Admittedly, the country was not in great shape when Barack Obama came into office. The United States had already gone into recession, the housing bubble had burst, and the global economy didn't look so hot either. Unfortunately, Barack Obama took a bad situation and made it much worse. Had Obama done nothing, chances are the country would be better off today and had he actually pursued a pro-growth policy of slashing regulations, cutting taxes, and tamping down the deficit, the economy would be immeasurably stronger than it is now. Instead, Barack Obama pumped job-killing, growth-draining rat poison directly into the veins of our nation's economy.
1) Obamacare: Obama pushed a massive new entitlement program past a Congress that didn't even read the bill. Many businesses don't fully understand how Obamacare will impact them when it goes into effect in 2014, but they do know their lives will be much more complicated, it will cost them a lot more money, and it will be considerably more difficult to provide health care for their employees. Obamacare is a major disincentive to hire new people.
2) Regulations: When the economy is reeling, that's when you need to cut back on regulations to spur growth, not gum up the works even further. According to the Heritage Foundation, "the Obama Administration imposed 75 new major regulations from January 2009 to mid-FY 2011, with annual costs of $38 billion. There were only six major deregulatory actions during that time, with reported savings of just $1.5 billion." In addition, the Obama Administration is proposing another seven new regulations that are projected to cost businesses somewhere between 35 and 100 billion dollars more. Every dollar that businesses have to spend trying to extricate themselves from government-generated red tape is another dollar that they can't spend on new workers who can make more of their products.
3) The EPA: The EPA has been waging a one bureaucracy war against American business and capitalism for a long while, but it’s stepping up its attacks to draconian levels under the Obama Administration. The EPA is pushing new greenhouse gas rules that could cost "7.3 million jobs and add $32.2 billion annually in new regulatory costs." Additionally, although environmentalists have claimed it's a "myth," the EPA is indeed planning to tighten its standards for how much dust can be in the air to a level lower than you'd find in "an average windy day in Dodge City." The EPA's new rules on boilers would wipe out 18% of the workforce in the pulp and paper mills. If you're a business owner in one of these industries and you see that the EPA is about to begin waging this sort of economic war against you, would you be creating any new jobs?
4) Spending: Even though Barack Obama promised to "cut the deficit in half by the end of his term," he's gone on the single biggest wasteful spending spree in recorded human history. Obama didn't start the bailouts, but he continued them, he pushed through a trillion dollar stimulus that did almost nothing for the economy, and he created a new entitlement program that, despite phony budget projections, everyone knows will add trillions to the debt. If Obama had actually gone in a different direction and lived up to his promise to cut the deficit, America's AAA rating would still be intact and we wouldn't have to worry about the possibility of America defaulting on its debts in as little as 4 (estimate from Tom Coburn) to 10 years (estimate from Mike Pence). America losing its AAA rating because of this level of spending was an almost unthinkable outcome before Barack Obama got into office. But now, businessmen have to consider the possibility of a government-caused default in less than a decade, an event that would create an economic climate in the United States that would likely be considerably worse than the Great Depression. Expanding in a situation like that is risky business and it's one more reason businesses aren't hiring.
5) Taxes: Obama has relentlessly demonized any American who's wealthy, productive, or owns a business. Then, Obama has gone on to scratch his head and wonder why those same people aren't creating jobs. Maybe he's never seen that old coffee-mug slogan, "The beatings will continue until morale improves." Setting aside pure politically-motivated class warfare, the reason Obama continues to regularly hurl his "two minutes of hate" at the most productive people in society is simple: It's a prelude to tax increases. The more you convince people that the Golden Goose is evil, the easier it is to get people to go along when you suggest slitting its stomach open. And the new taxes that are under discussion? They’re practically endless: killing the Bush tax cuts, a corporate jet tax, a value added tax, an increase in the capital gains tax, raising taxes on oil companies, a higher income tax on the "wealthy," the taxation of digital goods and services, healthcare taxes, raising the death tax, new corporate taxes, life insurance taxes, new energy taxes, taxes on allergy medicine, taxes on oxygen tanks, new real estate taxes, new tax rates for millionaires; on and on and on it goes. If you make enough money to actually hire someone to work for you in this country, it’s impossible to estimate how much of the money you've earned that you will be able to keep over the next few years. That uncertainty has caused job creators to hunker down, stockpile cash, and avoid hiring more people.
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