Jobs and the Economy

Small businesses constitute 85% of the US workforce. And yet our state policies are not focused on helping this key sector of our economy. I support innovative ideas such as Senator Cantwell’s small-business tax cut which will help craft brewers expand and create jobs.

We can - and must - do more on the state level. We need to promote creative policies that will help generate small business jobs and I'm committed to working with the financial services industry to create partnerships with emerging companies.

As someone who has built a successful business, I understand the hardships that often face entrepreneurs. One of my first initiatives will be to convene a meeting with the business community to create a working group whose goal will be to identify roadblocks in the bureaucracy and help streamline the processes. Our objective isn't to immediately overturn existing regulation, but rather to revisit rules that no longer make sense, update them, or eliminate them entirely where warranted.

By engaging in this process alone, we'll go a long way towards making Washington State a better place to start a new business. The bottom line is that we need to create jobs and we need to be creative in doing so.