Dear Representative Garrett,

On behalf of 1.8 million Americans for Prosperity activists in all 50 states, I commend you and your colleagues on the Republican Study Committee for introducing H.R. 3400, the Jobs Through Growth Act. Your legislation presents a clear and strong alternative to the President’s flawed vision for how to fix the economy: instead of raising taxes and growing government, your proposal would get government out of the way and give individuals and entrepreneurs in the private sector the freedom they need to drive innovation and job growth in this country.

America has been presented with two choices. In September, the President unveiled his American Jobs Act: $447 billion in new spending on Democrats’ favorite big-government “stimulus” priorities” – all paid for by imposing higher taxes on America’s job creators.

The Jobs Through Growth Act presents a different path for the American economy. The bill simplifies the tax code, cuts top individual and corporate rates to 25 percent, eliminates special tax breaks that distort economic decisions, and ends a number of inefficient taxes like the Death Tax and the Alternative Minimum Tax. The bill reins in excessive federal regulation currently strangling American businesses by offering a temporary moratorium for “major” rules, and requires Congress to proactively approve major new rules from federal agencies through the REINS Act. The bill opens access to American energy supplies in the Gulf of Mexico and the ANWR, removes barriers currently blocking the Keystone Energy Pipeline, and repeals the EPA’s misguided greenhouse gas regulations – all of which will create jobs in America and lower gas prices for consumers.

All of these provisions have one thing in common: they empower individuals and businesses in the private sector to use more of their own resources and their own judgment to figure out the best ways to spend, build, invest, hire, and grow the economy. This is a clear rejection of the prevailing (and highly mistaken) philosophy in Washington that politicians and bureaucrats can solve all our problems so long as they have heaps of taxpayer money to spend and unchecked authority to do so. It has and always will be true that the private sector is the engine of job growth, not government, and economic freedom is the fuel that makes that engine run smoothly.

Americans for Prosperity is proud to support H.R. 3400, the Jobs Through Growth Act. I urge your colleagues to support its passage, and I look forward to working with you in the future.

Sincerely,

James Valvo
Director of Government Affairs
Americans for Prosperity