Creating jobs?
January 27, 2010 - 10:00 pm
Declaring America’s middle class is “under assault,” President Barack Obama on Monday unveiled proposals he believes will help hurting families pay their bills, save for retirement and care for their kids and aging parents — by loading on more taxes and government spending.
One day later, the administration had the gall to reveal that the president, in his State of the Union address tonight, will advocate a spending freeze for some domestic programs.
So Mr. Obama’s jobs program includes an array of spending expansions. But the president also favors spending restraint?
This is nothing more than typical sleight-of-hand politics.
In fact, Mr. Obama wants more spending — which requires either higher taxes or borrowing, destroying Americans’ savings either way — and more mandates on employers. Neither will help the private sector add jobs.
The official unemployment rate is at 10 percent — 13.1 percent in Las Vegas — and most economists say it could take until at least 2015 for it to return to more normal levels.
Pouring billions of dollars we don’t have into “green jobs” that train unemployed nuclear physicists and valet parking attendants alike to weatherproof trailer homes or build windmills that would never pencil out sans federal subsidies — jobs that could disappear immediately after the subsidies run out — is just plain nuts.