The Voice of Young Conservatives Blog

This morning at a lumber store in Sterling, VA, John Boehner announced a new document entitled “A Pledge to America.” It was a fitting place to unveil a plan to restore America. But does the document contain the tools to get America back on track?

The document, intended to be a blueprint for Republicans governing philosophy, if and when, they regain control of Congress this November. It is mirrored off of the 1994 Contract with America, which provided voters a picture of exactly what they were voting for. The Pledge does the same. But it also goes beyond pure policy, laying out a governing philosophy that is sorely needed in today’s Washington. It is a promise to restore America back to its ideals where free people govern themselves and the government stops overstepping its bounds.

Americans don’t need reminded about what our nation stands for; they need directions as to how we are going to get back there. Fortunately that’s exactly what the Pledge does. So let’s dig in to the first section of the plan – creating jobs.

With unemployment rates continuing to linger around 10 percent, it is clear that the only thing the stimulus did was dig our nation deeper into debt. America knows that the federal government’s effort to jumpstart the economy has been a complete failure. What they don’t know is the extreme negative pressure that government debt has on the nation’s ability to create jobs.

Large government debt loads does two particularly pernicious things – takes money away from the private sector and threatens to drive up the cost of borrowing. Neither of these is exactly the road to recovery. What the Pledge promises to do is, in short, end the failed Keynesian experiment. The hope is that by eliminating the federal government’s wasteful policies, capital will more freely flow to the portions of the economy that need it. By getting spending under control we can promise to keep tax rates low, removing job-killing uncertainty from the economy. As President John F. Kennedy said, “an economy constrained by high tax rates will never produce enough revenue to balance the budget, just as it will never create enough jobs.”

To create incentives for job growth Republicans are pledging to:

• Make the Bush tax cuts permanent to give businesses a sense of certainty
• Provide small businesses with a tax deduction to provide an infusion of business capital
• Rein in red tape by requiring approval of any regulation that costs $100 million or more
• Repeal mandates that our costing small businesses millions in reporting costs

These policies are in direct response to businesses demanding a sense of certainty from a volatile administration. For instance Cypress Semiconductor CEO T.J. Rodgers told MSN Money, “we don’t know what the greatest great idea from Obama will be. Therefore we are hunkering down.” Intel’s Paul Otellini has said that “I think this group doesn’t understand what it takes to create jobs.” And Verizon’s Ivan Seidenberg told the Economic Club of Washington that Obama is creating “increasingly hostile environment for investment and job creation.”

Solving these problems is not all about policy. It is about a shift in ideology from demonizing business to nurturing business. We must do everything we can to reassure business leaders that they can feel safe spending some of their saved up cash reserves on capital investments and new employees. A large part of that is to simply stop the top-down tinkering that is driving much of the angst in the business community. To that end, the plan, which does not scrounge for more economic levers to pull, but instead appears content with a hands off approach, could work.

If nothing else, it represents a wholesale change from the interventionist Keynes policies which has so dominated (and disrupted) the past year. This Pledge is by no means a comprehensive solution to job creation. Nevertheless, it represents a solid start, and more importantly, it represents a promise to business leaders that they, not the government, can begin to get the economy moving again. Empowerment has long been a hallmark of America. It will be good to see its return if Republicans get their chance in November.

by Brandon Greife, Political Director