Since Tuesday's elections, media figures have increasingly suggested that the President and Congress should set aside things like health care and energy reform in order to focus on the economy. As MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan put it yesterday: “Jobs are job one.” Earlier today, another MSNBC anchor said “The debate is whether they should focus more on job creation instead of ambitious items on the President's agenda.” Other examples abound.

But this doesn't really make much sense when you think about it. “The economy” isn't some narrow, discrete thing like turning off a kitchen faucet. It's more like building a house -- there are a lot of things that go into it; far more than just twisting a knob.

One of the big things that goes into the economy is ... Health care. Not only is health care spending a massive part of the economy, but inadequate access to health care has all kinds of ripple effects. A low-income worker who doesn't have health insurance gets sick, loses wages (no sick days, either) and eventually loses a job. That isn't just a public health issue, it's an economic issue; a jobs issue. (Earlier this year, for example, the White House Council of Economic Advisers estimated that “genuine health care reform” would save or create 500,000 jobs a year in the “short and medium run.”) Likewise, energy policy has huge economic implications.

Saying that politicians should stop worrying about energy and health care and focus on the economy is like saying a homebuilder should stop screwing around with walls and build the damn house already: It isn't going to be much of a house without walls.

It's one thing to say elected officials should spend their time trying to address jobs and the economy rather than guns and abortion and gay marriage. Whether or not you agree with the prioritization, or agree that is necessary to choose, those are basically different things. But health care and the economy are fundamentally intertwined in a way that guns and the economy are not; it makes much less sense to say “forget about health care and focus on the economy.”

So here's a challenge to journalists and pundits who insist the White House and Congress should forget about health care and energy to focus on the economy and jobs: Spell out what that means. What do you suggest they do to address the economy and jobs that doesn't involve health care or energy policy? Why will it be more effective? Or do you just expect them to pass some magical bill decreeing that the economy must be robust, as though it is a faucet to be effortlessly turned on and off?