Veterans Job Corps: A Non-Starter

The Veterans Job Corps sounds like a fabulous idea…for a Democrat. Identify a myriad of ways to help Veterans and in the process keep our every growing bureaucracy in business. Let’s cut to the chase.

Incentives to hire Veterans as first responders sounds like a great idea. After all, who wouldn’t want trained military as our first responders, and Veterans should have preference in getting these jobs. Problem is that most communities need to trim their government spending like the rest of us. On similar notes are the initiatives to hire Veterans to work preserving and restoring America’s land and resources. Spending  $1 billion to develop 20,000 jobs beautifying America?  Just another Obama initiative to increase government spending. Smell the roses, we need to reign in excessive and incompetent spending.

Now, getting past the pure government spending initiatives, Obama suggests expanding entrepreneurship training opportunities for separating service members and Veterans with a two day entrepreneurship course and an eight week online training program. Training is important, but there are currently many programs in the VA, SBA and DoD targeted at transitioning service members. Before we add more, can we first determine what actually produces results or should we just keep throwing @#$#@ at the wall and see what sticks?

Ah, building on progress. Tax incentives are great, but only if a business actually has the work to hire someone. No business, small or large, will hire someone just for the tax credit. The Hiring Challenge sounds exciting, and the importance of advertising and supporting Veteran talent can’t be underestimated. But again, if there are no jobs to fill, not enough will rise to the challenge. There are also online tools, increased reemployment services and increased hiring of Veterans in healthcare related fields. Not sure which, if any, of these programs are effective. President Obama, it would be nice to see actual results, budgets, forecasts and variances.

So, let’s get to what’s really important and never directly mentioned in his cornucopia of solutions.

1. On the table are HUGE defense cuts. The President has failed to address this issue, and this will directly result in the loss of thousands of jobs currently, and in the future, filled by Veterans. Any tepid Job Corps program will fail miserably in light of the devastating impact of these cuts.

2. Businesses hire employees when they have work available and need human resources to meet demand. Every business owner has to make payroll, pay back loans and keep their operations running. In the current environment of high taxes, oppressive regulation and lack of government focus on business growth and job creation, all of these incentives will fail.

3. Businesses can expand when there is adequate financing available at low rates. In not one of these initiatives does President Obama address the need for the SBA and corporate banks (which were bailed out) to provide financing for Veteran owned businesses or businesses that employ Veterans in large numbers.

While the Veterans Job Corps sounds like a nice idea, the truth is that it misses the point. Businesses operate with a clear focus on the bottom line. For some reason, President Obama is unable to understand that concept and has yet again proposed more programs that increase government spending with little impact on the creation of long term, career jobs with strong small and large businesses.