Romney campaigns in Vegas

With Presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s stop in Las Vegas yesterday, Nevada has officially become an important state in the Presidential race. Recently, we have seen Vice President Biden in town and President Obama has made a number of stops here. Predictions show that the 2012 Presidential election will come down to seven states, Nevada being one of them.
Candidate Romney came to Las Vegas, which is leading the nation in unemployment, to unveil his jobs plan. Mitt Romney produced an economic plan, in book sized form, that he claims would create over 11 million jobs and lead to 4% annual growth in his first term. The highest annual rate we have seen since 2007 is 3%, which was 2010.
It’s not a big surprise that Romney picked Las Vegas, which has an unemployment rate of 14%, the largest city in the state leading the nation in unemployment at just under 13%. His plan calls for cutting corporate tax rates and eliminating taxes on savings, investments, capital gains and estates. Additionally, his plan calls for free trade agreements, oil leases and domestic energy exploration. Of the five “executive orders” Romney proposed, eliminating regulations and speeding up the permitting of oil leases would help create jobs.
Will Mitt Romney’s plan work? Will it help out our unemployment problem in Nevada and Las Vegas? The only way we will know for sure is if Romney gets the GOP nomination and defeats President Obama in November 2012. His proposals are nothing new, we have heard these before and they will help spur job growth. Will they help in Nevada? They could not hurt our job growth. Only cutting the corporate tax rate 10% is a good start, but a lower rate would induce more companies to stay in the country. These companies move oversees because it becomes to cheaper to make the products in another country and ship it here, than to make it here and pay the taxes. Rolling back regulations would go a long way to increasing job growth. Mindless regulations and reporting and tracking required by the government for compliance costs millions of dollars a year to Nevada businesses; money that could be invested in research, equipment and labor instead of government reporting. Reducing the tax burden on all Americans has proven to help stimulate the economy by giving everyone more money in their pockets to spend or save how they want to, not how the government tells them.
With the hospitality industry representing the largest employer in the state and construction was representing a good number, until the economy turns around Las Vegas will continue to struggle in those areas. Nevada does have a business friendly climate, so the focus should be on enticing manufacturers to relocate to the state. Another underutilized industry would our mining industry. Nevada is the home to many precious metals and has a rich mining history, it’s time to restore that legacy and put Nevadan’s to work mining the materials other states and countries want and need.
There are things that can be done nationally to help our unemployment and our economy, which is to get out of the way and stop taxing and regulating businesses with frivolous rules and regulations. Let the states determine their own jobs plan, every state is different and requires a unique solution. One size fits all laws cannot apply to 50 unique situations.

Please see my examiner article here for links to sources used.