Freedom Line Blog

Thanks to The Daily Caller’s Nicholas Ballasy for posting an extended exchange between House oversight committee chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) and two officials from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on what occupations count as “green jobs.”

REP. DARRELL ISSA: Well, let me — let me run you through some questions here because you’re here because we’re having a green jobs counting discussion.
Does someone who assembles turbines — is that a green job?

MS. JANE OATES: Wind turbines?

REP. ISSA: Yeah. Wind turbines.

MS. OATES: I think we would call any kind of sustainable manufacturing –

REP. ISSA: OK.

MS. OATES: — fitting the definition that was –

REP. ISSA: Does someone who sweeps — does someone who sweeps the floor in a facility that makes solar panels, is that a green job?

MS. OATES: Solar? I’ll give that to –

REP. ISSA: To Galvin?

MS. OATES: — if you don’t mind.

MR. JOHN GALVIN: We define — we have a two-part definition –

REP. ISSA: We already had the briefing on that. So just answer the question. If you’re sweeping the floor in a solar panel production facility, is that a green job?

MR. GALVIN: If you ask me for the number of health care jobs in the United States, I’ll give you the employment from the health care industry.

REP. ISSA: Look, Mr. Galvin –

MR. GALVIN: — nurses and doctors –

REP. ISSA: You did not want to come here as a witness. You are not a delighted witness. So let’s go through this. I asked you a question. You know the answer. Would you please answer it.
If you sweep the floor in a solar panel facility, is that a green job?

MR. GALVIN: Yes.

REP. ISSA: Thank you. If you drive a hybrid bus — public transportation — is that a green job?

MR. GALVIN: According to our definition, yes.

REP. ISSA: Thank you. What if you’re a college professor teaching classes about environmental studies?

MR. GALVIN: Yes.

REP. ISSA: What about just any school bus driver?

MR. GALVIN: Yes.

REP. ISSA: What about the guy who puts gas in the school bus?

MR. GALVIN: Yes.

REP. ISSA: How about employees at a bicycle shop?

MR. GALVIN: I guess I’m not sure about that.

REP. ISSA: The answer is yes, according to your definition. And you’ve got a lot of them.
What about a clerk at the bicycle repair shop?

MR. GALVIN: Yes.

REP. ISSA: What about someone who works in an antique dealer?

MR. GALVIN: I’m not sure about that either.

REP. ISSA: The answer is yes. Those are — those are recycled goods. They’re antiques; they’re used.
What about someone who works at the Salvation Army in their clothing recycling and furniture?

MR. GALVIN: Right. Because they’re selling recycled goods.

REP. ISSA: OK. What about somebody who opened a store to sell rare manuscripts?

MR. GALVIN: What industry is that?

REP. ISSA: People sell rare books and manuscripts — but they’re rare because they’re old so they’re used.

MR. GALVIN: OK.

REP. ISSA: What about workers at a consignment shop?

MR. GALVIN: That’s a green job.

REP. ISSA: Does the teenage kid who works full time at a used record shop count?

MR. GALVIN: Yes.

REP. ISSA: How about somebody who manufacturers railroads rolling stock — basically, train cars?

MR. GALVIN: I don’t think we classified the manufacture of rail cars as –

REP. ISSA: 48.8 percent of jobs in manufacturing, rail cars counted, according to your statistics. About half of the jobs that are being used to build trains.
OK. How about — just one more here. What about people who work in a trash disposal yard? Do garbage men have green jobs?

MR. GALVIN: Yes.

REP. ISSA: OK. I apologize. The real last last is, how about an oil lobbyist? Wouldn’t an oil lobbyist count as having a green job if they are engaged in advocacy related to environmental issues?

MR. GALVIN: Yes.

Cato expert Mark A. Calabria suggests a simple reform that would make decisions by the Federal Reserve Board more responsive to America’s different regional economies – include at least one board member from each Federal Reserve region.

Congress imposed a “geographic diversity” requirement upon the Fed for good reason. Regions of the country do not move together. Nevada’s 11.7 percent unemployment rate, for example, is significantly above South Dakota’s 4.3 percent. If the Fed lacks a wide range of voices, then its policies are not likely to reflect the economic differences across our country. An interest rate policy that might be appropriate for New York City, and its financial sector, might not be appropriate for industrial Ohio. Just the fact that only one current Fed governor, Janet Yellen from San Francisco, is from west of the Mississippi raises questions as to the legitimacy of Fed decision-making.

Calabria points out that another benefit of diversifying board membership is that doing so follows the law.  The Federal Reserve Act requires that, regarding members of the board, “not more than one of whom shall be selected from any one Federal Reserve district,” so that those making monetary policy decisions “shall have due regard to a fair representation of… geographical divisions of the country.”

Unsurprisingly, this easy to apply standard was recently violated when President Barack Obama nominated and the liberal Senate confirmed new members from Massachusetts and Maryland, even though two current members also hail from those states.  Combine this with the New York Fed’s distinction as the only district with a permanent vote, and there is a regional – and arguably illegal – bias in favor of the Northeast.

Every region of the country should be represented equally when the Fed Governors decide how much money to print and where to peg the interest rate.  To be sure, it would be better if the free market was deciding these issues, but that’s not the reality of the 21st century’s administrative state.  With that in mind, perhaps the cry could be, “No manipulation without representation!”

Byron York explains why President Barack Obama is not campaigning on behalf of Tom Barrett, the Democrat running against Republican Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin’s recall election on Tuesday:

The latest poll on the recall battle shows why Obama is staying away. It’s not just that he doesn’t want to appear with a loser. Perhaps just as importantly, there is no advantage for Obama to risk his own popularity by making a high-profile visit to oppose policies that are finding increasing favor with voters.

The new poll, from Marquette University Law School, shows Walker leading Barrett 52 percent to 45 percent. Beyond the horse race, the Marquette pollsters also asked about specific elements of Walker’s reforms. It turns out some of the key elements of those policies — reforms Obama strongly opposed — are now winning the day.

Those policies include:

• 75% of voters in favor of “requiring public employees to contribute to their own pensions and pay more for health insurance.”

• 55% of voters in favor of “limiting collective bargaining for most public employees.”

• 54% of voters thinking Wisconsin is better off in the long run because of the changes in state government

With these numbers and 52% of voters preferring him, Scott Walker appears likely to keep his job.  If Wisconsin voters start to apply the same poll questions to Obama’s failed economic policies – forty months of 8% unemployment, doubling the national debt in just one term in office – they’ll come to the opposite conclusion about the President.

No wonder he doesn’t want to be seen in Wisconsin.

ABC News reports that the SpaceX Dragon, the first private spacecraft to service the International Space Station, successfully returned to Earth this morning at 8:42am Pacific Daylight Time, off the coast of San Diego.

The mission wasn’t glamorous.  The unmanned Dragon “carried extra supplies, experiments and garbage that the space station astronauts had loaded on board.”  However, the success of the flight indicates that May 31, 2012 might become a milestone in commercialized space travel.

Until now, all flights to the space station have been made by the U.S., Russian or European space agencies. NASA hopes SpaceX and other commercial firms will take over space jobs previously done only by governments.

…

[Space entrepreneurs] say space could be a bit like the old West: Governments sent explorers, such as Columbus or Lewis and Clark, to open the frontier, and then private settlers followed.

PayPal founder Elon Musk started SpaceX in 2002 and is moving his company closer to becoming the private sector alternative to ferry U.S. astronauts to the ISS.  (With the shuttle fleet mothballed, the Russians are doing the job now at price-gouging levels.)  Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com started Blue Origin to build, test, and deploy reusable spacecraft.  Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic wants to make orbits around Earth the high-flying equivalent of a five-star cruise.

With the economy in the tank and NASA failing to find an extraterrestrial mission Congress will fund, it’s time to let these and other capitalistic cowboys take their shot at taming the final frontier.

In a recent report and video, the Institute for Justice gives an excellent summary of how government licensing requirements to enter occupations like interior design, massage therapy, or shampooing are raising time and cost barriers to people who just want to work.

In this video IJ research director Dick Carpenter shares the results of a study of 102 low to middle income jobs (i.e. not doctors and lawyers) that impose on average require would-be workers to: (1) pay $209 in fees, (2) pass an exam, and (3) endure 275 days of training, or the equivalent of about 9 months.  All this before earning a paycheck!

IJ also notes that burdensome licensing requirements have not been shown to protect public health and safety.  Rather, they increase costs to consumers and keep would-be competitors out of legally protected (i.e. licensed) industries.

As the IJ video and study show, not every regulatory problem is a federal creation.  State lawmakers have an easy method for spurring job growth and entrepreneurial activity – reduce or eliminate licensing requirements so that citizens can get working.

Jonathan V. Last at The Weekly Standard shares an eye-popping chart on the Bureau of Labor Statistics employment-population ratio; i.e. the percentage of employed Americans relative to the number of Americans able to work.

Below are the worst 30 months of the employment-population ratio from the last 25 years.  Notice a trend?

1. (tie) July 2011, 58.2 percent, President Barack Obama
1. (tie) June 2011, 58.2 percent, Obama
1. (tie) November 2010, 58.2 percent, Obama
1. (tie) December 2009, 58.2 percent, Obama
5. (tie) August 2011, 58.3 percent, Obama
5. (tie) December 2010, 58.3 percent, Obama
5. (tie) October 2010, 58.3 percent, Obama
8. (tie) April 2012, 58.4 percent, Obama
8. (tie) October 2011, 58.4 percent, Obama
8. (tie) September 2011, 58.4 percent, Obama
8. (tie) May 2011, 58.4 percent, Obama
8. (tie) April 2011, 58.4 percent, Obama
8. (tie) February 2011, 58.4 percent, Obama
8. (tie) January 2011, 58.4 percent, Obama
15. (tie) March 2012, 58.5 percent, Obama
15. (tie) January 2012, 58.5 percent, Obama
15. (tie) December 2011, 58.5 percent, Obama
15. (tie) November 2011, 58.5 percent, Obama
15. (tie) March 2011, 58.5 percent, Obama
15. (tie) September 2010, 58.5 percent, Obama
15. (tie) August 2010, 58.5 percent, Obama
15. (tie) July 2010, 58.5 percent, Obama
15. (tie) June 2010, 58.5 percent, Obama
15. (tie) March 2010, 58.5 percent, Obama
15. (tie) February 2010, 58.5 percent, Obama
15. (tie) January 2010, 58.5 percent, Obama
15. (tie) November 2009, 58.5 percent, Obama
15. (tie) October 2009, 58.5 percent, Obama
29. February 2012, 58.6 percent, Obama
30. (tie) May 2010, 58.7 percent, Obama
30. (tie) April 2010, 58.7 percent, Obama
30. (tie) September 2009, 58.7 percent, Obama

According to Last, “the 30 (or 32, including ties) worst months for employment in the past 25 year have all come after the most recent recession ended, in June 2009.  In other words, they’ve all come during the Obama ‘recovery.’”

Remember this the next time President Obama repeats his mantra that the American economy is “moving in the right direction.”

Military historian Victor Davis Hanson trots out an underappreciated statistic that should give European opponents of Germany’s austerity measures a reason to reflect:

There is one general rule about the history of the modern state of Germany since its inception in 1871: Anytime Germany has been both unified and isolated, armed conflict has followed.

The Greeks can’t form a government to implement Germany’s austerity measures, and are rioting rather than reforming.  Spain is teetering on the edge of a shredded social contract where more than 40% of young adults can’t find work.  France just elected a Socialist president who claims that “My real enemy is the world of finance.”

And there sits Germany with the most money on the Continent, vilified for insisting on the same frugality from its debtors.

While it’s almost impossible to think that Germany would resort to military force to press its claims, it is within the realm of possibility to see it pulling back from the European Union in a way that cuts its losses and leaves the big spending countries to defaults and devaluations.

If that happens, expect to hear at least a few Europeans wishing Germany had just annexed their country.  At least then they would be a part of a more stable economy.

When asked by the Washington Examiner about the policy choices facing American voters this election, Paul Ryan painted a picture of stark contrasts, beginning with the Obama Administration’s high-tax, high-spending approach:

“Those kinds of packages won’t succeed in preventing a debt crisis. We’ll pass one round of austerity, that won’t work, then the bond markets will get us, then we’ll do another round and another round, just like what Europe is going through now. We will have chosen to go on the path to decline and we’ll have a lost decade,” Ryan explained. “We see the president and his party are basically practicing lost decade economics,” he finished.

Moving to the Republican alternative, Ryan explained, “We think we have one more great chance, if the elections go the right way, to turn this thing around once and for all. And address it, the right way, up front. With real entitlement reform, restructuring these programs. Real tax reform to get back to growth. We want growth we want opportunity, we want reform, so that we fix this the American way.”

In terms of jobs and economic opportunity, it certainly has been a lost half-decade under President Obama.  Doubling down on more of the same for another presidential term would likely consign an entire generation of workers to a lifetime earnings amount much lower than their parents.

President Obama may be willing to tolerate being the first leader to see a generation of kids live below their parents’ standard of living since World War II.  (What else explains his campaign’s “Life of Julia” foolishness?)  However, my suspicion is that a majority of voters are not interested in either Lost Decade Economics or much less a lost generation of opportunity.

Good sound bites convey truth in a memorable way.  Kudos to Ryan for correctly identifying the likely result of Obama’s wasteful policies.

Tech billionaire and owner of the reigning NBA Champion Dallas Mavericks Mark Cuban correctly identifies the disconnect between the way policymakers talk about higher education spending and its true value to college students:

The President has introduced programs that try to reward schools that don’t raise tuition and costs. They won’t work.  Right now there is a never ending supply of buyers. Students who can’t get jobs or who think that by going to college they enhance their chances to get a job. Its the collegiate equivalent of flipping houses. You borrow as much money as you can for the best school you can get into and afford and then you “flip” that education for the great job you are going to get when you graduate.

Except those great jobs aren’t always there. I don’t think any college kid took on tens of thousands of dollars in debt with the expectation they would get a job working for minimum wage against tips.

At some point potential students will realize that they can’t flip their student loans for a job in 4 years. In fact they will realize that college may be the option for fun and entertainment, but not for education.

One of the hardest hit employment segments in the Obama Economy are college grads with too much education, too much education debt, and not enough work experience.  In a contracting economy, jobs go to those with years of on-the-job training and the financial flexibility to work multiple opportunities.

If Mitt Romney wants to put Barack Obama’s most blindly loyal constituency in play this election, he should pull no punches tying Obama’s spending and business regulations to the dearth of job opportunities available to college students and recent grads.

Reason has a great review of a new book on the Obama economic advisers who tried and failed to spend and regulate the economy into recovery.  But for all the space devoted to those around President Barack Obama, it’s the way he treats them – and wants them to treat him – that is most disturbing:

But Obama was not exactly a man without a team. He was loyal to the cult of policy smarts. He may have even been its high priest. As Scheiber reports, outside analysts reporting to the president were advised to highlight their expert credentials so he would know he wasn’t talking to cranks and dummies. Obama also wanted his inner circle to credit his own abilities: The president, Scheiber writes, “craved intellectual affirmation” and often badgered his lieutenants into acknowledging when his own ideas were perceived to have succeeded. Obama “had a habit of prompting his aides to acknowledge his wisdom and foresight,” Scheiber writes. The president would sometimes wonder aloud, “Whose idea was that?” when he deserved credit.

Whatever is Obama’s conscious motivation for overemphasizing credit and credentials at every turn, this window into his personality reveals a deeply insecure person.

Remember, this is the same man who’s boasted about being a better campaign manager than the one he employs, a better speechwriter than his scribes, and so on.

If this is the way the President wants to play it, why not let him own every decision by his administration?

$787 billion in stimulus spending and no change in the unemployment rate – Whose idea was that?

A federal takeover of the health care industry that raises the deficit while reducing services – Whose idea was that?

Selling thousands of guns to Mexican drug cartels so they could be traced to crime scenes – Whose idea was that?

The list could go on and on and on…

Veteran White House correspondent Keith Koffler on why presidential press conferences – and Barack Obama’s distaste for them – are an important issue:

Press conferences are extraordinarily important for several reasons. A number of questions are asked on different topics. The pressure of being on national TV forces the president to explain his thinking. The public gets to actually see the president think and understand how he comes to his conclusions, an invaluable public service.

What’s more, the prospect of a press conference forces the White House to think through its own views. Everybody in the West Wing, including the president, has to stop and consider just what they are doing and why. Often the agencies are mined for answers about current policies so that White House aides can prepare the president, giving the West Wing valuable feedback about what’s going on.

My guess for why Obama doesn’t submit himself to rapid-fire questions about the issues of the day: there are no witty phrases to justify regulations and rhetoric that keep millions out of work while adding trillions to the deficit.

Better to just stay quiet.

The Wall Street Journal reports on the reasons French tire company Michelin is expanding its operations in South Carolina while reducing its employment footprint in the Midwest:

Pete Selleck, Michelin’s North America president, said the state has strong technical education resources and ready infrastructure. “South Carolina has a long history with technical colleges dating back to the 1960s,” he said. The state “is also one of the least unionized states in the country, which gives us the flexibility to focus on the customer.”

“There is no significant difference between nonunion and unionized plants other than a rule book in our unionized plants that tell us what we can and can’t do,” Mr. Selleck added.

The emphasis is mine, and it tells you all you need to know about where the growth opportunities are for companies, customers, and employees.

In another part of the article Michelin is credited with paying a starting wage of $20 per hour, about a third more than the $15 per hour required under the average union contract.

Better pay and no union dues?  Maybe the iconic bumper sticker saying “Work Union, Live Better” should be changed to read, “Work Union, Earn Less.”

It’s been said by some supporters of President Barack Obama’s $787 billion stimulus spending spree that we can’t really know if it failed because we can’t ‘re-run’ the last three years to see if something else might have worked.

But according to economist John Lott, we don’t have to.

In a wide-ranging interview with The Daily Caller about his new book, , Lott compares the different approaches by the liberals in Debacle: Obama’s War on Jobs and Growth and What We can Do Now to Regain Our Future the Obama White House and the conservatives running Canada’s government.  The results aren’t pretty.

How do we know the stimulus package made the economic situation worse?

Compare the U.S. and Canada. Their unemployment rates increased in lock step from August 2008 until six months later, in February 2009, when the stimulus was passed in the United States. During those six months, the U.S. unemployment rate rose by 2.1 percentage points, from 6.1 percent to 8.2 percent, and the Canadian rate grew by 1.9 percentage points, from 5.1 percent to 7 percent (using the BLS [Bureau of Labor Statistics] measure to make the Canadian measure of unemployment comparable to the U.S. rate). The graph that we have showing this is actually stunning.

Canada adopted a much smaller and quite different “stimulus” program that emphasized cutting tax rates and regulations and that produced dramatically smaller deficits. On a per-capita basis, Canada’s stimulus was about a third that of America’s, costing $979 per person compared to our $2,730. The conservative Canadian government chose not to introduce any big programs.

Obama, meanwhile, adopted big-ticket Keynesian programs, believing that government spending for its own sake creates wealth. But Democratic emphasis on “green” energy, government-approved investments and technology and higher salaries for public-school teachers merely moved money away from where Americans and companies would have otherwise spent it.

Obama’s stimulus also raised the effective marginal tax rates that some individuals face, discouraging work; Canada, by contrast, cut some marginal rates. Obama kept the corporate tax rate stuck at 35 percent, while Canadians cut their corresponding rate from 21 percent in 2007 to 16.5 percent this year — with a further cut to 15 percent planned for next year. By last year, Canada had the lowest overall tax rate on business investment of any major industrialized country.

Canada also didn’t run the huge stimulative deficits that we ran here in the U.S. They didn’t saddle their kids with a huge debt that they were going to have to pay off.

But if Obama’s program — including a massive 21 percent hike in spending from 2008 to 2011 and corresponding massive deficits — worked so well, why has our unemployment rate risen more since those policies were adopted than have the rates of the European Union, South America, Japan, Australia or New Zealand?

Ironically, the Obama Administration projected when he entered office that unemployment wouldn’t exceed 8% after his massive spending “stimulus.”  Instead, the rate has exceeded 8% for 38 consecutive months, the most since the federal government began keeping records.  Over three long years.  Of course, Obama can at least claim something on which he has proved reliable.

Today, the Labor Department announced that only 120,000 new jobs were created last month, well below expectations of over 200,000.  That number is insufficient to reduce unemployment by even a single percentage point over a year, and the only reason the rate fell from 8.3% in February to a still-miserable 8.2% in March was that more people gave up and abandoned the workforce altogether.  Under Obama, we have witnessed record spending, record deficits, record regulation and record hostility toward private employers.  So what does he have to show for that?  As detailed this week by The Wall Street Journal, the worst economic recovery in history.  Those straightforward facts speak for themselves.

The Kauffman Foundation for Entrepreneurship’s newest report on business creation rates across the United States offers some intriguing insights for policymakers.

According to Robert Litan, the foundation’s vice president of research and policy, “The Great Recession has pushed many individuals into business ownership due to high unemployment rates.”  “However, economic uncertainty likely has made them more cautious, and they prefer to start sole proprietorships rather than more costly employer firms.  This ‘jobless entrepreneurship’ trend negatively effects job creation and the larger economic recovery.”

No doubt, regulatory barriers and confiscatory rates of taxation are causing start-ups to make the same kind of cost-saving hiring decisions as larger, more established firms.  Across nearly every industry these days companies are hiring people to independent contracts rather than salaries, converting many ‘company men’ into standalone consultants.

While becoming an accidental entrepreneur may not be the first career choice of many people – and according to the Kauffman study the college educated cohort saw the steepest decline in their willingness to start their own business – the movement of millions of people into the ranks of the self-employed could have huge consequences for policymakers.

For starters, this army of new business owners is much more likely to demand rollbacks of costly regulations and profit-killing tax rates on corporations.  Your perspective changes when you go from receiving a paycheck to making a payroll.

Remember, the people that lose a job and start a business are the people whom the government should want to help the most.  They aren’t looking for a hand-out or even a hand-up, just space to make a contribution that others in the free market will reward.

This constituency is a natural growth area for the conservative movement.

The best part about the Kauffman report is that entrepreneurial activity can be found in important electoral pockets.  Consider:

• Entrepreneurial growth was highest among 45- to 54-year-olds, rising from 0.35 percent in 2010 to 0.37 in 2011
• The top five highest entrepreneurial rates among the fifty states were:

(1) Arizona with 520 per 100,000 adults creating businesses each month during 2011;

(2) Texas with 440 per 100,000 adults;

(3) California with 440 per 100,000 adults;

(4) Colorado with 420 per 100,000 adults; and

(5) Alaska with 410 businesses started per 100,000 adults

The key to our economic recovery rests on policymakers understanding that Americans want to work.  I submit that any politician willing to make the necessary changes to tax and regulatory rules so that start-up owners can become employers as well as entrepreneurs will find a loyal constituency, and one well worth fighting for.

Former California Assemblyman and 2010 Republican U.S. Senate candidate Chuck DeVore explains why he gave up on the Golden State and moved to Texas in an article for National Review.

Here’s just one example of the differences between the states:

In his State-of-the-State address this January, California governor Jerry Brown said, “Contrary to those declinists who sing of Texas and bemoan our woes, California is still the land of dreams. . . . It’s the place where Apple . . . and countless other creative companies all began.”

Fast forward to March: Apple announced it was building a $304 million campus in Austin with plans to hire 3,600 people to staff it, more than doubling its Texas workforce.

California may be dreaming, but Texas is working.

President Barack Obama may never tire of blaming his predecessor for every current economic problem, but a new study by the Heritage Foundation shows that when it comes to the cost of federal regulation, Obama is king.

The numbers don’t lie, Mr. President.  Job growth is anemic, the employment rate is stagnant, but your regulatory agenda continues to add billions of dollars in costs to the only real job creators – employers.  After three years of your policies imposing five times the costs of compliance than under the Bush regime it’s time for something radically different.

Rick Santorum spoke in Mobile tonight at a dinner for the Alabama Policy Institute. I got a private five-minute interview with him before the dinner. Here’s how it went:

Q: “This is narrowcasting. You look at the [exit] polls and you are doing great among some groups but you are not doing well among two groups: single women, and people making over $100,000 and a lot of them are just over 100 thou, small businesses, not manufacturers but retailers. What do these groups not understand about your economic message that you would like them to understand?”

Santorum: “My economic message is, we’re cutting corporate taxes for everybody to a flat tax at 17 /12 percent, we allow complete expensing — a very very simple and fair tax code that allows the small business guy and the large guy to pay the same rate at the same simple tax form that they have to fill out. That to me is about as pro-small business — and the same thing is, we cut the top rate [on individuals] to 28 percent so those who are not corporations but file under the individual returns will have a tax rate of just 28 percent. Make it a very very simple tax code as far as deductions are concerned, just five deducations. Again: simplicity, predictability, all of those things are very growth-oriented and with lower rates. I’ve also pledged in this campaign that I’ll repeal every single one of Barack Obama’s high-cost regulations that cost over $100 million…..

[segue: crosstalk about single women and “media narratives”]…

I am about equal opportunity. If we give people the opportunity to rise in society, then people will be able to rise by themselves. We’re talking about lower taxes and less regulation and a society that is nurturing. And people say, ‘well, you’re just for families,’ well, families are important to our country, families are important so we have stable communities where moms and dads are together raising children — and that’s a good place for people to live, not just those families but single women and others.

—-

Q: “The second narrowcast question is, is there anything that people on the Gulf Coast might want to know about you, any national interest you’ve perhaps that might have particular local relevance to people in Mississippi and Alabama?”

Santorum: “Energy is obviously a very important issue. We believe the Gulf is an area that has tremendous promise, underutilized, all sorts of opportunities out there for expansion of oil and gas exploration; and the administration has not opened up and has not supported  opening it up. And that’s opportunity for jobs, here along the Gulf Coast.

You know, I think one of the other things that I know is important here is national security. And I’m the only person in this race who has said I will not cut the Defense Department. Flat-out, absolutely no way. In fact, it’s the only department I pledge will have an increase in spending, because we want to make sure that the benefits and salaries for men and women in uniform continue to go up as they should be with inflation…. and assuming no nuclear Iran, we are looking at a defense budget that is going to go up, modestly, and we’ll invest in making sure we will be the best trained, best equipped, and the best led military in the world — by far.”

After Tim’s excellent column explaining how President Barack Obama explicitly failed to live up to his promise to “cut the deficit we inherited by half by the end of my first term” the New York Times published today another damning indictment of America’s worst CEO.  In it, the Times faults the President for failing to exhibit any kind of leadership with the Bowles-Simpson deficit plan:

But the downsides for Mr. Obama have become clear. His partisan turn undercuts a central promise of his 2008 campaign, to rise above the rancor. And by neither embracing Bowles-Simpson nor explaining his objections and quickly offering an alternative, Mr. Obama arguably failed to show leadership on perhaps the country’s biggest problem. This month, in a New York Times/CBS News poll, 59 percent of Americans disapproved of his handling of the deficit.

My column this week explains how WWII wage ceilings and a compliant Congress teamed up to create employer-based health insurance, a market distorting phenomenon the reduces take-home pay while increasing both health care spending and widespread dissatisfaction with the results.  (When was the last time you heard anybody happy about the cost or care in an HMO?)

Of course, one of the reasons this problem is allowed to persist is the lack of a motivated constituency to change the status quo.  That may be changing thanks to the Great Recession.

According to Economic Modeling Specialists, Inc., between 2007 to 2011 there has been a steady rise in the numbers of independent contractors in industries like real estate, financial services and natural resource extraction.

More recently EMSI showed how self-employed money management consultants are adapting very well to the new economic landscape. “The surprising thing to note is the huge growth that took place in the three money management occupations – personal financial advisors, securities/commodities/financial services sales agents, and financial analysts.”  Many of these jobs are classified as non-covered, i.e. independent contractors who service clients rather than employees who work for employers (and thus get benefits).

The rise of the independent contractor makes perfect financial sense for a business looking to shred costs while maintaining quality in services and products.  The legal profession is being transformed by a switch to contract-based work for attorneys while other white collar jobs like money management are following the same route.

It is very likely that this type of vendor-client relationship will come to redefine the work life of many Americans who in a previous era may have counted on a brick-and-mortar institution to cover everything from an expense account to health care benefits.  But if millions of American workers are to be recast as intellectual entrepreneurs, the federal tax incentive to exempt employer-based health insurance but not insurance purchased by individuals or families has to change.

As I explain in my column, the Heritage Foundation has an easy fix to this problem.  From my column:

In Saving the American Dream, a team of Heritage experts propose transforming the existing exemption into a “uniform, nonrefundable federal tax credit” to assist individuals and families purchase health insurance.  The annual net value of the tax credit would be $2,000 for an individual and $3,500 for a couple or family.  The credit could be used “either to offset the cost of coverage offered through the workplace or to buy insurance outside the workplace.  For most middle-income working families, the value of the credit is similar to the tax relief that they receive for health insurance today.”

Law always lags behind reality, but if a presidential candidate wants to make an easy reform that will remove a huge disincentive to become an intellectual entrepreneur, adopting the Heritage Foundation’s health insurance tax credit would be a huge step in the right direction.