The latest jobs report was worse than abysmal. In August, the nation created zero net new jobs. And sure enough, within minutes of the report’s release, the airwaves were infused with vitriol over President Barack Obama’s inability to create jobs in America.
It was the latest bit of not just partisanship calumny, but of a nation that seems to need a civics lesson. We don’t seem to understand how our own government works – or maybe we just don’t want to understand. After all, it’s much easier to see all of the political fireworks in clear relief: Someone’s a hero, someone’s a villain. It’s Jersey Shore on the Potomac.
But the role of the president of the United States is not to create jobs. He cannot run around the country dreaming up new manufacturing ideas or establishing financial service companies. The standard argument is that it is government policy that spurs or deters job creation. But, as has been amply demonstrated in the fight over what to do about the national debt limit, the president can only suggest a course of action. The actual policymaking winds up in the hands of Congress.
And the Congress that we have now is irresponsible.
Blind to the reality that the U.S. is now a consumer-driven economy, Congress wants to pull back federal and state funding, forcing more government employees off the payroll and into the unemployment office.
The August jobs report, indeed, was illuminating. It wasn’t that there were no jobs created in the nation last month. There were plenty of jobs made – in the private sector. But they were all offset by jobs destroyed in the public sector. The reason there were no net new jobs created wasn’t because the president didn’t create them, it was because for every one an entrepreneur devised, a lawmaker cut an equivalent one.
The proper role of government is to do for the people what the people cannot do for themselves. It’s the government’s role to defend the nation. It’s the government’s role to build interstate transportation systems. It’s the government’s role to establish protections and safeguards.
Yes, the government should play as limited a role as possible in a capitalist economy, but that’s not the same as playing no role. Moreover, when an economic emergency is at hand, it is the government’s proper place to do what’s in its power to respond to that emergency.
That’s why the federal government was right two years ago when it launched its original stimulus bill, pumping billions of dollars into the economy. It was right when it enacted the Homebuyer Tax Credit, which pushed tens of thousands of people into homeownership.
No, these are not the kinds of things that government should be doing as a matter of course. But as a matter of economic survival, they were good and necessary.
The problem is that they still are. This economic crisis hasn’t passed, and all signals are that it’s likely to get worse. Deficit spending on programs that stimulate the economy isn’t a sign of fiscal irresponsibility, it’s an investment in our own nation’s economic future.
Consumer confidence is in the cellar. Home sales in our region are at a 20-year low. Unemployment remains perilously high. The stock market is bi-polar. And Congress jabbers away at press conferences, wondering what the president is going to do, then saying quite clearly that it won’t follow anything he suggests anyway.
We are not just in an economic crisis, but a political one. Whether we like the president’s plans is beside the point; we cannot simply bobble our heads and mindlessly murmur sympathy or consternation at Congressional gridlock.
We need to speak up and say, “enough.” We need to move to the middle, where compromise and moderation walk, rather than staying to the extreme, where there is no path to progress.
