With trillion dollar deficits and national unemployment in excess of 10% (before factoring in employees forced into part-time positions and those terminally unemployed), President Obama is under significant pressure to create the jobs he promised during the campaign.

Interestingly the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was not invited to the Summit – even though the Chamber represents over 3,000,000 businesses throughout the U.S.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/dec/02/obama-policy-critics-not-invited-to-jobs-summit/

http://www.ajc.com/news/atlantans-others-head-to-222929.html

While various corporate tax incentives, including hiring credits are being considered as part of the Summit, there are already a myriad of federal and state tax incentives which provide annual hiring credits ranging from $500 to $15,000 per “qualified” employee hired.  Many of these programs are Location-Based Incentive Credits (LBICs), requiring the business to be located in specific economically disadvantaged regions (over 8,000).  In addition there are a number of programs which can generate hiring credits regardless of the business location.

Hopefully the Administration will explore and add additional hiring credits.   Congress and the states should also invest funds to improve the marketing and education of the existing federal and state hiring credit programs to make sure employers understand that they can dramatically reduce their labor costs on new hires – as well as some employees hired in prior years.  Read more about these valuable incentives @: www.blakechristian.com

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich held his own “Real” Jobs Summit today to highlight his proposed fixes.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125980635501974009.html

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=34637

Republican Congressman Boehner’s job creation/ retention letter to the President can be found at:

http://www.employernation.org/letter.aspx?utm_source=whereoware&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=OpenLetter-Prosp-Dec09