The next governor needs to reduce spending and remove any barriers for small businesses to flourish, said Pennsylvania Attorney General and Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Corbett during a visit to Archway Press Inc. in Sharon Hill Tuesday.
Corbett called the family-owned Archway a success story in Pennsylvania for weathering the economic storm; though owner Tom Gaffney said the business has taken its lumps too, with a full-time workforce reduced from 20 percent to nine employees and productivity down about 20 or 25 percent in the last two years.
Corbett said such small businesses need government to be on their side. He has proposed cutting business taxes and holding the line on new taxes, streamlining tax paperwork, aligning state and federal investment expenses, and eliminating the inheritance tax.
“In the course of this campaign, we have developed a detailed plan to help grow small businesses just like Archway Press and our plan calls for reducing regulations that would stifle growth,” he said.
Corbett later said he would also like to address Medicare eligibility errors and reduce the state fleet by 10 percent, but did not reveal other cuts his administration might make.
When asked about a statement he made earlier this month that “the jobs are there, but if we keep extending unemployment, people are just going to sit there,” Corbett pointed to the classified section of the Philadelphia Inquirer that promises “thousands of jobs here (in print) and online.”
“So you make the distinction whether there are jobs out there or not,” he said to an Inquirer reporter. “I’m reporting what you report. Your newspaper says there’s thousands of jobs. Do I know that to be true? I don’t. I’ve got to trust your newspaper.”
Corbett would not say if he thinks people are not taking advantage of those jobs, but did say he wanted to focus on the future and job development, not what he had said in the past.
“Do you have a classified list? Are there jobs on there? … How would you interpret that?” he said. “All I know is we’re looking to make more jobs and employ more people in Pennsylvania. We’re looking to reduce that unemployment rate from 9.1 percent. That’s what we should be doing as a candidate, that’s what we will do as governor.”
According to a recent Quinnipiac University poll, Corbett is leading over his opponent, Democratic Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato, 43 percent to 37 percent. A Rasmussen Reports poll conducted July 14 gave Corbett a 10-point lead with 48 percent to Onorato’s 38 percent.