We Want America to Prosper

• Putting people back to work is job one. If it means that a few less Republicans get elected this November, but millions of American families get back to work, then so be it. I firmly believe that an article today sums up EXACTLY what must be done – regardless of who gets the credit.
  

  Today, at RealClearPolitics.com, Larry Kudlow, former Economic Advisor to President Ronald Reagan, writes perhaps the best article I have read in a long time dealing with exactly how we put America back to work.

  You can read it here.

  One of the opening lines sums things up. “It’s like business is on hold as it waits for the next Washington shoe to fall.”

  It seems axiomatic to many small business owners, like myself, that as long as the government threatens to increase corporate, marginal, payroll, health care, estate, and capital gains taxes, due to the uncertainty in forecasting or planning ahead, I will refrain from hiring new workers until I receive more certainty. It also follows that after all of these regulatory and tax burdens are foisted upon me, I may also find it impossible to proceed with my current payroll, and be forced to lay off workers or reduce capital expenditures and thus, stop investing in my own future.

  This line of reasoning has been true since the first taxes were assessed and the first governments began operating. This line of reasoning applies, not only to business owners, but to families as well. If you know your taxes will go up, and your health care costs will go up, and your job is not secure, will you buy a new TV? Will you put more money into your IRA? Will you invest in your children’s 527?

  As if the President’s job killing policies were not bad enough, the “remedy” the propose, is akin to Dr. Benjamin Rush’s “Thunderbolt” in the 17th and 18th century.

  (Rush’s Thunderbolt described here)

  For example, as Larry Kudlow points out,

  Check this out. On Friday, the day of the sub-par jobs release, President Obama comes out with a new green-jobs program that will cost taxpayers $2.3 billion. He predicts targeted tax credits for all of his faddish “energy savers” — presumably determined by hoards of EPA bureaucrats — will create 17,000 new jobs. This is out of a total workforce of 153 million.

  And wait, it gets better. The average cost of these alleged new green jobs will be $135,000 per job. It’s sorta like the $780 billion stimulus plan, half of which has supposedly saved 1 million jobs at roughly $200,000 per job.

  And on the subject of energy-related jobs, the EPA is now going to penalize manufacturing America — or what’s left of it — with tougher standards to reduce smog. Of course, smog has already fallen 25 percent in the last three decades. And the EPA’s projected smog savings are so miniscule compared to the new costs for business that the National Association of Manufacturers, the petrochemical makers and others are screaming bloody murder.

  This little EPA beauty could cost up to $90 billion annually. All of this with a 10 percent unemployment rate, mind you. It’s another triumph for left-wing social policy over economic-growth policy.

  And get this. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar recently announced that he is closing down federal lands for oil and gas drilling. This with the price of oil hovering around $83 a barrel and retail gas at the pump moving in the direction of $3 per gallon. Huh? Does anybody in Washington have any common sense at all?

  Steve Moore of The Wall Street Journal just wrote a good column about tax chaos in the new year, with small-business write-offs for capital purchases expiring, the alternative minimum tax (AMT) un-indexed for inflation and no fix in place for the estate tax, which is set to rocket from zero back to 55 percent.

  And let’s not forget, as Harvard economist Greg Mankiw reminds us on his excellent blog, that the $780 billion stimulus plan was supposed to generate a peak of only 8 percent unemployment. Not happening — at least not yet.

  I have no doubt that President Obama’s intentions are to grow the economy. I do not say his intentions are good because I also believe he firmly intends to establish government as the end all and be all of our daily lives and that, regardless of intent, is never good. But I also want Americans to go back to work and if it means millions go back on this President’s watch, so be it. The one comfort we conservatives have is that, in order to truly grow the economy, the President will have to do the exact opposite of what he is doing now. If a President cuts taxes, eliminates Capital Gains taxes, estate taxes, and reduces government spending…I don’t care if he has an R, a D, or an I next to his name.

  I cannot emphasize enough – It isn’t about scoring political points at the expense of a child going hungry or a mom and dad awake all night worrying how they will pay their bills.

  But the President, who seems to always put politics before proper policy, should know this from folks, like me, who speaks to American taxpayers every day…

  “There’s a populist wave coming, but it’s from the right, not the left. Free-market populism emanating from the tea-party movement wants government out of our businesses and out of our pockets. These folks are right.”

  Yes they are.

 

Comments are closed.