Cantor wrong on jobs

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor released a memo on the upcoming jobs agenda on Aug. 29.

His memo mentioned two major areas the House would focus on when passing legislation for job creation.

These two categories were the “Repeal of job-destroying regulations to create middle-class jobs,” and “Immediate tax relief to create middle class jobs.” These seem like reasonable categories, even if they were strongly worded.

Yet at the same time, his entire agenda is severely flawed.
Republicans and Democrats have wildly different ideals when it comes to job creation.

That is a known fact, and there is little overlap in their positions. Republicans believe that large government prevents jobs from being created in the free market, while Democrats assert that government can encourage a healthy market.

It is therefore understandable that they will have some disagreements about legislation that is passed.

However, the entire upcoming jobs agenda seemingly focuses on one thing and one thing only: preventing or reverting actions taken by President Obama and his executive branch.
Every one of the “Top 10 Job-Destroying Regulations” brought up in Rep. Cantor’s agenda focuses on actions taken by the executive branch in the past two and a half years.

It would seem that the entire House agenda on job creation is focused not on job creation but on undermining the president of the so-called “United” States.

Putting aside whether or not the regulations in Rep. Cantor’s memo are currently constraining job creation in the U.S. or will soon cause the losses of jobs (a whole article on its own), it seems unreasonable to me that the regulations hurting the U.S. the most are all ones that have been passed or proposed in the past 30 months.

Democrats have been presidents in the past and severe regulations have been placed against businesses for as long as the U.S. has existed. (Remember when we had to have specific stamps to sell our goods? That led to the American Revolution.)

While calling into light some regulations passed by the Obama Administration is an admirable thing to do, focusing specifically on things he has done severely limits how much Republicans can do to actually create jobs.

Regardless of whether the repeal of regulations helps the country, the House is handcuffing itself by focusing only on President Obama.

This calls to mind a larger problem seen throughout the entire Republican Party since the midterm elections.

Republicans have been so focused on being anti-Obama on anything and everything, they haven’t been focusing on what is really important for the citizens.

During the debt limit crisis, President Obama put forth a plan that was much more friendly to Republicans than to Democrats, yet Republicans widely chastised it.

Republicans are so focused on the 2012 election that decrying President Obama has become more important than passing reasonable legislation.

Just as with mud-slinging political campaigns, I suspect that Independents can only take so much of the Republican attempt to make President Obama look incompetent.

At that point, Republicans will have two choices: Start coming to the table with hopes of bettering our country through reasonable compromises or outting themselves as nothing more than Obama haters with no plans to help our struggling country.

Jay Nogami is a sophomore public policy leadership major from Denver, Colo. Follow him on Twitter @JayTNogami.