Obama's New Focus on Jobs

With the debt crisis behind us the President announced today that he will focus on jobs. At a press conference today he said, " -- Americans want us to get this economy growing and start adding jobs -- " No kidding. He just woke up to this? Well, that was the gist of his 2010 State of the Union, so I'm sure it has occurred to him before, but his efforts haven't worked out so well so far. The economy is still struggling along and small businesses, the engine of growth in our economy, are still not hiring. Why should they? The small business owner has no idea how much an employee hired today is going to cost in three years when the full effects of the President's policies will be felt.

"Shovel ready was not as shovel ready as we expected", the President quipped before the jobs council. As insensitive as the joke was, it underscored the basic problem with the stimulus plan. The President has never had to create a job in his life. He has never had to make a payroll. He has no idea how jobs are created. He honestly thinks that when the government spends money it creates jobs. It doesn't. It can only create conditions in which other people can create jobs. With public works, once the government taps are turned off, the jobs go away.

Today he spoke of creating an "Infrastructure Bank" to help private companies repair the nation's roads, bridges and utilities, touting this as a way out of the recession. Here's the problem, and what is at the root of the President's failure. Mr. Obama and most of the people around him have spent their lives in the rarified air of the non-profits, government and academia. They honestly don't know how roads get built. Apparently the President is under the delusion that it is still 1935. Franklin Roosevelt created the WPA, funded a lot of massive public works projects and put people back to work until the war started and industry expanded to supply the belligerents.

But it isn't 1935 and the days when we could scoop someone out of an unemployment line, give them a shovel, and tell them to go build a road, are long over. Construction workers today are not casual laborers! They are highly skilled equipment operators. But the President seems to think that a person who was working in an office at Shearson-Lehman can just jump on a grader and go to work.

If the administration is serious about creating jobs then they need to make the United States a tax haven instead of a tax burden. They need to remove unnecessary, conflicting and duplicitous regulation. They need to secure our future through development of domestic energy resources. But most importantly the government needs to be a help to starting a business and hiring people rather than an obstacle.

Oh, and the debt crisis? It wasn't really a crisis and it isn't really behind us. They just managed to put it off until after the election.