The national debt hit $38,000,000,000,000 in November. That’s a lot of zeroes.

Even scarier: We had just reached $37 trillion at the end of August. That means our country racked up another trillion in debt in the last two months alone.

During the recent federal government shutdown, many Americans were surprised to discover that forty-two million of their fellow citizens were receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. Double that number are receiving Medicaid and Child Health Insurance Program (CHIP) benefits.

Somewhere along the line, federal “safety net” programs have been expanded to include tens of millions of Americans as ongoing, daily living benefits. This is unsustainable. We’ve got to make it easier to create good-paying jobs, so people can support themselves.

Like most other states, Michigan has, for decades, offered massive tax incentives and corporate subsidies in the hopes of spurring job growth. The problem is that the actual number of jobs created has fallen far short of the amount promised.

(Here in Michigan, we’ve lost more than 250,000 manufacturing jobs since 1998, despite giving away more than $20 billion in corporate subsidies.)

I recently introduced legislation that flips it so that so that companies of all sizes get rewarded in real time for creating real jobs.

Instead of the state giving out massive subsidies up front in exchange for hypothetical, promised future jobs, companies that hire new employees would get to keep 50% of the new employee’s state income tax withholding. That way, instead of the money going to the government, companies get a discount on labor, which reduces the overall cost of adding more employees.

This mechanism ensures that a company only benefits if it creates and sustains new, good-paying jobs. Companies would be eligible to capture a portion of state income taxes for 10 years.

The big difference from the old way of doing things is that this legislation rewards actual performance, because the only way a company can capture part of the employee’s income tax withholding is if the job actually exists.

To qualify for the reward, a company would have to hire a new, full-time employee at a salary of at least 150% of the area’s median hourly wage. (“Full-time” counts as at least 35 hours per week.)

Unlike older systems with a high threshold of new jobs created needed to qualify, this plan includes incentives for small businesses; even a company that hires a single new employee is eligible for the tax break.

Labor is one of the most expensive components of running a business. This will help by giving businesses a discount on that cost. And the more they hire, the more they benefit, which is good for businesses and good for people looking for jobs.

I’m committed to aggressive and creative changes that make it easier for our existing businesses here in Michigan to be more successful. I’ll tell you about more economic development ideas in a future column.