Contact: Gerry Fritz, (703) 812-2062                                                                      [email protected]

For Immediate Release  January 25, 2012

Washington, D.C. – Associated Builders and Contractors’ (ABC) 2012 National Chairman Eric Regelin, president of Granix, LLC, Ellicott City, Md., today said the vision President Obama offered in his State of the Union address last night is no different than what he has promoted during his past three years in office.  

“In his speech, the president said ‘we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, and everyone does their fair share,” said Regelin. “Yet, one of his first official acts when he took office was to sign an executive order on project labor agreements that discriminates against the 87 percent of the nation’s construction workforce that chooses not to belong to a labor union.  

“It is not clear at this point what President Obama meant when he spoke of removing red tape from construction projects, but any sincere effort to do so must involve the elimination of government-mandated project labor agreements and Davis-Bacon wage requirements on taxpayer-funded construction projects,” Regelin said.  

“The president’s insistence on a so-called ‘millionaire’s tax’ to fund his various priorities will expose the 80 percent of construction firms that are taxed at the individual rate to a significant tax increase,” said Regelin. “This does not represent a ‘fair share’ that will help the economy and create jobs, but rather the president’s continued use of the nation’s job creators as his personal piggy bank.  

“The nation’s construction industry continues to struggle with an unemployment rate of 16 percent – nearly twice the national average,” Regelin said. “However, the president’s only solution to fix the economy is to hand out favors to special interests and punish those who work hard and take risks."      

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Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) is a national association with 74 chapters representing nearly 22,000 merit shop construction and construction-related firms with nearly two million employees. Visit us at www.abc.org.