It’s hard to believe a year has passed since the White House kicked off its “Recovery Summer” campaign. And it seems like only yesterday that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner bid us all a warm “Welcome to the Recovery.” But today is not a happy anniversary. As this now-infamous stimulus chart confirms, Recovery Summer never warmed up.

The stimulus didn’t work, and the federal government’s alphabet soup is only making things worse.

• The EPA has its “War on Jobs.”
• The NLRB is suing Boeing for creating new jobs in South Carolina.
• HHS has no “rhyme or reason” for who gets an ObamaCare waiver.

As one business executive recently told a top Obama aide, Washington “throws sand into the gears of progress.” The private sector, the people who actually create jobs, are stuck playing defense.  No wonder we’re in the slowest jobs recovery since the Great Depression.

We have to get Washington out of the way and get true job creators back on offense.

The solutions are pretty simple: cut away red tape, grow American energy production, cut spending and debt, streamline the tax code, and open global markets to American goods and services. If we can do all that, the next Recovery Summer might actually be for real.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) serves as Chairman of the Republican Study Committee. Follow the RSC on Facebook and Twitter.