Job Creation

Congress is currently considered another job stimulus that would be "deficit-neutral", meaning that it would take $200 billion in savings from TARP and spend it instead on "stimulus".

Even NPR finds this a bit hard to believe. In their report last night, they pointed out a couple of problems: first, that any savings found in any federal program tends to be spent three different ways. So we'll probably end up even worse off. Second, that the "stimulus" under consideration isn't very stimulating: extensions to unemployment benefits (which, er, don't help create jobs, although they may ease the pain for the unemployed), subsidized loans to small businesses (which might help if those businesses wanted loans; many don't since they aren't expanding anyway, with consumer spending off).

Here's my alternative, which I present as free advice to Congress and the Obama administration: stop. Stop meddling with health care. Stop talking about cap and trade. Stop encouraging the EPA to regulate CO2 emissions. All of these are job killers, but health care is the big one. How can any business - especially a small business - budget for employees when they may be on the hook for health-care-related penalties or insurance at any time? It's no surprise that no one is hiring; uncertainty looms everywhere.

Must we reproduce now the typical liberal error of spending a trillion dollars to "fix" something, then another trillion to fix the problems the original fix caused, and so on forevermore?