Print edition: 
At least as long as the nation's unemployment rate remains in the double digits, the time of elected officials at all levels is best spent using the tools at their disposal to try to save and create jobs.
That's what the Wichita City Council was doing Tuesday in approving millions of dollars of industrial revenue bonds for Cessna Aircraft Co. and Coleman Co. —despite the companies' failure to keep their hiring promises. That's what state legislators will need to do next month in Topeka, even as they try to close a mammoth budget gap.
That's why the Pentagon should be quick about ordering new air-refueling tankers for the Air Force and fully funding the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility planned for Manhattan — projects more than likely to generate jobs for Kansas.
It's also why the jobs agenda that President Obama rolled out Tuesday was welcome, even if its specifics were vague and neither its passage nor success is assured.
Relying on $200 billion in available funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, Obama's proposal focuses on helping small businesses hire, invest and get loans; improving the nation's infrastructure; and fostering energy efficiency through a "Cash for Caulkers" plan and other green measures. The president also wants to extend unemployment insurance benefits, aid senior citizens and do more to help states and communities keep from cutting jobs.
Any president's power to create jobs is limited at best. As Obama said Tuesday, "over the past 15 years, small businesses have created roughly 65 percent of all new jobs in America."
Obama's ability is further hampered by some businesses' worries about what he and Congress' Democratic leaders might have planned for them in the way of higher taxes and tighter regulations. The Wall Street Journal editorial board — which endorsed his proposals to eliminate capital gains taxes on small business investment and allow small businesses to immediately write off as much as $250,000 in qualified investments — suggested that "if Congress won't reduce taxes, the best stimulus now would be for Congress to stop scaring private job creators by promising to help them."
But most economists believe the nation needs another shot of federal stimulus, even if that word is now too politically loaded to use. And it makes sense to keep the focus on Main Street this time.
Perhaps the best news is that TARP has a surplus available for a jobs program at all — albeit with dollars borrowed in the first place. Even if some banks are paying back their loans in order to escape their strings in time to hand out huge year-end employee bonuses, the point is that TARP achieved its purpose of pulling the financial system back from the precipice and restoring a measure of confidence in the markets. Those are reassuring developments, especially given how many predicted the federal government would never see those dollars again.
