Harry Reid: We Need To Worry About Government Jobs More Than Private Sector Ones

Via Lachlan Markay.

At last, some honesty. All Democrats care about is increasing the public workforce, enriching public sector unions and eventually, themselves.

"It's very clear that private sector jobs have been doing just fine, it's the public sector jobs where we've lost huge numbers, and that's what this legislation is all about," Reid said on the Senate floor.

Reid was responding to comments from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who accused Democrats of purposefully pursuing higher taxes as part of the teacher/first responder bill, S. 1723, so Republicans would oppose it. McConnell said the bill was meant to fail in order to give Democrats an issue to run on in the 2012 election, but Reid said the Republicans are simply trying to defeat President Obama in any way they can.

Reid reiterated his emphasis on creating government jobs by saying Democrats are looking to "put hundreds of thousands of people back to work teaching children, have more police patrolling our streets, fire fighters fighting our fires, doing the rescue work that they do so well… that's our priority." He said Republicans are calling the bill a "failure" because they are "using a different benchmark for success than we are."

Yes, Republicans use wealth creation as a benchmark for success. Democrats use wealth consumption and redistribution. There's a big difference and it's nice to see Democrats admitting to their definition.

I'm just trying to imagine if a Republican had said that job creation was doing just fine in a time of 9%+ unemployment. They would be pilloried (rightfully so) for being out of touch with reality.

Now on an empirical level, Reid is right(ish). States have been shedding workers while the private sector has been adding them. However that rate of private sector job creation is so anemic that it barely manages to keep pace with population growth. It does nothing to put a dent in the number of jobs lost over the last 3 years. Yet the top ranking Democrat in the US Senate thinks that means the private sector is "doing just fine"?

Thanks for the ad material Harry!

By the way, Obama does this all the time too. On his bus tour touting his jobs bill he always talks about putting teachers and cops back to work. It's always about public sector workers, never anything about the crushing burden this hiring puts on people not working for the state.

posted by DrewM. at 10:49 AM

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