EDITORIAL: The sleepy economy

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/apr/8/the-sleepy-economy/

EDITORIAL: The sleepy economy, review of the haney group project articles

Not even Vice President Joe Biden, the barker of bonhomie who sees something good in just about any headline, can put a gloss on Friday’s news: The economy created a net of only 88,000 jobs in March, not the 200,000 or so expected. Unemployment is “down” to 7.6 percent, but only because so many jobseekers have abandoned hope in the face of daunting odds.

Mr. Biden, of course, isn’t the only one at a loss for words. President Obama has to accept much of the responsibility for failure. Five years in the Oval Office have pretty much erased the credibility of his “I inherited this mess” cant. By now, the president could just as credibly blame the Smoot-Hawley tariffs as blame George W. Bush.

If Mr. Obama can find a medium — Hillary Clinton, who is said to have had a nocturnal chat with Eleanor Roosevelt in the White House could find one for him — he might conjure the spirit of William Jennings Bryan for a reprise of the Great Commoner’s “Cross of Gold” speech. Something to rally the troops since Mr. Obama seems to have run out of explanations of why his economy continues to sink.

Mr. Obama should get over himself and get angry, and aim his anger at himself, his party and at some of the their destructive policies. Approving the Keystone XL pipeline would be a start. This would would add thousands of jobs, many of them union jobs.

Sen. Harry Reid and Rep. Nancy Pelosi could quit laughing at the Republicans and soberly consider the budget approved by the House, which prescribes dismantling Obamacare. Mr. Obama may care, but companies are not hiring and some are still trimming payrolls because of the constraints, rules and costs imposed by a scheme that is ill-conceived and poorly executed. Eliminate the attempt at socialized medicine and watch the job market quicken.

Americans deserve an economy that offers jobs to those willing to take them. Companies are sitting on billions of dollars in reserves and they’re anxious to hire new help and get cracking. Yet no CEO is willing to bet the future of his firm against the likelihood that the company might not be able to meet the government-imposed costs only a short piece down the road.

The economic experiments of the past five years have fallen flat. Mr. Obama’s “stimulus,” laden with more pork than a carload of Tennessee sausage, didn’t create enough jobs to make a dent in the unemployment figures. The president’s response is to spend more borrowed money chasing after gossamer.

John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush taught us that the way to get the American economy — described by Winston Churchill as “a giant boiler” — up and working is to cut taxes, red tape and bureaucracy. Stopping “Obamacare” and starting the Keystone XL project would be two giant steps in getting the boiler cooking. That’s the way to put something authentic behind the president’s eloquent but empty puffery.

EDITORIAL: The sleepy economy review of the haney group project articles