Stimulus 2.0

This column originally appeared at US Daily Review.

As I mentioned here on US Daily Review last week in my column titled "Avoiding The "S" Word", Stimulus II, the son of the first stimulus disaster was indeed presented Monday by the current President. The so-called American Jobs Act is more of the same. This is not surprising from a failed President, and a man who had never created a job or balanced a budget prior to or during his reign as President, unless it was with taxpayer dollars.

What the current President has done is created a plan that would take money from the people, and from the "big, bad evil" corporations, and put it toward government jobs. The current President has chosen to increase taxes on business and close so-called loopholes, rather that freeing up much needed capital so that American businesses can build bigger and hire more. I understand the President not wanting to go with the latter plan, that would not create enough votes for his re-election campaign. A plan where he creates government jobs and takes money from the business community, well that helps with his anti-capitalist base.

View this chart and see for yourself:



In Tuesday's Wall Street Journal, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor had this to say about the current President's plan, "Anything that is akin to a stimulus bill is not going to be acceptable," he said. "Over half of the total dollar amount is so called stimulus spending. We have been there, done that. The country cannot afford more spending like a stimulus bill."

As I have suggested before, if the current President were serious about job creation, the first two things he would do to address the high unemployment rate would be to reduce job-killing regulations and cut job-killing tax rates. Instead, the current President opts for more job-killing regulations, more job-killing tax increases and more government spending.

When the current President gave his campaign speech during a joint session of congress last week, he kept repeating, "pass this bill right away". This was an obvious attempt to show leadership from a President who has not been able to do so in any other way after 32 leaderless months in office. His bill that he wanted passed right away, is more of the same, as Majority Leader Cantor said, it is more of the same, it is more of what has already failed.

The Wall Street Journal also pointed out today, "The White House says the tax changes would take effect in 2013 and estimates they would raise $467 billion in additional revenue over 10 years."  So if you are one of the many unemployed Americans, don't worry, Obama's so-called jobs plan will be put into effect in just 15 short months, be sure to go to the current President's website and signup for emails on progress of that "plan".

It was amazing to watch and think during the Republican presidential debate last night, that any one of the people on that stage, will do more for America and job creation as President-Elect in November and December of 2012, than the current President has actually done while in office. We just have to hope that the Hopers and Changers who find themselves unemployed this go-round will be on the side of capitalism and free markets, and not on the side of government funded, government mandated attempts at job creation.

Hopefully Stimulus II is DOA.  It is worth noting that the bill itself is not designed to gain passage. It serves two purposes: It is something the current President can say he presented to congress; and hen congress does not pass the bill as is, the current President has a campaign weapon.

Avoiding The “S” Word

This column originally appeared at US Daily Review.

I saw this piece by The Hill a few days ago. With a headline and that would have made George Orwell giddy, "Pelosi Drops The Word "Stimulus".

The Left, clearly losing their war on jobs and their war on our nation's economy, is trying to repackage the same failed programs and legislation that did not work before.  They are not proposing their usual jobs killing tax increases, this time they are trying to pretend they are watching out for the taxpayers and actually wanting to reduce taxes.

As I witnessed the current President's campaign speech on Thursday night, and as I heard one platitude after another, I realized he was talking about more stimulus, this time without actually calling it stimulus.  The current President was also desperate, his speech came across to me as if he was begging or pleading.  It was a campaign speech afterall, I guess he was pleading for four more years of malaise.

The Wall Street Journal had a staff editorial on Friday, well worth reading in its entirety.  But there was one big takeaway worth staying focused on:

"Mr. Obama spoke last night as if he is a converted tax-cutter, asking Republicans to expand and extend the payroll tax cut that expires in December for one more year. Along with tax credits for certain businesses that hire new employees, he says this will cut unemployment, and no doubt it will lead to some more hiring.

But what happens in 2013 when those tax rates expire and Mr. Obama pledges to hit thousands of those same small businesses with higher tax rates on income, capital gains and dividends? He seems to think businesses operate only in the present and will ignore the tax burdens coming at them down the road. This is the same reasoning that assumed that postponing ObamaCare's tax and regulatory burdens until 2014 would have no effect on business hiring in the meantime."

Shovel ready jobs for infrastructure was a big feature of the current President's campaign speech.  Does the current President not understand that infrastructure jobs is money spent by the government, and where does that money come from?  Yes, the taxpayers. So once again, taxpayers get to foot this bill for infrastructure jobs.  This is a surreal cycle to look at.  The Left thinks this is real job growth.  I know the current President knows all of this, which is why this speech was really nothing; a non-starter.  If the Left really wants to create jobs, why not just have the government hire people to clean beaches, rivers and other waterways?  The government could hire people all day long, all year long to do meaningless jobs (some are called bureaucrats), and call it employment or a "jobs plan".

But what about jobs that last for many years? What about jobs that people turn into careers?  Yes, someone has to dig the ditches. Not all jobs in America will be glorious and lead to riches. Not everyone is looking for those jobs.

One final comment from the Wall Street Journal editorial:

"The larger political subtext of Mr. Obama's speech is that if Congress doesn't pass his plan, he'll then campaign against Republicans as obstructionist. Thus his speech mantra that Congress should "pass it right away." This ignores that Mr. Obama has been the least obstructed President since LBJ in 1965 or FDR in 1933, which is how we got here.

He passed $830 billion in stimulus, $3 billion for cash for clunkers, $30 billion in small business loans, $30 billion for mortgage modification, the GM-Chrysler bailouts, ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank, credit card price controls, Build America Bonds, jobless benefits for a record 99 weeks, and more."

It continues to interest me that after 32 months in office, the current President still doesn't have a plan and he still has not proposed something that reaches across the aisle, yet his speeches proclaim to do both.  I would have more confidence in this temporary President if he had managed a Domino's Pizza or a White Castle at some point in his "career".  I would at least imagine that he had experience hiring and firing, balancing budgets and at least looking at profit and loss statements.  For a guy that hasn't done any of this, the words on the teleprompter being read by a guy with a great education really don't establish confidence in my mind.

Stimulus by any other name is still stimulus; stimulus which doesn't stimulate. The Left can keep avoiding the big bad "S" word; the rest of us can keep pointing to it.  Only in America.

A Labor Day Lesson

This column originally appeared at US Daily Review.

On this Labor Day past, I was driving through a neighborhood and the road was right along side a local high school's track and soccer field.  I drove by around 1pm, and I had heard previously that the high was going to be 95 degrees.

Obviously, for Labor Day, school was not in session.  Yet, at 1pm, there were some clusters of individuals working out on the track and on the soccer field.  At a brief glance driving by, none of this looked coordinated, this looked like kids out trying to work on something specific, looking to improve their skills or their game.

As the sun beamed down on this area, and as I kept driving and left the track and field in the distance, I thought to myself what a great example those kids are to the people in our nation, and the people overseas, who expect something for nothing.  Recently, in the wake of the London riots, there have been stories about the appalling lack of accountability they see over in Great Britain. One doesn't need to look much further than this recent story that points out that 370,000 households had never had any paid work in the 16 years that the statistics have been kept.  Furthermore, nearly one in 50 kids lives in a home where a parent has never worked.  Without my being judgmental, I think we can all see a problem here.  And then we, and Londoners, wonder why the riots happened and why these kids looted and committed other crimes?

But I digress.  Our current President created a surreal, if not bizarre, atmosphere in America when he literally promised people in 2007 and 2008 that they would get something for nothing, if they put him in the White House.  I won't get into calling this form of governing one name or another.  I will get into identifying this as a problem and signifying what that problem means.

What were these kids promised by being out in the hot sun, running laps on the track by themselves, or kicking a line of soccer balls trying to hit the same upper right hand corner of the goal each time?  If the President had been there, he would have told them to stay on the couch, someone else will be running laps or scoring goals, and we'll make sure we take their laps and those goals and share them with you, so you don't need to be out here doing all this extra work.

It is easy to look like you are working hard when others are around to see, but there is also that saying about courage being what you do when no one else it watching. No one was watching these kids working, except for the passersby. These kids, whether driven by work ethic, by pride, by their peers or by their families, they were working extra to make them and their teams better.

There's a lesson in here for all of us.  Each one of us makes the whole of America better.  You don't have to go run laps in the heat, you can volunteer in a church, help an elderly neighbor with yard work or painting part of their home that might be in disrepair.  You can coach some kids in a sport and lead by example. Many kids do not live in two parent households, volunteering as a coach is a way to help kids like this who might need just one more adult in their life asking "how was school today" or "what kind of homework will you be working on tonight".  This adds up to accountability.

I was heartened to see these kids out there working. It reminds me that there is a spirit in America, a spirit that says if I work hard enough, I will choose my own path, it won't be chose for me.  Holidays can have interesting meanings and interesting takeaways. I never expected what I saw or learned on this Labor Day.

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The U.S. Must Support Israel At the U.N.

This column appeared in the Wall Street Journal on September 16, 2011

By Rick Perry

The historic friendship between the United States and Israel stretches from the founding of the Jewish state in 1948 to the present day. Our nations have developed vital economic and security relationships in an alliance based on shared democratic principles, deep cultural ties, and common strategic interests. Historian T.R. Fehrenbach once observed that my home state of Texas and Israel share the experience of "civilized men and women thrown into new and harsh conditions, beset by enemies."

Surrounded by unfriendly neighbors and terror organizations that aim to destroy her, the Jewish state has never had an easy life. Today, the challenges are mounting. Israel faces growing hostility from Turkey. Its three-decades-old peace with Egypt hangs by a thread. Iran pursues nuclear weapons its leaders vow to use to annihilate Israel. Terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians from Hezbollah and Hamas continue. And now, the Palestinian leadership is intent on destroying the possibility of a negotiated settlement of the conflict with Israel in favor of unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state by the United Nations.

The Palestinian plan to win that one-sided endorsement from the U.N. this month in New York threatens Israel and insults the United States. The U.S. and the U.N. have long supported the idea that Israel and its neighbors should make peace through direct negotiations. The Palestinian leadership has dealt directly with Israel since 1993 but has refused to do so since March 2010. They seem to prefer theatrics in New York to the hard work of negotiation and compromise that peace will require.

Errors by the Obama administration have encouraged the Palestinians to take backward steps away from peace. It was a mistake to call for an Israeli construction freeze, including in Jerusalem, as an unprecedented precondition for talks. Indeed, the Palestinian leadership had been negotiating with Israel for years, notwithstanding settlement activity. When the Obama administration demanded a settlement freeze, it led to a freeze in Palestinian negotiations. It was a mistake to agree to the Palestinians' demand for indirect negotiations conducted through the U.S., and it was an even greater mistake for President Obama to distance himself from Israel and seek engagement with the hostile regimes in Syria and Iran.

Palestinian leaders have perceived this as a weakening of relations between Israel and the U.S, and they are trying to exploit it. In taking this destabilizing action in the U.N., the Palestinians are signaling that they have no interest in a two-state solution. The Palestinian leadership's insistence on the so-called "right of return" of descendants of Palestinian refugees to Israel's sovereign territory, thereby making Jews an ethnic minority in their own state, is a disturbing sign that the ultimate Palestinian "solution" remains the destruction of the Jewish state.

The U.S.—and the U.N—should do everything possible to discourage the Palestinian leadership from pursuing its current course.

The U.S. should oppose the statehood measure by using our veto in the Security Council, as President Obama has pledged to do, and by doing everything we can to weaken support for the unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood in the General Assembly. The U.S. must affirm that the precondition for any properly negotiated future settlement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority is the formal recognition of the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state behind secure borders.

Since the Oslo accords were signed in 1993, the U.S. has provided more than $4 billion in aid to the Palestinian Authority. This year alone, the Obama administration is seeking to secure $550 million in funding for Palestinians. The U.S. has an interest in the development of Palestinian civil society and institutions. We should encourage Palestinians who are more interested in building a prosperous future than in fueling the grievances of the past.

Our aid is, and must remain, predicated on the commitment of the Palestinian leadership to engage honestly and directly with the Israelis in negotiating a peace settlement. Their threatened unilateral action in the U.N. signals a failure to abide by this commitment.

We must not condone and legitimize through our assistance a regime whose actions are in direct opposition to a peace agreement and to our vital interests. The Palestinian people should understand that their leaders are now putting this much-needed support in jeopardy and act in their own best interests—which are also the interests of peace.

Mr. Perry, the Republican governor of Texas, is running for president of the United States.

Job promotion need not cost a lot

This column originally appeared in the The Columbus Dispatch.

By Thomas J. Donohue

It seems like every politician in Washington has a jobs plan these days — or is at least promising one. While the focus is welcome, Americans are right to question whether the ideas are sound and whether all the talk will translate into action. At the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, we believe the time for rhetoric has come and gone. Twenty-five million Americans are unemployed, underemployed, have given up looking for work or are brand new in the workforce and can’t find jobs. They deserve to hear detailed, common-sense ideas that will at least jump-start job creation. What they aren’t interested in are empty promises or temporary, artificial government jobs that won't last but will add to the deficit.

There are some practical, private-sector ideas that can be quickly turned into action. We’ve put them together into a plan we're sending to the president and every member of Congress:

• Expand trade and global commerce. Congress has the tools to open new markets and create new American jobs by passing the pending free-trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama. Doing so would save 380,000 jobs and create hundreds of thousands of new jobs. The administration can immediately modernize export controls, allowing U.S. businesses to expand trade to the tune of 340,000 new jobs. We must also complete a Trans-Pacific Partnership and initiate trade talks with the European Union to spur U.S. exports to global economies. Congress can take immediate steps to safeguard 19 million intellectual-property-related jobs and create new ones by passing a patent-reform bill, along with legislation to shut down rogue websites.

• Produce more American energy. Let American energy workers responsibly develop all sources of domestic energy. By opening up offshore resources, we could create almost 250,000 new jobs. Expanding access to federal lands for oil and gas exploration would add 530,000 new jobs. Development of natural gas in the Marcellus Shale, as well as other resource-rich shale reserves, could generate 116,000 new jobs in Pennsylvania alone by 2020. And approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, connecting Canadian oil fields to refineries in Texas, would support 250,000 energy jobs.

• Speed up infrastructure projects. Passing a multiyear highway bill with adequate funding would enable states and communities to plan projects, hire employees and prevent layoffs. Removing regulatory and permitting obstacles to 351 stalled energy projects would create 1.9 million jobs annually. Eliminating impediments to $250 billion in global private capital for infrastructure projects here at home could create 1.9 million jobs in 10 years.

• Welcome tourists and business visitors. The travel and tourism sector already accounts for $700 billion in revenues and 7.4 million American jobs. We can create 1.3 million more jobs by 2020 just by restoring the U.S. share of the travel market to its 2000 level. We can do so by removing the hassle factor of visiting the United States, expanding the visa waiver program, promoting America as a premier travel destination and reforming the visa application process to ensure consistent, fair and timely procedures without compromising security.

• Streamline permits and provide regulatory certainty and relief. America’s economy and job creators need relief from a staggering amount of new regulations and mandates. The president should issue an executive order prohibiting agencies from issuing discretionary regulations that would have a substantial economic impact — until the economy improves.

• Pass job-creating tax incentives. Congress should swiftly enact pro-growth tax measures that stimulate business expansion without adding to the deficit. A repatriation holiday — reducing taxes on profits earned overseas — could bring at least $1 trillion back to America, creating 2.9 million jobs over two years of implementation. Congress should also temporarily reduce the capital-gains tax rate to help companies restore their balance sheets and free up cash for investment and hiring.

Timely action could significantly ease uncertainty, get existing capital off the sidelines, spur business and consumer activity and create American jobs — without adding to the deficit.

Now that Congress and the president are back in Washington, they must get to work so the 25 million Americans who are unemployed or underemployed can find work. Join us — and our network of three million businesses — in urging lawmakers to act now.

Thomas J. Donohue is the president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.