Elections have consequences: here is where the new congress will need the help of every manager and board member in America.

• Author: Hindery, Leo, Jr.
• Position: IT (STILL

IN THE MID-TERM ELECTIONS just past, Republicans, Democrats (I'm one) and Independents alike saw up close the electorate's anxiety and often anger. Every American facing prolonged unemployment, stagnant wages or economic insecurity of course has a right to be angry, but America's business leaders now need to help channel this disaffection into constructive, positive action before it becomes political gridlock.

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Without overplaying it, our challenge is unprecedented in magnitude and complexity, since in order to responsibly advance the country's economic health, we need to confront and mitigate the three economic premises that came to dominate the platforms of (too) many candidates for Congress, namely that:

1. Near-term large-scale job creation and long-term deficit cutting are mutually exclusive.

2. Even with unprecedented individual income inequality in the nation today, the principles of progressive taxation can be further gutted without destroying the fabric of our society and culture.

3. U.S. multinational corporations can continue to offshore millions of American jobs and defer taxes on large amounts of their overseas taxable income without further damaging our economy, increasing our trade deficit, and diminishing our workforce and the middle class.

In fact, well-conceived job efforts, because of their very large multiplier effects, are at least deficit neutral in the medium term and, most likely, they are substantially deficit reducing. And they are always a more responsible and effective way to reduce the long-term deficit than is slashing spending simply for slashing's sake. The new Congress does not have to choose between stimulus and austerity--it just has to get each challenge's priority and timing right.

We also need to make it clear that individual tax policies that largely benefit only the extremely wealthy contradict the fundamental "fairness to the middle class" premise on which our nation was founded--and they are also bad economics. With more income inequality now than ever before, the wages of 90% of America's workers stagnant for the past 20 years, and real unemployment of nearly 20%, the new Congress must revisit the 'trickle down' theory that since 1980 has dominated U.S. income tax principles and policies. This false theory, more than almost any other factor, has left our economy saddled with federal indebtedness far in excess of any acceptable level.

Finally, there is the inexplicable...