Congressmans views on business stimulus, taxes

A few hours before President Barack Obama signed the stimulus package into law, U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer toured the newly opened MU Life Sciences Business Incubator, a key component of what could be called Columbia’s economic stimulus plan.
Luetkemeyer, a small business owner before becoming the 9th District’s new congressman, listened with keen interest as the incubator’s director showed him the resources available to high-tech startups renting space in the building on Providence Road.
The business incubator already has two companies preparing to move in, including British company PetScreen, which specializes in canine cancer screening. The recruitment of PetScreen is a great thing, Luetkemeyer said in an interview later that morning at his local office in the Buttonwood Business Center. But then he added, “My concern is, will they stay?”
With U.S. corporate tax rates among the highest in the world, he is concerned that businesses such as PetScreen might stay until they develop their product for the U.S. market and then go abroad to avoid American taxes. Scaring off companies and putting them at a disadvantage in the global market is not going to pull the country out of the recession, he said.
“We gotta find a better way to do this,” the Republican congressman said with an exasperated chuckle. “Even Sweden dropped their taxes the other day.”
Luetkemeyer has a strong pro-business, anti-tax philosophy and has visited a multitude of Columbia businesses since taking the seat vacated by Republican Kenny Hulshof, a Columbia resident.
Luetkemeyer is from St. Elizabeth, a small town between the Lake of the Ozarks and Jefferson City. He owns a 160-acre farm and Luetkemeyer Insurance agency, and his family owns and operates the Bank of St. Elizabeth. Luetkemeyer served three terms in the Missouri House, coming in as a minority member in 1999 and retiring as member of the majority in 2005.    After a close race against former 25th District Rep. Judy Baker, where he won by 2.5 points, he finds himself in the minority party again. Thus far, he’s spent a lot of his time watching as the Democrats pushed through the massive stimulus bill, something he adamantly opposed.
“It’s not going to work,” Luetkemeyer said in the CBT interview. “It’s a very poor bill.” He added that he expects the initiative to raise inflation and interest rates over the next few years.
As the only new member to the Missouri delegation and a minority member of a strongly Democratic House, Luetkemeyer has begun his tenure in the House at a time of intense partisanship and keen public interest in change. Even though much of the time at his new job has been dominated by the scramble to push through the largest federal spending bill in history, he said D.C. is not unlike Jefferson City.
“You do your committee work, you form relationships and coalitions to work on issues and work them through the process,” Luetkemeyer said. “You still have to do your homework. It’s just on a bigger scale. Issues have more national and world importance, and as a result, they take a little more study.”

One of the areas he’s studying right now is close to his heart and, luckily, under the umbrella of one of his committee assignments. Because of his business background, Luetkemeyer landed a spot on the Small Business Committee, which is currently looking at the Small Business Administration’s loan guarantees. He said the stimulus package already has a provision that would increase the guarantee on SBA loans for 12 months, something Luetkemeyer likes because it should encourage lending without any upfront costs.
“Small businesses are where the real jobs are created, and this is where we need to have the help,” he said. “The SBA has always done a good job, an aggressive job, in helping small businesses get started. It’s not a big piece of the overall puzzle, but it’s a nice little piece.”
But overall, the stimulus plan doesn’t do enough for small business, Luetkemeyer said, explaining it contains only four tenths of one percent (more than $3 billion) for small business. And he said he didn’t really hear much support for the bill from constituents, despite ads running against him, encouraging people to call him and tell him to vote yes.
During the debate over the bill in Congress, Luetkemeyer said on the floor that “49 percent of my people are saying ‘no’ to this massive spending bill, and the other 51 percent are saying ‘heck no.'”
And that wasn’t much of an exaggeration, he said.
“Within our district, there may have been less than five people in the course of two weeks that called in and wanted me to support the stimulus package,” he said. “The rest of the hundreds of calls we got, were really ‘no’ and ‘hell no.'”
The problem was that it was touted as a tax-cut and infrastructure-spending bill, Luetkemeyer said, and then rushed through Congress as a spending bill.
“While some of the spending can be justified, it should have gone through the legislative process, the committee process, and let everybody vote on whether this is a good spending item or not,” he said. “A bunch of the stuff in there is very questionable spending, and that’s the portion that really gives me and many others pause.”
Had more time been given to the lawmaking process, Luetkemeyer said he believes the stimulus plan never would have been passed. The true cost of the bill, which includes interest payments and the possible extension of new programs over the coming years, is much higher than the advertised price tag, he added.
“This is the problem I have with the liberal mindset and the liberal way of governing,” Luetkemeyer said. “They believe the money in your pocket is their money, and they’re going to take and do what they want with it and decide when and if they give it back to you.”