Watching the debates last night, I was struck by how incapable the Republican candidates were in articulating what is actually a very simple idea. The reason that the United States is not creating jobs, and therefore not growing the economy in the way that we need to is, is that business owners, CEO's, and other decision makers understand, intellectually or subconsciously, that are country is on an unsustainable fiscal path.

This isn't about left or right, or whose "Sacred Cows" need to be sacrificed. Our debt, our deficit, our impregnable tax code: these are the reasons that no one has any confidence in our system.

It is true that our government has become too onerous. It has become too complicated, too invasive, too big, too unwieldy. We take it for granted but it wasn't always this way. As it started to grow and grow over the past 40 years, frankly, we could afford to let it do so. It wasn't really impeding our growth and prosperity. It wasn't impeding our innovation and our entrepreneurialism. 

Now it is. 

The people who make decisions about hiring and firing have a now calcified sense that our nation is not on the right track. That our politics, our goverment, our leaders, our institutions are no longer equipped to deal with the problems that we, as a nation, we face. 

Until those people, the business owners and investors, the entrepreneurs and the chief executives feel that we are dealing with our clearly broken problems, they won't be changing their minds about hiring, about investing, about planning for the future. Washington will need to get serious about the issues that threaten to bankrupt this country, fiscally and morally.