On the recordJuly 20, 2010
After four stimulus packages over the past 2 years, Americans are asking: Where are the jobs? Why aren't businesses hiring? In a word, uncertainty. We've seen a great deal of activist government over the past 2 years with enormous budget deficits, the government takeover of car companies, bank bailouts, mandatory national health care, misguided financial regulation and more. Still, President Obama and the congressional leadership have additional disruptive plans on tap, including big tax increases and cap-and-trade legislation. Not only are businesses being burdened with new taxes and other requirements, they also know that further afflictions are coming, but the form and extent of those afflictions are still a mystery. Business people plan to succeed, but when the government is making major burdensome and, as yet largely unspecified, changes, it is very difficult to plan. Rather than hiring and investing, many are choosing to wait and see. America's working people are the victims of this administration's and this Congress' rampant activism.
