Job one for whomever was elected to local, station and national office last night is jobs: Jobs for the millions of Americans who find themselves out of work through no fault of their own.

Most agree that the key is promoting the start of new businesses and helping small businesses already operating to succeed. It’s time to get serious about that idea by cutting taxes and making it far easier to start a new business.

Businesses are rising from the ashes of failure. An excellent example can be found in Oak Harbor where Pioneer Automotive Services, owned by Ray Sizemore and Joel Mami, opened for business on Monday, hoping to fill an auto repair hole left by the closure of three of the four new car dealerships that were located in Oak Harbor.

The new business will provided jobs to several mechanics who were laid off in the dealership closures. It’s a tough economic environment in which to start a new business, but Oak Harbor is pulling for the new repair shop to succeed. We need people who aren’t afraid to take a chance to pull us out of this disastrous recession.

Legislative bodies should take radical steps to support the creation of new businesses and support those we already have. How about suspending state and federal taxes for the next five years? How about a one-page “how to” list that anyone can follow to start a new business. How about permanently cutting taxes on small businesses, even if that requires raising taxes for Wall Street? (The days of cutting taxes without offsets should be behind us.)

The federal government has spent massively to bail out big businesses which are balking at expanding their work forces, while small business, the one ray of hope in the economy, has largely been ignored. It’s time to reverse those priorities and put America back to work.