The last thing we need is another stimulus package

As if one stimulus package wasn’t enough, President Obama has proposed giving hundreds of billions of dollars in additional federal funding to struggling state and municipal governments to hire more teachers, firefighters and policemen.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act “increased the number of people employed by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million.” Sounds good, right? Except it cost taxpayers $800 billion.

In response to the proposed “second stimulus,” Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey told Obama, “Please don’t send me any more money to hire more public employees. I’ve got plenty as it is, and I don’t need any more, and they’re expensive!”

Christie was, of course, referencing the expensive benefits and pension packages public workers receive, which have caused budget shortfalls around the nation and led to large-scale layoffs. Instead, he implored Obama to spend any proposed stimulus money on something that will create private-sector jobs, like infrastructure.

I couldn’t agree more. The last thing we need is another wasted stimulus.

The president believes that hiring more public employees will advance our sluggish economy. What we really need are new industries that create real and sustainable jobs.

The president should be looking at innovative ideas to create jobs and jump-start the economy. I would urge him to look into boosting private-sector jobs by investing in things like natural gas.

I’m not referring to wasting billions of tax dollars on failed energy projects like Solyndra or missed opportunities like the Keystone Pipeline with our ally, Canada, which have kept thousands of jobs from coming to fruition here in the U.S. America currently has a chance to decrease its dependency on foreign oil and keep money out of the hands of terrorists and dictators by drastically increasing our natural gas production.