Vin Suprynowicz

I’ve lost track of precisely how many “number one” priorities Barack Obama now has. I believe he recently said cleaning up the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf, drilled on a permit issued by the Obama Interior Department in the spring of 2009, which permit contained no emergency plan to deal with a blowout since federal regulators agreed none was needed, was his new number one priority — just before the president broke for a game of golf.

(“For decades, Libertarians have warned against putting trust in government regulatory bureaucracies like the Minerals Management Service (MMS),” Libertarian Party Executive Director Wes Benedict pointed out last week. “While costing the taxpayers a lot of money, these agencies generally fail to deliver the kind of protections they promise, they tend to become corrupt, and they discourage vigilance on the part of citizens by lulling them into a false sense of security…. Thanks to liability caps provided by the federal government, BP was able to engage in riskier activities than it would have otherwise.”)

Then Mr. Obama — who has blocked non-union skimmers from helping clean up the oil even when they were offered by other nations — extorted a $20 billion slush fund from BP, swore up and down it would not be administered by anyone in the government, and immediately turned it over to his own personal “Pay Czar,” Ken Feinberg.

But back in January in his State of the Union speech — my, how time flies when you’re having fun — Mr. Obama said his No. 1 issue was now going to be jobs. “Jobs must be our No. 1 focus in 2010,” Mr. Obama said, adding “People are out of work. They are hurting. They need our help.”

He didn’t mean it, though. The reason I say this, is that it’s within the power of the federal government to create millions of new private-sector jobs in only a matter of months, and they won’t do it.

If the head of a lending library determines a huge chunk of the collection is out on loan and overdue, that patrons are afraid to bring the books back because the accrued fines are so large, what does he or she do?

The traditional solution is to slice away the perverse disincentives by offering an amnesty: Anyone who brings back a book in the next month will be forgiven their fines.

Any president who wants to see a massive re-birth of private-sector jobs in this country (not government jobs, which are parasitical, sucking money out of the private sector in the form of taxes even after the bureaucrat retires) — especially if his party controls both houses of Congress — need only declare a three-year “employer amnesty.”

Why are employers reluctant to hire? First, it would be stupid to add capacity if the economy is still headed down the tubes, due to the looming threats of the health care taxes and mandates in Obamacare; the threatened “global warming carbon tax”; the threatened “Value Added Tax,” and the threat that workplaces will now be unionized without a secret ballot majority vote (“card check.”)

The president could stimulate a giant sigh of relief out there among private-sector employers by declaring that Obamacare is suspended for three years, along with all those other big-government initiatives. Tell Congress they’ve done a wonderful job, and send them home.

But the second big reason business owners are wary of creating jobs is all the costs, mandates, taxes and punishments the federal government has attached to job creation.

To fix this, we need an “employer amnesty.” Simply tell employers that for the next three years, the federal government doesn’t care how many employees you have, or who they are. Uncle Sam doesn’t want to hear about it.

We’re going to get busy rounding up and deporting some 12 million illegal aliens, so we won’t have to worry about all these new jobs going to illegals. Otherwise, hire whoever you want, and don’t tell us.

Minimum wage laws? Three-year hiatus. Withholding, matching and submitting income taxes, Social Security taxes, Medicare taxes? All gone for three years. Tear up the forms. The IRS is on a three-year leave of absence. We won’t need to keep transferring those moneys from young workers to old retirees; we’ll just draw down the “trust funds” into which those retirees’ wages were placed all through their working years in order to pay them their current, promised benefits.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission? Laid off for three years. OSHA? You won’t be hearing from them. The ADA? In abeyance. Environmental Impact Statements for that new hospital, highway, or factory you want to build? No one will ever ask to see them if you can get it done in the next three years.

Just go about your business, like your granddad would have in 1910; we don’t want to hear about it.

Leftists, statists, fascists (now easily defined as those who simper “You can’t call it socialism because government doesn’t yet entirely own the means of production!”) will be outraged over any and all of these proposals, of course.

“You want workers to DIE!” they’ll shriek, jumping up on their chairs and clutching their petticoats about their knees. “You want racists to be allowed to hire anyone they want, without QUOTAS! You’re against the CRIPPLES! Allow people to work for any wage they’ll agree to? Oh, oh, I feel suddenly light-headed; someone catch me. Who will protect the weak-minded and the oppressed from greedy capitalists offering them JOBS?”

Which means “creating jobs” isn’t really their top priority, or their second, or their third, or their 25th, is it?

By the time Rome fell, most of the farmland within a few days’ march of the capital stood fallow. You couldn’t make enough by farming the land to pay the taxes.

Yet keeping each and every one of these current job-killing federal taxes, regulations and mandates in place and operating at full strength is more important, isn’t it?

So what Mr. Obama really meant, back on Jan. 27, was that “Protecting and creating more tax-funded GOVERNMENT jobs must be our No. 1 focus in 2010, and you small people who work out there in Privatesectorland are just going to have to hunker down, shut up, and pay a whole hell of a lot more taxes to get it done, because not only are we NOT going to REDUCE the tax and regulatory burden on private employers who might want to create a job … you beasts of burden ain’t seen nothin’ yet!”

Didn’t he?