White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters today that “the White House doesn’t create jobs.” In fairness, Carney’s full comment is actually pretty solid, at least in the abstract.
Carney unintentionally repeats the old Sharron Angle plank, from when Angle said that it wasn’t a senator’s job to create jobs, explaining, “I believe my job is to create the policies that will encourage private sector to do what they do best,” as she put it in a debate during her Senate campaign. Don’t hold your breath waiting for Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., to run tv ads hitting Carney for what he said the way Reid hit Angle last year when she made the same point.
Both Angle and Carney attest to the proper role of government in job creation. Carney’s problem is that President Obama has never framed the issue this way. In addition to his many, many claims about job creation, the White House economy website lists “creating jobs” as President Obama’s “first priority,” and it still promises that the $787 billion stimulus package of 2009 “will save or create 3.5 million jobs.” (Maybe Carney should arrange to have that updated.)
As for “policies that allow for greater job creation,” that’s precisely where President Obama’s critics find fault, arguing that his policies are interfering with job creation rather than bringing stability to the economy. The Wall Street Journal blog notes today that the Bank of New York is charging a fee for large deposits. Why? Because people are so scared to invest right now that they are hoarding cash. The Federal Reserve has poured money into the economy, but “banks and investors are reluctant to put that cash to work” because of economic uncertainty, which has resulted in money staying in the bank accounts in a “liquidity trap.”
To return to Nevada: Casino company titan Steve Wynn put a finer point on the problem of Obama’s economic policies, stating in his now-famous conference call, “this administration is the greatest wet blanket to business and progress and job creation in my lifetime . . . [I am] frightened to death about all the new regulations, our healthcare costs escalate, regulations coming from left and right . . . And it makes you slow down and not invest your money.”
Speaking of regulations, the voluminous regulations in the Dodd-Frank bill to produce Wall Street reforms are now being written. The financial sector is reportedly on pace to spend well over $400 million this year on lobbyists, most of whom are trying to influence what those new regulations will say. At this moment, the federal government has become powerful enough, and the economy weak enough, that the best investment is to hire lobbyists.
