Dems Blame Business For Own Bad Policies

Economy: President Obama says he wants businesses to "step up" and hire more. If he's really sincere about wanting more jobs, he should stop demonizing and punishing American corporations for their success.

'Companies ... (are) making a lot of money," President Obama told a town hall meeting Thursday, "and now's the time for them to start betting on American workers and American products."

But the fact they're not "betting" more isn't their fault. It's Obama's — and his Democrat allies in Congress. Their tax-and-spend policies have pushed our nation to the brink of financial ruin, creating uncertainty and an unstable investment environment for companies.

The president let his true feelings slip later Thursday, telling a laid-off government worker there's "nothing more important" than working for the government. He then blamed "huge layoffs" in government for our current job ills. So why do businesses have to "step up"?

There are, as a matter of record, 418,000 more government jobs today than when the recession began, as noted by the National Review's Jim Geraghty. And face it, government "jobs" are mostly a waste, far below the private sector in productivity.

Even so, Democrats have in recent weeks implied repeatedly that companies are somehow unpatriotic for refusing to invest the $2 trillion in cash on their books.

But what sane company would invest at a time when it's in the government's greedy cross hairs? Or when both the White House and Congress repeatedly criticize "millionaires and billionaires," and threaten to crush small businesses — the engines of job growth — with higher taxes and new regulations?

As Obama spoke about jobs Thursday, oil CEOs were being grilled by Senate Democrats at a hostile hearing. Their crime? They're making fat profits. Time was, profits were a sign of success. Today, far-left Democrats think "profit" is a dirty word.

For the record, oil companies' profits are up because oil prices have soared. This isn't due to "speculators," but to the White House's foolish policy of keeping hundreds of millions of barrels of offshore oil off-limits — driving up prices and boosting foreign dependence.

Instead, the White House subsidizes money-losing alternative energy sources, none of which is ready to replace our current energy supply. Prices can only go up.

Then there's Boeing, one of America's great companies. It wants to open a $2 billion factory in South Carolina, creating thousands of new jobs. A cause for celebration by the White House? Hardly.

The National Labor Relations Board has charged Boeing with a labor-law violation because South Carolina is one of 22 right-to-work states. If you look at which party gets union donations, you'll understand why.

Fact is, we're 7 million jobs short of where we were when the recession began, there are eight unemployed people for every job opening and, despite April's gain of 244,000, we still aren't creating new jobs fast enough.

Yet Obama & Co. continue to play games, destroying jobs and blaming others for the economic carnage.