Jon Kyl, September 27, 2010

As the weather cools and the days shorten, we welcome fall and say farewell to the Obama administration’s "Summer of Recovery."

In June, President Obama and his administration had high hopes for the summer. It was supposed to be the time when the economy emerged from recession and people who had been searching for jobs returned to work.

"Welcome, everyone, to the Summer of Recovery!" Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood proclaimed on a White House blog.

Ron Simms, another White House official, wrote in a June 17 White House website posting that, "This summer is sure to be a Summer of Economic Recovery."

Too bad for all of us it wasn’t.

The national unemployment continues to hover at a historic 9.6 percent, and the unemployment rate crept above the national average in Arizona. Home sales are at an all time low. And more than a quarter million jobs were lost over the summer -- that’s tacked onto the three million jobs that have been lost since President Obama’s trillion-dollar "stimulus" bill was enacted in February 2009. Productivity has declined to 1.8 percent and economic growth decelerated to an anemic 1.6 percent in the second quarter, according to the Joint Economic Committee.

In Los Angeles, the city’s transportation department received more than $40 million in stimulus funds, but "created or retained" only nine jobs, according to recent report from the city’s controller. The department of public works fared slightly better. It, reports the controller, used about $71 million in stimulus funds and "created or retained" only 45 jobs, seven of which were new.

It appears the administration’s "Summer of Recover" was a bust, and more evidence continues to show that the President’s stimulus legislation is a failure.

Americans don’t need a PR slogan. Those who are unemployed want a job. And those who have a job want the security that they will continue to have it. Repeated proclamations about a "recovery summer" provide neither. In fact, when lackluster results follow such pronouncements, frustration only grows.

In the end, the government can’t create the jobs lost in the private sector -- only business can. As long as the Obama administration holds to the assumption that government spending and control will put people back to work, the recovery will be slow and stubborn; and Americans will continue to view its assertions that the recovery is here with justifiable skepticism.

So instead of spending time devising new PR campaigns to defend failed policies, the Obama administration would do well to heed the advice of Sean Snaith, an economics professor at the University of Central Florida, whose advice for recovery was: "Extend tax cuts for all income levels and do nothing else... More of the same piecemeal, patchwork policies put forth by this administration will undermine confidence and do little to change the path the economy is on."

Senator Jon Kyl, a Republican, represents Arizona in the U.S. Senate. He serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Finance Committee, and the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.