Choose Reaganomics over Obamanomics

As young Americans, ages 16-24, grapple with unemployment at 25 percent, President Barack Obama spoke to a joint session of Congress to lay out his new "jobs plan" to the nation.

However, rather than seizing the occasion to support bold, free-market solutions to the jobs crisis, the president reiterated a repackaged, downsized retread of his failed 2009 $787 billion stimulus package. A package that, according to the White House, without passage would result in 7.5 percent unemployment; but he promised that with passage we would currently be at about 6.5 percent unemployment. The president promised that this stimulus would "create or save 3.5 million jobs over the next two years." When the president signed this on Feb. 17, 2009, unemployment stood at 8.2 percent.

The president has called for more infrastructure spending. I guess the "largest new investment in our nation's infrastructure since Eisenhower" just didn't do the trick, and the "Shovel-ready wasn't quite as, uh, shovel-ready as we thought."

The president called for temporary tax breaks, which will not produce permanent new hires, but instead it gives incentives for businesses to hire temporary workers to gain from the short-term benefits. The president's mortgage refinancing program would translate into a $14 billion loss to responsible investors, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Moreover, it would create a moral hazard and encourage the same irresponsible behavior that led to the housing bubble in the first place.

Not surprisingly, the president was long on poetry and short on prose. He offered few specifics of how to pay for his new plan, which is estimated to cost $450 billion. He did promise that at some undetermined date in the future he would present a bold plan for deficit reduction.

Sounds awfully familiar.

If the president were serious about job creation, he'd take the following common sense steps: first, repeal the job-killing, cost-inflating, regulatory monstrosity known as Obamacare.

Second, reign in the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Labor Relation Board as part of a broader regulatory moratorium. This will promote the level of certainty job creators need to get America back to work. It is inexcusable that the president stands idly by as the NLRB single-handedly kills thousands of high-paying jobs in South Carolina in order to please their union cronies.

Third, stop cow-towing to Big Labor and pass the pending free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea, with no strings attached.

Fourth, end the Interior Department's war on offshore drilling. Instead, launch a real energy independence initiative that puts Americans to work harvesting all of our domestic energy resources. An initiative of this magnitude could put literally millions of Americans back to work while reducing the cost of fuel at the pump and building the foundation for a clean-energy future.

The president, however, is not likely to take any of these steps. This is because he is surrounded by academics and career bureaucrats who have never worked in the private sector.

It's up to us to take action and take our message to every corner at the country: Obamanomics have failed. Reaganomics work. Keynesian-style stimulus does not work. Freedom always works.