The Jobs Speech That Obama Dares Not Deliver

As job growth in America decelerates to zilch, President Obama promises a bold new speech on Sept. 8 to a joint session of Congress on ways to stimulate job creation – his sixth speech on jobs since early 2009. But this will be a campaign speech, not a policy address: Obama will propose schemes which he knows in advance won’t be endorsed by the current majority in Congress, and then he’ll hope that in 2012 amnesic voters will come to believe that the real cause of America’s stagnation is not his own policies but the “do nothing,” GOP-led Congress. On the slim chance Mr. Obama genuinely wants to promote private-sector jobs and adopt policies to that end, I hereby provide a draft of the speech he should give to Congress – a speech that he wouldn’t dare give, on ideological grounds.