COLUMBUS: As we come to the end of the year, folks are complaining about Congress, saying they didn’t do nothin’. They didn’t pass any bills.

Here’s Will Rogers on a similar Congress in 1924:  “Washington, D.C. papers say: ‘Congress is deadlocked and can’t act’. I think that is the greatest blessing that could befall this country.”  In 1926 he also said: “We cuss ‘em, and we joke about ‘em, but they are all good fellows at heart, and if they wasn’t in Congress, why, they would be doing something else against us that might be even worse.”

Everybody is making predictions about the economy for the new year. Here’s one for consideration: more unemployed people will find jobs in the next three months than in any other three month period in the last five years. I have a suggestion for young ones unemployed and still living at home. Get up early, change from your pajamas into nice clothes, and walk down the street looking for work. Remember, you don’t say, “Can I have a job?” No, you ask, “Do you have any work that needs to be done?” It might be for only a few hours, but it’s a start.

President Obama wants to reduce income inequality by raising the minimum wage. The main cause of inequality isn’t the ones making $7.50 an hour; it’s the ones making zero.

When the President returns to Washington he should call in each of his agency heads, one at a time, and ask, What changes can you make that will make it easier for businesses to hire more workers? Start with the EPA, then the Departments of Labor, and Energy, and Health, and so on. Up to now he’s always thinking of ways for the government to hire more people. But nobody that’s broke ever hired anybody extra, and neither should a government that’s broke.

If we’re going to put all these folks to work, where will they find the jobs? Well, in case you haven’t heard, the oil and gas business is booming. And we have plenty of coal, too, if we’re allowed to use it.

I’ll also go out on a limb and predict that Congress will pass a farm bill, with Democrats and Republicans agreeing that four fifths of the money appropriated will go to feed the poor. Of course, a year ago I predicted the farm bill would pass, and probably the year before that. But I’m not the only one that missed with earlier predictions. Al Gore said five years ago that “by 2013 the Arctic ice will all melt.”  The folks who suffered through ice storms recently in Texas and Oklahoma are curious if that cold weather originated at the balmy North Pole.

Historic quote by Will Rogers:

    “These people that you are asked to aid, why they are not asking for charity, they are naturally asking for a job, but if you can’t give them a job, why the next best thing you can do is see that they have food and the necessities of life. You know, there’s not a one of us has anything that these people that are without it now haven’t contributed to what we’ve got… The most unemployed or the hungriest man in America has contributed in some way to the wealth of every millionaire in America.” Radio, Oct 18, 1931