Time to "de-stimulate"

Larry Kudlow:  Time to De-Stimulate:

After the arrival of a disappointing December jobs report, my thought on putting America back to work is simple: de-stimulate.

That's right. Get rid of the Obama stimulus monster, including the government takeover of health care, cap-and-trade and all this nonsensical talk of creating green jobs. Get rid of the increase in marginal personal tax rates and capital-gains tax rates. Get rid of the payroll tax hike from the health care talks. Get rid of the spending that is a counterweight to growth. Get rid of it, every part of it. It's creating so much uncertainty that even profitable businesses are afraid to hire new workers and expand.

It's like business is on hold as it waits for the next Washington shoe to fall.

The Democrats and President Obama came in to power mistakenly believing that they had a mandate that would allow them to completely restructure the economy but they have failed.  The country has been plunged deeply in to debt and most would be hard pressed to name a single Obama initiative that has yielded positive results in any lasting or meaningful way.

Consider this comment I received on an earlier post:

Obviously, with regard to health care, you must have never left the country to see that other countries have a wonderful standard of living, all while getting much of government support. Taxes are higher, everyone pays them, and people do not have to worry about sending their kids to college, health care, maternity leave...all is well in these countries...just go there.(emphasis added)

The commenter, typical of many on the Left, wants to relegate their welfare to the state but that is not the mindset that built this country.  In this country, we succeed when government gets the hell out of the way.  If we have learned anything from the Stimulus it is that government intervention makes everything worse.

The housing bubble was in no small way caused by government intervention in the housing market.  It was due to pressure put on lenders by politicians who claim that owning a home is a basic "right" and who then exacerbated the problem by shifting much of the risk to Freddie and Fannie. 

Not learning from their mistakes in the housing market, the government is now interfering in both the health care and energy markets.  Rather than opening up competition in health care by allowing insurance companies to operate across state lines and concentrating on tort reform the government is giving us a system that will increase costs and lower care.  In the energy sector Cap & Trade will increase costs for every American household without providing any offsetting benefits.

If the Obama administration wants to improve our floundering economy they would do well to remember that less is more.  They need to concentrate on keeping the country safe and let the markets take care of themselves.