Today, families and small businesses across New Hampshire are struggling and Washington just doesn’t get it. Health care and college are increasingly unaffordable. Wages are stagnant. Home values have dropped. Gas prices are unbearably high. And people are legitimately frightened about how high heating fuel costs will be this coming winter.

Instead of taking real action to address these major challenges, Washington for the last six years has been listening to the big oil and drug companies and Wall Street while leaving middle class families and small businesses behind.

With John Sununu’s help, George Bush’s failed economic policies have driven our economy into the ground, and, still, they promote this same failed direction.

Jeanne Shaheen believes we need a new economic direction, one that strengthens the backbone of our economy – small businesses and middle class families – and spurs the growth of emerging industries like medical research and clean alternative energy.

As Governor, Jeanne Shaheen strengthened New Hampshire’s economy, leading to the creation of over 66,000 new jobs. She did it by enacting an economic agenda that put the needs of families and small businesses first while keeping New Hampshire’s tax burden the lowest in the nation the entire six years she was Governor. 

Creating Jobs in the New Innovation Economy

Lower Taxes for Families and Small Businesses

Restore Fiscal Responsibility

Expand Opportunity, Build A Skilled Workforce

Control Health Care Costs

Lower Gas and Heating Oil Prices, Create the New Energy Economy

Rebuild Our Roads, Schools and Other Critical Infrastructure, Not Iraq’s

Creating Jobs in the New Innovation Economy

• Return to making policy decisions based on science and not ideology;
• Boost federal research funding;
• Stimulate private sector investment in research and development by extending,  expanding and making permanent the R & D tax credit; and
• Build a workforce up and down the economic ladder with the knowledge and skills to thrive in the innovation economy.

Lower Taxes for Families and Small Businesses

Middle class families and small businesses are the backbone of our economy. Jeanne Shaheen believes we should end tax breaks for special interests and instead lower taxes for small businesses and middle class families.

Jeanne Shaheen managed and was co-owner of a small retail business. She knows what it’s like to struggle to meet a payroll. And as the former Governor of New Hampshire, she understands how important small business is to New Hampshire. 94 percent of New Hampshire companies have fewer than 100 employees and they employ close to half the state’s labor force.

It is small business that creates jobs and drives new ideas and innovation, and it is middle class families that provide the workforce that has built our prosperity and the consumer spending that keeps our economy thriving.

In the Senate, Jeanne Shaheen will push to end  special interest tax giveaways  and redirect that money to lower taxes for small businesses and middle class families. She’ll fight to:

• End special interest tax giveaways. Jeanne Shaheen will fight to end the massive tax subsidies for Big Oil, billionaire hedge fund managers, and companies that move jobs overseas.
• Health care. More than half of the estimated 47 million people across the country who lack health insurance live in a household headed by a small business owner or employee. Jeanne Shaheen is proposing a tax credit of up to 50 percent on premiums paid by small businesses that pay for at least 60 percent of their employees' health care premiums and are located in states like New Hampshire  where insurance companies are barred from discriminating against businesses that have sick workers. 
• Energy costs. Jeanne Shaheen believes we need to help small businesses and families insulate and weatherize their homes and  purchase and install alternative energy systems like solar water heating systems and wood pellet stoves.  Jeanne Shaheen supports extending existing credits on a long-term basis so that small businesses and families can plan and rely on them and to expand them.
• Child care and elder care. Middle class families are being squeezed by the costs of child care and taking care of aging parents. Small businesses know that the productivity of their workers goes up when they have good care for their children and aging parents. Jeanne Shaheen supports expanding the child care tax credit and creating a new elder care tax credit. 
• College tuition. Middle class families are struggling to pay for their kids’ college education and small businesses need an educated work force. Jeanne Shaheen believes we need to simplify and expand tuition tax credits.
• Asset protection. Jeanne Shaheen supports a $7 million exemption level from the federal estate tax that would ensure small business owners and families could pass on their major assets to their children.  
• Research and development. A proven way to stimulate private sector innovation is the federal research and development tax credit. Unfortunately, this tax credit expired at the end of last year and this summer. Jeanne Shaheen supports not just extending the federal R& D credit, but expanding it and making it permanent.

Restore Fiscal Responsibility

Jeanne Shaheen believes it’s time to stop Washington’s runaway spending and end special interest giveaways.

As Governor, she proposed balanced budgets and vetoed unnecessary spending, enabling her to triple New Hampshire’s rainy day fund. She kept New Hampshire’s tax burden the lowest in the country the entire six years she was Governor.

In the Senate, Jeanne Shaheen will push to:

• Make sure any spending increases are offset.
• Crack down on earmarks and eliminate no-bid contracts by requiring open, competitive bids for every government contract.  
• End tax breaks for companies that move jobs overseas.
• Repeal the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and redirect those to the middle class.
• Audit every federal department and agency to identify waste and inefficiencies.

Expand Opportunity, Build A Skilled Workforce

Jeanne Shaheen believes we desperately need a new direction on education.

A quality, public education system and affordable higher education are  essential to giving our children the opportunity to take full advantage of the promise of America. More than that, it is critical to maintaining our competitiveness in the global economy and providing small business with the skilled workforce they need.

We need to make sure all Americans, up and down the economic ladder, can contribute to and benefit from technological advances. Technological advances not only create jobs for highly educated scientists and entrepreneurs, but also create jobs for people installing solar panels, energy efficiency systems, and broadband – jobs that cannot be outsourced overseas. It’s estimated that 90 percent of the fastest growing jobs will require some amount of post-secondary education.

In the Senate, Jeanne Shaheen will fight to strengthen education through:

• Lifelong learning. She will push to boost lifelong learning, such as customized job training and associates degrees at our community colleges, so everyone has the skills to participate in the new innovation economy.

• No Child Left Behind. She believes we need to reform NCLB so we are providing struggling schools with the tools they need to succeed and end the unfunded mandates – costing New Hampshire alone $200 million - imposed on our schools by George Bush and John Sununu.
• Special education. Shaheen will fight to make Washington keep its promise to fully fund special education.
• Early childhood education. The research is clear: the early years of a child are critical, and expanding early childhood education is a wise investment. Our economy receives a $7 to $10 return for every dollar invested in early childhood education. Shaheen supports incentive funding to help states expand quality early childhood education programs.
• College affordability. No qualified student should be barred from higher education because of the cost. Jeanne Shaheen believes we should 1) raise the cap on federal guaranteed student loans. As tuition has skyrocketed, the maximum federal guaranteed student loan has not kept pace and students have been forced to turn to more expensive private or alternative loans to fill in the gap; 2) expand loan forgiveness for public service; 3) simplify and expand tuition tax credits. Today the federal government offers two different tuition tax credits and a tuition tax deduction – but students can only use one at a time. The system is needlessly complicated, and students and parents have a hard time figuring out which tuition tax benefit to choose. Jeanne Shaheen believes we should offer one expanded tuition tax credit; and 4) expand Pell grants.

Control Health Care Costs

The spiraling cost of health care is strangling small businesses and families and hindering our global competitiveness. Yet, John Sununu actually told New Hampshire business leaders to “stop complaining about health care.”

Jeanne Shaheen believes there are significant steps Washington can take to make health care more affordable for New Hampshire businesses.

• Establish a tax credit for small businesses. Jeanne Shaheen is proposing a tax credit of up to 50 percent on premiums paid by small businesses that pay for at least 60 percent of their employees' health care premiums and are located in states like New Hampshire  where insurance companies are barred from discriminating against businesses that have sick workers. 
• Lower the cost of prescription drugs. Jeanne Shaheen believes we should allow the reimportation of safe, cheap prescription drugs from Canada and will push to end patent abuses that prevent cheaper generic drugs from coming to market.
• Boost preventative care and chronic disease management. Jeanne Shaheen believes we should retool our current health care system to place greater emphasis on preventive care and chronic disease management. Over two-thirds of all health care costs today are spent on chronic care, and that drives up health insurance premiums for all of us. We currently have a sick care system and what we really need is a health care system.
• Apply new technology to health records and information. Currently, there is more information technology in most grocery stores than in most doctors' offices. Digitizing health information reduces duplication, avoids errors, allows providers to use data to improve their patients' outcomes and reduce costs and improves quality reporting and research into the effectiveness of different treatments. Transferring medical records to an electronic format lowers costs and increases efficiency.
• Reduce medication errors. Preventable medication errors cost about $1 billion a year and most medication errors are systems related, not the result of individual negligence or misconduct. System improvements can reduce error rates, improve quality and cut costs.  Jeanne Shaheen believes we should invest in programs like those implemented at the VA, which have reduced costly and dangerous medication errors by 70 percent.

Lower Gas and Heating Oil Prices, Create the New Energy Economy

Jeanne Shaheen believes we need a comprehensive approach to energy that addresses both the short-term crushing high prices and our long term energy needs. It’s a national security imperative, an environmental imperative and an economic imperative.

• Crack down on Wall Street speculation. To lower gas and heating oil prices in the short term, Jeanne Shaheen believes we need to crack down on the rampant Wall Street speculation that is distorting energy markets and driving up the cost of crude oil. Loopholes are enabling billion dollar hedge funds to evade government oversight and speculation limits and to distort oil markets, driving up prices. Speculators are not the airlines, home heating oil dealers, manufacturers and others who actually use oil and trade oil futures as a way of minimizing the effects of price swings on their businesses. Rather, speculators trade oil contracts as a profit-making investment and never take actual delivery of fuel. Experts estimate that closing these speculation loopholes could reduce the price of a barrel of oil by 30 to 50 percent. That’s why the airline industry and home heating oil dealers and others who actually use fuel in their businesses support closing these speculation loopholes.
• Smartly increase domestic production. Jeanne Shaheen wants to smartly increase domestic production of oil in a way that benefits American families and small businesses.
• End subsidies to big oil, make a serious commitment to energy efficiency and alternative energy.  The long term answer to our energy needs and future economic prosperity is energy efficiency and clean alternative energy. The world is on the verge of the most significant economic transformation since the Industrial Revolution.  Millions of new jobs will be created in alternative energy, energy efficiency and environmental remediation.   These jobs will go to the first nations to invest seriously in clean energy.

Jeanne Shaheen wants those jobs, that prosperity, and that economic security to come to New Hampshire. 

Jeanne Shaheen wants to redirect the billions of dollars in tax breaks Washington is giving to the oil companies – they don’t need them, they’re making the largest profits in the history of business – and instead use that money to expand tax credits for energy efficiency and alternative energy like solar, wind and forest byproducts, invest in research and development of new energy technologies, and build a 21st century transmission system.

New Hampshire has abundant timber resources and an entrepreneurial spirit second to none.  Our goal should be to make New Hampshire the alternative energy capital of New England, and that’s what Jeanne Shaheen will fight for in the United States Senate.

Rebuild Our Roads, Schools and Other Critical Infrastructure, Not Iraq’s

Highways, roads, bridges, schools and other critical infrastructure in New Hampshire and across America are deteriorating, yet Washington is still spending  $10 billion a year on Iraq reconstruction.

Investment in infrastructure not only is necessary to facilitate trade and commerce, it creates jobs both directly and indirectly. Construction is a major source of good-paying jobs, providing employment to 7.5 million employees making on average over $20 per hour, 20 percent higher than the average private industry wages.

As Governor, Jeanne Shaheen boosted state investment in highways, roads, bridges and public schools. She fought for a new kindergarten construction program that has built new kindergartens and rebuilt existing ones across the state. She pushed for the largest capital investment in the University System in state history. And when our economy slowed after the September 11th attacks, one of the first things Governor Shaheen did was expedite infrastructure projects that were in the pipeline.

In the Senate, Jeanne Shaheen will push to rebuild New Hampshire and America and create good construction jobs by:

• Redirecting the $10 billion a year we are spending on Iraq reconstruction to rebuilding our highways, roads, bridges, and other critical infrastructure.
• Strengthening the Highway Trust Fund so that fuel tax exemptions and refunds are paid for by general funds not the highway trust fund and cracking down on fuel tax evasion.