Deregulation, tax cuts are the real job killers

The McCain-Palin ticket doesn't want anyone to look back for good reason.

In 2004, President Bush touted the job growth in Nevada as reason Silver State voters should give him another four years. At the time, he warned a John Kerry administration would (and where have we heard this?) be a job killer.

When she wasn't avoiding specific questions during Thursday's debate, Sarah Palin was off on her own little fear campaign. The choice in this election was so clear to her: You either cut taxes and spur jobs or raise taxes that kill them.

But nothing has proved to be a greater job killer in this country than the Bush administration's handling of domestic finance -- it has poured hundreds of billions of dollars into a country we were told would pay for its own reconstruction.

There's nothing more sobering for me as a voter than Friday's job numbers, showing 159,000 fewer people on the payroll.

In my neighborhood, "For Rent" signs have replaced a few "For Sale" signs -- and new signs are still popping up. At several local private schools, parents are uprooting kids to put them into public schools and save the tuition money. And go ahead and try to buy something at a grocery store or a discount chain when there's one checkout clerk on duty.

It used to be that if you wanted to work and couldn't find a job in Las Vegas, there was something really wrong with you. Sure, you might be stuck with an advanced degree serving coffee or putting on a security uniform, but you had a job, probably with health benefits.

At the start of 2008, I was wondering why more people weren't saying we were in a recession. Perhaps we hadn't yet met the technical definition back in January, but how can what we're in now be anything other than a recession?

It would seem to me the American people need a bit more honesty when it comes to the economy. Maybe if we didn't sugarcoat conditions with talk of "downturns" and fundamental soundness, Americans wouldn't have been so surprised when the whole thing crumbled.

How is it that the average American is supposed to stay out of debt when the government's example is to run up budget deficits?

The average Middle American is squeezed by stagnant wages, increased costs at the pumps and grocery store and rising health insurance premiums that don't translate into better coverage. At the campaign level, however, we just hear about how increasing taxes would kill jobs.

John McCain and Palin say it about Barack Obama's economic proposals, and Jon Porter says it about Dina Titus' legislative record.

The reality is the war in Iraq, deregulation and tax cuts have gotten us into job-killing mode.

It's also telling when you hear about the last time unemployment was this high in America. It was during Reaganomics -- when the national debt clock first went up in New York City.

Clinton paid down the debt so well that the clock became pointless. Now it's pointless because there's no digit to represent the "10" in $10 trillion.

Where I come from, that's not sound fiscal policy.

And there are the 159,000 people who joined the ranks of unemployed last month -- people who aren't earning, who probably have no health insurance and who are unable to get any kind of credit.

Friday's job report isn't even the whole story. About 750,000 people have lost their jobs this year.

Imagine the outcry if this were happening under a Democratic administration.

It would be nice if this $700 billion bailout would work. It might. But there's still the looming unregulated derivative market that makes Wall Street's "crisis" look like just another blip.

Friday's debate in the House of Representatives was another sad joke to Main Street. Speaker Nancy Pelosi telling Wall Street "the party is over" and cheering the little gifts negotiated to win over a handful of representatives.

I wonder if Nevada Rep. Shelley Berkley would have acted differently on the bailout if she faced any opposition this year. She voted no on the first version of the bill because her constituents didn't like it. The majority of her constituents didn't like the new version, even though Berkley voted yes the second time around.

Is the second version really that much better? We're still throwing $700 billion at a private-sector problem.

It would be helpful if the whole story of the economy were being discussed, explained and vetted with the American people.

Instead we just hear proponents of a real job-killing philosophy trying to shift the blame.

Contact Erin Neff at (702) 387-2906, or by e-mail at eneff@reviewjournal.com.