By Ted Schnell • BocaJump
U.S. Rep. Randy Hultgren spoke about an array of topics within the framework of the nation’s economy while meeting with area businessmen Thursday morning at Elgin Community College’s University and Business Center.
The Republican congressman spoke for an hour during the Elgin Area Chamber of Commerce’s “Good Morning Elgin” breakfast. With Congress in recess, Hultgren is touring his 14th District — which includes all of Kane and Kendall counties, as well as parts of Bureau, DeKalb, DuPage, Henry, Lee and Whiteside counties.
Hultgren pointed to all the construction in the area, from the roads and highways coming into Elgin to ECC itself, as good signs for the local economy.
“We actually need to get things rolling again and improve our road system,” the Wheaton native said.
Hultgren said he is convinced one of the keys to getting the economy growing again is focusing on the small and midsized businesses, which provide the vast majority of the nation’s jobs. Government, he said, should be there to provide assistance where it can and get out of the way in other areas.
Yet it seems that Washington, D.C., he said, is trying to build economic recovery on the backs of small and midsized businesses. “We have got to change that — if we’re going to get going again, it’s going to be because small and medium-sized businesses are hiring again … that’s how we’re going to get the economy back on track,” he said.
He praised local government, which he said has the greatest level of accountability to the people it serves, where residents can have a direct voice in what’s happening in their communities, Conversely, he said, the government that is least accountable is federal government.
“We need to be careful and work to change that, to bring that accountability back,” he said. “And that is something I’m committed to doing.”
Hultgren said in his visits with people, he is convinced the American people believe Washington is broken and is more concerned about its preservation, not the nation’s preservation.
“These are pivotal times. I am more convinced than ever that our decisions that we make determine the future of our nation and really determine the opportunities that our kids and our grandkids will have,” he said.
One of his largest concerns is the nation’s $14 trillion debt — a very serious concern, he said. The national debt is almost as high as the nation’s gross domestic product, something that has not happened since World War II.
Ultimately, he continued, the debt is not a revenue problem, but a spending issue. “We have to change that, we have to get that back under control,” he said. Hultgren said he wants to see more revenue, but he wants to see it come in as a result of economic growth.
He pointed out that when he served in the Illinois General Assembly, the state did not have to raise taxes because the economy was growing, which produced more revenues for the state. “… Jobs were growing, more people were being hired, more people were wanting to come to Illinois to do business,” he said. Since then, however, Illinois has made decisions Hultgren believes have pushed companies out of the state, “and I think that’s tragic.”
Hearing from businesses
Hultgren said as part of his visit back to the 14th District, he’s been visiting businesses, listening to businessmen to learn their views and about what they are experiencing. From those visits, he has picked up several common themes.“One is, the businesses that are still here are struggling, but they’re making it,” he said, applauding their resiliency in really tough economic times. “They’ve found a way … to get through the obstacles, get over the hurdles ... but there is a real level of frustration there, a real level of uncertainty from government.”
That type of uncertainty, he continued, is paralyzing to small businesses. One key area of uncertainty relates to health care.
As a result, many companies are hiring part-time workers to avoid paying for health-care benefits that are in flux right. Yet those employers, he said, would prefer to hire full-time workers but fear the health-care costs.
“We’ve got over 9 percent unemployment — those are the stated numbers. We all know they’re much higher than that when you look at the people who have given up looking or the people who have taken anything just to somehow pay the bills,” he said.
Hultgren said the high cost of preventative health care is key, noting that Illinois physicians face incredibly higher malpractice insurance premiums than elsewhere in the nation. One neurosurgeon at Sherman Hospital paid $40,000 a year for coverage when he lived in California. Moving to Illinois pushed his premiums to $200,000 annually, and he never had had any claims, he said.
In a related vein, Hultgren said the problem of the uninsured could be reduced by providing good jobs with benefits.
Credit crunch
Another area of uncertainty that harms business is inaccessibility to credit.Sharp declines in property values have limited that credit, Hultgren said. But there also is fear in the banking industry that makes lenders want to turn to investments in bonds to beef up their portfolios instead of lending money locally. That, he said, means small businesses are running into problems when they need financing they normally would be able to obtain under better economic conditions.
Job creation is key, he said, because as people get back to work — and by work, he stressed, he means full-time, stable jobs with benefits — they’ll have incomes and more money to spend, which in turn eases open the door to borrowing.
Once workers have some kind of stability, they will be more confident in terms of investing in homes, donate to charities, buying products and saving money, which in turn will help businesses grow and hire more people.
“This is the type of positive cycle we need to get back in,” he said. “We’re not there — we’re in a negative cycle on both sides of the aisle, where consumers are scared, businesses are scared, and it’s paralyzing the economy. We’ve got the break that.”
Tax and budget issues
Hultgren also work needs to be done to simplify the federal tax code. He said he met with one attorney who has practiced tax law for 30 years who said he doesn’t understand the code.
He added that other changes need to be made to ensure the tax code does not penalize productivity so that businesses can grow.
Hultgren also criticized Congress for its handling of the nation’s budget. He said one measure he introduced would halt congressional pay if Congress fails to pass a budget on time.
He also said he favors real cuts to federal spending now, and that Congress should cap spending tied to the gross domestic product — the dollar value of goods and services in a given period. Still, he said, Congress is known for finding ways around limits like that, so he favors a balanced budget amendment.
Finally, Hultgren addressed the raising of the nation’s debt limit. He said of the three options presented to Congress, he favored two that included significant cuts in federal spending. Those, however, were not the ones that finally passed. He voted against the final measure, he said, because it raised the debt ceiling without making necessary cuts in spending. On that same issue, Hultgren expressed concern about the 12-member super-committee that worked on the debt ceiling compromise.
Hultgren serves on the Agriculture, Space, Science and Technology, and Transportation and Infrastructure committees.
