Tag Archives: jobs

A Wise and Practical Man

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What he said.

The Honorable Barack Obama
President
The White House
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

I am writing today to urge your Administration to take overdue but necessary action to confront soaring gasoline prices. In the last three years, gas prices have doubled, draining the disposable income of millions of hardworking Americans. In 2011, the typical U.S. household already spent $4,155 on gasoline, almost 10 percent of their income. Yet some analysts now predict prices may rise this year to more than $5.00 per gallon.

In a speech this Thursday, you stated that “there are no quick fixes to this problem. You know we can’t just drill our way to lower gas prices.” While we should explore a variety of energy resources—most especially those which do not put taxpayer dollars at risk—I respectfully disagree that we cannot utilize our remarkably vast untapped energy reserves to provide Americans with much-needed relief. I reject the defeatist view that says the nation that won two world wars, pioneered space travel, and overcame the Soviet Empire is now helpless in the face of high prices at the pump. We are not at the mercy of dictators, cartels, and events beyond our control.

Simply by removing the bureaucratic barriers imposed by your own administration we can begin to make progress. But we can go much further than that. Powerful action to harness America’s untapped oil and gas resources would place downward pressure on prices and speculation in the short-run and, by surging global supply, would serve to keep prices low in the future. Crucially, it would also provide millions of Americans with good-paying private-sector jobs; produce substantial royalties for local, state, and federal governments; reduce our enormous trade imbalance; and put an end to our huge wealth transfer from America to competitors oversees.

I therefore recommend the following proposals for immediate implementation:

1. Restore the bipartisan 2010–2015 offshore lease plan to ensure that the 31 lease sales called for in that plan are completed expeditiously. Your Administration only directed one lease sale in 2011 and has announced just one lease sale for 2012, far short of the number of sales that would have occurred over this period under the original 2010–2015 plan that your Administration discarded.

2. Take all necessary steps to accelerate the leasing and permitting process for domestic shale oil production. The United States has recoverable shale oil reserves estimated at 800 billion to 1.2 trillion barrels, meaning our nation has potentially three to four times more recoverable oil than any other country in the world except Canada.

3. Maximize energy production from federal lands. As I and 21 other Senators noted in a January 25, 2012 letter to you, actual oil production on federal lands is now just 714 million barrels per year, a 16 percent decline from what was projected just five years ago. This decline must be reversed.

4. End the de facto moratorium on permitting for offshore oil and gas production.

5. Direct the EPA, the Department of Energy, and other federal agencies to grant all necessary waivers and approvals to oil and gas refineries to facilitate maximum production at minimum cost. Refinery expenses comprise 11 percent of the price for gasoline that Americans pay at the pump, but your Administration has imposed numerous regulations that have driven refining costs up, not down.

6. Abandon your proposal to increase taxes and fees levied on U.S. energy production by more than $40 billion. These additional costs would be passed along to consumers, taking money out of their pockets and discouraging needed domestic production.

7. Approve the Keystone XL pipeline and grant necessary waivers, licenses, and permits, where possible, to ensure expedited completion of this important North American energy project. The pipeline would carry 700,000 barrels a day to U.S. refineries, which is nearly half what the U.S. currently imports from the entire Middle East.

America has the potential to fundamentally shift the balance of power in global energy production—to produce more energy, more efficiently and more cheaply, than your Administration has recognized. Such bold steps will broadcast an unmistakable signal to the world that not only places downward pressure on prices in the near-term but helps deliver a future of abundant, affordable energy. Moreover, unlike costly short-term stimulus, achieving energy independence would provide long-term relief to both struggling families and our indebted treasury.

I look forward to working with you on this important matter.

Very truly yours,

Jeff Sessions
U.S. Senator

Hmm….

The President’s Jobs Performance

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Much has been made of the recent fall in the headline unemployment rate.  Among others, I’ve written about some of the data this publicly bandied-about number conceals.

Here’s another look at the employment picture, with a h/t to Power Line.  The figure was prepared by the Republican Study Committee, and it depicts the percentage of Americans actually in the labor force from January 2005 through January 2012. The RSC also points out that [emphasis theirs] 36.3% of working-age Americans do not have a job and are not even looking.

Fairness

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Stephen Moore, of The Wall Street Journal, asks some questions….

about taxes

Is it fair that the richest 1% of Americans pay nearly 40% of all federal income taxes, and the richest 10% pay two-thirds of the tax?

Is it fair that the richest 10% of Americans shoulder a higher share of their country’s income-tax burden than do the richest 10% in every other industrialized nation….

Is it fair that Americans who build a family business, hire workers, reinvest and save their money—paying a lifetime of federal, state and local taxes often climbing into the millions of dollars—must then pay an additional estate tax of 35% (and as much as 55% when the law changes next year) when they die, rather than passing that money onto their loved ones?

Is it fair that nearly four out of 10 American households now pay no federal income tax at all—a number that has risen every year under Mr. Obama?

about labor

Is it fair that after the first three years of Obamanomics, the poor are poorer, the poverty rate is rising, the middle class is losing income, and some 5.5 million fewer Americans have jobs today than in 2007?

Is it fair that those who work full-time jobs (and sometimes more) to make ends meet have to pay taxes to support up to 99 weeks of unemployment benefits for those who don’t work?

Is it fair that thousands of workers won’t have jobs because the president sided with environmentalists and blocked the shovel-ready Keystone XL oil pipeline?

Is it fair that in 27 states workers can be compelled to join a union in order to keep their jobs?

Is it fair that Boeing, a private company, was threatened by a federal agency when it sought to add jobs in a right-to-work state rather than in a forced-union state?

about individual responsibility

Is it fair that those who took out responsible mortgages and pay them each month have to see their tax dollars used to subsidize those who acted recklessly, greedily and sometimes deceitfully in taking out mortgages they now can’t afford to repay?

Is it fair that our kids and grandkids and great-grandkids—who never voted for Mr. Obama—will have to pay off the $5 trillion of debt accumulated over the past four years, without any benefits to them?

Contradictions

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In an energy policy article in The Daily Caller, Deneen Borelli raises some interesting disconnects between President Obama’s rhetoric and his actions.  She points out the failures engendered by his contradictions:

Despite his class-war rhetoric, Obama’s command-and-control energy policy drains our budget to reward crony capitalists such as General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt and his fellow presidential jobs panel member and billionaire venture capitalist John Doerr.

Ironically, the Obama war on fossil fuels hurts hard-working Americans because high energy prices have a disproportional impact on middle- and lower-income households and jeopardizes U.S. manufacturing.

And although Obama has called for fairness and a level playing field, the mandates and subsidies for renewable energy he favors would stifle competition by picking winners and losers.”

Then she gets specific.

on energy

Obama’s call for more oil and gas drilling in his State of the Union address was meant to deflect attention away from his failure to approve TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline.

Obama’s energy policy excludes coal. Coal now provides approximately 45 percent of our electricity, but regulations generated by the Obama EPA are imposing significant costs on utilities, costs that are forcing some power plants to close and others to spend billions of dollars in order to comply. Those compliance costs will be passed on to consumers in the form of higher electricity prices.

Fossil fuels — coal, oil and natural gas — provide roughly 85 percent of America’s energy needs. Yet, despite the failure of companies such as Solyndra, Obama is doubling down on renewable energy by calling for a national renewable energy mandate, forcing the Department of Defense to buy enough renewable energy to power a quarter of a million homes

on jobs

The president’s refusal to allow construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, at a cost of an estimated 20,000 jobs….

Some Thoughts on the January Unemployment Number

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Last week some jobs data were published for January, and the headline number was an unemployment rate of 8.3%, a 0.2 per centage point drop over December’s 8.5% rate.  This seems highly encouraging, but it’s useful to look at some of the data underlying this number: those data give a clearer picture of the true employment picture for our economy.

If we look, for instance, the BLS’ participation rate—the per centage of Americans actually looking for work—some other aspects of our jobs numbers appear.  The Dec 2011 participation rate was 64% of a civilian labor force (those aged 16-65) of some 153,887,000.  Yet the participation rate of January’s civilian labor force of 154,395,000 had dropped to 63.7%—or 138,000 fewer Americans actually were working despite a larger labor force and 243,000 net jobs “created.”

Adding those missing 138 thousand Americans back into the numbers yields an unemployment rate of 9.1%%.  The participation rate in Jan 2011 was even higher: 64.2% (notice that: under the Obama policies, the participation rate keeps falling, as more and more Americans despair of getting jobs).  The civilian labor force that year ago January was 153,250,000 compared to Jan 2012’s 154,395,000.  Projecting 2011-2012 population growth rate onto 2011’s participating population gives an expected 2012 participating population of 155,539,000, or  1,144,000 more than the BLS says was participating in Jan 2012.  Adding those missing million Americans back into the unemployment equation of unemployed/(Civilian labor force) gives an unemployment rate of 9.0%.

Indeed, if the participation rate were at the level it was at the start of President Obama’s administration, as James Pethokoukis, of The Enterprise Blog, points out, the unemployment rate today would be 11.0%.  But under Obama’s policies, the jobs really aren’t there (the 243 thousand additional jobs appearing between December and January notwithstanding, coming as they do with 5 million fewer Americans actually working today than at the start of the Obama administration), and Americans, millions of whom have been out of work this entire administration, are giving up.  Moreover, a “measure of unemployment which includes both the discouraged plus part-timers who wish they had full time work” yields an unemployment rate that’s “a sky-high 15.1 percent.”

These are just some ways of looking at the true unemployment rate.  Tyler Durden, at Zero Hedge, writes of yet another way.

Using BLS data, the US civilian non-institutional population was 242,269[,000] in January, an increase of 1.7 million month over month: apply the long-term average labor force participation rate of 65.8% to this number…and you get 159.4 million: that is what the real labor force should be.  The BLS reported one?  154.4 million: a tiny 5 million difference.  Then add these people…to the 12.758 million reported unemployed by the BLS and you get 17.776 million in real unemployed workers.  What does this mean?  That using just the BLS denominator in calculating the unemployed rate of 154.4 million, the real unemployment rate actually rose in January to 11.5%.

The Wall Street Journal put it this way:

After such a long trough, the economy’s natural recuperative powers are taking hold.

Washington has also stilled some of its damaging impulses, at least temporarily, thanks to the gridlock that arrived a year ago with the Republican House.