Bumps on the road to recovery

According to the White House, today's jobs report showing 9.1% unemployment and anemic job growth is just one of the "bumps on the road to recovery." Well isn't that special! The economy is stalling out because the president cannot manage to get the federal government out of the way to allow growth, and all it says is that we hit a bump in the road to recovery. Nothing like "I'm sorry" or "We have a new policy to promote growth" or even "We are looking into changing our policies". Nope, it's just a "bump in the road to recovery."

Here are six things that Obama could do today to increase economic growth and increase the number of jobs.

1)Issue an executive order allowing Boeing to complete construction of its new plant in South Carolina without interference from the NLRB which has tried to stop the new plant and the tens of thousands of jobs it will create.

2) Issue an executive order requiring federal agencies to rule on drilling permits for oil and gas wells within 15 days. This will help increase domestic production and lower energy costs.

3) Issue an executive order opening the offshore waters in Alaska and elsewhere to drilling. The order should also limit the requirements for obtaining a permit to realistic requirements. This would stop the government from doing things like preventing Shell from drilling on areas that it has leased due to some small technicality in the permit application. Literally billions of dollars of production has been stopped with the resulting reduction in economic activity and job creation.

4) Issue an executive order mandating the EPA to refrain from issuing regulations to reduce carbon dioxide emissions until a new study can be completed to determine on an actual scientific basis if there is any connection whatsoever between carbon dioxide emissions from man made sources and climate change. This would allow investments to proceed around the country without having to worry that new EPA regulations would shut them down in a year or two.

5) Sign the free trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia etc. These agreements will open markets for US goods and add jobs in shipping and commerce.

6) Put forward a plan to reduce the deficit by a significant amount over the next few years. This would reduce the fear of a government default and allow for more economic activity.

This list is by no means complete. There are probably two dozen other things that Obama could do today that would result in increased economic activity and more job creation. Unfortunately, Obama seems more interested in raising money for his re-election campaign than in trying to help those who have been devastated by the bad economy.

Oh, and one last thing: Obama should fire the idiot who decided to call today's terrible numbers "bumps on the road to recovery." What a jerk!