With “the Dow Jones Industrial Average down more than 500 points, as investors appeared to lose faith in the ability of the world’s policy makers to revive the global economy” and a “growing realization among even the most optimistic investors that the United States is entering a new recession — a dreaded ‘double-dip’“, Republicans need to put forward a plan to jumpstart the economy.

We know that increased government spending won’t do the trick.  We have to find ways to stimulate the dynamic and job-creating sector of the economy.  Perhaps the biggest problem is what the blogress formerly known as Little Miss Attila dubs the “pervasive climate of regulatory uncertainty” which . . .

. . . has led to the phenomenon of businesses “not knowing which way to turn.” When businesses don’t know what to invest in, they keep their money to themselves. [The president] should have signalled that he’d try to be fair to entrepreneurs and corporations.

Via Instapundit.  Over at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s blog, Tom Donohue offers “five steps officials in Washington should take immediately to spur faster hiring in America’s private sector” which instead of ratcheting up federal spending will thin “the ranks of those who are dependent on government support”:

1. Ratify Pending Free Trade Agreements With Colombia, Korea, and Panama.
2. Unlock Our Domestic Energy Resources.
3. Green-Light Transportation and Energy Infrastructure Projects.
4. Speed Up Permitting and Provide Immediate Regulatory Certainty.
5. Put the Welcome Mat Back Out for Tourists and Travelers.

Of those five points, I think we need focus on 1, 2 and 4, but alas that the incumbent administration does not seem much interested in such free-market policies.

With the debt debate behind us, House Republicans must at minimum debate bills which would unshackle the engines of economic growth, removing burdens from entrepreneurs, those job creators and innovators who are the life-blood of any economy.

Conservatives have to do more than just criticize Obama’s big-government policies.  We have to offer free market alternatives.  With these five steps, the Chamber of Commerce has done just that.  It’s time for House Republicans to follow suit.

On Tuesday, I linked the closing question of Stephen Green’s insightful post on the Obama administration, but the beginning of that post also merits your attention (as does the middle).  He used Steve McCann’ thoughtful piece at American Thinker, linking the president’s behavior in the debt ceiling debate to his overall failure of leadership, as his jumping-off point.

McCann contends that

Barack Obama’s only interest in the debt ceiling debate was to raise the borrowing limit sufficiently to get by the next election, and as a cudgel to denigrate the Republicans. His concern was not for the American people and the impact of overwhelming national debt, nor an impending and inevitable credit downgrade. Rather, he was determined that raising the debt ceiling would not become an issue during the presidential campaign. . . .

The destruction wrought by the nearly $5.5 Trillion (more than a third of the total debt of a nation 222 years old) he will have added to the nation’s balance sheet by the end of his term was immaterial, thus no detailed plan was forthcoming from the White House, and no lie or accusation aimed at the opposition was too absurd to tell.

The Democrat has, McCann observes, “abdicated all responsibility to the Congress, in particular the House of Representatives, which has little choice but to assume a role they are not structured to do: lead the country as best they can until November 2012.”  Indeed, Obama been doing that since the dawn of his administration where he let congressional Democrats draft the “stimulus” as they would later write the health care overhaul.

Seems the election of a Republican House threw a wrench into his plans of governance.   (more…)

Kudos to Yahoo! for this headline on their homepage yesterday:

More than anything this exposes the emptiness of the Democratic and left-wing bellyaching about the deal and reminds those of us who wish to reduce the size and scope of the federal government that we still have our work cut out to us.

But, at least Yahoo!’s Chris Moody is acknowledging that in Washington-ese a spending cut is not a reduction in the current level of spending, but a reduction of projected future spending:

Much of the problem has to do with the language of Washington, which, you might have noticed, is different from the speech you hear almost every other place on Earth. When most politicians talk of “cutting” spending, they don’t always literally mean that they intend to reduce current spending levels. Instead, under this version of fiscal discipline, Congress merely agrees not to spend as much money as it initially had planned. Once that deal is struck lawmakers then turn around to sell their proposals as “cuts.”

Take the “debt ceiling deal” President Obama signed on Tuesday. Let’s say that the federal government, when all is said and done, actually slows the growth of spending by $2 trillion over a decade–the minimum amount promised. After 10 years’ time, if all $2 trillion is not spent, there will actually be an increase of about $1.8 trillion.

Read the whole thing, especially for the video on the minuscule nature of the cuts in the recent deal.

In the coverage of the Reagan budget “cuts” in the 1980s, we only saw such candor in the conservative media.

SOMEWHAT RELATED: Paul Ryan asks, Where’s Your Budget, Mr. President? Via Instapundit.

UPDATE:  So, the “public backlash” the president is enduring from his liberal base over the deal is anger that spending increases aren’t going to be as large as forecast?