We therefore urge Congress and the administration to immediately support at least a temporary extension of all the tax relief passed in the prior decade

   Spending is also going through the roof and deficits right along with it. Instead of expanding entitlements, policymakers should control and modernize them without further delay.

   Sustained economic growth can help bring down the deficit, but we will also need to generate additional revenues. Government should raise these funds without undermining economic growth or competitiveness, for example, by selling $1.7 trillion worth of oil, gas, and shale leases.

   The president has also said that millions of American jobs can be created by doublingU.S. exports in five years, and we agree. We can start by immediately passing three pending free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea and reviving global trade talks known as the Doha Round.

   Millions of jobs, as well as our quality of life, depend on modernizing all forms of American infrastructure. We must remove the regulatory, legal, and financial roadblocks to private investment.

   Doing so would unleash up to $180 billion and create more than 1.5 million jobs in the next decade in water infrastructure alone. Incentives and legal surety for investments in energy projects would also create hundreds of thousands of jobs, as would a multiyear, federal surface transportation bill.

   Finally, as I discussed in my last column, the avalanche of new regulations is precisely the wrong prescription for our economy. Instead of strangling the private sector with burdensome regulations, we must enable it to nimbly respond to changing market conditions.

   The business community wants to help our economy and our country succeed. The surest way for this to happen is for government to create the right conditions for economic recovery.

   We don ’t want to wait until after the November elections. We’re ready to start today, and we don’t care who gets the credit.

Originally published 2010. Reprinted by permission, uschamber.com, 2010.
Copyright© 2010,U.S. Chamber of Commerce.