This week I was in Henderson County participating in the Barefoot Economic Summit.  If I wasn't depressed before I got there I certainly was somewhat depressed by the time I left.

What I heard from Summit participants was the same thing I hear from Fortune 50 CEOs in Dallas and small business people in Henderson County, and that is that the economic uncertainty we are experiencing keeps all the capital and keeps the job creators on the sidelines.  So number one, if we want to get people back to work we're going to have to do something about rendering some of the uncertainty out of this economy.

Perhaps the worst example of how Democrats in Congress have contributed to economic uncertainty is the fact that people don't even know what their marginal tax bracket is going to be come January 1. I don't know how you write a two-year, four-year business plan without that being settled.

In many respects this is the most foreseeable crisis in America's history, and Americans are justifiably asking when is this uncertainty going to end?

It's going to be challenging.  For example, under the just-passed Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill, we have several hundred rule makings.  We don't necessarily know, outside of liberal law professor Elizabeth Warren, who is going to be making these rules. 

And so the uncertainty will continue.

As a conservative Republican, I am cautiously optimistic that my ideas about reining-in spending and finding a way to get better health care and better retirement security at a cost that we can afford are gaining ground. But quite literally as the son and grandson of chicken farmers, I do not count my chickens before they hatch.