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As Americans Ask “Where Are the Jobs?” Obama Advisor Pushes for Even More Tax Hikes
Washington
(Apr 7)
Families and small businesses are struggling in an economy that isn’t producing the jobs President Obama promised. When the Democrats’ trillion-dollar “stimulus” was signed into law, the Obama Administration promised it would keep unemployment below eight percent and create jobs immediately. With nearly four million jobs lost under President Obama’s watch, is it any wonder why Americans continue to ask “where are the jobs?”
What’s the answer? Obama Advisor Paul Volcker says more tax increases, specifically a job-killing European-style value-added tax (VAT). Of the VAT, one Reuters columnist says “politicians love the hidden aspect of a VAT as way of duping voters. To them opaqueness is a feature, not a bug.” The fact is a VAT would be yet another Obama tax hike that would hammer small businesses and undermine job creation, but this Administration continues to pursue job-killing tax hikes:
• ObamaCare is already destroying American jobs. More than 130 economists warned President Obama and Congress in a letter that the health care bill, and specifically its tax increases, “will eliminate jobs, reduce hours and wages, and limit future job creation.” That’s exactly what we’ve seen so far, as employers and small businesses consider cutting jobs and dropping health care to blunt the impact of the Democrats’ job-killing government takeover of health care.
• Obama’s job-killing national energy tax will ship jobs overseas and impose a massive tax on every single American. If you drive a car, buy food or a product manufactured in America, or have the audacity to flip on a light switch, you’ll pay under the Democrats’ national energy tax. Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) said this about the tax: “Nobody in this country realizes that cap and trade is a tax. And it’s a great big one.” Moreover, one key study says it will cost 2.3 to 2.7 million jobs each year.
• Obama’s job-killing $3.8 trillion budget spends too much, taxes too much, and borrows too much. It includes, among other initiatives harmful to our economy, one of the biggest tax increases in American history.
We know that President Obama’s economy is still leaving far too many families behind. Consider the following key points from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) analysis of the March employment report:
• In March, the number of unemployed Americans increased slightly from 14.8 million to 15 million.
• While the national unemployment rate remains high at 9.7 percent, the jobless rate is now 16.5 percent for African-Americans and 12.6 percent for Hispanics.
• The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) increased by 414,000 to 6.5 million. In March, 44.1 percent of unemployed Americans were jobless for 27 weeks or more.
• The number of Americans working part time for economic reasons increased to 9.1 million in March. These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job.
• Approximately 2.3 million Americans were “marginally attached” to the labor force in March, according to the BLS, compared with 2.1 million a year earlier. These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months – but they were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the last four weeks.
• In March approximately one million of these workers simply chose not to look for work because they believed no jobs are available for them, up by 309,000 in March 2009.
It is no coincidence that according to the latest CNN survey, more Americans say Republicans would do a better job of dealing with the economy. Our economy will ultimately recover, but it will do so because of the hard work and entrepreneurship of the American people, not because of the job-killing policies from Washington Democrats. Republicans have listened to the American people and proposed better solutions to address the challenges middle-class families are facing, including a no-cost jobs plan to help small businesses get back on track and put people back to work.
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