President Obama says he is focusing on jobs. Is that good or bad? In 2009 and 2010 he said he would “focus like a laser” on jobs. Yet we suffer from the longest high unemployment since the great depression with no end in sight.
What has President Obama done with respect to jobs? He promoted his Cap and Trade bill which would have driven up everyone’s energy prices. This would increase business costs, reducing funds for creating jobs, and be another impetus for a company to move jobs overseas.
Then he promoted Obamacare which increases health insurance costs and taxation. The affect on business is again to increase costs and drive jobs overseas. Already over 700 temporary waivers were given to businesses or unions so they wouldn’t have to comply with Obamacare because to do so would cause layoffs or drive them out of business.
The stimulus was supposed to create jobs. Remember President Obama’s promise that unemployment wouldn’t go above 8% if the stimulus bill was passed? What happened to the stimulus money? Much of it went to the states where it was used to fund excessive state spending and postpone the day of reckoning with deficits that so many states like Wisconsin, Ohio, New York, California, and even New Hampshire are struggling with.
The apparent focus of the stimulus spending was simply to save union jobs. Perhaps it is just a co-incidence that unions overwhelmingly support democrat candidates.
Stimulus spending seems to have had no direct positive affect on employment in the private sector which is where the unemployment has primarily occurred. But in the last two years President Obama has added 200,000 Federal government jobs (averaging twice the salary and benefits of the private sector workers whose taxes support them).
What has President Obama done recently for private sector jobs? Since Congress didn’t pass his Cap and Trade bill, he is having the EPA implement it. This will cost thousands of jobs and increase the prices of the things you buy. He has imposed a moratorium on oil drilling in the Gulf costing tens of thousands of jobs, increasing our dependence on foreign oil and increasing our energy costs. Now he has started withdrawing permits for previously approved coal mines which eliminates jobs and wastes invested money which discourages other investing which could create jobs.
President Obama and his supporters talk about investing in green energy creating green jobs. Where are those jobs? President Obama has been President for more than two years and democrats controlled Congress for four years, where is all the green energy and green jobs they promised? Perhaps we are encountering the same phenomenon as the Europeans, that green energy is more far expensive than the alternatives and green jobs are so expensive that more than one job is lost for every green job that is created.
President Obama’s actions work against the creation of American jobs. In fact they drive American jobs overseas!! If President Obama continues to focus on jobs as he has in his first two years, I worry for the future of our country.
Don Ewing
Meredith, NH
