Obama Needs Help!

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- President Barack Obama on Thursday said he'd look into giving businesses more tax incentives to add employees, as leaders from Corporate America, labor and academia offered up ideas for creating jobs at a White House jobs summit.

Obama called new tax breaks for businesses "an idea we think is worthy of further consideration" at the end of the summit, which drew about 130 participants. He also said that there was unanimous agreement on growing U.S. exports and said that too many businesses still can't get the credit they need to expand.

"We are going to have to unlock that," he said.

With U.S. unemployment at a 26-year high and pressure on Obama's party to address the situation as an election year dawns, Obama's administration is considering a number of job creation proposals but does not want to expand the deficit significantly.

Obama said he heard ideas for job growth including protecting intellectual property and upgrading worker training programs.

He opened the summit on Thursday with a stark message to businesses, saying that only they can hasten an economic recovery and that the government's resources are limited due to the U.S. budget deficit.

"I want to be clear," Obama said at the outset of the summit. "While I believe that government has a critical role in creating the conditions for economic growth, ultimately, true economic recovery is only going to come from the private sector," Obama said.

"We don't have enough public dollars to fill the hole of private dollars that was created as a consequence of the crisis," Obama said.

The summit took place a day ahead of the release of the latest U.S. employment data, which is expected to show yet another month of job losses. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch forecast that the economy shed 100,000 jobs in November. It would be the 23rd consecutive month of job losses. See Economic Calendar.

In a shot at Obama and Democrats, Republicans held a counter-event before the start of the White House's gathering. House Republican Leader John Boehner invited a group of conservative economists to his office Thursday morning for advice on creating jobs.

Boehner also faulted the White House's agenda for climate change and health care.

"The American people are asking, 'where are the jobs?' but all they are getting from Washington Democrats is more spending, more debt and more policies that hurt small businesses," he said.

Organized labor, meanwhile, is asking the president to support a wide-ranging package of funding for infrastructure projects, direct aid to state and local government and extensions of unemployment and COBRA benefits.

"The summit will only mean something if it triggers an urgent round of actions to create American jobs," said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka on Thursday.
Robert Schroeder is a reporter for MarketWatch in Washington.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/obama-opens-job-summit-with-appeal-to-businesses-2009-12-03-145000

My Thoughts: I think it is good that Obama is finally addressing the unemployment situation. Hopefully he can get a team together to come up with new ideas on developing new jobs. I think the idea about reducing taxes on businesses to hire new people is a good idea and should deeply consider it.