Government Action Causes UnemploymentBy Thomas E. BrewtonThe more the President flails around with barrages of new programs,  taxes, mandates, and business takeovers, the warier businessmen  become about hiring new workers.Hence the accelerating level of unemployment, now at 9.5%, the  highest level in more than 25 years.  That picture is even worse when  allowing for the decline in the average work week to 33 hours.The administration continues to use the crutch of blaming President  Bush for everything that goes wrong.  But it can't escape the fact  that its first official economic act was the $787 billion stimulus  package, which was by many multiples the largest such program in  history.  When it was enacted, the unemployment level was  approximately half the present 9.5%.The standard liberal-progressive-socialist rationalization for  failure was provided, in advance, by the New York Times's left-wing  propagandist Paul Krugman: the government isn't spending enough.  Mr.  Krugman, in his February 12, 2009, column (shortly after passage of  the stimulus bill), wrote:"For while Mr. Obama got more or less what he asked for, he almost  certainly didn't ask for enough. We're probably facing the worst  slump since the Great Depression. The Congressional Budget Office,  not usually given to hyperbole, predicts that over the next three  years there will be a $2.9 trillion gap between what the economy  could produce and what it will actually produce. And $800 billion,  while it sounds like a lot of money, isn't nearly enough to bridge  that chasm."Since then, the President has upped the ante to many trillions of  dollars, with proposals for socialized healthcare and other  enlargements of government's interventionist role in our lives.All this not withstanding, the July 6, 2009, edition of the Wall  Street Journal, in its front-page headline article, reports "Calls  for More Stimulus Grow."http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124680904844296383.htmlSuch blather, coming from politicians and Keynesian government  economists, may make the public believe that effective action is  being taken.  But it's just a PR smoke screen.Much of the first-round stimulus package, aimed at public works that  would put people to work, remains unspent.  That is the inescapable  nature of government public works spending.  Months' or years' time  is needed to clear challenges by environmentalists and other special- interest groups, not to mention planning and letting of contracts.   But that can't be used by the administration as an excuse, because it  was the Democrat/Socialist Congress that designed the pork-laden  stimulus package.What then is stopping business from hiring more workers?The answer, in large part, is that, with its pretensions to a new New  Deal, the Obama administration is recreating the atmosphere of FDR's  Hundred Days blitz of new Federal agencies, huge tax increases and  continual business bashing.  See "A Jackboot at Home, an Olive Branch  Abroad" and  "A New Deal Frame of Mind."http://www.thomasbrewton.com/index.php/weblog/a_new_deal_frame_of_mind/.http://www.thomasbrewton.com/index.php/weblog/ a_jackboot_at_home_an_olive_branch_abroad/Businessmen were so frightened and unsure of what might come next  that they stopped hiring workers.Jerry Bowyer, in Why Isn't America Hiring?, explains:http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=070609A"America isn't hiring precisely because of government policy. Small  business owners, who are usually the first into and the first out of  the job pool, are standing by the fence and watching. They are  paralyzed by regulatory uncertainty. If they hire someone who ends up  doing poorly, will they be able to fire that person? Will they have  to pay their health care bills after they've been terminated? If so,  for how long? Who will pay for all these stimulus checks? If it will  turn out to be small business, why would they hire instead of keeping  costs low to prepare for the big tax bill? Where will the market  move? Are you in the right business or are your clients in a  politically disfavored industry? Are your clients in health care  (being nationalized), autos (already nationalized), banking (somewhat  nationalized) or any energy production process which uses carbon  (pulverized)? Until you know, you don't grow, and until you grow your  market, you don't grow your payroll."Jobs aren't languishing despite the government's best efforts.  They're languishing because of them."