Five Economic Solutions Obama Won’t Address
President Barack Obama once again will make his tired pronouncements about fixing the economy and creating jobs. Obama’s leadership on the economy has been about as sturdy as the faux Greek columns providing the backdrop to his acceptance speech in 2008.
So, what should the president say and do?
The quickest way to attack the crisis of confidence in our business community is by lowering taxes on our job creators. Obama believes when a company makes money the owner stuffs the money into their pocket. That’s not the case. Profits are reinvested to grow their business and retain workers.
America already has one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world. If our states were countries, 23 would be the highest taxed countries in the world. The government has plenty of room to cut taxes and still get more than their fair share.
Obama to gin up on jobs needs to double down on tax breaks that provides our small businesses, entrepreneurs and inventors more funds to invest. A good start is to eliminate the employer payroll tax for the next 24 months and provide tax incentives for capital expenditures and tax credits for new hires.
The problem is Obama has got the caboose driving the train. He believes incentives should go to consumers, not producers. This was the premise of Stimulus One. It did not work. Now we are told Obama will request the payroll tax reduction be extended for employees.
Although this is a nice gesture, it is simply the Son of Stimulus and will do absolutely nothing to move the needle downward on unemployment.
The second area he needs to address is the growing list of regulations forced upon U.S. companies that puts them at a distinct disadvantage with other world producers. Since Obama or the majority of his staff has never run a business they fail to grasp the concept that when you add regulations, you strangle the life out of our job creators.
Regulations cost the U.S. economy $1.75 trillion every year. Obama has been bragging about a couple of regulation cuts in health care and the EPA which has a total impact of just $11 billion. This is peanuts. We must greatly curtail the regulation factories inside the Beltway.
Next we must not run away from our debt crisis. By now we have surely learned we cannot solve a debt crisis with more debt. Debt creates instability which demoralizes our job creators.
Standard & Poor’s warned us months ago we needed to trim $4 trillion from our expenditures over the next 10 years to avoid a downgrade. Moody’s has placed us on a negative watch, which means they are the next to downgrade us.
A good chunk of our budget cuts can and should come from declaring war on government waste.
Fourth, the president must make good on his commitment to double exports in five years. To do this, he needs to provide American exporters the same access to foreign markets as foreign manufacturers have to our market. He should start but immediately sending to Congress the three pending free trade agreements with Colombia, South Korea and Panama that have been sitting on his desk since assuming office.
He needs to lay out his vision for a strong American presence in the global marketplace. The right trade policies translate to 6 million new jobs, and that’s just for starters.
Finally, the president must tackle entitlement reform. Let’s face it, we are all going to have to work longer and expect less. Social Security and Medicare are programs created for all the right reasons during a very different America. Social Security was enacted in 1935 during the Great Depression that helped millions of families at poverty’s doorstep. Medicare was enacted in 1965 when our life expectancy was 68. Because of the incredible advancements in health care, today life expectancy is nearly 80.
Do the math. These two bedrocks of American culture are at grave risk. We must do something. Let’s start by telling the truth.
There are 115 million Americans currently working but over 20 million Americans are unemployed, stopped looking for work, or are under employed. Obama said last week we should not dwell on the latest employment numbers that showed in August no new jobs were created. This is the first month since 1945 this has happened. The president is in denial.
It is looking more and more like jobs will be Obama’s Vietnam. At least Lyndon Johnson had the good sense to look into the camera and say “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.”