But it’s not nearly large enough to pay the bills, reduce the national debt, grow the economy, and come to the aid of all of the people in the world who need us. Why, because nearly half of us (some legally, some not so) pay little or no federal income taxes at all— and because our elected representatives have no financial management skills.

The only taxes that always get paid are those that reduce the amount of spending money in our pockets and which raise the cost of the goods and services we purchase — thus retarding economic growth.

First KISS: Create Jobs Right Now

Create jobs immediately by eliminating the corporate income tax (and all other fees, local taxes, assessments, ad nauseum) for any corporation that adds 10% to its permanent workforce and/or 20% to its total workforce.

Second KISS: Lower and Eliminate Taxes

Third KISS: Produce Sustainable Economic Growth

“The Rest of the Story”: http://kiawahgolfinvestmentseminars.net/Inv/index.cfm/6942

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Steve Selengut

http://www.kiawahgolfinvestmentseminars.com/

http://www.sancoservices.com

Professional Portfolio Management since 1979

Author of: “The Brainwashing of the American Investor: The Book that Wall Street Does Not Want YOU to Read”

The proportion of Americans who can’t find work is likely to “remain elevated for an extended period,” Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, White House budget director Peter Orszag and Christina Romer, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, said in a joint statement. The officials said unemployment may even rise “slightly” over the next few months as discouraged workers start job-hunting again.

“We do not expect further declines in unemployment this year,” the officials said in testimony prepared for the House Appropriations Committee. They predicted the economy would add about 100,000 jobs a month on average — not enough to bring the jobless rate down substantially.

Today’s projections are in line with the 10 percent average unemployment forecast for this year in last month’s budget plan. Christopher Rupkey, chief financial economist at Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd. in New York, said the administration’s language risks damping expectations for a recovery.

“They need to work on the message, and right now the message is that there is not a lot to be hopeful about,” Rupkey said. “Warning about a slow jobless recovery can help make it a reality.”

Growth Outlook

Geithner, Orszag and Romer reiterated the administration’s forecast that the economy would grow 3 percent this year, as measured by comparing fourth quarter growth in gross domestic product. Growth is projected to rise to 4.3 percent in 2011 and 2012, and inflation probably will remain low, they said.

“The worst now appears to be behind us,” the officials said. “However, the country faces significant and ongoing challenges: high unemployment, the need to build a new and stable foundation for prosperity in the years and decades ahead, and a medium- and long-term fiscal situation that could ultimately undermine future job creation and economic growth.”

The three urged Congress to pass Obama Administration job stimulus proposals including extended unemployment benefits, aid to state and local governments and tax breaks for businesses that hire new workers.

They argued tax benefits for businesses that add new workers would have a large impact in the early stages of an economic recovery.

‘Particularly Effective’

“The current situation — where for many firms the question is not whether to hire but when — is one that may make such programs particularly effective,” they said.

The officials said projected federal budget deficits, which the administration forecasts at more than $1.5 trillion for 2011 and over $751 billion for 2015, “remain undesirably high.”

“Deficits matter. Ours are too high; they are unsustainable,” Geithner said during testimony. “The American people, along with investors around the world, need to have more confidence in our ability to bring them down over time.”

The officials put the greatest blame for the high budget deficits on “years of poor decisions” during the administration of George W. Bush, citing enactment of the Medicare prescription drug benefit and income-tax cuts without corresponding budget savings to pay for them.

“If these two policies had been paid for, projected deficits — without any further deficit reduction — would be about 2 percent of GDP per year by the middle of the decade, and we would have been on a sustainable medium-term fiscal course,” they said.

California businesses can't keep going - more jobs to be lost as Democrats plan to spend trillions focusing on health care, not jobs.

The Obama administration’s new plan to give a boost to small businesses reflects continued trouble in that sector, which is facing new failures even as much of the nation’s economy is stabilizing.

As credit lines have shrunk and consumers have cut back on spending, thousands of small businesses have closed their doors over the last year. The plight of struggling firms has been aggravated by the reluctance of banks to lend money, said Brian Headd, an economist at the Small Business Administration’s office of advocacy.

“While bankruptcies are up, overall, small-business closures are up even more,” Headd said.

California has been particularly hard hit. The latest data show small-business bankruptcies up 81% in the state for the 12 months ended Sept. 30, compared with the previous year. Filings nationwide were up 44%, according to the credit analysis firm Equifax Inc.

The actual number of small businesses in trouble is probably higher, experts said, because many owners file for personal bankruptcy rather than seek protection for the business.

Dennis McGoldrick, a bankruptcy lawyer in Torrance, said his clients are all stuck in similar situations — capital is hard to come by, customers are tough to attract and debt is piling up.

“We can’t keep up,” McGoldrick said. “There’s more people that want to come in every day than I can see.”

Cecily McAlpine, who filed for bankruptcy protection for her Cold Stone Creamery franchise this spring, said the experience was humiliating but she had no choice.

Receipts at the fledgling Compton ice cream shop plunged dramatically during the recession, and by late 2008 she was paying her employees out of her pocket.

“When the refrigerator died, that was it; I’d just had it,” McAlpine said. “That was the day I broke. I just started throwing stuff away.”

McAlpine recently withdrew her bankruptcy filing after selling all the store equipment and paying off her creditors. She is slowly paying off some back-rent and utility debt, and will officially dissolve her business in the next couple of weeks, she said.

“I still feel scarred and like a loser,” she said. “Even though I’m not in it anymore, it’s still there.”

Recognizing the problems of business owners like McAlpine, the Obama administration has proposed using federal stimulus money to help funnel more loans to small businesses. The White House has also asked Congress to eliminate capital gains taxes for one year on new investments in small-business stock, and called for a new tax incentive to encourage small businesses to hire more employees.

On Dec. 14, Obama called a meeting of executives of Wells Fargo & Co., Citigroup Inc., Bank of America Corp. and nine other large banks, and told them that they owed it to the nation to make more loans to small businesses and help rebuild the economy.

In California, the need is great.

Over the last year, the Los Angeles, Riverside/San Bernardino and Sacramento metropolitan areas have led the nation in small-business bankruptcy filings, said Tim Klein, a spokesman for Equifax.

About 19,000 small businesses filed for bankruptcy in California during the 12 months ended Sept. 2009, up from 10,500 the previous year.

During September alone, 2,229 small businesses filed for protection, up from 1,503 filings in September 2008, the firm reported.

Kathleen March, a bankruptcy lawyer in Los Angeles, said she often pushes her clients to file for personal bankruptcy instead of a business filing because it’s easier.

Many people also close down their businesses thinking that will solve their problems, only to find their companies’ debt lives on, March said.

“The norm is if you’re running a small business, you will have to either cosign or personally guarantee the significant debts,” she said. “The business itself can shut down, but the people cosigned all the debts. So, the individuals are then saddled with these huge debts.”

A client who owned a surf shop was paying for business expenses from the client’s own funds long before filing for personal bankruptcy, she said.

“In this economy, anything that isn’t a necessity is a tough business to be in,” March said. “And the majority of my clients have waited too long to file for bankruptcy and in the process made things worse on themselves financially as a result.”

nathan.olivarezgiles@latimes.com

Chalk up another 500 jobs to the list of jobs President Obama will need to create or save.

A Pittsburgh-based coal company, CONSOL Energy, will lay off nearly 500 of its West Virginia workers next year and its CEO blames environmentalists dead-set against mountaintop mining who have waged “nuisance” lawsuits for the job loss.

But CONSOL Energy’s political problems are not unique to the mining industry, which has suffered under the Obama Administration. The Environmental Protection Agency is already holding 79 surface mining permits in West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee. The EPA says these permits could violate the Clean Water Act and warrant “enhanced” review. And, agency went even further in October, announcing plans to revoke a permit for the Spruce No. 1 Mine in West Virginia.

The latest setback for the coal industry was announced on Tuesday when CONSOL Energy said close to 500 workers would lose jobs at their Fola Operations location near Bickmore, West Virginia in February 2010.

CEO Nicholas J. DeIuliis said the poor economy compounded by legal challenges by environmental activists forced CONSOL to slash jobs.

“It is challenging enough to operate our coal and gas assets in the current economic downturn without having to contend with a constant stream of activism in rehashing and reinterpreting permit applications that have already been approved or in the inequitable oversight of our operations,” he said in a statement. “Customers will grow reluctant to deal with energy producers they perceive are unable to guarantee a reliable supply due to regulatory uncertainty. It inhibits the ability to remain competitive.”

The Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, the Sierra Club, the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy and the Coal River Mountain Watch were the various groups active on the legal challenge CONSOL Energy refers to.

OVEC’s Executive Director Janet Keating told the Washington Times she believes CONSOL Energy is using the lawsuit as an excuse to layoff workers, although she says “we don’t hide the fact we don’t like mountaintop mining.”

“The price of coal has dropped in half and I think we are a convenient target, a convenient scapegoat,” she said.

“This ruling does not even go into effect for 60 more days so doesn’t that tell you something?” Ms. Keating added. “Suddenly, all the sudden they are issuing these layoff notices as if the world is ending.”

District Judge Robert C. Chambers handed down the ruling in question on Nov. 24. He said the Army Corps of Engineers violated the law by not giving the public enough information during the public comment period for permits issued by the government, although he wrote the error “did not stem from any wrong-doing on the part of the mining companies.”

Even though the court said not enough information was given to the public, the permit application process for the Fola mine consumed nearly a year and a half, according to court papers. But, environmentalists say they weren’t given the enough specific information during the 30-day public comment period. “How can we make substantial comment if they only give us general information?” Ms. Keating asked.

Judge Chambers said requiring the mining companies to go back through the public approval process would provide the public “meaningful opportunity” to weigh in on the permits as well as “force the Corps to reconsider these permits, possibly with new information.”

“To put it into human terms, we are talking about the jobs of nearly 500 of our employees at the Fola Operations, and the impact such legal interpretations will have on their quality of life and that of their families,” CONSOL CEO Mr. DeIuliis said.

But OVEC maintains CONSOL Energy is putting blame in the wrong place.

“We’re in a recession right now and utilities are using less coal and using more natural gas,” Ms. Keating said. “The manufacturing sector isn’t using the same levels of coal so there are these stockpiles and they are going to wait until the price of coal goes up.”

Nobel-award winning economist Paul Krugman can’t figure it out.

So, I doubt that he or any of the other hot-shot business and academic experts at Pres. Obama’s jobs summit Thursday will bring up the fact that hundreds of thousands additional Americans could be working a year from now by changing immigration quotas (FOR FREE).

I’m just an humble former newspaperman, but if Obama had invited me, I would have made the suggestions shown below..

SUPER-SMART ECONOMIST KRUGMAN IS CLUELESS

But first, a word about Paul Krugman’s myopia as displayed in his recent New York Times column.

Failure to act on unemployment isn’t just cruel, it’s short-sighted. So it’s time for an emergency jobs program.– Paul Krugman

I agree entirely! This is an emergency. In an emergency, you consider suspending even things you love. And I don’t care how much the President or Krugman love immigration, they need to set that love aside in favor of their greater love (and concern) for the 16 million Americans actively looking for a job who can’t find even a part-time job.

Krugman recommended a number of ways to drive the U-3 unemployment rate well below its current 10.2% level.

All of this would cost money, probably several hundred billion dollars, and raise the budget deficit in the short run.– Paul Krugman

But there is no other way, Krugman said.

Well, there ARE other ways. I do not have the expertise to say whether any of Krugman’s expensive proposals are a good idea.

But I DO have the expertise to know that there other ways.

I would offer Pres. Obama the same testimony I gave to the House of Representatives before Thanksgiving and tell him that he could make sure that hundreds of thousands of additional Americans could be working a year from now at zero or near-zero cost to the government, the taxpayers or the swelling deficits.

All Congress has to do is cut immigration quotas. My suggestions would be virtually free to implement.

In addition, I would recommend (as found at the beginning of my testimony below) some relatively inexpensive ways to drive millions of illegal aliens out of their jobs over the next few years. If my suggestions were followed, there could easily be yet another half-million or more segment of Americans with jobs a year from — and far more than that two or three years down the line.

Before Thanksgiving, I blogged about the opening part of my testimony that focused on a few key numbers that demand immigration reduction now.

Today, I give you the rest of the testimony that offered my proposed solutions.

THE SOLUTIONS PART OF MY TESTIMONY TO THE U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

(Testimony of Roy Beck at “American Jobs in Peril: The Impact of Uncontrolled Immigration” Forum on Nov. 19, 2009.)

Let me offer a broad outline of what Congress could do in the next month to change immigration policy so it would no longer be an enemy of U.S. workers and their families.

There are six easy changes in immigration law, and one that would be a little more complex, that could result in one million additional Americans having a job a year from now.

All of these changes would have broad public support and probably would seem quite reasonable during a good economy and certainly so in a time of an unemployment crisis.

The cost should be nominal, especially in comparison to $350,000 per job (White House estimate of cost per job saved/created under Stimulus and Tax Relief measures this year.)

• 3 Easy Changes to Keep Illegal Foreign Workers Out of U.S. Jobs

An immigration policy that puts unemployed Americans first would immediately begin opening up hundreds of thousands of jobs currently held by illegal foreign workers.

We know from the few major worksite enforcement actions of this year that legal workers will quickly come forward to fill meatpacking, janitorial, service and construction jobs that have been vacated by illegal aliens.¹²

You can begin reducing unemployment in the first month and accelerate the benefit through the year with just three changes in enforcement law:

No. 1 – Allow all employers to voluntarily run their entire workforce through E-Verify.

Many of the 160,000 employers¹³ currently using E-Verify chose the program because they learned that they previously had been hiring a lot of illegal aliens and decided to clean up their act. But under current law, they aren’t allowed to use E-Verify to clean up the results of their past hires.

Give companies that want to ensure they have a 100% legal workforce the ability to use E-Verify on the pre-existing workforce. This will open up thousands of jobs quickly for unemployed Americans.

No. 2 – Immediately begin the roll-out of mandatory E-Verify.

The system is in place. It is proven. It already is expanding rapidly because of the new Obama Administration mandate on federal contractors. USCIS has shown itself quite capable of rapid expansion of use of E-Verify.

To ease the number of new businesses signing up in the first few months but to maximize the likelihood of opening up the jobs most likely to be taken by illegal workers, begin the mandate for employers of more than 25 in the top 10 industries with illegal-alien workforces (excluding agriculture). ¹⁴

All of those businesses should be mandated to be using E-Verify for their new hires within 6 months.

Because there tends to be rapid turnover in these illegal-alien-prone industries, a lot of extra jobs can be opened up for jobless Americans in a hurry.

Provide the nominal amount of extra funds needed for this expansion.

Thousands of jobs will open up for the less-educated Americans who are suffering the highest rates of unemployment.

Set a 12-month deadline for all other businesses with more than 100 employees, plus all governments.

Establish a deadline schedule for the remaining employers.

Agree to set aside the question of amnesties and legalizations. For now, Congress should just concentrate on moving U.S. citizens and legal immigrants already here to the front of the jobs line.

Are there really many Members of Congress who would look their voters in the eyes and argue that illegal workers should be at the front of the jobs line ahead of unemployed citizens of the District?

And if Congress is really serious about helping unemployed Americans, it will require every business in America to run all existing employees through E-Verify during the next year, or a perhaps a somewhat longer time.

When I testified before the House Subcommittee on Immigration in 2007, I suggested that it might be best to phase in total E-Verify over a few years to give illegal-alien-dependent companies more time to create channels of recruitment and to transition to a legal workforce. But during this time of huge unemployment, experience is showing that businesses will have no trouble finding legal workers to replace their illegal ones.

No. 3 – Provide full funding so that DHS can quickly train as many local and state police forces as desire to enter into the 287(g) program.

Empower the local governments that desire to assist the federal government to work within the limits of the 287(g) program to deter illegal foreign workers from settling or remaining in their jurisdiction.

Some localities have found that the illegal worker population decreased merely from the announcement that the local government was PLANNING to enter into a 287(g) arrangement.

• 3 More Easy Changes to Reduce LEGAL Foreign Worker Competitors

Reducing the flow of legal permanent foreign workers means that unemployed Americans will have less competition for jobs as they open up during the economic recovery. In general, they will get a job faster with less competition from the foreign workers.

No. 4 — Suspend issuing Green Cards to visa lottery winners. ¹⁵

The lottery randomly selects workers from around the world to compete with U.S. workers without any regard to the immigrants’ education, skills or any other criteria, or how any of that matches the needs of our society.

Obviously, Congress would not openly state that these lottery winners are more deserving of U.S. jobs than unemployed U.S. citizens.

No. 5 — Suspend the chain migration categories of adult siblings and adult children of anchor immigrants.¹⁶

They fill up U.S. occupations without any regard for their effect on the U.S. workers competing there. And we have no control over which occupations they affect the most as they are accepted without regard to their education, skills or job preferences.

Anchor immigrants are chosen for their specific qualities. They are allowed to bring in their spouse and minor children but, in accepting the gift of a Green Card, freely make the decision to separate themselves from their extended family and communities in their home country.

Congress must choose to give job priority to U.S. citizens and the legal immigrants already here – rather than to extended families of immigrants.

No. 6 – Suspend issuing work permits to the parents of anchor immigrants.¹⁷

You can create renewable one-year Parent-Care Visitor Visas that allow anchor immigrants to care for their parents as long as they choose, if they provide proof of non-taxpayer supported health insurance coverage. Visitor Parents would not be given any kind of work permit and would not be allowed access to any taxpayer-supported social services. The cost of the care for foreign parents would be borne by the immigrants.

• Reduce Employment-Based Green Cards — A Little More Complex

This one will take a little more thought and some more administrative effort from the Department of Labor. But it should be possible to put the new criteria in place quickly. Until it is in place, perhaps it would be best to just suspend all issuance of employment-based Green Cards to make sure no American workers are hurt in the interim.

No. 7 – Dramatically reduce permanent work permits issued through employment-based categories to take jobs that Americans want.

Last year, 166,000 of these Green Cards were issued.¹⁸

Although there can be considerable red tape, there are not a lot of criteria to protect the jobs for U.S. workers.

You will need to wrestle with where to set the numerical cap during the Jobs Depression immigration suspension period.

But I believe that if you set the criteria for issuing these work permits so that they don’t hurt American workers, the number will end up at only a fraction of the current ceiling.

What should be the criteria for these permanent work permits that are sought for specific jobs?

I suggest that you start with the questions to which virtually any business lobbyist or organization would answer, “NO.”

• For example, if you asked if they were seeking foreign workers in order to avoid hiring qualified U.S. workers, they would emphatically answer NO.
• Do they want foreign workers so they can avoid having to recruit and hire from under-represented minorities in their field, such as disabled Americans or Black and Hispanic Americans – or an under-represented majority, women? I imagine businesses would answer NO.
• Do they want foreign workers in order to discourage American high school and college students from pursuing certain careers? NO
• Do they want foreign workers so they can hold down wages, benefits and working conditions? The answer surely would be NO.
• Do they want foreign workers because they will be more compliant if various labor and safety laws are violated? OF COURSE NOT.

Then, create criteria for employment-based permanent work permits that guarantee that all the aforementioned will NOT happen. Everything that follows merely serves this goal.

The criteria should leave room for the persons of truly exceptional world-class skills that peers would say exceed 95% of the Americans in the occupation.

But if our trade schools, colleges and corporations are capable of training Americans to do these jobs, meet temporary shortages with temporary visas until the Americans are ready to take the jobs. In this kind of economy, it surely will be a rare case to find true shortages in any occupations.

Surely during the Jobs Depression, the Labor Department would not want to issue a permanent work permit in any of its categories in which U-3 unemployment is above 5% or real wages have been stagnant or declining.

To give unemployed Americans full opportunities, all applications for foreign workers by an employer must be transparent to the public. That would mean posting of all non-proprietary information about the job on a national website and a record of the American applicants who applied and were rejected.

SUMMARY

There you are: 6 easy changes and one a little more complex that very well could save jobs for Americans at the same pace as all the other job creation programs underway and being considered.

Thank you for this opportunity to look at immigration policy, not in terms of how it affects special interests but in terms of how it affects the 16 million Americans who are looking for a job and cannot find one — and for the millions more Americans and their families who live in daily fear of losing their jobs.

===================================================================

¹²In October, 2009, approximately 1,200 illegal aliens were fired from a San Francisco-based company hired to clean buildings across Minneapolis-St. Paul. These jobs were quickly filled. http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/11/09/immigrants-fired/. After a House of Raeford poultry plant was raided in Columbia, South Carolina, the company quickly began to let illegal aliens go at their plant in Raeford, North Carolina. These jobs were quickly filled by unemployed American workers (mostly Black Americans). http://www.charlotteobserver.com/258/story/884790.html.

¹³ According to the Department of Homeland Security more than 159,000 employers utilize the E-Verify system (as of October 21, 2009). http://www.dhs.gov/files/programs/gc_1185221678150.shtm.

¹⁴I would suggest phasing in agriculture later. This is partly because such a high percentage of the workforce is illegal and because this is the one occupation that a legal local workforce might not be immediately available. Movement of illegal aliens out of the agricultural fields is not likely to put large numbers of Americans to work because there are so few lines of recruitment and networking channels into the American laborforce. The most likely short-term result of moving illegal aliens out of agriculture is that the jobs would be filled legally by agribusiness hiring foreign workers through the H-2A system. Thus, E-Verify in agriculture can be phased in over a few years without much loss of opportunity to legal American workers.

¹⁵Department of Homeland Security. “Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2008.” Green Cards in 2008 were issued to 41,761 persons through the Visa Lottery category. The Department of Homeland Security does not report an age breakdown for the category. However, it does report the age breakdown for all categories combined that gives us a ratio. Of the total Green Cards issued in 2008, 79.5% of them were issued to immigrants aged 15-65 (880,636 out of a total of 1,107,126). Applying the 79.5% ratio to the visa lottery category suggest that about 34,000 of visa lottery winners were of working age. http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/statistics/yearbook/2008/table08.xls.

¹⁶Ibid., 124,305 Green Cards in 2008 were granted to unmarried sons/daughters of U.S. citizens and their children, to married sons/daughters of U.S. citizens and their spouses and children, and to the brothers/sisters of U.S. citizens (at least 21 years of age) and their spouses and children. While DHS does not issue age-specific data for these categories it is reasonable to apply the 79.5% ratio to estimate that around 99,000 of these Green Card recipients are of working age. http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/statistics/yearbook/2008/table06d.xls.

¹⁷Ibid.,In 2008, 121,470 Green Cards went to the parents of U.S. citizens. DHS does not issue age-specific data for this category. Applying the 79.5% ratio would suggest that around 96,000 of these individuals are of working age. All of them are adults, but many are too old or infirm to take jobs. http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/statistics/yearbook/2008/table06d.xls.

¹⁸Ibid., 166,511 aliens received legal permanent resident status in 2008 due to employment-based preferences. DHS doesn’t provide an age breakdown for this category. Applying the 79.50% ratio would suggest that about 133,000 were working age and the rest young dependents. http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/statistics/yearbook/2008/table06d.xls.

ROY BECK is Founder & CEO of NumbersUSA