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Americans need real recovery and real leadership
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06/19/12 04:22 PM ET
Like many others, I disagree with the president’s assertion that the “private sector is doing fine.”
And I’m certain the more than 23 million Americans who remain unemployed or underemployed also disagree.
I’ve long said private sector job creation should be the number one domestic priority today.
In President Barack Obama’s view, we just need more government jobs.
Two years ago, the White House kicked off the “Recovery Summer” campaign, claiming that the president’s nearly-trillion-dollar stimulus had done its job.
Secretary Tim Geithner even penned an op-ed in the New York Times entitled “Welcome to the Recovery.”
The rhetoric was high, but economic growth remained low.
The real gross domestic product (GDP) grew at a rate of 1.7 percent in 2011 and 1.9 percent in the first quarter of 2012 – well below the rate of previous recoveries.
And in 2012, only 77,000 jobs were created in April, and only 69,000 in May.
Even after the stimulus passed, unemployment peaked at more than 10 percent and has remained above 8 percent for 40 straight months. It would be much higher if so many hadn’t just given up on finding work in the Obama Economy.
The country is stuck in the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression, and Americans have realized the current administration’s out-of-touch policies have failed to make things better.
This administration’s tax, borrow, and spend policies have done nothing to turn around the lagging job creation and the nation’s record debt, which have come to define the Obama Economy.
There’s still time for the president to lead and things to do.
For example, the Keystone Pipeline is a clear way to promote more North American energy sources and would create thousands of new jobs – the first of which are construction jobs.
The House recently voted to repeal the onerous medical device tax, which, if fully implemented, could cost as many as 43,000 private sector jobs.
Current U.S. tax laws make it costly and more difficult for companies to bring global earnings back to invest in the United States – virtually trapping more than $1 trillion in earnings overseas that could be used to hire more workers. The Reinvest Foreign Earnings Act is a solution to this issue.
Bills like the Regulatory Accountability Act, the Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act, and the REINS Act would immediately relieve regulatory burdens on small businesses and create jobs. These are all practical, common-sense proposals that have been passed by the House and are sitting here in the Senate.
Democrats in the Senate haven’t even passed a budget, which is required annually by law, in more than three years.
To achieve a real recovery, we should focus on individual incentives to work, produce, and invest. That means cut reckless government spending, increase domestic energy production, stop job-killing regulations, and reform the tax code to create certainty in the private sector.
The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) warned last month that, if lawmakers failed to take action ahead of the coming $607 billion combination of expiring tax provisions and automatic spending cuts set to take effect in January 2013, the country would be plunged into a deeper recession.
Former President Bill Clinton even announced that the economy is already in a recession and urged Congress to extend all the tax cuts due to expire at the end of the year.
Our country is at a fiscal cliff. We have to decide if we fall off or get to firm economic ground.
We could be like Europe, and continue to allow our government to get bigger than our economy can support. Or we could take action on the dozens of bipartisan, House-passed, job-creating bills stalled in the Senate, and make private sector job creation our priority.
The bottom line is that American families and job creators need real recovery and real leadership.
Sen. Blunt (R-Mo.) serves on the Senate Appropriations Committee and the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.
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