Open Letter to our Leaders by B. Coffman

President Barack Obama

Senator Richard Lugar

Senator Dan Coats

Representative Todd Young

Gentlemen,

This is an open letter to all four of you as you are the four people that have been elected to represent me in The Federal Government. I am writing you because I think I may have a solution to some of the major economic issues facing our great nation today. Now I want to first let you know that nothing that I am presenting here is a reinvention of the wheel. Most of my ideas were borrowed from legislation that has already been passed by great political minds such as the ones you four possess. As a matter of fact the main thing that my idea stems from is “No Child Left Behind” legislation that is currently making its rounds in the hopes of improving education.

As you all know “No Child Left Behind” is going to tie a teachers pay to performance. The theory that I have heard is that we are trying to make it a more real world example. When I heard President Obama and Speaker Boehner speak last night I realized that maybe what these debt ceiling negotiations need is a more real world example as well. With that in mind here is what I propose. First, we keep the current “Bush” Tax Cuts in place. There is one caveat to this though. These tax cuts will now be based on performance. No longer will these big corporations and extremely wealthy receive these tax cuts on the old “Trickle Down” theory. With the advent of the global marketplace the only places that are creating jobs as a result of this trickle down are Mexico and China. We need to create jobs here in America. So in order to receive these billions of dollars in tax cuts the wealthiest Americans and major corporations must prove that they are creating jobs in America. The next step to my plan is that the corporation or individual that hopes to receive these tax cuts must make a proportional difference to job creation in relation to the size and revenue of the company. So the bigger and more profitable the company is the more jobs it must create. You cannot just hire your son who just graduated Harvard and needs a job and say look I created a job give me the tax break. This is the hardest part of my plan because it will require setting standards and quotas for each corporation and individual that hopes to get the tax incentive. If you cannot agree on these among yourselves I will be happy to help you but there will be a fee for my services.

The next part of my plan is also complicated and will be really hard on the people that want these tax breaks. However, there will be billions of dollars at stake and they are the best and brightest our nation has to offer so I think they can handle it. In “No Child Left Behind” the onus of education is on the teacher. His or Her pay depends on it. In my plan the onus of employment is on the employer. Their tax break depends on it. If a kid does not want to learn the teacher must find a way to make that child learn. If an employee does not want to work at bettering their skills to make them fit the open jobs then the employer must find a job that fits them or make sure they get the training they need to fit into the job. I know that this will be tough for them because my wife is a teacher and I know how tough it is for her. However, I am sure they can make it work. My wife was up all night last night during Summer Break trying to make sure she was as prepared to do just what I am describing for her kids and she only has a salary of around $40,000 at steak. These corporations have billions at steak. They can make it work.

This plan will work to fix the economy. The tax cuts will be assured to do what they were intended to do and people will get back to work. I predict that if you were to implement my plan you would see unemployment drop from around 10% to around 4% by January 2013. The corporations will be happy because they are still getting tax cuts and our debt will get smaller because we have more people working and the economy will be happy because the new workers will start buying stuff again.

Finally I would like to provide you with a plan to eliminate the national debt and solve our current issue with the debt ceiling and our nation’s credit rating. It seems to me that you guys are having trouble agreeing on thing and this is not good. You do realize that if you cannot work together to fix our current crisis that none of you will get elected again. I know you realize this because you are all intelligent people and anyone with a functioning brain can see that. Polls are showing both parties have unfavorable ratings and there is a huge anti-incumbent sentiment in our nation. My plan helps you fix that. Well OK it is not really my plan. Once again I am not reinventing the wheel; I am merely borrowing an idea from someone else who is a lot smarter than I am. In this case I am borrowing an idea from Warren Buffett. This is Warren Buffet’s plan. You just pass a law that says that any time there's a deficit of more than three percent of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election. Now I know you may not like this but really it is nothing more than we the people holding you accountable the way we are currently holding teachers accountable and the way I propose that we hold these big corporations and wealthy business owners accountable. You see what I am proposing is to make what you considered real world for the teachers something that is in fact real world. It would be real world for them, real world for big business, and real world for the wealthy and real world for you. It is not that outlandish to people like me. However, I must admit that I get paid on commission so if I do not make the sale I do not get paid at all and that is real world to me.

Sincerely,

Brian A Coffman