Let create jobs to reduce the deficit.

The best thing we can do to help with deficit reduction is to create jobs in this country for our unemployed. In order to create those jobs, especially jobs for manual laborers, we need to take a number of what seem to be obvious steps.

The easiest of these steps would be to have an aggressive program to switch to domestic energy sources. These domestic sources right now would have to be natural gas, coal, ethanol and biodiesel as we develop nuclear and renewable power sources. Critics of this approach talk about how far we are from getting off our dependence on foreign oil. True enough, but every kilowatt of domestic energy that replaces a kilowatt of foreign oil helps incrementally. The added benefit of natural gas is that it is cleaner than foreign oil and we have a tremendous amount of it.

Building the infrastructure to deliver the natural gas would in and of itself create thousands of jobs. In addition, the added benefit of reducing our balance of trade deficit would leave more wealth in this country and add thousands of additional jobs. The ongoing development of these resources would increase this benefit year after year.

The other thing we have to fix is the high cost of hiring labor in this country. Business is asking for tax cuts but there is no evidence that allowing corporations to keep additional profits will result in employment. The cost of labor has to be less than the contribution of that labor. Understanding that health care is generally a cost of labor in this country while in most other industrialized countries, the cost of health care is a societal cost, not a labor cost. As long as our model inflates the cost of labor by adding what is effectively a health care tax, companies will analyze the choices and move jobs to more economical locations. Our failure to fix this is costing Americans jobs. It is not the only factor, but the cost of labor in this country would have a much better chance of being competitive without this impediment.

These two things would go a long way to creating jobs and promoting growth. The creation of jobs has two benefits, more people paying taxes and less requiring benefits. This clearly helps the balance sheets at all levels of Government.