Westchester County Business Journal Hall speaks out on fuels, IP, TZ and AMT
Hall speaks out on fuels, IP, TZ and AMT
Speaking to business and nonprofit leaders in Rye Brook recently, freshman Congressman John Hall, D-19th District, welcomed their input on pending legislative issues while taking a stand on the Indian Point nuclear power plant that could put him at odds with his Westchester business constituents.
A breakfast guest of The Business Council of Westchester in its Key Bank speaker series, the rock musician-turned-politician from Dover Plains thanked the sponsoring bank for the small-business loan that enabled him to start his independent record label – “a loan I’m happy to say we just paid off last week.”
Pledging to work “to reinforce fiscal fairness for small businesses,” Hall said he had voted for the Small Business Tax Relief Act recently signed into law.
Reform of the alternative minimum tax (AMT) “continues to be one of the top necessities for tax reform for this Congress,” he said.
AMT “has strayed from its original purpose” of taxing only the wealthiest and now places “an increasing and onerous tax burden on a growing number of middle-class families,” he said. Westchester County has more households paying AMT than any county in the nation, he said, while all five counties in the 19th Congressional District are among the top 2 percent in the country impacted by AMT. In 2004, district residents made an average of just above $3,800 in AMT payments, $500 less than the average yearly tuition at a SUNY school, Hall said.
Addressing a critical issue for his audience, the congressman said health care “leaves all businesses from GM to the corner store vulnerable.”
Hall said premiums for employer-based health care rose by 7.7 percent in 2006.
Premiums for firms with less than 24 employees increased by 10.5 percent. “It’s the fastest-growing expense for employers and health-care costs are dramatically outstripping growth in earnings, wages or inflation.”
The health-care coverage crisis is “a complex challenge but one that we must address,” he said. “It’s compromising our ability to compete in the global marketplace.”
A member of the House Select Committee on Climate Change and Energy Independence, Hall warned that with America’s dependence on Middle East oil purchased from despotic, terrorism-financing regimes with money borrowed from China and others, “We’re gradually losing our sovereignty as a country, not to mention our solvency.” He said the nation can reverse that slide by developing new technologies and alternative renewable energy resources such as biofuels, wind turbines and low-head hydropower.
“We in the Hudson Valley can grow energy crops for biofuel and biodiesel” and create local jobs in the process, he said.
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