In response to President Barack Obama's address to a join session of Congress this evening and his proposal for another deficit spending initiative labeled a "jobs plan," Independent Women's Voice President & CEO Heather Higgins released the following statement:
Tonight, President Obama proposed a "jobs plan" that spends another $447 billion in a speech that was long on concept and short on specifics. (Given his intention being to take it to the people, not discuss it with Congress, one can predict that those specifics might be pretty toxic.)
It sounded good, and it sounded reasonable, but the devil will be in the details. One can hope, but the experience of the last two years makes it probable that this is yet again reasonable rhetoric masking a high cost bill full of temporary measures that once again won’t go to the core of our problems but rather repeat the same expensive and ineffective approaches that haven’t worked before.
You may recall back in 2009 when Congress passed President Obama's $800+ billion stimulus package with promises that, if passed, unemployment would stay below 8%. How's that working out for us? The official unemployment rate is currently 9.1%, with real unemployment considerably higher, and has remained over 8% since the stimulus package was passed.
Now, the President is asking for more of the same, promising results we were promised the first time. We've seen this movie before, Mr. President, and we know how it ends. It failed then, just as it will fail now.
If President Obama wants to get serious about creating jobs then he should offer solutions that unleash the power of American free enterprise, not tries to micromanage them with tiny, temporary, targeted carrots.
We should start by ceasing to spend money that we don't have. Our national debt is already in excess of $14 trillion. This new round of deficit spending will only exacerbate a debt and fiscal crisis that has already lead the S&P to downgrade our once-AAA credit rating. This ever-increasing government spending succeeds only in crowding out private sector investment — the kind of private sector investment that creates private sector jobs.
American business owners are currently being crushed under the weight of an ever-growing litany of government regulations. It's these regulations that foster uncertainty and make it harder and more expensive to start a business, and more difficult and expensive to keep a business in compliance. Entrepreneurs should be set free from these regulatory bonds to do what they do: Create jobs, innovate and add value to our economy.
Lastly, we must address the detrimental economic impact of ObamaCare. President Obama's signature piece of legislation is also the most harmful, representing a government take-over of one-sixth of the American economy. While the original stimulus package wasted a great deal of money once, ObamaCare portends to waste a great deal of money many times over. And, that's in addition to raising taxes, raising fees, raising health insurance premiums, lowering quality of care, and taking private health care decisions out of the hands of doctors and patients and putting them in the hands of unelected and unaccountable government bureaucrats.
As another American President once said, "In our present situation, government is not the solution to the problem. Government is the problem."
We must get the roadblock of government out of the way so we can unleash the amazing power of the American people.