8/6/2019 The Obama administration is hopelessly out of touch with reality

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-obama-administration-is-hopelessly-out-of-touch-with-reality 1/2

The Obama administration is hopelessly out of touch withreality

As good an example as any to demonstrate that Washington, DC is disconnected

from reality is what White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said at Thursday’snews conference following the news that initial unemployment claims for the weekending July 16 came in at 418,000, higher than the predicted 408,000. Mr. Carneysaid “the economy is vastly improved from what it was when Barack Obama wassworn into office.” Seriously!

A review of some of the relevant numbers shows the depths of Mr. Carney’s fantasy:

• Unemployment is up from 7.3 percent to 9.2 percent today.

•  The federal debt was $10.7 trillion and is now $14.5 trillion, 35 percenthigher.

•  The budget deficit is more than three times higher: $438 billion then, $1.4trillion this year.

• Gasoline has risen from $1.67 a gallon to about $3.60, more than double.

Vastly improved? But there’s more.

 The Heritage Foundation’s James Sherk wrote last week that “[p]rivate-sector jobcreation initially recovered from the recession at a normal rate, leading topredictions last year of a ‘Recovery Summer.’ Since April 2010, however, netprivate-sector job creation has stalled. Within two months of the passage of Obamacare, the job market stopped improving. This suggests that businesses arenot exaggerating when they tell pollsters that the new health care law is holdingback hiring. The law significantly raises business costs and creates considerableuncertainty about the future.”

Mr. Sherk, Senior Policy Analyst in Labor Economics, adds this: “In a recent survey,33 percent of business owners said the health care law was either their greatest orsecond-greatest obstacle to new hiring,” and quotes Dennis Lockhart, the Presidentof the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, who commented, “We’ve frequently heardstrong comments to the effect of ‘my company won’t hire a single additional workeruntil we know what health insurance costs are going to be.’”

At a time when you expect national leaders to do what is needed to enable theprivate sector to create jobs the Obama administration instead maintains anti-business policies, such as at first an official, and now unofficial, moratorium on oildrilling projects, which hold great promise for aiding economic recovery.

A study by IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates and IHS Global Insight showsthat from 2005 to 2010 there were on average, in April of each year, 59 Gulf of Mexico drilling plans pending prior to the moratorium, while after the moratoriumthe number increased by 90 percent to 112 each April. The waiting period was 36days pre-moratorium, but 95 percent longer post-moratorium at 131 days.

8/6/2019 The Obama administration is hopelessly out of touch with reality

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-obama-administration-is-hopelessly-out-of-touch-with-reality 2/2

During the same period 372 plans were accepted and 545 permits were approvedpre-moratorium, but after the moratorium only 54 plans were accepted and 203permits were issued, down 86 percent and 63 percent respectively.

Were the government to approve these projects, the study says nearly 230,000 jobswould be created, GDP would increase by $44 billion, almost $12 billion in tax and

royalty revenue would accrue to the federal treasury, and the US would send $15million less to foreign governments by the end of next year.

 The National Labor Relations Board recently took action against The BoeingCompany’s opening of a new 1,000-worker plant in South Carolina that will producea new airliner, after a labor union in a Boeing plant in Washington State filed acomplaint.

And just last Thursday the NLRB announced proposed rules that will shorten thetime period between the filing of a petition for a union-representation election andthe actual election. Employers condemn this rule change as government taking theside of unions in the struggle between management and labor organizations.

When they are attempting to organize a company’s workers, unions do not informmanagement they are talking with their employees, and organizing efforts notinfrequently go on for weeks or months without the employer’s knowledge. Theyonly become aware of the unionization effort when the petition is filed, and thenhave only 38 to 40 days to prepare and present their arguments againstunionization to their employees. The NLRB rule change gives employers only about10 days to respond, hamstringing their ability to effectively present their case.

Over the last 50 years private sector union membership has dwindled from 35percent to 6.9 percent, as workers see fewer and fewer advantages in unionmembership. And today 22 of the 50 states have Right-to-Work laws securing the

right of employees to decide whether or not to join or financially support a union.

 Yet, the Obama administration has clearly sided with labor unions and againstemployers on two recent occasions.

 The administration also ignores the opportunities for job creation, for domestic oilproduction that will increase energy security, and for increases in tax and royaltyrevenue by refusing to act on Gulf drilling projects, and it squandered valuable timeon a health care overhaul that most Americans opposed and that stifles jobcreation.

If your goal was to design a set of policies that would prevent economic recovery, itwould be difficult to develop a plan that is more effective than the Obamaadministration’s current policies.