Narcisse wants to help restart Iowa's economic 'engine'

It's a subtlety lost on many folks, but Jon Narcisse is trying to explain the difference between engines and motors.

In the case of Iowa's economy, he wants to fire up the economic engine. A motor is powered from without, he said. An engine is powered from within and, in the case of Iowa, Narcisse believes its economic engine ought to be fueled by the restoration of the food industry.

“Currently Iowans grow fuel, grow feed, and raise meat, while purchasing 85 to 90 percent of the food consumed in our state from outside Iowa,” he said, “despite 25 percent of the world's best farmland being located within our borders.”

Narcisse, a former Polk County Democratic chairman, Des Moines school board member, businessman and radio host, is running on the Iowa Party ticket.

He's proposing a 10-step plan to rebuild the Iowa economy that starts with phasing out corporate incomes taxes, base property taxes on the purchase price regardless of what improvements are made, roll back sales tax to 3 percent over four years, lower the state's top income tax bracket to 6 percent, not tax overtime and preserve federal deductibility.

However, before cutting taxes, Narcisse said it's necessary to cut spending. Not simply slowing the growth of state spending, “but actually eliminating obsolete, ineffective and wasteful government programs and positions.”

Narcisse also calls for illegal immigration reform to prevent rising unemployment, restore a competitive wage scale in the construction trades, for example, and open more jobs to teens, college students and the elderly.

He also calls for urban and rural development initiatives to address aging and decaying neighborhoods in both cities and smaller communities. He also wants to create a “pipeline from Iowa's restored family farm food producers to daily urban farmer markets.”

He proposes creation of rural enterprise zones to bring people back to the land and “cultivate a generation of small family farmers as the core group serving in the creation of an Iowa fruit and vegetable economy.”

He'd improve transportation access by using inmate labor to fix county roads.

Narcisse wants to eliminate most tax credits, which he calls “reckless and irresponsible.” He would use tax credits to encourage investment in his urban and rural enterprises zones.

His economic development plan relies on corporate and property tax reform and other steps “to end state government's failed economic development efforts.”

“The free market should decide what is a good investment or not, rather than a taxpayer-financed bureaucrat,” Narcisse said.

Narcisse's plan can be found at his campaign website,

www.narcisseforgovernor.com.