We Must Tackle Inflation.
During my Listening Tour, the issue that reigns supreme with our friends, neighbors, and local business owners are gas prices, paying for groceries, and housing costs. More than one quarter of local voters attending our listening tour and talking with us at their doorstep say that inflation and the cost of living will have the largest impact on their vote in November.
As a woman, mom of two, and local homeowner who runs a small business, I know how vital this issue is and I understand why it ranks as the top concern across demographic lines, such as race, gender, age, and income level here in Western Forsyth.
I’m a mom, live music lover, and a history buff, not a prize-winning economist, but you can hardly walk through downtown Clemmons or Lewisville or anywhere else in West Forsyth County without folks talking about what has made our prices so sky high; some claiming it is demand-induced, largely the result of high spending in response to the pandemic. Small business owners around here say they still haven’t recovered from pandemic-induced supply shortages and demand shifts, possibly exacerbated by market power and market manipulation. What I know is we need to fix it.
What I can’t figure out is why Jeff Zenger hasn’t done a single thing to try to fight it.
How To Use This Plan
Our Fight Inflation in NC Plan can serve as a values guide for local policymakers to take swift action on this urgent challenge to North Carolina families and businesses and set up long-term, durable policies to keep prices low and our economy strong in the years to come. Our families and businesses deserve better than they’ve been getting from Raleigh, and as our next State Representative I‘ll work to take better care of our pocketbooks.
1. Cut taxes and regulations so families can keep more of the money they earn.
As our next State Representative, I will help North Carolina work to fight inflation by reducing unfair taxes, fighting to keep our taxes low, ending the gender pay gap, and reducing unfair regulations that keep it hard to do business in NC. As a successful small business owner myself, I have seen first-hand how North Carolina’s small businesses create jobs for the people in Forsyth County and help grow our economy. Right now too many business owners say they can’t deal with onerous regulations that drive up the cost of doing business here. Eliminating or minimizing regulations will drive economic growth and reduce costs on entrepreneurs, workers, and consumers.
As our next State Representative I will also fight for the creation of regulatory sandboxes – a new and successful legal classification that creates a space where participating North Carolina businesses won’t be subject to onerous regulations, usually for a limited amount of time. Regulatory sandboxes allow new businesses to develop more easily – which can create jobs and opportunities for communities. We can debate how long companies can stay in the sandbox, or what we allow in the sandbox, but we can all agree that we should do more to help new companies start up here to help our economy. This is one way to do that.
Additionally, did you know there are nearly 300,000 regulations overseeing new businesses in North Carolina? As our next State Representative, I will audit those regulations and fight to pare them back to make it easier on our friends and family to start businesses here.
2. Expand our labor force.
As our next State Representative I will fight to bolster North Carolina’s extremely talented and diverse workforce and keep workers’ incentives aligned with economic conditions by indexing unemployment benefits to economic conditions, expanding unemployment work search requirements, and looking at opting out of federal restrictions that are keeping more North Carolinians on welfare.
As our next State Representative, I will also work to reform some of our burdensome occupational licensing laws to make it easier for workers, especially those with lower incomes, to find employment. It is high time we audit North Carolina’s onerous licensing laws that make it difficult for people to find work.
3. Increase our housing supply.
As a 20-year Forsyth County homeowner myself, I know many of you already know North Carolina has a shortage of affordable homes. Recently the National Low Income Housing Coalition determined there are 326,751 extremely low-income households in North Carolina, but only 130,930 affordable rental homes. By 2030 new home construction led by luxury developers like Jeff Zenger who continue to place profits over people will fall well short of the need for an additional 900,000 houses created by population growth, research shows. The NC League of Municipalities has called housing affordability in the state “a crisis,” and I agree.
As our next State Representative, I will fight to increase the supply of low-income housing in the following ways:
A. Fully support the new North Carolina Housing Finance Agency (NCHFA) and their new $750 million in revenue bonds to continue its efforts.
B. Fully support existing federal programs to address increasing homeownership like: HUD’s Home Investment Partnership Programs, the Self-Help Homeownership Opportunity Program, and the Housing Choice Voucher program, all of which provide rental assistance to low-income households in North Carolina.
C. Reform our zoning rules to make land more available.
D. Allow more housing density in highly attractive areas.
E. Reduce regulations that block the development of new homes.
F. Speeding up permit approvals.
G. Removing minimum lot requirements and minimum square footage requirements.
While we do need federal funding to address low income housing, the truth of the matter is that leadership has to come at the local level. And right now we are lacking that leadership on this issue, and our families and community are suffering for that lack.
4. Aggressively increase competition where we can.
In the last year, airline fares have increased 25 percent while airline industry profits have soared. A major reason is lack of competition in key markets. This is true across many industries.
A great national example of this is that right now our federal DOT has a unique opportunity to increase competition in the Washington DC market by using the recently passed FAA Reauthorization Bill to reduce the dominance of a few carriers in the long-haul airline market at Washington National Airport. There are letters being passed around via email and online asking people to sign on supporting the effort. I have signed on. I know some of you have, too. There’s no reason we can’t do the same thing locally with gas retailers, groceries, and housing.
5. End the gender pay gap.
The truth is the single easiest way to raise wages is to end the current gender pay gap in North Carolina. If women were paid the same as men for the same job, tens of thousands of North Carolina children would rise above the poverty level immediately, and a huge financial burden would be lifted from current social programs. So how do we do that?
Make it legal to discuss your salary on the job. If workers want to compare salaries, let them do it. It only benefits employers to regulate salary conversations. Also, make it illegal to hide salary/ compensation when people apply for jobs. As our next State Representative, I will fight to require companies to openly display the compensation offered for a job.