With President Obama and the Democrats steamrolling their agenda, conservatives have never been more energized. With 2010 midterm elections coming into view conservative bloggers, commentators and pundits are looking for a theme or a message for an opposition platform that will lead to election victory. My take is that many conservatives are searching to bring the Republican Party back in touch with their principles. While I agree with them, I think we need something a little more tangible for a national platform. We need a single or a couple of specific issues to rally around. I suggest that the perfect opposition to President Obama and the Congressional Democrats will be jobs.
Both the White House and Congress are careless, if not flippant in respect to job creation. Sure, Obama talks about unemployment and job creation all the time, but he really hasn’t put his money where his mouth is. Obama’s stimulus is the perfect example of his insincerity. At the beginning of May, only 6% of the stimulus funds had been spent. Obama touted at creating and saving 150,000 jobs, while sending the same number of already employed people working at dealerships to the unemployment line. The stimulus is basically a three year spending bill and all the spending is in areas not likely to promote or create a sustainable number of jobs. For example, NY has finally decided to spend some of the stimulus by extending unemployment benefits for 13 weeks. The spending may be a worthy effort on NY’s part, but where’s the job savings or creation?
Two simple facts will dramatically hurt Obama and the Democrats. Obama promised to save and create 3.5 million jobs (the OMB already has forecast that his stimulus is likely to only save or create 2.5 million jobs). Unemployment is going to get worse and is not going to ease anytime soon. That is not just my prediction, which I’ve been saying for a while. That is also the prediction of the Federal Open Market Committee.
According to their
April minutes, all members of the FED Committee were in agreement that it will take 5 or more years for unemployment to recover. What is interesting in this statement is that the opinion was unanimous for all the committee members.
Obama has nothing in the works to deal with this issue. Obama’s budget agenda and policies were written with a different economic landscape in mind. You see, Obama crafted his budget plans during his primary race, which was most of 2007. Did Obama revise his plan when the 2008 recession hit? Of course not! What might have been good policy in a 2007 economy must also be good in a 2009 economy, right? Did anyone else find it weird that the same ideas Obama thought out in 2007 were then touted as the solution in 2009?
Truthfully, there is nothing about job creation in Obama’s budget. In fact, much of it is going to cause more job losses than spur job creation. Ideas like cap and trade will put many more millions out on the unemployment line. This is a huge opportunity for opponents to the President’s agenda. It was economic unrest and uncertainty that led to Obama’s election. However, it is the disillusionment of that choice that can lead to the Democrats defeat.
