Forecast 2016: Pete Sessions Says He is Not For Housing Tax on Transportation, or Trump, But Would Support Him IF He’s the Party’s Nominee

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Pete Session at MetroTex

Note: I tried to live blog for you this morning, then lost my connection – good ole AT&T!

Good morning! I’m sitting here at MetroTex’s Forecast 2016 and Britt Fair is the emcee. Seems like every Realtor is Dallas is here. Pete Sessions is about to take the stage, followed by Jim Gaines, of course, Chief Economist and Everything at the Real Estate Center, Texas A&M University… a panel about relocation (who the heck are all these peeps moving here and where do they come from?) with Karen Greene, Director of Corporate Relocation Services at Ebby Halliday Real Estate, Frank Obringer, President of Dallas-Fort Worth Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage (and a recent transplant from Florida) , and Ginny Taylor, Senior Vice President of Relocation Services at Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s International Realty.

Oh yes: we heard from Steven Garza first, from the Texas Association of Realtors on proposition 1, which we will talk more about.

OK, Pete Sessions is up. Starts by telling us how excited he is that we are getting rain next week, nice to know!

Dallas, he says is at the epicenter of world events… but we have fewer people actually employed today than we did in 1980. We need to get back to where we have been in those 80’s: job creation. Realtors get this because people need jobs to buy houses.

“We learned years ago that Realtors understood how important it is to create jobs to sustain our schools and cities,” he says. “This is the way we were.”

Then he tells us about the problems with patents. This is relevant because he says the Obama administration has taken the incentive out of creating patents in the U.S., where jobs could be created from the inventions. Patents are now being created everywhere else in the world because we took away the incentive to have them in the U.S. An example, I guess, of how we force entrepreneurs overseas.

Government spending: we have had the most significant spending reductions in modern history… but Americans still expect more. (Reductions, I assume.) We are competing against infrastructure spending and military spending, he says. Our growth in spending is related to Medicare, Medicaid and Obamacare, and Social Security. We have 8,000 people retiring every day in America, those jobs being replaced by part-time workers, ostensibly because part-time contract labor is cheaper for corporate America, and may eclipse Obamacare. (Note: yesterday at the Keller Williams Luxury Real Estate Outlook, Keith Hall from the National Association for the Self-Employed said there are 23 million self-employed and micro businesses in the U.S. Wow!) . Corporate U.S. profits are lagging. During 2004- 2007, he says, President Bush went on a spending spree related to military, transportation and infrastructure, which was 20% of our total spending. We let the free enterprise system grow then.

Today free enterprise is not growing. We have less money to spend and dollars for infrastructure are dwindling.

So: 95% of the world’s population lives outside the US. Sessions is trying to build trade agreements outside of China through the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

“We want to trade with counties who play by the rules,” he says.

China and Russia apparently do not play by the rules: Ripoffs!  Pete relayed a story out of Shanghai in May, from the head of the Coca Cola Company: Coca Cola apparently has a license with 50 million Chinese, but the man who runs the company said he can buy coca cola anywhere in China. It’s just made & sold by the Chinese government. The Chinese just copy all our stuff, reproduce it and sell it in China with no regard. Ripoffs!

So patent reform is Pete’s baby, as is protecting the mortgage interest deduction, like kind exchanges and the Capital Gains tax. Tax reform should not be a zero sum game, he said. We need to grow our economy, remove the excesses of the government from our day to day lives.

We also have the highest corporate tax rate in the world, which is turning business elsewhere besides the U.S.

Here’s how Pete summarized his morning talk in his newsletter:

This morning I participated in the MetroTex Association of Realtors Forecast 2016 event. I gave a legislative update and discussed how current initiatives would impact the North Texas business and real estate communities. The House has passed numerous pieces of legislation to help the housing market, including H.R. 685, the Mortgage Choice Act of 2015, and H.R. 650, the Access to Manufactured Housing Act.  In addition, at the end of this month Congress is expected to consider a long-term transportation funding bill to address our nation’s growing infrastructure needs. I have diligently worked with North Texans to expand and bolster our existing infrastructure, ease the regulatory burdens on homebuyers, and fight against this Administration’s continued assault on the free-enterprise system. Despite interference from Washington the North Texas economy is booming and I remain committed to ensuring our region has the tools necessary to thrive.

Realtor Questions — what’s happening with the Speaker of the House?

Sessions: We have three distinctly different groups — moderates, centers, and the freedom caucus. Boehner made probably too many decisions without consulting the various sections. Everyone is waiting on Paul Ryan. Whoever gets this job, it will be their last political job.  “For the good of the country, pray for whoever the Speaker is going to be,” said Sessions.

Realtor Questions — The Donald

Sessions: “He is an interesting character. As long as he is on TV, Mrs. Clinton will come back. He is consuming millions of dollars of TV time…”

The Donald has capitalized on a deep seated feeling in this country that we are losing what America really is. This comes at a time when there is a strong cross wind from Europe, which is losing it’s identity. In America, Pete Sessions also believes we are losing what America is. Right or wrong, Trump has hit on the birth right citizenship. How we define birth right citizenship is not in the constitution. We have more than 60,000 children born in this country of dual citizenship. People move here,  have their babies, and then move back to their home country carrying dual citizenship. And we are losing control of our borders. Still…

“I’m probably not for him,” says Sessions, “but I will vote for him if he is our party’s nominee.”

Realtor Questions: Tax on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s credit risk guarantee fees (g-fees) to fund transportation programs.

Sessions: The NAR and most Realtors oppose this, said Sessions, and it will impact low and moderate income homebuyers. Now is not the time to go and add further taxes to the home buying process. This will be a call by the next speaker of the House. The problem is we need money for infrastructure spending. Up to Paul Ryan to come up with the alternative.

“We have a territorial tax system,” said Sessions. “It’s skewed against us bringing back money made overseas. We are investing American business dollars in Europe to save paying taxes in U.S. We need an extra ten billion for a six year plan… to repair infrastructure.”

Realtor Questions: What About Our Military?

Sessions: Our world is more dangerous, not less dangerous. ISIS represents a camaraderie of people taking equipment we left behind. Our military finds itself in a crunch. We have not been able to grow our economy and hence our government. The military has had to adapt and we are losing 700 members of the military per day. Career military people no longer have jobs. Causing a drain on the lives of dedicated men and women. I believe our next speaker needs to cut a deal with the next president to grow our economy.

Lastly, the world oil market is in total disruption.

The Russians and Chinese are hacking and stealing at record levels. (Note: later we hear how they are also buying U.S. real estate.)

We are paying the price for a big government. This government is still attacking our core viable economic entities. Example: I was a young man when we solved the problem or break up of AT&T.  the bottom line is it was the only company with as many lawyers as government has, AT&T finally got tired of fighting. Not so our government. It continues to fight with rules and regulations and lawyers.

Realtor Questions: Entitlements: any plans to rein in?

Sessions: The people elected Barack Obama twice. They elected conservatives to run the House. The Senate has only come across the line in the last year. We still have constitutional revisions that have to be met. Seven years ago the House froze Congressional pay.

“We put Obamacare on each of us (more cost). We cut spending in House by 35%. That’s what we have done in House. We are trying to mirror what you see and how all of you live.”

The ability to stop government is constitutional. The power of the purse is with House. You cannot take back anything unless it’s law or the Senate and President agrees.

“We voted 60 times to repeal Obamacare. But it takes the House, Senate and president to agree. When you shut down the government, the military goes on half pay and vital government functions go home.”

We are trying as best we can to fight a good battle, said Session, to not lose.

“But we are counting on the American people to change a lot in in the next election.”

 

 

Candy Evans, founder and publisher of CandysDirt.com, is one of the nation’s leading real estate reporters.

2 Comments

  1. Randy on October 17, 2015 at 8:50 am

    Pete Sessions is one of the main problems in the U.S. Why does NRA and Metrotex and Ebby always go to And support conservatives why don’t we ever get opinions from progressives, liberal or non-career politicians

  2. Candy Evans on October 17, 2015 at 11:48 pm

    I like Pete but it would be good to have a view from each party, especially in an election year. Let’s suggest that to MetroTex. Of course, is the other party as friendly to the Realtors? I suspect that has a lot to do with the invitation.

    But I have a question: Pete mentioned AT&T, and they are like so many of these big companies who outsource as much as they can overseas, giving jobs to folks in India or wherever, because the wages and benefits are so much less, and the cost of living is lower. Almost everything we touch is made in China, where it’s cheaper to manufacture. I almost think the ship has sailed on this so far that it’s not coming back. Can you get anyone in the US to work for $3. an hour besides a 10 year old (Maybe)?

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