Dold files payroll tax relief bill

Tenth District Congressman Robert Dold has filed legislation that would provide payroll tax relief to businesses that hire long-term unemployed workers.

The Kenilworth Republican — who filed the bill hours before President Barack Obama put forth the idea in his jobs speech last week — says he's long supported such an idea.

“We had no idea what the president was going to say,” he said in an interview Tuesday.

Dold's legislation — announced Monday in the company of two suburban business representatives, would amend the Internal Revenue Code by suspending the 6.2 percent payroll tax for both employer and employee for one year.

Each worker would, by signed affidavit, have to show that he or she had been receiving unemployment or had exhausted all unemployment options.

Dold estimated that for each new worker making $40,000, the legislation would mean a net savings of $2,500 for a business.

Matt Eggermeyer, vice president of Wheeling-based Keats Manufacturing, said the legislation would help his company purchase updated metal stamping machinery, which it largely has been unable to do in recent years.

George Clarke, CEO of Skokie-based Perfect Clean, said his company would ideally invest some of those dollars into training.

Dold's legislation, filed last Thursday, has no co-sponsors yet from either side of the aisle. Dold said he is “certainly hoping” it will gain bipartisan support in Congress.

It doesn't mean, however, that he'll be signing onto Obama's jobs plan, which was released in full by the president later Monday.

“I would like to take a look at the package. I'm concerned with (the country's) deficits,” Dold said. “I think we need to be reasonable, realistic about what it is that we can do and what it is that we're promising to do,” he said.