In Republican Congressional candidate Randy Altschuler's 10-point jobs plan you will find his idea for helping veterans returning home. Like almost all of his ideas, it helps business men, especially wealthy businessmen, more than the people who it's supposed to help. He proposes that we;
"Provide employers with an effective tax credit for each veteran they hire by enabling employers to expense 150% of a veteran's wages for the first three years they are employed. It would then return to the standard 100%
While this sounds reasonable at first you soon realize that he is not so much helping veterans as literaly showering money on the people who hire them.
After his career as an outsourcing pioneer, according to Wikipedia "In 2001 (Mr. Altschuler) co-founded an electronic waste (e-waste), recycling company Cloud Blue Technologies, which is based in, Norcross Georgia, having moved there in 2011 from Alpharetta GA.[9][10] Altschuler serves as the company’s executive chairman and works out of their Port Jefferson, NY office."
It looks like Mr. Altschuler or somebody like him would profit far more than any single veteran from this plan. Logistics are the military's stock in trade and Mr. Altschuler would benefit greatly by hiring veterans regardless. But allowing him or anybody else to take enormous tax credits as a reward for doing so is petting the dog when the cat killed the mouse.
For example an employer could hire ten truck drivers at $60K each. They would get to work hard at the prevailing wage and make an honest living.
But the employer would be able to claim an expense of $900,000 for his taxes. He would probably pocket an extra $100 Grand in reduced taxes from that. Mr. Altschulers belief that it's the beleagured employers who need to be helped comes shining through.
That's not to say that we shouldn't be doing all that we can to help veterans make up for the lost time they sacrificed for us. We should'nt forget that many sacrificed even more than that. But let's help the veterans not the businessmen.
With Tim Bishop the Democrats have already put in place reasonable tax credits as incentives, not rewards, for companies that hire veterans, even more so for disabled veterans.
But in addition to that they have implemented programs programs that help the veterans themselves rather than the bosses that hire them. so veterans quickly get certified for the civilian jobs that correspond to the jobs they did while serving. They've expanded access to education. They've created the Veteran's Job Bank, the Veteran's Gold card and supported Veterans entrepeneurship. They've challenged the private sector to hire vets and they've helped increase hiring of vet's in law enforcement and land conservation. They've created onling tools like the Veteran's Job Bank.
The Democrat's have made it easier for vets to buy homes and get the health care they need. They've cleaned up the backlog of disability claims and redefined psychological injuries.
I can't list all the things the Democrats are trying to do for our Veterans and it's still not enough, but Mr. Altschuler's way of thinking is completely foreign to me.
