We need long-term tax reform that promotes private sector job creation. And legislated mandates that kill jobs by raising the cost of payrolls need to be eliminated.

Our first priority has to be getting our fiscal house in order - and creating an atmosphere for the private sector in job creation.

It's not coincidental that America's vigorous recovery in the early 1980s was led by a president who worked hard to unshackle growth in the private sector.

Around the time President Lyndon B. Johnson was declaring a War on Poverty in the 1960s, federal, state and local governments began accelerating a veritable War on the Private Sector.

With 1.7 million private sector jobs lost and half a million jobs shipped overseas over the past three years, we must take action to spur job creation and restore economic prosperity.

The borrow-spend-and-centralize agenda that has been so destructive to job creation elsewhere in America has been a gravy boat inside the Beltway.