New Jobs That Can Save the U.S.: Opinion

Editor's note: This is the last of a six-part series by Matt Horween, CPA, FSO (retired). The previous columns were Iran, Pakistan Biggest Threats, Political Class Choking America, Bring the Troops Home, Fix America First and Immigration System Broken.

We already have a structural trade deficit with most countries of the world and we are spending money outside the U.S. at an alarming rate on two active wars and countless military installations worldwide as well as an expanding foreign aid program.

All of this while we and other countries like Spain are in a jobs depression. We are still losing more than 300,000 jobs a month, and Challenger/Grey said recently that layoffs would get worse in the months ahead going into year-end.

Why are companies going to lay off even more people if the stock market is rising and some economic reports are getting better? I think the reason is the Pelosi/Obama factor and the fact that President Obama likes to lecture and bully the business community and anyone else who disagrees with him. Grownups are getting tired of this act.

Here is my list of job killers, and afterward I will list my super job creators.

Job Killers

1. Trying to change our entire health care system during a very deep recession and extending it to illegal immigrants through their U.S.-born children, who of course are U.S. citizens. The plan includes fines or fees or mandates that will hit small and medium businesses hard. Many very small businesses will fire people to stay under some magic number of employees so they will not have to be under the new plan.

Other employers still have no idea what the plan will really look like since no one can tell them or us at this point, and they will just not hire until they have a clear understanding of the plan. In addition, to the direct hit on small and medium-sized businesses, the Pelosi/Obama team wants to tax the so-called rich to pay for a large part of the cost of the plan. The Obama/Pelosi team should table the plan until we have three straight months of job gains. In the meantime, they can continue to refine it and study it some more to be sure it actually will reduce health care costs and not increase them as the Congressional Budget Office has said that it might do.