BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

You want a plan to create jobs? Here’s a good one:

1.    Simplify the tax code, reduce capital gains, corporate and dividend taxes, and improve the climate for American businesses overseas.
2.    Open up domestic exploration of oil, encourage use of natural gas and clean coal technology, increase use of biofuels, and increase supplies from our friends, like Canada.
3.    Repeal burdensome regulations spawned by Dodd-Frank and Sarbanes-Oxley laws, repeal and replace Obamacare, and repeal regulations that inhibit economic growth, particularly those recently promulgated by the Environmental Protection Agency and the National labor Relations Board.
4.    Improve our relations with Asian economies and finally ratify pending agreements with South Korea, Panama and Columbia.
5.    Enact patent reform, reform the Federal Drug Administration and privatize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Those are five principal elements of Presidential candidate Jon Huntsman’s jobs plan.  It’s a good plan and contains the fundamentals of what Republicans have been talking about for some time.

There are other plans on the table from liberal Democrats calling for tax increases, and heavy public investments in repairing roads and bridges, painting schools and providing health care to the needy, extension of unemployment, a freeze on the payroll tax and more.  Interest groups ranging from the Chamber of Commerce to the AFL-CIO have thoughts on creating jobs, including major investment in infrastructure, on which they both agree.

There is no shortage of plans, but just to put a fine point on them President Obama is going to address a joint session of Congress to present some more ideas and the following week, it’s been reported that Speaker John Boehner will offer another in a long line of House Republican plans.  No word yet from Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell and Conan O’Brien.

The media should ignore it all.  We’ve had enough plans and enough speeches.  Speeches don’t translate well into public policy. The gap between what you hear and what you get is wider than the Grand Canyon.

The nation doesn’t need a jobs plan, either.  There are drawers and file cabinets all over Washington full of them on flashy power points, three-ring binders and legal pads.

I feel like I’m on one of those flights on which the Captain spends all of his time on the public address system, welcoming special passengers and pointing out sights of interest 30,000 feet below.  It’s time for the captain to put the microphone down and just fly the plane.

It is time to govern; to get down to the business of picking out the best elements of the plans and bringing policy makers together on common ground on both short-term and long-term solutions.

President Obama came close to a major deal with Speaker John Boehner on the debt ceiling debacle and he blew it.  Apparently the deal was done and he asked for more in taxes.   That kind of grand bargain can be reached again on jobs and on debt reduction.  Speaker Boehner is the one political leader in this country who has demonstrated an ability to govern, to move the country from debates to decisions, and bring people together.  President Obama ought to take a page from his book.    There is no one else on the national stage that has what Boehner has—the right instincts, legislative craftsmanship, a sense of his national constituency (a center-right America fed up with indecision and political dysfunction) and the character and disposition to forge a consensus where no one seems to think there is one.  Boehner is in the right place at the right time to become a great Speaker of the House.  We really haven’t had one since Sam Rayburn. The President should follow suit and become that kind of President.

But both of them will have to turn off the teleprompters, give us a break from the partisan and ideological mudslinging, and get down to the real work of a Congress, which is producing legislation that can be enacted into law.

The country is in a nose dive. There doesn’t seem to be anyone at the controls and the passengers are anxious and scared.   The time for talk is over.

—
Mike Johnson