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Four steps toward job creation

by Steve Welch

President Obama is holding a jobs summit at the White House Thursday. I commend the President for recognizing that the economy is the number one domestic issue of the day.

Unfortunately, it has been the policies (and threat of policies) that have come out of Washington over the past several months and years that have driven jobs out of this country or kept companies from investing here. All businesses know that it is difficult to invest when you do not know what the rules of the game will be down the road; especially when so many of the possible rule changes will be harmful. If the President wants to add jobs, he should indicate that this country will have a pro-jobs environment by doing the following:

1. Show a path to a balanced budget through reduced spending. This will provide job creators the confidence that taxes in the United States will be competitive in the global environment and encourage investment in job-creation.

2. Scrap the current health care proposals and focus on one that bends the ever-rising “cost curve.” Everyone agrees that we need to lower costs and increase efficiencies with our health care system. The current plan will not achieve these critical goals, nor reduce costs to small businesses, where the overwhelming majority of job-creation is found.

3. Make it clear that “cap and trade” will be taken off the table and that the United States will focus our energy policies on ensuring a truly global effort in which all trading partners are playing under the same rules. When I built up MITOS (a manufacturing company in the biotech area) our second biggest cost was energy. The current “cap and trade” policy would do nothing more than drive up costs further for our high-tech sector and push jobs out of the country. President Obama must encourage investments in job-creation by making it clear that the United States’ energy policy will ensure that costs here at home will be competitive in the global environment.

4. Announce the end of his efforts on “EFCA”—the so-called Employee Free Choice Act. The President should clearly communicate that labor in this country is one of our most precious and valuable resources; but, “card check” is unacceptable to Americans. Washington bureaucrats must not force punitive rules on job creators. Putting this issue to bed will provide job creators the confidence they need to be competitive in the global environment and encourage investment in job-creation.

If the President left today’s summit and announced these four policies, the economy would begin a long and steady recovery based on the most important (but recently abandoned) principal that America has a pro-job environment. And, not one of these initiatives would cost taxpayers a dime.

Imagine: job-growth through private sector job-creation; not increasing power in Washington, or adding to our nation’s debt.

We can only hope.

The writer is a Republican candidate for Congress in the 6th District.

December 3, 2009 at 2:11 pm

--Steve Welch

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