Obama's jobs (tax) "plan"

As expected, President Obamao's ideas for stimulating taxes -- umm, the economy and jobs are wrong. Equally wrong is the willingness of congressional leaders to work on legislation that build on Obamao's wrongheaded ideas. Why? Because few in Washington know anything about jobs or where they come from. Fewer care to know.

If Congress and the President (and his teleprompter) truly want to do anything positive about jobs and the economy, they must think like businessmen and employers -- not like statists, regulators, central planners and attorneys. Those who cannot or will not think like businessmen and employers (or at least respect them and their needs) must be replaced!

The nation desperately needs legislation to:

▪ Permanently eliminate the minimum wage. This will make it feasible for businesses to hire workers whose productivity isn't worth paying the minimum wage.
▪ Permanently eliminate the alphabet soup of other regulations and agencies that increase the cost of labor and production such as the Clean Air Interstate Rule, Davis–Bacon Act, Department of Agriculture, Department of Commerce, Department of Energy, Department of Labor, Department of Transportation, Economic Development Administration, Energy Policy Conservation Act, Environmental Protection Agency, Food and Drug Administration, ObamaCare, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Sarbanes-Oxley Act, Small Business Administration, etc. None of these have any authority in the Constitution. All these regulations and agencies impede prosperity. Their roles can be better handled at the state and local level. A permanent and substantial cut in the size, power, and cost of government will facilitate a permanent and substantial cut in taxes. With more money left in their paychecks, Americans will spend more resulting in an immediate demand for more business productivity (jobs).
▪ Permanently eliminate the corporate income tax. (Congressman Louie Gohmert of Texas has submitted his own "American Jobs Act" which would actually create substantial numbers of jobs by eliminating both all corporate taxes and the alternative minimum tax.) This will enable US businesses to better compete with imported goods. Foreign producers do not pay the US corporate income tax -- a significant reason imported goods are often cheaper than our own. Note that corporations don't really pay taxes anyway -- they simply add that expense to the product or service they sell so that we, the consumers, ultimately pay all taxes imposed on corporations.
▪ Permanently lift all restrictions on development of domestic oil, coal, natural gas, and nuclear energy. Open up all natural sources of energy that has been arbitrarily and necessarily locked up such as the coal in Utah's Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Businesses need affordable and reliable energy to create jobs. So-called "green" energy is not affordable nor is it reliable. It honestly isn't even "green!"
▪ Permanently eliminate all subsidies and focused tax breaks. Subsidies only push inefficient and unwise businesses and technologies into the marketplace. Allowing a free market to pick winners and losers is always better than central planning.
▪ Permanently stop bailing out businesses, unions, nations, and individuals that fail. This only encourages weakness, poor leadership, and failure.
▪ Permanently ban collective bargaining for public-sector unions. This will sharply cut the cost of government, restoring much of the taxpayer's hard-earned income. The fact that public-sector unions have the ability to elect the politicians against whom they bargain for compensation and benefits should inspire great concern in the minds of all voters.
▪ Permanently close the borders and shores to the invasion of illegal immigrants. Abolish anchor-baby citizenship for children of illegals. Make it extremely difficult for illegals to find work. Make it impossible for them to find any taxpayer-funded aid such as education, health care, etc. This will free up the jobs that Americans allegedly won't do.
▪ Permanently eliminate incentives for Americans to not work such as extended unemployment compensation, food stamps, housing assistance, etc. These programs not only violate the Constitution, they violate human dignity and remove the incentive to do the jobs Americans allegedly won't do.
▪ Permanently abandon the student-loan scandal that only enslaves students with unmanageable debt. Without easy student loan money pouring in, colleges would have to lower prices to compete for students. Among things they'd have to cut would be worthless courses and degrees as well as buildings and other structures designed to be monuments rather than places of learning. Without easy student loan money pouring in, students (and parents) would be more conscientious with how they spend their education money. All that would be a very good thing. Whether it's buying a car, a home, or an education, at the time of purchase, people tend to look as loans as free money and pay more than they should. Instead, offer 100% tax credits for education from Kindergarten through graduate school and trade schools. This will make it easier for Americans to prepare for the future.
▪ Permanently abandon taxation (including taxes on capital gains) on all investments whether they be savings accounts, stocks, real estate, etc. Elimination of the ongoing uncertainty of tax law will allow Americans to plan for the future -- especially business growth and job creation.
▪ Permanently return airport security screening to the private sector. Nationalizing this function obliterated an entire sector of the free market. There are few functions that are best done by government. All else must be done in the private sector.
▪ Permanently withdraw from, and condemn, Agenda 21, Law of Sea Treaty, and other UN schemes that adversely affect US sovereignty and prosperity.

The Phoenix Center reports that

Even a small 5% reduction in the regulatory budget (about $2.8 billion) will result in about $75 billion in expanded private-sector GDP each year, with an increase in employment by 1.2 million jobs annually. On average, eliminating the job of a single regulator grows the American economy by $6.2 million and nearly 100 private sector jobs annually. Conversely, each million dollar increase in the regulatory budget costs the economy 420 private sector jobs.

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, government employs 8% of workers in the United States. -- and many of those bureaucrats are paid twice what their counterparts are paid in the private sector. That is far too much government at far to great a cost. This is an unconscionable burden on the private sector.

Congress' escalating penchant for central planing and social engineering over the past 100 years has come to a head. A primary cause of the current economic and employment crisis is the uncertainty in the economy created by fickle fiscal policies of the legislative and executive branches of the central government. Businessmen are unwilling to invest in the future because nobody in the private sector can forecast what congressmen and bureaucrats will do next to make life even more difficult for businesses and consumers.

Three-fourths (74%) of Americans in a recent poll recognize that businesses and consumers are over-regulated. 73% see that "every time the federal government mandates a new regulation on America’s large and small business, the prices of American made good and services like gasoline and food go up." The only way that Congress and bureaucrats know to deal with such over-regulation is, you guessed it, more regulation! (One recently imposed regulation covers the proper disposal of lip balm at farms. That regulation is written in three parts to cover coastal-state farms, inland farms, and midwest farms! Lip balm! We're outta control!)

I recently met a businessman who said he needs to expand and he needs to hire new employees. But he dares not. He has no idea how much each new employee will cost him due to additional costs of mandatory benefits (ObamaoCare) and regulations.

Businessmen must have a stable, predictable, and favorable regulatory and tax environment if they are to thrive. Instead, Congress and the bureaucracies it has created are hostile to the free market. No amount of government spending (AKA "stimulus") can possibly fix that. The only fix is for Congress and bureaucrats to get out of the way! Now!

Obamao's entire "new" proposal to create jobs by spending more money confiscated from the productive sector of the economy must be rejected. His proposal of temporary tax cuts paid for with permanent tax increases is an assault on the economy and the businesses and consumers that drive it -- not to mention common sense. Once again, Obamao reveals his profound disrespect for, and understanding of, basic economics. At a cost of $447 billion, America can ill afford another half trillion dollars of deficit spending on a program that isn’t going to work.