United Liberty

The stagnant economy is sure to be on the minds of voters as we get closer to the fall election. President Obama’s campaign is doing everything it can to distract voters from the dismal unemployment rate, depressing budget deficits, and looming tax hikes.

Recently, Veronique de Rugy, an economist at the Mercatus Center, noted the job creation numbers under presidents dating back to 1945. While Obama claims that the economy has created some four million jobs since taking office, the truth is that Americans have seen the worst job creation numbers under the current administration than any of his predecessors dating back to Truman.

And while his fixes haven’t worked as sold haven’t worked as promised — and there was no question that they would fail before they were even passed, President Obama is trying to sell more snake oil to Americans by pushing crippling taxes hikes. Nevermind that the share of income taxes paid by higher-income earners has gone up since the passage of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts and nevermind that even Keynesian economists will tell you that raising taxes in an economy is a bad idea.

And it’s not just taxes, folks. There is also the cost of regulatory compliance. George Scoville noted this briefly on Friday, but there is more to the story that often goes untold. For example, regulatory compliance costs businesses in the United States $1.75 trillion each year. We can talk about businesses going overseas to avoid the unfriendly tax climate in the United States all day long, but the regulatory costs often go overlooked.

What’s more, this burden has only gotten worse under President Obama. Thanks to new EPA regulations on coal plants, energy costs could rise by as much as 13% — costs that consumers will bear both directly, through their power bill, and indirectly, through costs at the point of sale as businesses pass along compliance costs.

The reality is that our economy cannot recover and achieve its potential while our government is raising taxes and maintaining an hefty regulatory burden.