GETTING OUR ECONOMY BACK ON TRACK
These are unique and challenging times. After the health and safety of our loved ones and most vulnerable, ensuring our economy once again thrives is Lee’s top priority. To do so, we must fight for lower taxes, build up our small businesses, and move essential manufacturing out of China and back to America.
Lee was selected to the bipartisan White House Opening Up America Again Congressional Group and bipartisan Congressional Coronavirus Task Force. He voted to support urgent relief and provide $370 billion in loans for our small businesses and additional funding for emergency unemployment coverage for workers impacted by the quarantine.
When this funding ran dry due to Democratic Party inaction, Lee worked with the White House to ensure Suffolk County’s needs were represented in the compromise and that these programs were replenished to provide essential aid to small businesses and workers impacted.
He also successfully fought for Suffolk County taxpayers, working to secure $257 million for Suffolk County in coronavirus emergency funding and worked with the Treasury Secretary and Federal Reserve to help Suffolk qualify for special loan assistance through the Municipal Liquidity Facility.
Lee also knows that as we rebuild our economy we must never again rely on Communist China to manufacture our essential equipment like ventilators and PPE.
To get back on track, we must reverse years of tax increases and job-killing, anti-growth policies coming out of New York City and Albany.
Lee has consistently fought against job crushing taxes in New York City, Albany and Washington. In the State Senate, Lee helped reduce middle-income tax rates to the lowest level in 60 years, co-sponsored the nation’s strongest property tax cap, and led the successful effort to repeal the MTA Payroll Tax for 80 percent of employers.
When Congress voted to reduce the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction in 2017 to a cap of $10,000, Lee Zeldin voted against it. Since then, Lee has been among the most vocal leaders in Congress, working across the aisle to introduce and cosponsor multiple bills to have the SALT deduction fully and permanently reinstated and deliver additional tax relief as well. However, to actually solve the core problem we face with high state and local taxes, it’s critical for Albany to step up and help deliver desperately needed tax relief. During his time in Congress, Lee has helped lead the successful effort to secure 20 tax relief provisions into law for Long Island businesses and families with the PATH Act, and cosponsors multiple bills to permanently reinstate the full SALT deduction.
While some choose to hijack Congress for self-serving, highly partisan, political agendas, Lee was one of the most outspoken voices urging colleagues to focus on economic growth, which included recent enactment of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) to promote better trade and more jobs for our country.
Lee worked with the Secretary of Energy to secure $2 billion in federal funding earlier this year to build the Dream Machine electron-ion collider right here in NY-1 at Brookhaven National Lab. This project will not only fund groundbreaking scientific research but will also fund high-paying jobs and huge investments back into our community. Lee worked hard with Brookhaven National Lab and the Secretary of Energy directly to make sure that these jobs and research dollars would be headed to Long Island and not Virginia.
Lee also understands that businesses can’t operate, people can’t get to work, and we can’t take our kids to schools without safe roads and bridges. In Congress, Lee helped lead the successful effort to pass a 5 year fully funded highway bill, which included his bipartisan Safe Bridges Act that has already resulted in tens of millions of dollars for Hospital Road bridge and Smith Point bridge.
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