A recent Gallup poll puts a large spotlight on the disconnect between Americans and their current government, and the SOTU speech last Tuesday was a great example of that disconnect. Inequality and immigration were mentioned as the President’s top priorities this year, yet according to the poll, those two issues are not even close to the priorities of many Americans; garnering just 4% and 3% respectively. What Americans do understand, which our government does not, is that flooding the labor market with a lot of unskilled labor via immigration reform will further exacerbate the unemployment problem, which has become a hardship for millions of Americans. Furthermore, raising the minimum wage to $10/hr will do nothing to lift anyone out of poverty, another concept that most Americans understand and that our government does not. Last Tuesday, Obama emphatically stated that Americans want the government to work together and resolve the problems our country faces. NO, Americans do not want that. Americans currently rank government as the problem, not the solution. There is very little that the government can do, that the private sector and the average American can’t do better.
Americans WANT jobs. Jobs that pay more than $10/hr. And if Obama would unleash the private sector, those jobs would be created. Just as the Tech boom fueled the growth and expansion of the 90’s, the energy boom and expansion can, and should fuel the growth for the next decade or two. We have discovered in the last few years that we are literally sitting on vast reserves of crude oil and natural gas, and the extraction of those reserves would put millions of people to work instantly. The Keystone pipeline is waiting approval, and Canada is hoping that we come to our senses and get the ball rolling. Otherwise, Canada will build that line themselves and those jobs and resources will flow west to China. Obama should also pay close attention to what is happening on private lands in North Dakota and how that activity is fueling job growth throughout the region in every business and driving up wages as well. This is not rocket science.
The private sector and American ingenuity reigniting an economy built on an energy platform rich with crude and natural gas resources is the prescription this country needs. Not some pandering minimum wage and immigration reform cited by out of touch bureaucrats, Republican and Democrat alike. They are all so out of touch it’s embarrassing, and that is why this year, I am changing my registration to Independent.