Obama’s Unacceptable Status Quo

Last summer, Mitt Romney released a 59-point plan for growing jobs in America. Didn’t hear about it? Well, that’s not too surprising. The media largely ignored it- too complicated for the nightly broadcast and a little too dense for editorial writers.

Ultimately, the candidate boiled down his talking points to just five. Here they are: energy independence, more trade, better education systems, cut the deficit, and encourage small business.

Last night, the president released his plan for growing jobs just two weeks before the election. No time like the present I guess. Here’s his list: energy independence, encourage small business, cut the deficit, better education systems... is it me or does this sound familiar?

Now, not only does Obama claim these are his goals, but he says that he's already accomplished many of them, or is on the way to accomplishing them. However, the reality is something different:

Let's start with manufacturing.

No doubt about it, more manufacturing jobs would be good. The president says he has created 500,000 jobs over the past 31 months. Close. He actually created 480,000 during that period. But why just look at 31 months? The president has been in office for more than 45 months. Using that as a yardstick, manufacturing jobs have shrunk by 610,000.

Obama brags he has increased net oil imports by 30%. True enough, but if he was serious about ending our reliance on Middle East oil, why didn't he approve TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline? Not only would that have transported hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil from Canada, but it would have created as many as 20,000 jobs.

Then, Obama says he wants to cut the deficit by $4 trillion. Well, that wouldn't undo the damage of his first term when his deficits totaled more than $5 trillion. The record here isn't good; too much spending, and not enough cutting back.

I could go on, but you get the point. This little pamphlet feels more like a piece of fiction than a real roadmap for getting America back to work.

After all, the claim Obamacare would increase employment is well malarkey, as Vice President, Joe Biden put it. The congressional budget office says health care reform alone would cost 800,000 jobs. The truth is this Administration has settled for middling performance when it comes to this economy.

The president seems a-ok with 23 million of us underemployed or unemployed. 46 million Americans are on food stamps and the economy can't seem to inch its way much past 1% growth.

Can't we do better than this? I sure think we can. Let’s set the bar higher.