U.S. Senators come together to add new legislation to Jobs Act

By Alexandra Carrera

May 22, 2012 11:35 AM EDT

Senator Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Sen. Marco Rubio, (R-Fla.) will introduce legislation today that will be added on to the Jobs Act that was signed into law earlier this year.

Along with Senators Christopher Coons (D-Del.) and Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), Warner and Rubio are introducing the Startup Act 2.0, which is dedicated to helping new businesses add employees and improve the fragile economy.

Senator Warner admitted that "Eighty percent of all the new jobs that have been created in the last 20 years have been created by new businesses."

While the bill passed earlier this year improved access to capital for new businesses, the bill would take a comprehensive approach to helping them have better access to potential employees.

The legislation's main component is the conception of two new visas for legal immigrants: an "entrepreneur's visa" to allow immigrants creating jobs to stay put and a "STEM visa" for U.S.-educated foreign students who graduate with a master's or Ph.D. in science, technology, engineering or mathematics.

"You read about Microsoft moving thousands of research jobs to China and India because they can't hire enough Americans in those fields," Warner revealed. "Why would we go out and train some of the world's best and brightest and then send them home if we can't fill those jobs with Americans? ... This is to keep these jobs here."

The bill would also reduce the per-country limits for employment-based immigrant visas. Some of its other conditions involve:

making the exemption of capital-gains taxes permanent on the sale of certain small-business stock held for at least five years;

creating targeted research and development tax credits for businesses that are less than five years old and with less than $5 million in annual receipts;

using current federal funding to support taxpayer-supported university schemes designed to bring research to the marketplace more quickly;

demanding that all government agencies conduct a cost-benefit analysis of all proposed rules and regulations with an economic impact of $100 million or more.