MADNESS - AT 8:40 A.M. ET:  The unemployment and underemployment situation has become a real crisis.  If we don't create jobs, we will have, at best, a sluggish recovery, and possibly another recession.

So who is making job creation more difficult?  I suspect you've guessed it. 

While President Obama and congressional leaders say they would like to do more to spur job creation, economists and business executives warn that their plans to impose new health care and climate-change costs on corporations would have the opposite effect.

The initiatives, according to this analysis, are likely to overwhelm any positive impact on jobs from stimulus measures by giving businesses a reason to keep laying people off.

The House's health care bill would raise the cost of hiring in a straightforward way: by charging businesses a new payroll tax of up to 8 percent if they do not provide health insurance to workers. The Senate plan would impose smaller fines on those same employers.

The House-passed climate-change legislation would not add directly to the cost of hiring, but would raise energy prices, which are a major cost of doing business. Economists say that many companies would react by hiring fewer people.

And...

The legislation has "perverse economic effects," said John Silvia, chief economist at Wells Fargo Securities. "Health care mandates will likely raise the cost of labor and thereby discourage hiring," while "cap-and-trade will likely increase the cost of energy and transportation for employers and thereby reduce any funds left to hire workers."

COMMENT:  One of the biggest mistakes Obama has made was to turn his legislative program over to Congress.  The result is wild legislation that may hurt more people than it helps, if it helps anyone.  Yet, the liberals in Congress, who run the place, show little interest.  Once again we see that they're more interested in ideology than in people. 

But they will get great praise at those seminars in Aspen.

November 27, 2009