Reactions to President Barack Obama's September 8, 2011 Jobs Speech

7:42 p.m.

JON HUNTSMAN STATEMENT ON PRESIDENT OBAMA'S JOBS SPEECH


Orlando, FL - Governor Jon Huntsman issued the following statement regarding President Obama's speech to Congress on jobs:

"The American people are tired of President Obama’s empty rhetoric and failed policies; they're desperately searching for leadership and, above all, results. Tonight's list of regurgitated half-measures demonstrates that President Obama fundamentally doesn't understand how to turn our economy around.

"Last week, I detailed specific and comprehensive solutions to create jobs and revive our flailing economy – a plan immediately endorsed by the Wall Street Journal and described as 'the most pro-growth proposal ever offered by a US presidential candidate.'

"Rather than tinker with a broken and outdated tax system, I propose bold reform which eliminates loopholes, special interest carve-outs and subsidies, while lowering rates across the board to make our tax code flatter, fairer, simpler and more conducive to growth. My plan also eliminates burdensome regulations like Obamacare, promotes energy independence, and opens more global markets for American products by expanding free trade.

"In stark contrast to my fellow candidates, my economic plan is built upon a proven record of success. It draws heavily from my experience as governor of Utah, where we enacted similar reforms which made our state number one in job-creation and our economy grow at triple the national rate.

"President Obama has failed. It's time for America to compete again. We did it in Utah and we can do it for America."

7:43 p.m.
GARY JOHNSON ON JOBS SPEECH: STOP HELPING IS TO DEATH

September 8, 2011, Santa Fe, NM -- Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson released the following statement regarding the President's jobs speech:

"I suspect I am not the only American asking, if a trillion dollars' worth of stimulus didn't work, why will another $450 billion do the trick?  Whether it be jobs created with borrowed and newly-printed dollars, temporary extensions of tax cuts, or sending money to the states to postpone layoffs, none of the President's proposals will remove the real obstacles to job creation.  Government cannot create jobs.  Businesses, entrepreneurs and investors can create jobs, and right now, they are simply afraid to do so.  And they should be.  They are looking at a national debt that is consuming the private economy, more deficit spending with no end in sight, and a regulatory environment that promises only new and costly surprises every day.

"Instead of nibbling around the edges of a job-killing tax code, we need to throw it out.  Eliminate income, business and payroll taxes altogether, and replace them with a FAIR tax (FairTax.org) that will result in millions of jobs.  Instead of spending more, balance the budget now.  Get the burden of government spending and borrowing off the economy, and it will flourish.  And as the government's chief executive, the President needs to get federal agencies out of the business of managing the economy, and into the business of establishing regulatory certainty.  Do those things, and the U.S. will become the job magnet of the world.

"Government is absolutely a big part of the jobs problem, but it is not the solution -- other than by getting out of the way.   Congress and the Administration have almost helped us to death.  What we heard tonight is that they are going to help us some more.  Please, please, just stop."

7:52 p.m.

Presidential Candidate Buddy Roemer Responds to President Obama’s Jobs Speech

MANCHESTER, N.H. – Republican businessman and former Louisiana Governor Buddy Roemer today released the following statement in response to President Obama’s jobs speech.

“The President’s jobs plan will certainly create jobs – jobs in China.  Another $450 billion government stimulus is not the answer.  The President’s job-killing economic policies have decimated domestic manufacturing, shipped thousands of good American jobs overseas and saddled future generations with an historic level of debt they may likely never be able to escape.”

Governor Roemer enacted sweeping reforms that cut unemployment by half in Louisiana during his four-year tenure by reducing the regulatory and tax burdens on families and small businesses.  He has proposed a job creation plan that eliminates the tax incentives for companies that export American jobs and ends unfair trade practices that undercut the competitiveness of American goods and services. Governor Roemer has also called for the repeal of Obamacare, the reimplementation of Glass-Stegal banking principles and a commitment to energy independence.

“We must end unfair trade practices, enact real tax reforms by closing special interest loopholes and restart the idle engines of job growth in our private sector now.  Mr. President, get passionate about creating jobs here at home and start standing-up for ‘Made in America’ again.”
Rep. Michele Bachmann responded as a member of Congress in an 8:30 p.m. press conference
8:21 p.m.

Statement by Texas Gov. Rick Perry on President Obama’s Speech

Gov. Rick Perry today released the following statement regarding President Barack Obama’s speech to Congress:

“President Obama’s call for nearly a half-trillion dollars in more government stimulus when America has more than $14 trillion in debt is guided by his mistaken belief that we can spend our way to prosperity.

“Like the president’s earlier $800 billion stimulus program, this proposal offers little hope for millions of Americans who have lost jobs on his watch, and taxpayers who are rightly concerned that their children will inherit a mountain of debt.

“America needs jobs, smaller government, less spending and a president with the courage to offer more than yet another speech.”

8:50 p.m.

Senator Santorum: "Many say the President is a failure, but I disagree - he'd have to improve a whole lot to even be considered a failure."
 
Verona, PA - Former Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) made the following statement in response to President Obama's jobs speech before a joint session of Congress this evening.

Senator Santorum said, "Many say the President is a failure, but I disagree - he'd have to improve a whole lot to even be considered a failure.  The President's speech tonight was more of the same failed policies and empty rhetoric that got him elected and got us in this mess.   Sadly, the President seems to have forgotten his own charge that our country should come before party or his own even re-election. Instead President Obama kicked off his campaign for reelection in the most disingenuous way possible - by using the Congress as a his political toy.  His failed plan to spend over $400 billion more that we do not have, create further tax instability for workers and employers alike, and use federal tax dollars to prop up government is only made worse by the political theater we saw tonight.  Regardless of what he says, the President is guilty of political malfeasance that was no clearer seen than by his campaign's email fundraising appeal sent shortly before his address this evening."

President Obama and the national Democrats used tonight's address to raise money through an email solicitation just over an hour before the President entered the House Chamber.  In his email to supporters, President Obama says that he is "about to head to the Capitol to ask Congress to ask on [his] plan to put Americans back to work" and that it is up to his supporters to "pressure Congress to act - or hold them accountable if they do not."  This was not a policy speech to the nation, but a political speech using the Chamber of the House of Representatives as the backdrop.

Senator Santorum's jobs plan, which was released on July 5th in the Mississippi River manufacturing town of Burlington, IA, focuses on reinvigorating the "great middle of America" that has been lost over the past several decades - specifically the manufacturing sector.    Rather than focusing on further extending unemployment benefits or government aid, Senator Santorum focuses on actually putting people back to work and not furthering the numbing dependency on government.

Among the many initiatives in the Santorum jobs plan are:

· Cutting the corporate tax rate for domestic manufacturers from 35% to 0%;

· Repatriating foreign income at a 5% tax rate rather than the current 35% to bring those revenues home to be investing in America;

· Increasing the R&D Tax Credit from 14% to 20% and making it permanent;

· Reducing the regulatory burden currently stifling American innovation, including complete repeals of ObamaCare, Sarbanes-Oxley, and Dodd-Frank; and,

· Expanding domestic energy exploration to lower energy costs for manufacturers and create good paying manufacturing jobs.

For more information on the Santorum jobs plan:
http://www.ricksantorum.com/news/2011/07/courage-fight-american-jobs 

10:02 p.m.
Herman Cain Responds to President Obama's Speech on Jobs

(Stockbridge, GA)- Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain responded to President Obama's speech on jobs tonight, saying:

We waited 30 months for this?

PRESS RELEASE from Libertarian Party
September 8, 2011
Libertarians respond to Obama speech and Republican debate

WASHINGTON - Libertarian Party Executive Director Wes Benedict has released a video response to President Obama's jobs speech. The video is available here.

A transcript follows:

My name is Wes Benedict and I'm the Executive Director of the Libertarian National Committee in Washington, DC.

I have a message for the American people in response to President Obama's proposal tonight for an American Jobs Act. I also have a few comments about last night's Republican Presidential debate.

Unemployment is at 9 percent. Four years ago, in late 2007, unemployment was less than 5 percent. Then in 2008, President Bush mailed out millions of 300-dollar government stimulus checks. Later that year, he supported the massive TARP bailout. Unemployment rose. In 2009, President Obama said if we passed another big stimulus plan, unemployment would stay below 8 percent. Now it's at 9 percent. Government spending does not help the economy, it hurts the economy.

Stimulus spending doesn't create jobs, it destroys them. When investors hear that the U.S. government is going to flush more money down the spending hole, they react immediately by cutting back on investments that would have created jobs.

Government stimulus spending benefits a few, but at great expense to everyone else. Politicians like to be able to say they're "doing something," but too often, "doing something" means handing out money to special interests. Often these programs are promoted with false claims that they will benefit the poor and middle class. Usually the opposite happens.

We don't need the government "doing something" if it involves more spending and new programs.

We'd be better off if the government stopped trying to help, and gave Americans a chance to recover, adjust their plans, and start solving economic problems themselves.

However, if politicians feel like they must be seen "doing something", then they should cut spending, bring our troops home from the Middle East, reduce Medicare and Social Security benefits, cut taxes, and eliminate burdensome licensing laws and minimum wage laws. Licensing and minimum wage laws take the bottom rungs off the economic ladder.

The President's tax cut proposals are good and bad. Libertarians always support broad-based tax cuts. But targeted special-interest cuts and loopholes just amount to social engineering, and they pit different interest groups against each other. And tax cuts without spending cuts virtually guarantee that future generations will suffer a heavier tax burden.

It's foolish to talk about increasing taxes on the wealthy. That would be a great way to destroy even more jobs. Libertarians want to cut spending, and cut taxes for everyone.

Last night, I watched the Republican Presidential debate, and it was the same old nonsense from Republicans. They sometimes say they are for free markets. Yet, Mitt Romney defended his Romney Care plan. Rick Perry boasted about his new 3-billion-dollar taxpayer funded medical research center in Texas. Newt Gingrich said we need to grow revenue. Mr. Gingrich, the last thing we need is to put more money into the incompetent, wasteful, and corrupt hands of the federal government.

Libertarians want less government, and more jobs. We support free markets, civil liberties, and peace.

You can find out more on our website at LP.org.

Thank you, and good night.
PRESS RELEASE from Green Party of the United States

For Immediate Release:
Friday, September 9, 2011

Contacts:
Scott McLarty, Media Coordinator
Starlene Rankin, Media Coordinator

Green Party, responding to President Obama's Sept. 8 address, calls 'Green New Deal' the key to job creation

Greens urge public works programs to provide millions of jobs and help convert America to a secure green economy

WASHINGTON, DC -- Responding to President Obama's speech Thursday night, the Green Party today called for a 'Green New Deal' to put Americans back to work while helping the US transition to a carbon-free green economy.

"We need a Green New Deal that will put all of the unemployed to work rebuilding America on the basis of an economically and ecologically sustainable prosperity. The green in the Green New Deal means we must go beyond the old New Deal and bring an environmental focus to our public investments, including clean manufacturing processes, to not only address the crisis of climate change but to build the foundation of a sustainable green economy," said Jill Stein, co-chair of the Green-Rainbow Party of Massachusetts (http://www.massgreens.org) and author of "Jobs for All with a Green New Deal" (Green Papers, September 5, 2011, http://www.greenpapers.net/?p=164).

"Other countries are already making major investments to position themselves for this future carbon-free economy. America needs to catch up. A Green New Deal offers the opportunity to revive and reinvent American manufacturing, so we can have good jobs by making the solar panels and wind towers and transit cars right here in America," added Dr. Stein.

More on the Green New Deal: http://www.greenpartywatch.org/2010/08/11/62-green-candidates-endorse-green-new-deal

Green Party leaders said that President Obama's new jobs proposal will fall far short of finding enough jobs for the 25 million Americans who need employment. They sharply criticized the president for failing to call for revenue measures needed to finance a robust jobs creation program, including taxes on Wall Street speculation, off-shore tax havens, millionaires and multimillion dollar estates, as well as a 30% reduction in the trillion-dollar bloated military-industrial-security complex budget.

"President Obama refused to address the massive problem of income inequality, a major cause of the economic recession. The wealthiest 1% of Americans now take home 24% of the national income, up from 9% in 1976. The last time the US had such massive income inequality was in 1927, which pushed the country into the Great Depression because of the loss of consumer spending," said Laura Wells, Green candidate for the 2010 governor's race in California.

Green leaders said that a payroll tax cut for working Americans will at best provide a modest economic stimulus, but agreed with President Obama's support for extended unemployment benefits.

Greens have long advocated the establishment of an infrastructure bank, noting that North Dakota's successful public banks have granted cheaper and easier access to credit to small businesses, nonprofits, and local governments.

"The path to full employment in America lies in building a green economy, not in caving to polluters as the Obama administration has done recently. The New York Times reports that the recent surge of the Green Party in many European countries was due to the recognition that building a green economy is the key to job creation (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/02/world/europe/02greens.html). Politicians in the US love to campaign on a green jobs agenda, but once elected, its back to pushing more tax cuts and handouts for large corporations," said Starlene Rankin, co-chair of the Green Party's national Lavender Green Caucus.

"A Green New Deal will establish government's responsibility to guarantee the right to a job for every American willing and able to work. Let's turn the unemployment office into the employment office. If the private sector fails to provide you a job, you go down to the employment office to get work. We need to build ecologically sustainable energy and transportation infrastructure and production systems -- clean renewable energy generation, retrofitting buildings and homes and other projects for energy efficiency, intra-city mass transit and inter-city railroads, 'complete streets' that encourage bikes and pedestrians, regional food systems based on sustainable organic agriculture, and clean manufacturing of the goods needed to support a sustainable economy," said Howie Hawkins, co-chair of the Green Party of New York State and Green candidate for Common Councilor in Syracuse, New York.

Green leaders noted that the White House launched several successful public works programs since the 1930s. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the 1930s and Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) in the 1970s employed millions to provide necessary public infrastructure and public services like education, health, child care, elder care, youth programs, and arts and cultural projects.

The net cost of a WPA-style jobs program to create 25 million new jobs would be $666 billion, only about 50% more than the $447 billion President Obama proposes and less than the $825 billion in the 2009 stimulus -- and miniscule compared to the trillions in Wall Street bailouts in 2008 and 2009. (See "Learning from the New Deal" (draft) by Philip Harvey, Professor of Law and Economics at Rutgers School of Law, http://www.njfac.org/HarveyLearningND.pdf). Assuming that a public jobs program would stimulate about one private job for every two public jobs created, we would need about 17.5 million public jobs the first year. With pay between $14 to $17 per hour, plus benefits, the net cost per job would be only $28,600, compared to $228,055 per job cost of Obama's initial 2009 stimulus, which mainly consisted of tax incentives.

Greens warned that Obama's proposals also fail to provide enough relief from housing foreclosures. A July 2010 report from the International Monetary Fund shows that the foreclosure crisis account for more than 10% of the unemployment rate (http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/scr/2010/cr10248.pdf). Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-run mortgage companies, must aggressively reduce the principal balances on underwater loans and make refinancing easier for underwater borrowers.

The cost of a Green New Deal jobs program would be covered through a combination of carbon taxes to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, increased taxes on the wealthy and Wall Street, and major cuts in the military budget. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the top four contributors to the federal deficit are (in order of importance) the Bush tax cuts, reduced revenues in the wake of the 2008 economic meltdown, bank bailouts, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Defending America doesn't require a globally deployed military, with bases in over 100 countries and full-scale occupations and wars on several fronts. The military budget has doubled over the last decade. The US spends over $1 trillion a year on the military-industrial complex. If we cut military spending by two-thirds to fully fund an Employment Assurance program in the depths of the current Great Recession, we would still spend three times more than China, the world's next biggest military spender, China," said Mark Dunlea, New York Green and chair of the Green Educational Legal Fund, Inc.
from the Constitution Party
September 9, 2011

President Obama’s Job Speech: A Constitution Party Response

by Darrell Castle
Vice-Chairman, Constitution Party National Committee

Last night President Obama addressed a joint session of Congress and the nation on the subject of jobs. The result was a proposed bill he called “The American Jobs Act,” which he repeatedly urged Congress to pass right away.

The president summarized his proposal in a pre-speech announcement by describing it as a series of bipartisan proposals that allow Congress to take immediate action to rebuild the American economy. He went on to say that his proposal would strengthen small businesses, help get Americans back to work, and put more money in the paychecks of the middle class and working American. His proposal would do all this while still reducing the deficit and getting our fiscal house in order.

The meat of the president’s proposal could be summarized as follows:

The President has a very difficult situation on his hands. The 2012 presidential campaign has already started; his approval rating is the lowest since such records have been kept; and he is facing 9.1% unemployment.

He knows that no president since FDR has been re-elected with unemployment above 7.2%. He must, therefore, bring down unemployment; he must do it quickly; and he must do it without offending any particular voting constituency.

His very difficult situation is made close to impossible by the fact that he has only a set of failed economic theories to work with. The Keynesian Theory of how to revive a faltering economy has been tried several times in the last four years with no lasting effect. The trillions spent to prop up failing financial institutions, Cash for Clunkers, $8000 home purchase incentives – are all gone, all disappeared into the black hole of debt as if they were never there.

The President is right about one thing, though. This fiscal disaster we are facing has been built by a joint effort of Democrats and Republicans. After all, one-half of the Federal Reserve’s mandate is to maintain full employment. It usually attempts to fulfill its mandate through a bipartisan formula of debt and more debt.

What then is the problem?

The problem is several decades of the Keynesian approach of debt and inflation. During the 98-year existence of the Federal Reserve, the dollar has lost more than 95% of its value and the national debt has passed 15 trillion dollars. The deep fiscal problems – perhaps unsolvable without serious pain – which we now face are the inevitable result of America’s severing the last connection of the dollar to gold in August 1971. That act, in effect, changed the world’s reserve currency from gold to paper and now the paper is returning to its intrinsic value.

The other problem is the relentless transferring of American jobs, especially the high paying ones, to foreign countries. This process was brought about through trade agreements like NAFTA, CAFTA, WTO and GATT. President Obama made a campaign promise to revisit NAFTA but he has not done so.

The President recognized that unemployment was a serious problem shortly after his inauguration, and he created a position commonly referred to as Jobs Czar, to deal with it. That position is currently held by Jeffrey Immelt, C.E.O. of General Electric. Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D – OH) recently issued a statement calling for Mr. Immelt to resign or be removed because of G.E.’s transference of vital technology to Chinese state-owned companies. Mr. Immelt, it seems, has created a lot of new jobs – in China. A problem caused by profligate spending, high inflation, and the resulting unsustainable debt, along with transferring jobs to foreign countries cannot be solved by more profligate spending and more job transfers.

What then is the solution?

There is no solution that will not bring with it at least temporary pain. Change our monetary system from one based on debt and inflation – which lead inevitably to recession or depression – to one based on sound money. Sound money would quickly return America to fiscal sanity after a period in which debt in the system is flushed out through repayment or default. Abolish the Federal Reserve and with it the policy of never-ending debt and inflation. Withdraw from international agreements such as NAFTA which encourage the transferring of American jobs and technology to foreign countries.

Perhaps President Obama’s “American Jobs Act” will be passed by Congress, and will delay the inevitable long enough to allow him to survive the 2012 election. Time will tell, but should the things I have proposed be enacted, I have no doubt that America would quickly become the most prosperous and dynamic nation on earth again