Reagan years that deficits don't matter - that it is possible to have everything without having to pay taxes.

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  6. Well, Anonymous 2, one thing is clear. If Obama knows how to create jobs in the private sector, he is keeping it to himself. He certainly has demonstrated that he knows how to kill them!!

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  7. Well, Obama and Democrats did compromise on the stimulus and include massive job killing tax cuts in the bill.

    A better stimulus would have been the one Bush signed in the middle of the 1990 recession, a huge tax hike. Job growth resumed three months after he signed the tax hike, and with the Clinton tax hike, we had a decade of nearly constant job creation, with the rate of employment reaching the highest in US recorded economic history.

    Of course, the predictions in both cases were for recession and poor economic recovery

    One other problem with the stimulus program was an excessive emphasis on "eliminating waste fraud and abuse" so everything had lots of controls over the spending. I've seen this quite often in private firms where top management requires their authorization for all spending from equipment to post-its, slowing down the release of new products needed to help with the corporate revenue short fall. Many firms have lost ground in the market place from such prudent cost control but counter productive management practice.

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  8. As we move closer to the election, you still have not answered many questions posted to your FB page and other sites. Where do you stand on Amnesty? Where do you stand on implementation of a VAT (or similar) tax? Your competition says you are for each of these and so far I've seen nothing from your campaign that states otherwise. Neither of these are good for the US and if you want people to vote for you, you need to answer the questions.

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