Repairing The Pot-Holes On Freedom's Highway
Job One for this new Congressional repair-crew is, of course, jobs. Not more for the "stimulated," purposely over-bloated D.C., but jobs in the private-sector, the only engine of real economic growth. A sliver of light seems to be poking through the gloom, due, not to intervention by the Feds, but to an ailing-economy slowly healing itself. That's the good news. The bad is that we're still averaging 400,000 new jobless-benefit claims a week; and 260,000 discouraged job-seekers simply dropped out of the work-pool in December, artificially reducing the unemployment figure; almost 45% of the unemployed have been so for more than six-months; and Fed Chair Bernanke says the job market is still 4-to-5-years away from normalcy.
The solution certainly isn't throwing still more billions at favored-causes and federal expansion, the formula of choice for history-ignoring, big-government socialists. Re-energizing employment requires incentives for industry, business, and consumers alike. The key to reigniting the full-force of private-sector productivity and growth is to restore longer-view investment confidence, by making tax-cuts permanent, and getting rid of expansion-killing regulations. Following two-years of executive regulation, driven primarily by politics, not need, and with only a grudging, 24-month, tax-cut extension, why would responsible companies expand, given recent political whims and power-grabs? The capital is there. The confidence is not. With its grow-government agenda, the Feds have done little or nothing to encourage real, long-term private-sector growth. To do so requires economic confidence, created by realistic predictability. Permanent tax-cuts, for companies and families, and far-fewer, growth-inhibiting regulations, are what's needed now.
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