President Obama: Creating Jobs to Kill Jobs

Posted on 15. Oct, 2009 by James Devere in American Politics

President Obama offered only platitudes on the economy during the election. Since he has been in office, he has continued to talk about putting Americans back to work, rebuilding the economy, and securing our economic future. On the economy, just as on healthcare, Obama seldom gives details. Today we have little to go on when trying to judge either the competence or genuineness of the President’s economic plan. We have change: the unemployment number is approaching double digits and under-employment is at 17%. We have hope: that we are not the next to lose their job or their house. But we lack any substantive understanding as to his economic vision.

Today in Virginia, the President made a stop at a construction site to praise the success of the Recovery Act. Most of the speech consisted of the same grand statements that we have heard all along. “Hardworking Americans have borne the brunt of this recession. They’ve been laid off in historic numbers… they’ve lived in fear of being the next ones to be let go. And that’s not right.” He went on to say, “Middle class Americans are the ones who built this country, made it great, and keep it going each and every day.”

Outside of a Keynesian attempt to spend a trillion dollars on a stimulus plan that, unlike Keynes principles, has been spent mostly on social programs, we have little to tell us what actions will be taken to achieve the grand plan. In the absence of such detail, a couple of quotes from the address today deserve a closer look.

President Obama today stated, “we’re going to continue to explore each and every avenue that I can think of that will lead to job creation.”

I believe that the President thinks that he has explored all of the avenues and will, as he says, continue to do so. The problem is that the only avenues the Administration believes exist are those with direct involvement from the government; those where the Administration can attach their social engineering strings. The President does not understand macroeconomics and tries to delve too deeply into direct job creation to a point that it will become detrimental to the economy.

Let me suggest just a couple of avenues to job creation that the Administration seems to be blind to:

Tax cuts on job creators. The claim that 95% of Americans received a tax cut is ridiculous. The tax roles do not include 95% of Americans and the average person (who did not lose their job) can now afford an extra cup of coffee at Starbucks. Job creators and those who pay most of the taxes saw their burden increased. Allow Americans to keep and spend their hard-earned money and local business will grow, investments will return, and jobs will once again be created. Yes this sound like trickle down economics, the bane of progressives, but is a more proven tactic than trickle up poverty.

Create an environment where industry can thrive. The Administration has done more than any other to attack industries such as mining and oil. Directly putting people out of work while at the same time funding some highway projects to say that you have created jobs is not sound governance. Allowing environmentally sensitive oil drilling and mining will create very good paying jobs and drastically reduce our dependence on overseas commodities.

These are just a couple of avenues that have not been explored.  I find it hard to accept the veracity of a statement that we will continue to explore every avenue to job creation, when in reality so much has been done to destroy jobs. And so much more is planned, with programs like cap and trade, as well as other attacks on industry.

Maybe the President’s most telling quote of the day was “And we are going to keep on going until we make sure that every single American in this country who’s looking for work is going to be able to get the kind of well-paying job that supports their families.”

What, Mr. President, is a well-paying job? It seems like we are losing a lot of those these days and replacing them with bureaucratic positions. Of course the President wants to put people looking for work in a job; he needs them to support the people who are not looking for work, and he needs them to support the people that are now working for taxpayer funded programs and the government. Today, the military announced the attainment of their highest recruitment goals since 1973, a sign that economic trouble is forcing people into the service.

We have tipped the scales with an increase of over 1 trillion dollars to the deficit, and still have a massive burden of unfunded entitlement programs. We are not coming out of our debt situation anytime soon. The only thing that will put the economy back on track is a drastic reduction of the size and scope of the American government. Spending has to return to levels of sanity, yet we are headed in the opposite direction.

Most troubling in the President’s address today is the fact that he does not understand the responsibilities of the office. It is not his duty to directly create jobs. The president’s role as the Chief Administrator of this country is to enforce laws and set in place policies that allow the economy to grow–it is to govern, not to rule. Delving into direct job creation requires an army of bureaucrats and as that army and government spending grow to support the directly funded jobs, so grows the opportunity for corruption. We are building a structure that can not be supported in a free enterprise system, and the elimination of free enterprise will be the ultimate end of our current path.

Quotes were taken from a DOT press release.

Tags: Brunt, Closer Look, Competence, Construction Site, Construction Workers, Double Digits, Dow, Economic Plan, Economic Recovery, Economic Vision, Genuineness, Grand Statements, Job Creation, Keynes, Middle Class, New York Construction, Platitudes, Recession, Robust Economy, Stimulus Plan, Trillion, Unemployment Number