Obama admits private sector key to improved economy UPDATE: Video

No friggin’ kidding? You mean to tell me the private sector is the engine of the United States economy? I swear less than a year ago politicians in-the-know were telling us we – the people – had no clue how to spend our own money and improve the economy on our own.

President Obama and his team, including the vice president spoke at the opening session of the Jobs and Economic Growth Forum in Washington D.C. yesterday.

He’s brilliant I tell you … BRILLIANT!

But I want to be clear — 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.  We don’t have enough public dollars to fill the hole of private dollars that was created as a consequence of the crisis.  It is only when the private sector starts to reinvest again, only when our businesses start hiring again and people start spending again and families start seeing improvement in their own lives again that we’re going to have the kind of economy that we want.  That’s the measure of a real economic recovery.

Even the vice president agreed.

Many different participants are going to — are here, and many different offerings are going to be put forward, many different ideas.  But in the end, the grist is the same:  take the things that we know work, and make them work better and make them work faster.  And all of this can’t be done — I should put it another way:  None of it can be done without your full buy-in and your leadership in the private sector.

In July, Vice President Biden suggested that we – meaning the government I assume since that’s who did all the spending – needed to go out and spend money to keep from going bankrupt.

“And folks look, AARP knows and the people with me here today know, the president knows, and I know, that the status quo is simply not acceptable,” Biden said at the event on Thursday in Alexandria, Va. “It’s totally unacceptable. And it’s completely unsustainable. Even if we wanted to keep it the way we have it now. It can’t do it financially.”

“We’re going to go bankrupt as a nation,” Biden said.

“Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’” Biden said. “The answer is yes, that’s what I’m telling you.”

We know what already works. How about this?

1. Make it easier for small businesses and corporations to do business on a day to day basis. Reasonable regulation at the state level and low business taxes.
2. Reduce the tax rate on investment profit to some sort of “crazy” low rate for at least the next five years. Watch money pour into the United States from everywhere.
3. Cut federal programs that are not specifically enumerated in the Constitution. If the people want them, let them fund them at the state level, and after the programs are cut, drastically cut the federal income tax. (Yes, this means if you want the services, state and local taxes will go up)

Are any of these ideas on the table?

Hat tip to Jim Hoft over at Gateway Pundit.

Update (Jim): Here’s the relevant portion of the speech. As Steve said, incredible. I am posting it just for the record.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oO_G3ASH58

What makes this admission so amazingly disingenuous is that just moments earlier he whacks companies (again), accusing them of not hiring workers so they can squeeze profits out of the employees they have.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV7NfrEpx5w

I could write volumes on this one but how do you lay the recovery at the doorstep of the private sector and then in the same breath (almost literally) take a shot at that same private sector? Clearly business isn’t hiring because a: they are frozen out of fear of more government taxes and employee mandates and b: the economy shows little sign of reviving enough to boost sales sufficiently to warrant new hires. But, that requires a basic understanding of economics and this is the guy who tried to explain the famous “profits/earnings” ratio. I missed that class.