To:      Interested Parties From:  Dan Varroney, American Solutions RE:      American Solutions Supports Freeze on Spending and Tax Hikes Washington, DC - In a letter sent to Minority Leader John Boehner today, American Solutions put its support behind efforts to... more »

In a speech delivered today at the Milwaukee Laborfest, President Obama asked Congress to approve billions of dollars in new government spending to improve the nation's infrastructure.

But the $50 billion plan is likely more of a political stunt than a legitimate job-creation plan: The Washington Post, for example, initially deemed it little more than "a pre-election effort to show [Obama's] trying to stimulate the sputtering economy." (That quote, however, has since been removed in the updated version of the above-linked article.)

Furthermore, the legislation is based upon the same mentality that gave us the failed $862 billion stimulus in February 2009, which skyrocketed the nation's deficit and did not live up to its billing, including keeping the unemployment rate below 8%.

And if history is any guide, this next round of government-spending-disguised-as-relief will suffer the same fate... more »

The big news this week is that President Obama is making a political pivot to focusing on the economy with a massive new stimulus proposal. What has been lost in that ongoing story, however, is how the administration plans to pay for it.

The White House claims it will be paid for by "closing tax loopholes," which is the Left's preferred method of saying "higher taxes." In this case, those "loopholes" are in the oil and gas industry, which the administration wants to tax in order to pay for its latest public spending boondoggle.

And as POLITICO reports this morning, it's unlikely that the President will be able to fund Stimulus II without raising the gasoline tax, meaning Stimulus II could sock taxpayers even more at the gas pump... more »

It is time for a fresh start.

The most compelling evidence for the President to take a new direction is his "jobs gap" which surpassed one-million in August. According to the St. Petersburg Times the American economy needs to create 292,000 jobs a month beginning in February 2010 to reach 5% unemployment by 2015. Today, the Obama jobs gap has widened to 1.3 million jobs.

Unemployment Day weekend will mark the official end of the Obama administration's "Recovery Summer". 14.9 million Americans are unemployed. 6.2 million people have been out of work for more than six months. And, over 450,000 people are filing unemployment claims each month. Yet, the White House continues to tout the $862 billion stimulus as a success.

As the President himself has noted, small businesses were responsible for over 60% of all jobs lost in the last three months of 2009. Elsewhere in the economy, home construction has fallen and businesses continue to keep investment capital on the sidelines.
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Starting tomorrow, a new series of rallies will showcase Americans across the country publicly fighting back against job-killing policies, including President Obama's politically-motivated deep water oil and gas drilling moratorium.

The events, known as the Rally for Jobs series, are intended to highlight how vital the energy industry is to the American economy and how affordable energy is necessary for economic growth. According to the official website:

More energy equals more jobs, higher incomes and greater economic growth. We must come together to tell Washington that our livelihoods depend on the oil and natural gas industry and consumers who rely on access to affordable energy will not be overlooked...

"What can we do?!"
 
You hear that question a lot these days. It is often a frustrated response to the socialist direction of our federal government...or liberal schemes in a City Hall or Statehouse.
 
Millions of Americans are new to the conservative movement. They have become more intensely concerned about politics because of reckless deficit spending, unemployment, corruption and scandal.
 
We need to turn their frustration into activism.
 
Remember the joke about the teacher asking a student, "Which is worse -- ignorance or apathy?" The student replied, "I don't know and I don't care." It's funny, but it raises a serious point. It's not enough to know that America is heading in the wrong direction. And it's not enough to just care. We need to effectively act.
 
Newt's new book sums up the challenge: "To Save America." And he proposes specific solutions. But we must campaign for solutions at every level - local, state and national.
 
Community organizers have been training liberal activists for years, and they succeeded in electing one of their own as President. We conservatives must do more to beat them at their own game: organizing, protesting, persuading... Complaining isn't enough.
   
How can one citizen make a difference? Here are some of the ways.

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