Talking about jobs, and doing nothing about them

The president’s agenda seems to be, well, all about the president. How good he looks. How nice he talks. How smart he is. How pretty his wife is.

Sure, he talks about healthcare reform. But his version of healthcare reform makes it harder for small businesses to create jobs.

Sure, he talks about “green jobs.” But he had to fire his “green jobs” czar because the guy was pretty close to being Marxist, and his plan to add green jobs is a cap-and-trade scheme that will put even higher taxes on small businesses.

There are two ways to create jobs. You can hire more people on the government dime in make-work jobs (a la Paul Krugman). That, of course, costs a lot of money, which requires higher taxes on small businesses, which kills private-sector jobs. That is the current model being employed by the White House and its congressional allies.

Or you can make it easier for small businesses to hire workers by easing government mandates, cutting businesses taxes and creating better macroeconomic conditions to allow the private sector to thrive.

The Obama administration believes that the private sector isn’t smart enough or altruistic enough to create jobs. It has a deep-seated distrust of the business community. It has an agenda that is pro-bigger government, pro-labor, pro-higher taxes, pro-bigger mandates.

This jobs summit is a joke. Instead of talking jobs to death, the president should start acting to create better conditions for small businesses to prosper.

Give credit to John Boehner, Eric Cantor and congressional Republicans who have been on this jobs message since the start of the year. They know how jobs are created in the private sector. They have been pounding the president to adopt a more job-friendly agenda. Without their efforts, it is unlikely the White House would have even thought about focusing on jobs.

That being said, we need less jaw-boning from the White House, and more actual work to create private-sector jobs in this country.

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