Before coming to Congress, I was a successful entrepreneur who managed numerous businesses, created new jobs, met payrolls and balanced budgets.
Based upon my experience in the private sector, there are several steps we can take to help turn around our sputtering economy.
We should expand markets for exported U.S. goods and services, reform corporate taxes to keep jobs in America, eliminate frivolous lawsuits and abolish unnecessary regulations that impede growth.
A package of these measures could be ready for President Obama's signature soon and would begin helping our businesses by autumn.
As an essential first step in that process, Congress and the president need to work together on a debt reduction package. Reaching agreement on such a plan could set the stage for an economic growth bill.
In four short years, the public debt has skyrocketed to $14 trillion, fueled by $1 trillion annual budget deficits. America borrows $188 million every hour of every day, 365 days a year.
The root problem is reckless spending by both parties over the last decade. In the last 50 years, the federal budget has only been balanced five times.
The key to solving this problem has two parts: first, we need to ratify a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, which will ensure that the government doesn't spend more than it takes in every year, and second, we need bipartisan agreement on a historic package of $2 trillion in spending cuts to the federal budget.
And then we need to establish an environment in which job-creating businesses can thrive and prosper. The government is not a job creator -- that's the private sector's responsibility. Instead, the government can build an environment in which our employers can recharge America's economic engine.
We can do this by adopting the following:
1. Free Trade Agreements with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama. Helping businesses export more domestically manufactured goods could create up to 250,000 jobs in the U.S. Florida has 14 deepwater seaports that generate over $65 billion in economic value. Our state is well-positioned to benefit from higher exports.
2. Fundamental corporate tax reform will encourage U.S. businesses to keep their jobs in America, and will attract new facilities and jobs here by reducing the tax rate and broadening the tax base. In January, President Obama publicly endorsed this idea. A flatter and fairer tax code will help small and mid-sized businesses as well.
3. Repeal the new federal mandate contained in President Obama's health care law that all employers purchase health insurance for employees. Mandated health coverage could be a job-killer. Instead, we need to use free market principles to bring down the cost of health insurance for employers.
4. Implement legal reform to eliminate wasteful, frivolous lawsuits that clog up our court system and increase costs to employers.
5. Scale back federal paperwork requirements on businesses that cost far more than any benefit they produce. The SBA estimates that federal regulatory requirements cost $1.75 trillion.
Successfully getting our fiscal house in order and our economy turned around are the keys to maintaining America's status as the only global superpower.
The American people don't want rhetoric, they want results. Let's make them proud by giving them just that.
