Mark Warner on Employment

Senators Mark Warner, Marco Rubio, Chris Coons, and Jerry Moran have proposed a piece of legislation that they say will reduce the incidence of unemployment, if passed.

From Senator Warner's e-mail...

China, India, Brazil, and the rest of our global business competitors certainly are not waiting for us to get our act together, so we cannot allow election-year politics to interfere with smart, reasonable efforts to strengthen our economy and jumpstart job creation.

That’s why I have joined several of my colleagues in introducing bipartisan legislation, Startup Act 2.0. With my partners -- Sens. Chris Coons (D-DE), Jerry Moran (R-KS) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) – we intend to prove the critics wrong: we want to demonstrate that Congress can get something significant done, even during an election year, when we’re willing to put partisanship aside and work together.
While the recently enacted JOBS Act focused on access to capital, Startup Act 2.0 concentrates instead on access to talent:

• Too few American college students are pursuing advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering and math. So Startup Act 2.0 would, in effect, staple a green card to the diplomas of foreign-born students earning advanced STEM degrees who can demonstrate they are willing to remain in the United States to apply their talents here and create new jobs. The Roanoke Times calls this “a small but crucial slice of U.S. immigration policy,” and notes that “The immigrants at issue would create jobs for themselves and thousands of native-born Americans. That's an outcome that deserves bipartisan support.”
  
• Startup Act 2.0 also offers some targeted tax breaks aimed at enabling small businesses to conserve financial resources more effectively while they grow. Among other things, it creates a targeted research and development tax credit for early-stage startups, and it makes permanent an existing exemption from capital gains taxes on start-up stock that is held for at least five years.
  
• Start-up Act 2.0 proposes a mandatory cost-benefit analysis of proposed regulations that could have greater than $100 million in economic impact. “By requiring this analysis, agencies might think twice about imposing unnecessarily burdensome regulations,” according to the Progressive Policy Institute.
  
• Let’s face it: not every college or university is as capable as a UVA, Virginia Tech, VCU or ODU to maximize the market potential of faculty-driven R&D. So our legislation will help smaller universities move taxpayer-funded research from the laboratory to the marketplace more quickly.
  

Google, the Consumer Electronics Association, the Information Technology Industry Council and TechAmerica all have endorsed Startup Act 2.0. And one leading national newspaper even had this to say about our bipartisan effort:

“Much of the time, Congress is, well, Congress. Gridlocked, combative, dysfunctional are only three of the adjectives that might be routinely applied. But some days, there is a hint of a different institution… [Startup Act 2.0] is a potential reminder that, when the conditions are right, members of both parties are far from giving up on good.”

In the past 16 months, six countries have implemented new policies to encourage more entrepreneurship, innovation and job creation within their borders. The U.S. cannot afford to turn a blind eye to our competitors or use the coming elections as an excuse to delay action on an issue that is so critical to our economic future.

Regards –

Mark Warner