CONCORD – While many Republican legislators feel passionately about social issues, House Republican leadership said the top priorities for their 2012 agenda has to help businesses and citizens recover from the recent recession.

The House is expected later this month to vote on whether to repeal the 4-year-old law legalizing marriage for gay and lesbian couples, but House Majority Leader D.J. Bettencourt, R-Salem, insisted GOP leaders aren’t distracted by it.

“This is not something we need to spend a lot of time on. We need to spend time on doing everything we can to get our citizens back to work,” Bettencourt told reporters.

In outlining their agenda for this year, Republican leadership said the focus will be on pro-business and taxpayer relief.

Social issues often dominate election-year issues, since adoption of a two-year state budget consumes the previous year’s work.

Special-interest groups on the far left and the far right encourage like-minded legislators to champion their issues and force roll call votes in hopes of putting their opponents on the defensive. The 28 bills and three proposed amendments to the state Constitution contained no measures on abortion, gay rights, expanding the right of gun ownership or stripping power from public employee unions.

Bettencourt said when voters put Republicans in charge after the 2010 election, they demanded the focus be on promoting jobs, lowering the cost of energy, expanding educational opportunity for students and promoting local control to allow all communities to thrive.

“Ladies and gentlemen, make no mistake; the road to economic recovery is a challenging one,” Bettencourt said. “The proposals presented today are not radical reforms; they are common sense. They are not rash; they are long overdue and ultimately they are what is necessary to refurbish the New Hampshire Advantage and it is time to roll up our sleeves, focus and get to work and fight for Granite Staters.”

House Democratic Leader Terie Norelli, D-Portsmouth, said Bettencourt and O’Brien can’t disguise the breadth of their extreme agenda: taking away labor rights, threatening public safety by relaxing gun restrictions and denying women their reproductive freedom.

“Happy Groundhog Day from the House GOP,” Norelli said. “Their reckless agenda has driven off the road again.”

GOP leadership has admitted they would like to cut business taxes, but the sluggish recovery from the recession does not allow it to keep the state budget in balance.

Instead, proposals include raising the threshold so that businesses with less than $200,000 in gross receipts would not pay the Business Enterprise Tax. The current threshold is $150,000.

Both House and Senate leaders have placed major stress on New Hampshire joining states that give tax credits for business owners who donate to scholarships for students attending non-public schools.

“Improving education in New Hampshire starts with one simple step: putting our students first,” Bettencourt said.

Other changes would require out-of-state college students to create New Hampshire residency to vote in elections and eliminate the chancellor’s office for the University System of New Hampshire.

The three constitutional changes endorsed Thursday would outlaw an income tax, permit more education aid to go to the neediest school districts and require a three-fifths hurdle be cleared to raise any state tax or fee.

Earlier this week, Gov. John Lynch chastised the GOP-led Legislature for allowing the clamor of the debate to become too personal.

Bettencourt took Lynch up on that call and vowed to lead by example.

“Therefore, while we are focused and passionate about this agenda, we invite the Democrats to join us and work in a bipartisan manner,” Bettencourt said.

Kevin Landrigan can reached at 321-7040 or klandrigan@nashuatelegraph.com; also check out Kevin Landrigan (@KLandrigan) on Twitter and don’t forget The Telegraph’s new, interactive live feed at www.nashuatelegraph.com/topics/livefeed.

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