Create jobs with business confidence

The best way to create jobs and reduce unemployment is to create an environment where business has confidence in the future economic outlook.

Unfortunately, most of the programs the federal government has tried over the past 18 months have not created business confidence.

Job credits that subsidize the hiring of the unemployed who would have been hired anyway do not create confidence. Cash for operable clunkers that are replaced by subsidized cars do not create confidence. Additional unspecified federal regulation of Wall Street may sound good on Main Street, but it does not stimulate bankers to lend to or invest in American businesses. The $867 billion stimulus package allocated more to plugging state government deficits than proving opportunities to private business. Shutting down Gulf Coast offshore drilling for six months may play well with the environmentalists, but it does not help the hundreds of thousands of employees who lose their jobs as a result.