CHARLESTON, W.Va. — U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito says Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s plan to give tax breaks to working families and corporations will “enrich” the nation and West Virginia.
“We need to be more competitive in this country,” Capito (R-W.Va.) said two hours before Trump was scheduled to present his economic plan in Detroit Monday afternoon.
The New York businessman plans to call for a moratorium on federal regulations that directly affect small businesses. He will propose an elimination of the death tax, will propose that the corporate business tax be reduced from 35 percent to 15 percent, among other topics.
“If we lower that tax to 15 percent or somewhere in and around that number, many executives had said they would bring their money back into the country and reinvest,” Capito said on Monday’s MetroNews “Talkline.”
Lowering the corporate tax, Capito said, should be devoted to infrastructure and energy production to get people back to work.
“We’ve got to get Americans working again. We have the lowest workforce participation rate than we’ve ever had and certainly in West Virginia we are really feeling it,” she said.
Capito said “we’re getting nothing right now” due to the high tax rate.
“We see large companies like Apple and other who have parked their dollars overseas because the tax rate to bring it back in and reinvest in this country is just punitively high,” she said.
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton plans to offer her economic speech later this week in Michigan. Her campaign released a statement ahead of Trump’s speech Monday saying she would create more jobs than Trump, if elected.
Her campaign said she would create 60,000 jobs, while 19,000 jobs could be lost under a Trump’s presidency.
“Hillary Clinton has offered a plan that would help build an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top – while Donald Trump’s temperament, his record, and his agenda suggest he would do just the opposite,” Hillary for America Senior Policy Advisor Jacob Leibenluft said in the statement.
But Capito said she’s backing Trump for a reason.
“When she (Clinton) says she’s going to put coal miners and coal companies out of work, not matter what else she says, that’s the bottom line for me,” Capito said. “I can’t take another four years of the Obama policies.”