Tom Malinowski meets with community business leaders in Phillipsburg

(Phillipsburg, NJ) Tom Malinowski co-hosted a breakfast round table with Phillipsburg Mayor Steve Ellis for area small business owners, local developers, investors, and city planners to discuss the challenges and opportunities presented by local development efforts.

Business leaders brought up their concerns on issues like regulation, healthcare prices, and tax reform, among other issues.

On regulation, in response to concerns about overly complicated and oppressive regulations, Tom said often time there could be too much bureaucracy and rigidity that stifle a business owner’s ability to function without a department of lawyers.

“For small businesses, we should be looking at if they follow the spirit of the law, without looking at the specifics of it,” Malinowski said.

A business owner in attendance said due to rising healthcare costs he was having trouble purchasing insurance for his employees, while another could afford the insurance, but was concerned over market volatility.

In response, Tom called for taking immediate, bipartisan action to stabilize the healthcare market, like reintroducing cost-sharing subsidies, and offered his campaign policy of introducing a Medicare public option as a way to drive up competition to decrease costs.

Finally, some business owners brought up concerns over the elimination of the SALT deduction.

“We’re getting hit hard on that,” Malinowski said. “It’s a deliberate hit… to get us too spend less on schools, and the environment, which we don’t want to do.”

Tom said there was a need for tax reform that would close loopholes that multinational corporations use to shield their profits from taxes — at the cost of small businesses who can’t afford to get around the law.

“You guys, I assume, are not making subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands,” Malinowski said, to laughs.

After the breakfast, Tom traveled with community leaders to discuss the Riverfront Development Zone and to open the Warren County Campaign office.