The President's Prescription for Jobs: Not Treating the Symptoms

The President's administration is prescribing the wrong medicine for creating American jobs. In the short-term it would appear to help treat the problem, but in the long run it's not attacking the symptoms of the problem. There are provisions in the President’s plan that will create jobs in the short-term - the plan will give employers tax credits for hiring people who have been unemployed for six months or more - which will certainly coax employers to hire. This is the short-term treatment.

But ameliorating the problem in the short-term is not what is needed. We need long-term, sustainable job growth, not short-term solutions like the plan offers. What the politicians in Washington need to do though is step back and ask themselves: why aren’t businesses hiring right now in the first place? Does it have to do with the environment that we have created?

The answer is yes, the government has created a toxic environment for business, specifically the rules and regulations the government forces businesses to comply with. These rules and regulations by the government have piled on each other, decade after decade. These rules and regulations are part of the serious structural problems that the government needs to cure. By fix, I mean repeal. The thing is in the past the government almost never repeals legislation if they want to try to “fix” it; instead, they create new legislation to fix the “bad” legislation, instead of repealing the bad legislation in the first place.

What the President ought to be proposing is repealing a lot of legislation and rules to allow the market to operate without the roadblocks the government imposes. To find the hindering rules/regulations, the administration should be talking to business people and asking them, what legislation or rules or regulations are most stifling to your business? What can the government do to create a better environment for business? They can begin by conducting interviews with businessmen so they can express which rules and regulations are stifling their businesses.

In addition to rules and regulations, the Obama administration, especially the Justice Department, has incited fear into American businesses that if they hire the “wrong” way - or the way the Justice Department doesn’t like - then they will be penalized, punished, and/or harassed. American businesses are less likely to hire in this environment – in fact, they will try to find ways to avoid hiring in America or hire outside the country because of this. This needs to stop and a firm message has got to be sent across from the Obama administration that they will stop these actions. Based on the administration’s actions so far though, it is very unlikely that this will happen.