Original blog date: August 8, 2011, with new blog text added below on April 5. 2015

Ten Things Congress Can Do to Increase Jobs & Boost Our Economy

by Edward M. Marshall, MD aka Dr. Ed

Our government leaders keep talking about increasing jobs, but they don’t seem to know how to get it done. So, citizens like you and I have to give them some helpful hints. Here are mine (please pass them on to your Senators and Congressperson):

1. Offer any business that hires a net increase in employees this year and for the next two years, a yearly tax deduction of $500 for each month, per additional employee.
2. Make the first $50,000 of earned income free of federal income tax for the next two years, for individuals and businesses. This would put about $5,000 more of spendable dollars in the pockets of some 100 million Americans, adding one trillion dollars to the economy over the two years.
3. Allow more onshore and offshore oil and gas drilling, which will create thousands of new jobs. We must recognize that it will take many years for green energy technology to be able to replace fossil fuels. Improved safety standard enforcement will help assure that oil spills will be far less of a threat.
4. Make it easier for qualified foreigners to come to the United States legally, while vigorously preventing illegal entry. This will reduce the costs of dealing with those here illegally, and will make more jobs available to people here legally.
5. Make it a felony for any government administrator to spend any money on anything for the sole purpose of retaining the same budget amount for the next year.
6. Make it a felony for any company contracting with the federal government to charge the US more money for goods and services than that company charges its other customers, after reasonable allowance for extra costs of working with the government.
7. End the War on Drugs. We spend billions every year to arrest, try, convict, and imprison people for having small amounts of drugs, often marijuana, in their possession for their own use. Let confirmed addicts buy drugs under legal regulations, for their own use only, at approved sites.
8. Bring our troops home from most of the approximately 150 countries where we now have troops deployed.
9. Reduce the corporate tax rate from 35% to 25%.
10. Our leaders need to stop grousing about the lowered US credit rating, and pledge to regain the AAA rating ASAP by passing a law that debt payments due are always to be repaid before any other spending, and by doing the other nine items listed above.

Your friendly problem solver, Dr. Ed

April 5, 2015 Update of this blog:

Well, we have come out of the awful recession since I wrote that blog in 2011, but it was largely done by increased printing of money and by increased deficit spending, while remarkably lowering interest rates to levels that have hurt many people while helping the overall economy to survive.

So much better and so much more could have been accomplished (and still can and should be) by doing those Ten Things.

We know from experience, such as in the 1980s, that when tax rates are lowered, the economy is boosted a lot because people keep more of their income and have more to spend. What’s more, the government collects MORE income taxes even at the lower rates because businesses, and individuals, are making more money.

Let’s reduce the corporate tax rate from 35% to 25%, and make the first $50,000 of earned income free of federal tax for all Americans, not just for two years, but permanently! States with income taxes should also participate!

Think how many more people could afford to upgrade their standard of living, buy that new car, take vacations, buy a home, help their children go to college, and much more! Plus, with the lower tax rate, and increased sales, corporations are much more likely to hire more unemployed people, and those unemployed who have given up looking for jobs, will have lots of incentive and opportunity to get jobs again. $50,000 income tax free is better for workers than a higher minimum wage, dollar for dollar, and besides that, employers won’t have to stop hiring or lay off workers as will happen with increased minimum wages. Everyone wins!

If Congress dares to do #7, regulating drugs that are now illegal, instead of making them totally legalized, or leaving them totally illegal, that would provide drugs to confirmed addicts for their own use, in limited quantities, at reasonable prices that would put street drug dealing pretty much out of business.

Drug lords would now find it a good idea to use their huge amounts of cash to go into legitimate businesses such as resorts, legal casinos, and much more, without having to be surrounded by armed security people, no longer having to live in secrecy while knowing they can be killed by competitors or imprisoned for their illegal drug business at any time. It would be a fair exchange to let them live law-abiding lives in exchange for no imprisonment.

With addicts able to get their drugs inexpensively and legally, our crime rates would go way down, as would the costs of law enforcement and prisons. Plus, addicts are more likely to be reachable and to want to use my Guides and other ways to get off drugs and live well without them. All of this is advocated in my book, Jump-Starting America, available on DrEdMarshall.com or on Amazon.com.

Doing the rest of the Ten Things would also save the government, and all taxpayers, many billions of dollars, maybe trillions, every year. That would allow tax rates to be lowered even more down the road, and would allow even higher earnings to be tax free!

Contact your Congressional representative and your US Senators. Make it clear that unless they back these 10 things, you will never vote for them again.

The only way to defeat Congressional representatives in so many of our heavily gerrymandered districts, is for members of the same party to run against them in the primaries. That will give us back a true democracy, and those representatives that thought they were elected for a lifetime no matter how poor of a job they might do, will have to give up their Congressional crowns, and do something useful for a living!

Thanks for your attention to this blog update.
Your friendly problem solver,
Dr. Ed