Weak Employment Report Shows Need for Debt Reduction
Unemployment increased to 9.2 percent in the latest monthly jobs report, marking a modern record of 29 straight months with unemployment above 8 percent -- the longest such period recorded since the Great Depression. The dismal report happened to be released on the date that marked 800 days since Senate Democrats last passed a budget. The timing is fitting. There is a direct connection between sluggish job creation and the budget policies of President Obama and congressional Democrats.
Report after report shows great trepidation and uncertainty among job creators. Statistics indicate that 78 percent of American small business leaders believe we are still in a recession, while 70 percent of them have no plans to hire new employees over the next 12 months.
The rhetoric coming out of the White House is hardly encouraging. The Obama administration has offered very few specific proposals for dealing with the crippling $14 trillion debt, and the policies they have suggested revolve around tax hikes. The president's tax increase plans carry the unfortunate distinction of being both damaging for job creation and utterly worthless for actually reducing the debt.
President Obama's oft-repeated call for renewed taxes for corporate jets are a prime example. As Charles Krauthammer writes in the Washington Post, "If you collect that tax for the next 5,000 years — that is not a typo — it would equal the new debt Obama racked up last year alone."
We need spending cuts, not revenue increases, to solve the debt crisis. By continually threatening to raise taxes, Democratic leaders jeopardize prospects for economic recovery. A chief economist with the National Federation of Independent Businesses explained how the refusal to adequately address the debt is a factor in sluggish job creation: "The failure to understand why small-business owners are not hiring or investing has resulted in a set of policies that have not been very effective, and Main Street is suffering. The icing on the cake: the growing debt, large deficits, threats of higher taxes, regulations…and the uncertainty of the new health care law – is it any wonder that optimism is down?”
House Republicans have passed nine separate bills to spur economic recovery and create jobs, but the Democrat-controlled Senate has not even considered any of them. The House-passed budget plan would cut $6 trillion in government spending. Senate Democrats have not passed a budget in almost two years -- even though Congress is required by law to pass a budget each year by April 15. House Republicans have cut spending and curbed excessive government regulations in all of the three appropriations bills approved for the coming fiscal year, and we will continue to cut spending throughout the remainder of this year's appropriations process.
How many more months of rising unemployment will it take to convince President Obama's party that they must get serious about the debt crisis?