While Chattanooga is very fortunate that about 2,000 new jobs are in prospect here with the coming of the new Volkswagen plant, and that more jobs are coming to our area as new industries plan operations nearby, it is painfully obvious that Tennessee and North Georgia still need more jobs.
There are lots of economic and other problems that our people may deal with satisfactorily if they have regular work that produces regular paychecks.
But as the national unemployment rate hovers around 10 percent, the jobless rate for Tennessee is reported to be 10.9 percent. For Georgia it is 10.3 percent.
Our federal government is taxing too much, spending too much and adding to the more than $12 trillion — yes, that’s trillion — national debt. This is discouraging our whole economy and free enterprise job creation as government is growing too much and too expensively.
We look forward with great enthusiasm toward the new industrial jobs coming here. They surely will generate more jobs of many kinds to serve the new industries and their employees. But we should admit that our current economic recession is in large part a result of unwise government policies and excessive government spending, adding terrible burdens upon our general national economy and our people.
Yet, too many of our officials in Washington seem determined to continue going down the wrong economic path instead of seeking to create a climate for free enterprise to thrive for the benefit of all our people.