The job market continues to cool along with the temperature, and wage growth is ice-cold.
Today’s jobs report reveals 263,000 jobs were created in September, down from 315,000 in August. It confirms that American workers’ real wages continue to fall, reducing living standards and making it harder and harder to get ahead.
Will Americans put up with ongoing wage erosion, month after month, seemingly in perpetuity? Or will they make their voices heard at the ballot box on Election Day next month? A new Monmouth poll released this week suggests pocketbook issues like inflation will decide the midterm elections.
Today’s numbers follow a string of poor economic indicators as we head into the stretch run of election season. Yesterday, initial jobless claims rose more than forecast. On Tuesday, the Labor Department announced a significant contraction in national job openings. Gas prices are skyrocketing again on this week’s news that OPEC will constrain supply.
And the stock market just had its worst September in 20 years.
These economic headwinds, combined with continued aggressive Federal Reserve interest rate hikes, suggest another Great Recession may be coming unless Washington changes course. The Fed and the American people desperately need federal policymakers’ help to reduce inflation without devastating the economy via the blunt instrument of excessive rate hikes.
Job Creators Network and Newt Gingrich recently introduced a roadmap to lead Washington back from this economic precipice. The American Small Business Prosperity Plan includes eight provisions that would reduce inflation, boost real wages and jumpstart economic growth. Every congressional candidate should support it.
The Prosperity Plan assists the Fed in its inflation fight by calling for the immediate end to all reckless federal spending fueling the inflationary fire. The Biden administration has unnecessarily spent several trillion dollars, leading to too much money chasing too few goods. Balancing the budget will stop the money printing and the inflation that goes along with it.
The plan also calls for increased domestic energy production to boost supply and bring down outrageous energy prices, which prop up costs throughout the economy. Instead of begging Saudis for more oil, let’s just produce it at home and enjoy the good jobs and economic growth that come with it. Earth to Biden: Carbon emissions are a global phenomenon, and it doesn’t matter whether oil is produced in the Middle East or North America.
Small businesses still haven’t fully recovered from the pandemic and associated government restrictions on business activity. The Prosperity Plan includes numerous provisions to bring small businesses back, allowing entrepreneurs to start and expand businesses, boost supply, and bring down prices.
For instance, the plan makes the Tax Cut and Jobs Act permanent. These tax cuts led to an explosion of economic activity and wage growth, but without congressional action, they begin expiring next year. The plan also exempts small businesses from painful new federal regulations that disproportionately hurt small businesses.
Small businesses deserve tax and regulatory certainty to help overcome the current inflationary and economic uncertainty.
The Prosperity Plan also finally addresses insane healthcare costs that act as a massive tax on hiring. Instead of simply throwing more money at the problem as Democrats did in the Inflation Reduction Act, the Prosperity Plan calls for market-based solutions like price transparency and expanded health savings accounts to purchase care directly to actually lower healthcare costs.
The plan also calls for increased access to credit, investigates ongoing supply chain disruptions and reestablishes work requirements for welfare.
Washington is trying to leave the entire inflation fight to the Fed so policymakers can scapegoat it for the ensuing economic calamity.
This feckless approach is unacceptable and exactly why Americans hate politicians. Congress should step up and adopt this Prosperity Plan to return the country to the shared economic prosperity enjoyed in 2018 and 2019 and make worries of an economic winter a thing of the past.
Alfredo Ortiz is president and CEO of Job Creators Network.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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