While the Obama Administration talks about universal healthcare or reducing carbon emissions or suing Arizona or helping Islamic nations get into outer space, people in my town get together around the kitchen table and talk about how they are going to keep their jobs. Those that still have jobs are finding that work has become harder now that a smaller number of employees has to do the same amount of work. Those that have lost their jobs (and often they have never been out of work in their adult lives) are finding the competition to find a new job overwhelming. What must we do ?

No one can say that the road back to prosperity will be easy. But the Obama Administration appears to believe that the economy will spring back to life as a natural consequence of the "business cycle." They believe that growth, independent of the trillion dollars of "stimulus" they have injected into the economy, will return automatically as it always does. They expect the goose to lay another golden egg as it always has.

But growth is not a natural law. Growth occurs when people with money think of ways to invest it to make more money. Such investment goes hand-in-hand with the demand of other people, with money to spend,  for new goods and services. Neither investment nor consumption are automatic. Growth is not automatic. How can we move back to a thriving economy ? And if the President will not lead, what steps can Congress take to return us to fiscal sanity ? The first question is easier to answer than the second.

Here are several basic steps that we need to take to return to prosperity and to start creating jobs again as the American economy is so beautifully capable of doing.

First, we must extend the Bush tax cuts - make them permanent if possible, extend them for a single year if that's the best we can do. When these tax cuts expire, so too will many small businesses. We must extend these tax cuts at all levels, not just for the middle class but for the upper income brackets as well. This is not a hard sell in the United States. Americans don't want to take from the rich - they want themselves and their children to some day be rich. In pulling down the successful they see themselves as making their own future rise more difficult. Americans have aspiration.

Next, we must end the ethic of "too-big-to-fail." No matter whether it is General Motors or A.I.G. or California, the next time someone comes in the door threatening to make a financial mess for everyone unless we prop them up from failing, let's treat them just like we would treat any other extortionist and throw them out the door.

Crucially, we must stop the stimulus spending altogether. It has become increasingly clear, and has been borne out by a recent study by the Harvard Business School, that spending by the federal government does not stimulate the private sector, it crowds it out. John Maynard Keynes was wrong - you cannot spend your way to prosperity. It further doesn't help when the stimulus money, rather that being aimed at arguable benefits like roads and infrastructure, are instead targeted at the Obama Administration's pet, ideologically-approved projects. However valuable research might be into alternative energy sources, we will not get to prosperity by building windmills.

I have proposed, from the beginning of my campaign, that we reduce, through legislation, the federal civilian workforce by 10%. We now have over two million federal employees (this number include the military) for the first time since the Clinton Administration. If people in their jobs in Massachusetts have to do more with less, so too should our employees, the bureaucrats in Washington D.C.

Finally, the minimum wage was raised last year. While a repeal of the minimum wage is politically untenable, a roll-back to last year's level would be a tremendous benefit to college students who are unemployed this summer at unprecedented levels.

None of these changes will be suported by the Obama Administration. Many of them, however, will be possible with a conservative, disciplined Congress that is willing to use the power of the purse to push deals through to law. Even, however, where change to a fiscally sane America is difficult due to opposition from an out-of-control spending Administration, it is important to keep the principals of growth, freedom and the market clearly in mind. Prosperity is only possible when investor and buyer confidence is strong. It is not automatic. As we all know, there is no such thing as a free lunch.