Do nothing. That's right, do nothing. This one might be my favorite of the whole lot so far. And it's particularly timely. In July, it was the height of the supposed "political dysfunction" related to the debt limit increase, and Republicans fought off an attempt by President Obama to get them to agree to a tax increase. In August, President Obama and Congress went on vacation. In September, though Mr. Obama gave a lot of speeches about what an emergency it is and how Congress needed to pass his job-creation bill, Congress did not pass the bill. And today, lo and behold, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that, according to the seasonally adjusted payroll survey, total private employment grew by 173,000 jobs in July, 42,000 jobs in August, and 137,000 jobs in September. That's not fabulous, but it's not terrible, either, especially given the oft-repeated claim that political dysfunction (what the left and the establishment center calls our constitutional system of checks and balances that allows Congress not always to do exactly what the president asks for) was creating job-destroying uncertainty.
Earlier: Cost-Free Job-Creating Idea No. 18: Sell some government land.
Earlier: Cost-Free Job-Creating Idea No. 17: Pass the Cement Regulatory Relief Act, preventing the Environmental Protection Agency from imposing new rules on cement manufacturers that the industry says would kill 4,000 cement jobs and another 12,000 to 19,000 construction jobs.
Cost-Free Job-Creating Idea No. 16: Roll back state licensing requirements for occupations like auctioneers, ballroom dance teachers, yoga instructors, interior designers, and florists.
Cost-Free Job-Creating Idea No. 15: Give all 50 states waivers from ObamaCare's requirements and let them experiment with their own plans to increase coverage, improve health care quality, and reduce costs.
Cost-Free Job-Creating Idea No. 14: End state and local blue laws that keep retailers closed, or restrict sales of certain items, on Sundays.
Cost-Free Job-Creating Idea No. 13: Eliminate requirements for legal ads in print newspapers in connection with business formation.
Cost-Free Job-Creating Idea No. 12: Tort reform.
Cost-Free Job-Creating Idea No. 11: "Allow all 50 states to experiment at the state level with developing a mandatory training component of unemployment compensation."
Cost-Free Job-Creating Idea No. 10: Abolish extended unemployment benefits.
Cost-Free Job-Creating Idea No. 9: Waive environmental-impact reviews, making it possible to speed up start times on construction projects.
Cost-Free Job-Creating Idea No. 8: Pass the free trade agreements with Colombia, South Korea, and Panama.
Cost-Free Job-Creating Idea No. 7: Moratorium on significant new regulations until unemployment rate returns to pre-Obama level of 7.7 percent.
Cost-Free Job-Creating Idea No. 6: U.S. work visas for foreign graduate students in science, technology, engineering and math.
Cost-Free Job-Creating Idea No. 5: Repeal the regulatory burdens of Sarbanes Oxley for all companies with less than $1 billion in sales, and index that number to inflation.
Cost-Free Job-Creating Idea No. 4: Open up domestic energy production.
Cost-Free Job-Creating Idea No. 3: Repatriate overseas corporate profits with a tax cut or holiday.
Cost-Free Job-Creating Idea No. 2: Drop the National Labor Relations Board's case against Boeing.
Cost-Free Job-Creating Idea No. 1: Repeal ObamaCare.
Thanks to all the reader-participant-community-member-watchdog-content co-creators who have already submitted ideas using the comments section, and please keep them coming. We'll be rolling them out at a rate of one each weekday until we get to 30. Remember, the concept is to devise things that the federal government can do to help create jobs that don't require the $450 billion of spending that President Obama is proposing (depending on whether you consider his tax cuts as "spending") or at least are deficit-neutral.
