Our lack of growth, along with inefficient spending on Medicaid and K-12 schooling, hold us back.

The sky does appear to be falling. As we look about us, we see a financial meltdown quickly turning into a significant economic recession.

If the national news is gloomy, the news in Maine is little brighter.

As we haven't yet recovered from the 2001 recession in terms of job and income growth, we don't have as far to fall, I suppose.

If it is a consolation, Michigan is much worse off – although rescue parties are forming for them in Washington. Even in New England, we find a state, Rhode Island, with a significantly higher unemployment rate.

Still, in all, Maine's economic situation is disturbing by most measures. The fundamental problem is that we do not create jobs – and haven't for the past several years.

The genius of America's economic performance has been creative job destruction.

We routinely lose lots of jobs to greater productive efficiency, to off-shore sourcing, to outdated technologies or approaches – all a natural part of a global economy.

However, what America has always done much better than any other developed economy is the creation of many more new jobs – many of these good, well-paying jobs, because of our innovation, investment and strong base of intellectual capital.

In fact, it is because we are not willing to prop up failing businesses with artificial supports, such as tariffs or bailouts, that our overall job creation effort works so well. You may now have a sense of my position on the proposed bailout of GM, Ford, and Chrysler.

In Maine our problem is not so much the propping up of failing businesses, it is the singular failure to create jobs.

Come January the new Legislature will be absorbed with the issue of how to cope with a budget shortfall that may approach a billion dollars – out of a roughly $6 billion biennial budget.

As daunting as that seems, they will find a way. Moreover, a deficit of this size may force the Legislature to, at last, face up to the twin towers of Maine's chronic budget problems, Medicaid and K-12 education spending.

Both are fine programs that could deliver all that really needs to be delivered at substantially less cost.

But I challenge the Legislature to not lose this opportunity to address the more fundamental problem of job creation.

Maine's inability to create jobs is well documented in Charles Lawton's commentary in the Maine Sunday Telegram of Nov. 9. As Lawton suggests:

"Maine's crisis is the slow, nearly invisible, glacial creep of job creation. We have to think about how we want to capture some of the lost potential that creeps out of the state every quarter, indeed every day and hour."

The Brookings Report on the Maine Economy recommended priorities for job creation – namely in investing $200 million in the "Maine brand" to attract both entrepreneurs and visitors to the state and investing another $200 million in an Innovation Jobs Fund.

To the Brookings list of innovative opportunities, we now need to add alternative energies, particularly wind power. Maine's wind power capability is a breakthrough technology with enormous job creation potential.

So far the state's response to these opportunities has been tepid: a small R&D bond was passed, but support money to help translate the bond investment into real business development has been lacking.

There has been no investment in building the Maine brand.

However, a historic district tax credit was passed, and this should help spur private development in several of Maine's towns and cities once we are through the worst of this credit crunch.

What the Legislature needs to do is to dust off the excellent report of the Joint Select Committee on Maine's Future Prosperity from the last session. Leadership has tried its best to keep this report from serious consideration.

However, the report is a bipartisan effort to tackle the issues of growing the Maine economy head-on, building on the best of Brookings and putting it in a broader context.

The report calls for nothing less than a revolution in the way Maine regulates business – and revolution is clearly what is needed.

At a time when the Legislature struggles with necessary budget-cutting priorities, leadership must also be placing a few bets on revolution.

Else there will be very little future in Maine for our children.