Why aren't we creating more jobs?

Written by Joe Pitts on December 03, 2009, 10:23 PM

The number-one issue in American right now is unemployment.  In Chester County, the unemployment rate is 6.5 percent.  In Lancaster County, it’s 8 percent.  In Berks County, it’s 9.1 percent.  Those are serious numbers.  But unemployment isn’t about numbers.  It’s about people, and we have to remember that we’re not talking about statistics.  We’re talking about real people who are struggling to put food on the table.

What can we do about it?  Jobs don’t come from the government.  Jobs come from businesses and entrepreneurs who act on good ideas, take risks, and invest in people.  Government can make this easier, or government can make this harder.

Government can make it easier by leaving more money in private hands.  High taxes take money out of the economy, hampering job creation.  Government borrowing also hampers economic growth, as money that might be invested in job-creating enterprises goes to government bonds instead.

This Congress is breaking records when it comes to taxing and borrowing.  Letting the 2001 tax cuts expire amounts to the largest tax increase in history, and it will apply to every taxpayer.  The Democrats' health legislation includes large tax increases.  The “cap and trade” national energy tax will amount to a massive tax increase. 

What is driving this?  Spending.  Under this Congress, government spending is simply out of control.

I can remember, as a child, when I first heard the word “trillion.”  It was a word kids used the way they say “zillion” or “kabillion.”  It may as well have been a made-up word.  Like “googolplex” it was a real number, but too big to be used for anything but exaggerating.

Unfortunately, that’s no longer true. 

Back in January, the Congressional Budget Office said the federal deficit would total $1.2 trillion this year, and $3.1 trillion over the next decade.  Those are shocking numbers.  If you started spending $1 million a day—every day—on the day Jesus was born, and kept spending until now, you still would not owe even three-quarters of $1 trillion.

But as shocking as those January numbers were, they didn’t account for the return of tax-and-spend big government liberalism.  This summer, CBO estimated this year’s deficit at $1.6 trillion—the biggest since World War II.  Over the next decade, they say the deficit will grow by $7.1 trillion.  If President Obama gets his entire legislative agenda into law, that number increases to $9 trillion, more than doubling the already huge debt he inherited.

At the end of the Carter presidency (tough economic times!), the national debt was equal to one-third of the nation’s gross domestic product.  The White House predicts the debt will be larger than 100 percent of GDP by the end of President Obama’s four-years in office.

It is hard to comprehend numbers this large.  Imagine, for instance, that you tried to count to a billion.  If you counted one number per second—and that’s pretty fast—it would take you almost 32 years to do it.  How long would it take to count to a trillion?  Almost 32,000 years.  You would have had to start in the Paleolithic Age!

Elections have consequences.  Americans voted for “change” last year.  Unfortunately, the change we got was not the kind we need.