By: Fred Johnson; Columnist

President Obama recently held a job summit at the White House. The attendees were a collection of college professors, politicians, union leaders and Obama campaign donors. Missing from the attendees were the voices of business, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business. Also missing from the jobs summit were any useful ideas on how to create jobs.

The reason why no useful ideas came from the jobless summit is that few, if any, of the attendees has ever created a job. Most new jobs come from small businesses and they are not hiring because of the threat of higher taxes, higher health care costs, more government regulation and because 7.3 million unemployed people cannot               

afford to buy their products.
Raising the minimum wage with a 70 cent increase to $7.25 an hour in July has also cost jobs. Three months later, in September, the teen unemployment rate hit 25.9 percent, the highest since World War II.

However, there is one sector that is expanding and thriving. That is the Federal employees. The number of civil servants making $100,000 or more has jumped over 46 percent since the start of the recession and the average Federal worker's pay is now $71,206, compared with $40,331 in the private sector.

The Washington, DC area has received nearly 10 times as much stimulus money per capita than the national average which has kept the unemployment rate in the area at 6.2 percent while many cities, including Atlanta, has an unemployment rate over 10 percent.

President Obama is blaming banks for the high unemployment rate for not loaning enough money. But it is not a lack of loans that keeps businesses from hiring. It is the anti-business climate of Congress and the administration.
Fred Johnson is a member of the Morgan County Republican Party.