Main Street America Comes First for Sen. Cory Gardner

What’s one thing independent insurance agents and legislators have in common? The work they do and the decisions they make should help Main Street America thrive.

During his keynote address at the Big “I” Legislative Conference Breakfast, Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colorado) gave an overview of the progress the Trump Administration has made thus far for the sake of small businesses and the clients they serve.

Over the last three months, “the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate have worked with the Administration to reduce regulations by more than $85 billion in the U.S. economy,” Sen. Gardner noted. “We also reduced the amount of paperwork required by all of you by more than 54 million hours.”

What’s yet to come for the communities independent agents serve every day? Gardner touched on three areas:

Tax reform. “How can we have a tax reform package that lowers the burden for American families and lets them invest their money the way they want to—instead of the way Washington thinks they should?” Sen. Gardner asked. “Keep government out of the way of American work.”

Sen. Gardner is from Yuma, Colorado, a tiny town on the eastern plains of the state. “That small town is primarily farmers and ranchers,” he explained. “I realized if we’re going to find new ways to keep them on the farm, and find new ways to bring new generations of farmers and ranchers back to the eastern plains, we need people to stand up and fight for economic opportunity.”

Doing that requires economic growth, Sen. Gardner said. “Every 1% in GDP growth creates hundreds of thousands of jobs. It brings billions of dollars into the U.S. treasury because more people are earning more money.”

“We can lower our tax rates,” Sen. Gardner summarized. “I know there’s a number of you who have concerns about how we do that. Working together, we can have a bill that represents the best ideas to reduce tax burdens that allows us to meet all our goals.”

Infrastructure. In the senator’s home state of Colorado, “we have thousands of people moving into the city every day. I’m sure if any of you have been to Denver recently, you’d think that the state bird is a construction crane. We have a highway system that looks like it did in the 1960s.”

Tax reform will help create a “robust infrastructure”—which will also translate into improving the livelihood of American families, Sen. Gardner noted. “We need to make sure roads and bridges meet the needs of the modern-day economy. Our families are too important to be stuck in traffic all day when they’re trying to get to and from work.”

Health care. “What we have in terms of health care continues to increase in costs for the American people,” Sen. Gardner stressed. “Thousands of people have lost their health insurance plans and had their doctors cancel on them.”

In Colorado, 150,000 people saw their health insurance cost increase by 77% in the last few years, Sen. Gardner pointed out. “That cannot continue,” he said. “The promise that the cost would be lowered by $2,500 a family was broken. We need a replacement for the Affordable Care Act that gives quality of care. We know there’s a difference between access and coverage. So how we can make sure people have access to that insurance through affordable coverage?”

Like insurance solutions, every legislative decision should revolve around safety and well-being—not just cost, Sen. Gardner said. “If the cost outweighs the benefit, maybe it’s not the best thing for us to be moving forward.”

Jordan Reabold is IA assistant editor.