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Jewish World Review July 26, 2011 / 24 Tamuz, 5771 ObamaCare strangling business? You ain't seen nothing yet! By Jack Kelly
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Cisco, Lockheed Martin and Borders announced a combined 23,000 in job cuts last week, prompting Yahoo Finance to declare "the mass layoff is making a comeback."
Job losses since January, 2008 are now the greatest since the Great Depression, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Billionaire casino magnate Steve Wynn, a Democrat who's been a major financial supporter of Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, thinks he knows why.
"This administration has been the greatest wet blanket to business, and progress and job creation in my lifetime," Mr. Wynn said in a conference call with investors. "The business community in this country is frightened to death of the weird political philosophy of the president of the United States. And until he's gone, everybody's going to be sitting on their thumbs."
The legal environment has become so hostile to business there is likely to be an erosion of wealth "like we're seeing today in Europe," said Paul Otellini of Intel.
Because of Mr. Obama's anti-business policies, his company is more likely to create new jobs in Canada or Mexico, 3M's George Buckley told the Financial Times.
Home Depot was founded in 1978, in the midst of what had been, until now, the worst recession since the Great Depression. If it were launched today, Home Depot "never would have succeeded" because of Mr. Obama's regulatory policies, co-founder Bernie Marcus told Investors Business Daily.
General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt is Mr. Obama's strongest supporter in the business community. But in a speech in Rome last year, he expressed concern that "over-regulation in response to the global financial crisis would dampen a 'tepid' U.S. economic recovery," the Financial Times reported.
Obamacare alone has done that. The private sector created an average of 67,600 jobs a month between January of 2009 and April of 2010. Then Obamacare passed, and private sector job creation fell to 6,400 jobs a month, according to BLS data.
Obamacare is their greatest or second greatest obstacle to new hiring, said 33 percent of small business owners surveyed by the Chamber of Commerce.
It isn't just Obamacare that's strangling business with red tape. There were 165,494 pages in the Code of Federal Regulations at the end of last year, a 23 percent increase since 1998, a 202 percent increase since 1970.
According to the Government Accountability Office, 43 "major" new regulations were imposed last year, with an estimated cost of compliance of $26.5 billion, by far the largest one year increase in history. Regulatory costs now total about $1.75 trillion annually, according to a study by the Small Business Administration. That's nearly twice as much as all the personal income taxes collected last year.
More job killing regulations are on the way. There were 2,439 proposed new rules in the regulatory pipeline at the end of last year.
New rules the Environmental Protection Agency is proposing for power plants could cost 50,000 of its members their jobs, estimates the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. A coal industry study forecasts an overall job loss of more than 200,000, and a spike of 11 to 23 percent in the electric rates consumers must pay.
Sluggishness in granting permits since the moratorium on oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico was lifted is blocking creation of up to 230,000 jobs, according to Cambridge Energy Research Associates.
The hard hit auto industry could lose another 220,000 jobs if stringent new fuel economy standards are imposed, automakers say. The new standards, said one auto industry official, "are like dealing with the nation's obesity problem by forcing clothing manufacturers to sell only small sizes."
President Obama doesn't mean to harm the economy, he just doesn't know what he's doing, Mr. Marcus said. "He doesn't know how to make a payroll, he doesn't understand the problems businesses face."
Mr. Wynn isn't so sure. "The guy keeps making speeches about redistribution," he said. "We haven't heard that kind of talk except from pure socialists."
Will Barack Obama be known more as the most reckless spender in American history? Or as the biggest job killer? It's too early to tell. But neither is a terrific economic record on which to base a re-election campaign.
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JWR contributor Jack Kelly, a former Marine and Green Beret, was a deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration.
© 2009, Jack Kelly |
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