Why Obama’s approach has been a failure

Yet today, as unemployment hovers around 10 percent, Americans are understandably demanding accountability for the bearish jobs outlook.

{mosads}There are two main reasons why the administration’s jobs efforts haven’t worked.

First, it was misguided to assume that Washington could create millions of sustainable jobs by dumping hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars into government programs and agencies. Remember all the talk of “shovel-ready” projects? Almost a year after its implementation, the stimulus has proved to be just another example of how woefully inefficient government is at directing capital into projects and ventures to create jobs.

Instead of growing the government and increasing the economy’s dependence upon it, Congress and the administration should have implemented sweeping tax cuts for small businesses. House Republicans last year proposed reducing taxes for small businesses — America’s most productive job creators — by 20 percent. Using the White House’s own jobs formula, our alternative stimulus would have created twice the jobs at half the cost of the bill that was enacted. By paying our proposals mere lip service, the president squandered an excellent opportunity to set our economy on a more competitive footing.

Second, but perhaps most importantly, the ideological agenda being pursued in Washington has bogged job creators down in a thick cloud of uncertainty. Fear about the rising cost of doing business has grown so pervasive that it has drowned out any budding optimism from the thaw in the economic landscape — and any marginal job gains from the stimulus have been rendered irrelevant.

These are the consequences of pressing ahead on anti-competitive pursuits like card-check, cap-and-trade and a government takeover of our healthcare system. It’s common sense why job creation is at a standstill: Employers are not going to hire back the workers they have laid off when the threat of more oppressive regulations and red tape, skyrocketing deficits and tax increases looms over their heads.

In fact, a November 2009 poll taken by the National Federation of Independent Business asked small businesses to name their single most important problem. Not surprisingly, “taxes” and “government regulations and red tape” finished second and third, respectively.

The start of the new year presented the perfect opportunity for the Obama administration to stop perpetuating an atmosphere of uncertainty around job creators. It could have chosen to govern based on pragmatism and practicality rather than merely ideology. Yet two weeks into the new year, as the anti-jobs healthcare overhaul moves forward against the will of the people in the back channels of the U.S. Capitol, it’s apparent that the president is not willing to make the right choice.

While it’s unfair to blame any one person or party for all job loss, there can be little doubt that President Barack Obama, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the Democrat-controlled majority have made a bad job environment worse. If we are fortunate enough to see jobs return, it won’t be because of the actions of Congress and the administration. It will be in spite of them.

Cantor is the House minority whip.