As Americans, we are big on traditions. These traditions tend to flow from one holiday to the next, season to season, cycle to cycle. Over the past century, there has also been a job cycle.

From an early age, we send our children to grade school, hoping they will get the best teachers and form a foundation of learning, hard work and skills. Then in high school, we spend hours transporting them to sports practice, dance lessons, band camp and SAT prep - all with the hope that they will get into college and eventually land a job and career better than our own.

But now, that cycle has been stopped dead in its tracks. Our economy is at a standstill and unemployment is at its highest level in decades. Our children are graduating from high school and college without any jobs and moving back home for a new life of unemployment purgatory. The statistics speak for themselves. As of last month, just 74 percent of Americans ages 25 to 34 were working, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The report also shows that 14.2 percent of young adults are living with their parents, up from 11.8 percent in 2007.

The back end of this jobs cycle is having the same impact. Last week it was reported that 25 percent of Americans do not think they will be able to retire until age 80. Older workers have seen their retirement savings and investments dried up as a result of the great recession and are staying put in their jobs for fear of insolvency. The jobs that do exist are being held hostage by fear, risk and submission.

Parents are beginning to look at their children and wonder if the American Dream is dying. With deadlines for thousands of dollars in student loan debt creeping up, their children are moving back home, desperate for a job - any job. This is not the America I have always known. We can and must do better.

In health care, the ultimate goal is to cure the disease, not just treat the symptoms. As our economy continues to suffer, President Obama is focusing on the symptoms. His own staff confirms that his student loan program will only save borrowers around $8 a month while adding approximately $400 billion to our debt. His stimulus two years ago did nothing to create jobs or lower the unemployment rate. Instead, it lost millions in taxpayer dollars to bankrupt companies like Solyndra and his "first time homeowner" tax credits failed to halt foreclosures. If a person doesn't have a job, how can they afford a house?

We need jobs in this country - millions of them. While this is no easy task, there are real, immediate solutions. Here in the House of Representatives, we have armed ourselves with over 20 job-creating bills. They attack the diseases that are killing our private sector, such as bureaucratic regulations, uncertainty, spending and taxes. They are gift-wrapped and sitting on Harry Reid's desk in the Senate, awaiting action.

Businesses want to hire employees and grow. They want a more profitable future in the same way that young people want a better job. But instead they are forced to focus on expensive regulations, tax increases on the horizon and worst of all - no new customers.

Where are these new customers? How can we get them to spend and invest? They're at their parents' house, writing another cover letter, and praying for a job.

Rep. Renee Ellmers of Dunn represents North Carolina District 2 in Congress. She has been a registered nurse for more than 21 years and is chairwoman of the House Small Business Committee's subcommittee on Healthcare and Technology.

Read the original article in the Fayetteville Observer.