Welcome Mr. President. We Need Jobs.
Washington,
Jun 30, 2010 -
President Obama is visiting Wisconsin today to discuss the economy. We can only hope that when he hears that Wisconsinites need lower taxes, he’ll take it to heart. People deserve a better response than what Vice President Biden gave last week while campaigning for Senator Feingold when he called a Kopp’s manager a “smart ass.”
Wisconsinites don’t need to hear President Obama tell them, again, how he inherited a bad problem. He’s been in office for almost 18 months, spent nearly a trillion dollars on his failed stimulus package, and has only made the problem worse with his misguided solutions.
I’m glad to hear President Obama will at least be able to discuss one resolution at his Town Hall Meeting from a problem he and his Administration solely created for Wisconsin: this morning’s reversal of the recent U.S. Export-Import Bank ruling.
This ruling, which was recommended by President Obama’s Departments of State and Treasury, would have sent at least 300 jobs in the Milwaukee area at Bucyrus International Inc., and 1,000 total American jobs, abroad. I’m glad the President realized late, rather than never, that the ripple effect of the reduced spending from these job losses and the spending of the suppliers would have been huge. Denying jobs to American workers is no way to address climate change or energy independence.
The President’s initial response showed that his Administration values its environmental agenda more than creating jobs for the American worker. While one wrong has now been righted, we must ensure his ideological agenda, and push to use the power of agencies to impose the Cap-and-Tax policies that the Congress has refused to pass, will not be imposed on businesses and consumers in other cities and states, as they will do even more harm.
What the President needs to fully grasp is that it is these American workers – those who work at private companies, like Bucyrus, and the individual companies – which pay the taxes that allow him to even enact an agenda. Private sector jobs create employment, generate wealth and provide tax money. Government jobs eat up tax money. This means, much to the President’s disappointment, the government can’t be our economic focal point. The government can’t give hand-outs, without taxpayers opening their wallets, as they did for the stimulus 16 months ago.
The only thing that has grown in Wisconsin with President Obama’s stimulus package is the length of the unemployment line. Since the stimulus passed, Wisconsin has lost 73,000 jobs and the state unemployment rate is 8.2 percent. More government spending on the creation of more government jobs is not the solution.
This past Tax Day, I said that no company is going to invest more money on new employees when they don’t know what higher taxes, added regulations and increased mandates the government will impose next. Companies that want to survive for the long run know that they need to protect their rapidly shrinking bottom line. This was backed up in a recent Wall Street Journal article that found U.S. companies are now hoarding more cash than at any point in financial history. Consumer confidence is down and businesses are stockpiling their money because they are nervous about more government policy and the potential for another economic dip.
With this in mind, the best thing President Obama can do right now to improve the economy is put job creation in front of his ideological agenda. Then we should get to work to slow government spending, offer confidence to investors, and provide tax incentives that appeal to business owners looking to branch out.
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