Venango County Tea Party Patriots

A non-partisan, non-profit, non-member, association dedicated to educating the public and promoting the principles of fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government and free market economics, and all other lawful activities.

economy

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Labor Secretary Says Immigration Reform Will Help Economy!

Saying the jobs report shows the Obama administration has more “work to do,” Thomas Perez said on CNBC that immigration reform, in addition to promise zones, was needed to jumpstart the economy.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), the ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee, said that is exactly the wrong approach to take, as the Congressional Budget Office determined that comprehensive immigration reform would lower the wages of American workers. Sessions said that if Obama gets amnesty legislation passed this year he will have to create more economic “promise zones” for the American workers that would be displaced after comprehensive immigration reform.

Sessions also said that Obama’s announcement of economic promise zones on Thursday “represents an admission that five years of tax, spend, borrow, and regulate have produced economic misery for countless Americans” and noted that Obama’s “policies are growing the government and shrinking the middle class.”

“Yet what is the President’s top second-term priority? Is it a plan to help Americans on unemployment and welfare find good, paying jobs?,” Sessions said. “No, the top priority remains an immigration bill crafted by CEOs that will double the flow of new workers from abroad to compete in every industry and sector throughout the U.S. economy. If the President succeeds in pushing through the House his plan to take jobs needed by Americans, he will have to create many more ‘promise zones’ for the millions of displaced workers.”

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Only 74K Jobs Added in December -Some Say Sure Sign of Economic Recovery!

The economy added a paltry 74,000 jobs in December, a figure far below the gains of recent months that raised immediate questions about the strength of the economy — and whether the report was an exception to the trend.

The unemployment rate dropped from 7 percent in November to 6.7 percent, though that was in part from people leaving the workforce. The labor force participation rate dropped slightly to 62.8 percent, which is right around the 36-year low.

The economy had been averaging gains of more than 200,000 jobs per month, and the December totals are the lowest number of jobs the economy has added in a single month since January 2011.

The low figures surprised most observers, and Mark Zandi, chief economist with Moody’s Analytics, went so far as to say he wouldn’t pay any attention to the latest figures because they are not consistent with any other data.

“Next month we get benchmark revisions and I expect the December numbers to be revised up,” he said. “The reality is the economy is creating 200,000 jobs a month.

Zandi said the December decline in unemployment is also overstated and will likely be revised up, at least in part, in the next couple of months.

“Bottom line, I think the economy and job market have shifted into a higher gear and that will become evident in the next few months,” he said.

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11 Nasty Trends That Will Test America’s Resilience

Still, five years into the Obama presidency, the economy is grossly underperforming. Contrary to the dominant media narrative, it’s not bad luck or the financial crisis to blame, but bad policies — from the $860 billion “stimulus” that didn’t stimulate to the Dodd-Frank financial reform that killed lending.

Last year was a challenging one for entrepreneurs and other productive Americans. No fewer than 13 new taxes were put into place. Big government now consumes one of every four dollars of our GDP and is getting bigger.

Entering 2014, we face problems, including taxes and spending, that neither the White House nor Congress is addressing. In the following charts, we look at a few of the more alarming and intractable ones.

Read More At Investor’s Business Daily.