Staff and Wire Reports
Against the backdrop of the recent White House Jobs Summit, State Representative Phil King (R-Weatherford) called for a smarter, limited government approach to job creation that he says is a proven alternative to federal stimulus spending and intervention in the private sector economy.
In a late-week release, King said although Texas remains better off economically than the rest of the nation, the most recent unemployment figures illustrate the imperative for a targeted and responsible state-level plan to grow the economy and create jobs.
“We know that the federal stimulus package has failed,” King said. “The national unemployment rate now stands above 10 percent and each job purportedly ‘saved or created’ has cost taxpayers $250,000. If President Obama wants ideas on how to get the economy back on a sound footing, he should look to Texas.”
Texas’ unemployment rate of 8.3 percent is too high, according to King, but remains lower than the national rate of 10.2 percent and the 12.5 percent rate in California.
President Barack Obama kicked off a White House jobs forum on Thursday by saying he’s “open to every demonstrably good idea” to reverse the worst job losses in decades. But Obama said the government’s resources are limited and that growth ultimately must come from the private sector.
“So we can’t make any ill-considered decisions right now even with the best of intentions,” he said. “We have to be surgical and we’re going to have to be creative.” Obama appealed to his audience of academics, business and union leaders and local officials to help him find “the biggest bang for the buck.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has suggested one way to create jobs is to use leftover money from the Wall Street bailout to pay for new spending on roads and bridges and save the jobs of firefighters, teachers and other public employees.
Republicans staged their own jobs forum in Washington, inviting a team of mostly conservative economists to a round-table discussion.
“I don’t think there is a moment to lose. I think we have to move aggressively toward policies that actually promote jobs. And so far what’s been tried hasn’t worked very well,” said Lawrence Lindsey, a top economic adviser early in the administration of President George W. Bush.
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former head of the Congressional Budget Office who had been 2008 GOP Republican nominee Sen. John McCain’s chief economic adviser, said that the single best thing Obama could do to create jobs was “to reverse course on a dangerous agenda of debt-financed spending, crippling regulation, expensive mandates, and intrusive government expansion.”
King agrees with fellow Republicans that the current administration’s plan will only make economic matters worse.
“So far, Texas has weathered the current economic crisis relatively well thanks to sound tax policies and targeted job growth programs put in place over the last six years,” King said. “We must engage in a vigorous debate about state fiscal and economic policy. Washington must hear that there is a better way to create jobs: the Texas way. We know tax cuts and workforce development programs work. The Obama way is the wrong way.”
