The Wall Street Journal has a must-read editorial today explaining the real meaning of the debate over paying for unemployment benefits and President Obama’s press conference yesterday. The WSJ writes, “President Obama introduced three Americans—an auto worker, a fitness center employee and a woman in real estate—who’ve been out of work so long they underscore the failure of his economic program. . . . Sure, Mr. Obama’s ostensible purpose was to lobby Congress for the eighth extension of jobless benefits since the recession began, to a record 99 weeks, or nearly two years. . . . But Mr. Obama was nonetheless obliged to concede that, 18 months after his $862 billion stimulus, there are still five job seekers for every job opening and that 2.5 million Americans will soon run out of unemployment benefits.”

As The Journal’s editors point out, “Only last week Vice President Joe Biden was hailing the stimulus for ‘saving or creating’ three million jobs. This week the White House says we need even more stimulus, in the form of jobless checks, to make up for the jobs his original spending stimulus didn’t create.”

Why not? The WSJ writes, “The one possibility the President and Congressional Democrats won’t entertain is that their own spending and taxing and regulating and labor union favoritism have become the main hindrance to job creation. Since February 2009, the jobless rate has climbed to 9.5% from 8.1%, and private industry has shed two million jobs. The overall economy has been expanding for at least a year, but employers still don’t seem confident enough to add new workers. The economists who sold us the stimulus say it’s a mystery. But maybe employers are afraid to hire because they don’t know what costs government will impose on them next.”

And the government under the Obama administration and the Democrat majority in Congress has been imposing an awful lot of costs on job creators. Just today, the Lexington Herald-Leader reports, “The Kentucky Hospital Association Said in a report on Monday that Kentucky hospitals will lose $1.2 billion in revenues in the next 10 years because of health care reform.” Last week, The Wall Street Journal editors wrote of the financial regulation bill, “Dodd-Frank, with its 2,300 pages, will unleash the biggest wave of new federal financial rule-making in three generations. . . . In a recent note to clients, the law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell needed more than 150 pages merely to summarize the bureaucratic ecosystem created by Dodd-Frank. As the nearby table shows, the lawyers estimate that the law will require no fewer than 243 new formal rule-makings by 11 different federal agencies.” And then there’s the uncertainty over whether the administration’s next goal, a costly national energy tax, will be enacted.

It’s little wonder, then, that major business groups have been frustrated by this administration’s failure to foster an environment to create jobs. Just last month, what had been the administration’s closest ally, the Business Roundtable, blasted the White House for creating a “hostile environment for investment and job creation.” All the way back in January, the National Federation of Independent Business, representing small businesses across explained to The Washington Post that “members have been reluctant to invest in new equipment and employees because they remain wary of the country’s nascent recovery.” And they excoriated the health care law, saying “Small business owners everywhere are rightfully concerned that the unconstitutional new mandates, countless rules and new taxes in the healthcare law will devastate their business and their ability to create jobs.”

Last week, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce criticized the Obama administration in an open letter to the President, Congress, and the American people: “Uncertainty is the enemy of growth, investment, and job creation . . . . Through their legislative and regulatory proposals—some passed, some pending, and others simply talked about—the congressional majority and the administration have injected tremendous uncertainty into economic decision making and business planning. In the process, we are also eroding our competitive position globally, as other nations take steps to cut taxes, reduce regulations, and restrain the appetites of government.” I think most Americans see the connection here. This administration’s policies are fueling a awful environment for business where employers can’t add the jobs needed to grow the economy and put Americans back to work.

Related:

Obama’s Hypocritical Attack On Unemployment Benefits is Completely Off Base

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