Sen. Burr bullish on future of economy
By Steve Herring
Published in News on January 6, 2016 1:46 PM
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News-Argus/CASEY MOZINGO
Sen. Richard Burr speaks to the Goldsboro Rotary Club Tuesday at the Lane Tree Golf Club.
The United States can take the dominant role in reviving the global economy, provided the leadership in Washington will lead, Sen. Richard Burr told Goldsboro Rotarians on Tuesday.
That leadership will need to include cutting capital taxes and easing restrictive regulations that prevent businesses from doing what they need to do, Burr said.
The global economy will not improve until the U.S. economy improves, he said.
The U.S. also has to take the leadership role in the fight against terrorism, said Burr, who is chairman of the U.S. Select Committee on Intelligence.
"As a globe we are challenged with the threats that exist," he said. "They are not limited to the United States. They target anywhere and anybody, including Muslims, and Christians and Jews. At some point the world will have to decide that we are going to eliminate this threat.
"It will not be done by the United States alone. It will require a tremendous coalition of partners. But make no mistake about it, until the United States leads, that coalition will not be created, and until the United States leads, the threat will be every bit as real to us as it is to everybody else in the world."
Burr, a Republican running for re-election, said some might interpret those comments to mean he is pessimistic about the future.
"I will tell you I am exactly the opposite," he said. "I am more optimistic than I ever have been about what America can accomplish and more importantly, what we can leave for our children and grandchildren, even with the headwinds that all of you are aware of."
Those headwinds include a $17 trillion national debt and U.S. and global economies growing at an "anemic rate," he said.
The question is what can change that from the standpoint of what the U.S. Congress has control of, Burr said.
Burr said he believes the economy can "drastically" change if the U.S. assumes the role of the "800-pound gorilla" in the world economy for the next 50 years.
That is the single most important issue and opportunity facing the country today, he said.
"Let me suggest that the offices we hold don't have anything to do with us," he said. "As a matter of fact, the roles each of you play in business or did play in business, they weren't about you. They were about the impact you were going to make for the future.
"It was about the next generation. I will tell that when we all start focusing on the decisions that we have to make, whether it is downtown revitalization or the future of Seymour Johnson (Air Force Base) or for that fact the individual business decisions that we make."
Those decisions are not made based with the thought in mind of how they affect the individual, he said. Rather they are made with the thought of how does it take the company, the community and national security forward, Burr said.
"When we think of it that way it really comes into focus what we have to do as a country," he said. "I would suggest to you today the greatest legacy we can leave for our children is an economic opportunity as great as or better than what we inherited from the generation before us."
For that reasons Burr said he hopes the next two years will be focused on what can be done to make the country's corporate tax structure competitive with the rest of the world.
Congress has talked about tax reform before, but never with the opportunity as great as it is today, he said.
"The genie is out of the bottle. The global economy is here," he said.
There has been much talk in Congress about trade agreements including one with Europe that could be every beneficial to North Carolina and the country's agriculture industry, he said.
"It would make us the 800-pound gorilla in the world," he said. "But it is not good enough to pick just one area of what we are good at, and to assure our kids and our grandchildren as good an opportunity means we have got to be the 800-pound gorilla of the entire global economy."
To do that the country must attract "massive amounts" of capital, Burr said.
"The only way to do that is to make sure that the return on investment in the United States is perceived the best opportunity, the safest opportunity in the world," he said. "The only thing that holds us back from that are two things -- one, government regulation and two, corporate tax rates in this country."
Burr said the tax rate needs a massive cut from 34 to no more than 25 percent to make it competitive with the top half of the rest of the world.
Do that and for the next 50 years and America's dominance in the global economy will be evident, he said.
"Make sure corporations can come here and not have onerous regulations that don't permit them to do the businesses that they do," Burr said.
If that happens, the country will see the largest capital influx in to the U.S. that the country and world have ever seen, he said.
Nor is the federal budget going to be balanced by just spending cuts, Burr said.
The country must grow its economy by 4 percent or better annually for at least the next 10 years, he said.
"You can't get to 4 percent without making U.S. corporations competitive globally; without making sure America is the magnet of corporate attraction," he said. "The capital flows from Asia, the Middle East, even from Russia to the United States because the perception and the reality is that the return on the investment is the greatest in the United States you could ever invest in."
North Carolina already has the talent pool to attract investment because of the number of college graduates it produces each year, he said. Now the state needs to match that with the vocational skills in demand in the labor force -- skills employers across the state require for investments to be made in plant expansion, equipment purchases and job creations, Burr said.
"What is the best way to do that?" he said. "Flood the United States with as much capital as you can find. Make capital as cheap and as easy and investment will take place and the lion's share of it will take place in this state."