Set the right tone. I was reminded of this by the remarks Eric Cantor prepared for delivery today at Wharton. They are worth reading in full, but here were the highlights for me:
There are politicians and others who want to demonize people that have earned success in certain sectors of our society. They claim that these people have now made enough, and haven't paid their fair share. But, pitting Americans against one another tends to deflate the aspirational spirit of our people and fade the American dream....Instead of talking about a fair share or spending time trying to push those at the top down, elected leaders in Washington should be trying to ensure that everyone has a fair shot and the opportunity to earn success up the ladder. The goal shouldn't be for everyone to meet in the middle of the ladder. We should want all people to be moving up and no one to be pulled down. How do we do that? It cannot simply be about wealth redistribution. You don't just take from the guy at the top to give to the guy at the bottom and expect our problems to be solved.
It doesn't cost hundreds of billions of dollars to have a president who talks this way rather than a president who talks the way President Obama talks. Talk is cheap. But the right words can create confidence that leads to job-creation.
Earlier: Cost-Free Job-Creating Idea No. 28: Deregulate transportation at the local level.
Cost-Free Job-Creating Idea No. 27. Fix immigration in a way that opens the door wider to more legal immigrants.
Cost-Free Job-Creating Idea No. 26: Pass the Northern Arizona Mining Continuity Act, preventing the Obama administration's Interior Department from halting uranium mining in Northern Arizona.
Cost-Free Job-Creating Idea No. 25: Pass the Employment Protection Act, requiring the Environmental Protection Agency to consider the jobs impact of any new regulation, new policy statement or permit denial.
Cost-Free Job-Creating Idea No. 24: Pass fast-track trade promotion authority.
Cost-Free Job-Creating Idea No. 23: Deregulate the bond-rating agencies.
Cost-Free Job-Creating Idea No. 22: Balance the budget by cutting spending and dealing with entitlements.
Cost-Free Job-Creating Idea No. 21: Repeal the Dodd-Frank financial "reform" legislation
Cost-Free Job-Creating Idea No. 20: Pass the Regulations From the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act of 2011, or REINS Act.
Cost-Free Job-Creating Idea No. 19: Do nothing.
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 governments 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.
