Neal Asbury opened his nationally syndicated “Neal Asbury’s Made in America” show on Radio America (now on 47 stations) by focusing on the latest lackluster job reports. He noted that 130,000 new jobs last month won’t come close to filling the gap in a job picture that finds that 77 percent of new jobs are part-time – a wage that results in part-time workers five times more likely to live in poverty. And it doesn’t account for the millions that have simply dropped out of the labor force.
Made in America welcomed first-time guest Congressman Cory Gardner to the show. Congressman Gardner has been a leading conservative voice in Colorado and represents the state’s 4th Congressional District.
“HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius can visit the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, but won’t appear before Congress to explain how she approved the Obamacare website that cost American taxpayers $634 million and was fraught with red flag warnings during every phase of its development. I mean the site was using ancient computer codes up front to explain the program, practically guaranteeing that the site wouldn’t work,” said Gardner, adding that the site included a great deal of explanatory text upfront because if site visitors immediately saw how much the program would cost them they would get off the site.
Co-host Dr. Rich Roffman related a joke that Jay Leno told relating to the difficulty people had signing up for Obamacare: “It’s easier to join Al-Qaeda than Obamacare.”
“Obama talks about the glitches that the website has. The website doesn’t have glitches, Obamacare does. You can’t have the IRS acting as policemen to see if people have health insurance. Obama is facing some big problems down the road,” predicted Gardner.
Neal and Dr. Roffman continued the discussion on job creation and the current economy.
“A recent Washington Post survey found that only 50 percent of Americans think that they will be better off than their parents, and only 30 percent believe that their children will do better than they have. That’s tragic. It means that the American Dream just isn’t in reach anymore for many people –it’s been redefined as a quest to get entitlements, which robs people of their dignity and any incentives to do what is necessary to pursue the American Dream,” said Neal.
He noted that 47 million people are on food stamps and that so many people are on social security disability that the program will go broke by 2016. Entitlements were only supposed to be a temporary helping hand until someone could find a job. Now the lure of free money poses a great risk to the future of the country and to getting people back to work and the economy back on track.
“Can you imagine what will happen if entitlements stop? We got a taste of that when EBT cards didn’t work in 17 states. There were almost riots. We’ve spent $3.7 trillion on welfare payments over the past five years, with little to show in return. When you stay on welfare, there is no incentive to get ahead or move forward. That’s a recipe for economic disaster,” concluded Dr. Roffman.
Made in America’s next guest was first-time guest Aparna Mathur, an economist who writes about taxes and wages for the American Enterprise Institute.
“The recent job numbers reflect a troubling trend. We’re only creating 140,000 -150,000 jobs a month; we need at least 180,000, and if we really wanted to get people back to work, we would need to be generating 250,000 jobs a month. There are actually twice as many people unemployed as the current government figures indicate,” said Mathur.
She added that the unemployment numbers are misleading. The real numbers to look at are the long-term unemployed, where 4.1 million Americans have been out of work for 27 weeks or more. Then there’s 7.9 million that have involuntarily accepted part-time jobs, and 2.3 million who have simply stopped looking for work.
Co-host Dr. Roffman agreed, suggesting that the numbers to review are the labor participation rates, which indicate that only 62 percent of Americans are working. And the hidden numbers that show that 150,000 fewer women were in the workforce at the beginning of the year, reaching a 24-year low.
“Obama talked about the Republican war on women, but his administration has done little to help women in the workforce,” added Dr. Roffman.
The final guest on Made in America was first-time guest Fran Smith, from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, who noted that increasingly U.S. candy makers are moving their production to other countries because federal price supports keep domestic sugar prices way above the world market price.
“U.S. sugar policy has been keeping sugar prices high through a system of domestic supply and import restrictions and price support programs that historically have kept U.S. sugar prices double or triple the world price. The result is that food manufacturers, especially candy manufacturers, are moving to where they can get cheaper sugar supplies,” said Smith, who added, that as a result, the U.S. Commerce Department found that for every one job saved in the sugar industry because of the U.S. sugar program about three jobs were lost in the candy-making industry.
Neal and co-host Dr. Rich Roffman concluded the show by returning to the topic of cronyism and its resulting waste of taxpayer dollars.
“If you think that everyone suffered during the governmental shutdown, then you don’t live in Oregon, where federal workers not only received unemployment benefits, but also back wages for the time they weren’t working. So in essence, they made more money not working than working,” revealed Dr. Roffman
He also noted that while his cronyism reports primarily deal with Democrats, the Republican Party isn’t immune from cronyism. It appears that many GOP politicians are taking military aircraft to attend the funeral of Representative C.W. “Bill” Young in Florida.
“Now back to Democratic cronyism. Super Bowl winners the Baltimore Ravens are being paid $130,000 to promote Obamacare. And players on the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers have been recruited to also promote Obamacare,” said Dr. Roffman.
Dr. Roffman saved the biggest cronyism outrage until the end, noting that a former Defense Department attorney and big Obama fundraiser, Jeh Johnson, has been nominated as the new Secretary of Homeland Security to replace Janet Napolitano.
“What credentials does he have to protect the nation? He doesn’t need any if he raises money for the Obama administration. If he raised even more money, he could be named an ambassador,” concluded Dr. Roffman.
Each week Neal Asbury’s Made in America provides Neal’s insights into the week’s top news stories and their impact on the worlds of entrepreneurship, small business ownership and the overall economy. Neal’s analysis, together with co-host Dr. Richard Roffman, a veteran 30-year publisher with extensive domestic and international experience, takes a non-biased approach based on real life experience in business as an American manufacturer and exporter. Made in America airs nationally each Saturday from 7-8:00 PM on Radio America. Link to Made in America at http://www.nealasburysmadeinamerica.com.
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