Tom Pauken: Bring Manufacturing Jobs Back to the U.S.

I had the opportunity yesterday to hear from Tom Pauken.  He’s the chair of the Texas Workforce Commission and author of the book, Bringing America Home.  He also served in the Reagan Administration.  He spoke at the Eastside Conservative Club in Altoona, IA.  He noted in his speech that the United States is restructuring downward – the jobs we are creating are typically lower paying service-oriented jobs.  China on the other hand is restructuring upwards.  This is largely to do with the loss of manufacturing jobs in the United States.  He noted much of this is due to our “onerous corporate tax system.”  He suggests a corporate tax plan that would make us competitive once again and bring back free trade.  He believes the U.S. should scrap the current corporate tax structure and replace it with an 8% border-adjusted business consumption tax.

He noted that we get hit by border adjustments (which he calls “silent tariffs”) in other nations, giving the example of Germany’s at 18% and France at 19%.  This makes it difficult to compete.  He also suggests that not only do we need to grow the private sector, but we also need to address the out-of-control federal spending, have a foreign policy that is guided by our national interests, and notes that if we don’t fix our culture that everything else we do will be for naught. 

Here’s the video of his speech:

He also had a Q&A time after his speech. If you watch closely you’ll see a newly-minted Tea Party celebrity paying *rapt* attention to what Paulken had to say.  I’m sure he was multi-tasking, the rest of us were paying rapt attention.

I also had a chance to speak with him afterwards, since many of my questions regarding expanding the private sector, in particular manufacturing were answered, I wanted to drill down on his statements on foreign policy, culture, and wanted his opinion about the job growth seen in Texas. A side note, we started our conversation and about a minute in my camera turned off, I realized I hadn’t been recording. My mistake. The first question was related to foreign policy.