Republican Leader John Boehner Op-Ed in the Allentown Morning Call

Republicans have the answers Obama seeks on creating jobs

John Boehner

December 4, 2009

President Obama will have plenty of explaining to do when he arrives in Allentown today. More than 3 million Americans have lost their jobs in the nine months since he signed into law a trillion-dollar ''stimulus'' that was supposed to put people back to work ''immediately.'' Only one in eight Pennsylvanians, according to a recent Franklin & Marshall College survey, feel they have benefited from ''national economic recovery efforts.''

It's not hard to figure out why. Instead of spurring job creation, the taxpayer dollars being spent on this ''stimulus'' have been directed to all kinds of questionable projects, including $800,000 to repave an alternate runway at Democratic Rep. John Murtha's Johnstown ''airport for nobody,'' which serves just a handful of people a week.

Having been promised much more than a ''jobless recovery,'' the American people are right to wonder whether Washington Democrats can be trusted to turn things around, especially when their costly policies are only making matters worse.

Washington Democrats' government takeover of health care -- priced at $1.3 trillion and counting -- is funded by new taxes that will fall heavily on small businesses that are trying to create new jobs, and harsh mandates that require employers to either provide ''government-approved'' coverage or pay another steep tax.

According to a methodology developed by a senior White House economist, these sorts of tax increases would result in as many as 5.5 million more American jobs lost over the next 10 years. The effects of this government-takeover-of-health-care bill will be felt not only in job losses, but in higher insurance premiums and fewer Medicare benefits for seniors.

Democrats also have in the works a ''cap-and-trade'' national energy tax, a bureaucratic nightmare that would make households, small businesses and family farms pay higher prices for electricity, gasoline, food and virtually every product made in America. One independent analysis determined that this national energy tax would cost our economy anywhere from 2.3 million to 2.7 million jobs each year for the foreseeable future.

The very prospect of these and other costly policies has caused employers large and small to hold off on hiring decisions, freezing the job market at the worst possible time.

Further complicating matters is the shaky state of our nation's balance sheet as President Obama and Democrats in Congress continue to pile unsustainable debt on our kids and grandkids. The national debt recently topped $12 trillion for the first time in U.S. history with no relief in sight: The Washington Democrats' budget doubles the debt in five years and triples it in 10.

All this government borrowing hurts job creation by undermining confidence in our economy and making it harder for small businesses to gain access to much-needed credit.

Washington Democrats continue to rely on more spending, more taxes and more government as the answer to every problem. Maybe that's because it's all they know. A whopping 90 percent of the Obama administration Cabinet's professional experience is in working for the government. This represents by far the least private-sector experience of any presidential Cabinet going back more than 100 years. As a former small businessman, I know what it takes to meet a payroll and a bottom line. America's entrepreneurs are being left behind by out-of-touch Washington Democrats' wrong-headed policies.

That's why Republicans have offered common-sense solutions to break down barriers to economic growth and help small businesses create jobs, starting with a recovery plan that would have helped create twice the jobs at half the cost, and a budget that would impose strict caps to limit federal spending. Instead of the national energy tax, Republicans would implement an ''all of the above'' strategy to create jobs, lower energy prices and clean up our environment.

In stark contrast to Washington Democrats' government takeover, Republicans have proposed the only health care bill that would lower premiums, cut the deficit and consistently reduce federal spending on health care over the next two decades.

President Obama may be willing to offer families asking, ''Where are the jobs?'' a shoulder to cry on, but only Republicans are providing answers and a responsible blueprint for action.