Larry Kudlow explains why the Democrats’ supposed pro-jobs policies aren’t remotely designed to help foster private-sector hiring:

The so-called $85 billion jobs program is not a jobs program at all. It is a spending bill. Temporary tax credits to hire new workers have virtually no permanent job-creating effect. In budget terms, these kinds of temporary tax credits are scored as tax expenditures — i.e., spending. Only a permanent reduction in the marginal business tax rate has the incentive effect for long-run job creation. Reducing the business tax rate makes firms more profitable after-tax. And it gives them more cash flow. Those incentives will work to expand investment and jobs.

Then there is “the worst idea of all” — increasing the tax on capital and the top marginal rates. At the very time we should be making investment, hiring, and wealth creation more attractive, the Obami are doing the opposite. As Kudlow explains: “That’s why the capital-gains tax must not be increased. Plus, raising the top two income tax brackets from 33 percent to 35 percent, and then from 35 percent to 40 percent, thereby penalizing those who own about half of the small-business income, is a job-destroyer.” Kudlow doesn’t think much of the Republicans’ efforts to encourage this approach. He argues that they shouldn’t be dickering with a maze of tax credits. Instead, he contends:

This is a moment for the GOP to send a message that it is the party of growth through across-the-board reductions in marginal tax rates — for everyone. That includes large and small businesses, along with all individuals and families. All producers and investors should get lower tax rates. At a bare minimum, Republicans should be fighting hard to extend the George W. Bush tax cuts on the way to a longer-term goal of low-rate, flat-tax reform.

There is a group of people that grasps this free-market principle and has little patience with those in Washington who fail to understand just where it is that all the jobs come from. As Kudlow points out, it is the tea-party protesters. Yes, it seems as though the rubes, whom the media sophisticates  have derided as know-nothings, actually have a solid understanding of market economics. They understand that taking more of what individuals and businesses earn leaves less for investment and new hiring. They understand that corporate taxes need to be lowered, not hiked, in order to attract investment here in the United States. Kudlow calls this “traditional, commonsense, center-right free enterprise, which basically says to the government, ‘Please, let me keep more of what I earn and, please, just leave me alone.'” So far at least that message hasn’t permeated the Beltway bubble. Maybe in November it will.