Sunday, September 26, 2010
Republicans know that government can't create jobs
Which is why they are preternaturally opposed to any extension of the emergency fund for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program.
Tens of thousands of people will lose their jobs within weeks unless Congress extends one of the more effective job-creating programs in the $787 billion stimulus act: a $1 billion New Deal-style program that directly paid the salaries of unemployed people so they could get jobs in government, at nonprofit organizations and at many small businesses.The sad fact of the GOP Congressional opposition is that even Republican governors support the idea of extending it. When arch white wing conservo-slob Haley Barbour, a man who will take credit for anything he opposed before it worked, wants to see it extended then it is time for the inside the Beltway boys and girls to suck it up and do the right thing. This would be very hard for the DC GOP. Aside from foregoing the sheer pleasure of throwing thousands of worthless Americans out of work, there is the undeniable fact that it funded no bond traders, hedge fund managers, Fox "News" anchors or even one lousy Heritage Foundation analyst. What more proof does the public need that government can't create jobs?
In rural Perry County, Tenn., the program helped pay for roughly 400 new jobs in the public and private sectors. But in a county of 7,600 people, those jobs had a big impact: they reduced Perry County’s unemployment rate to less than 14 percent this August, from the Depression-like levels of more than 25 percent that it hit last year after its biggest employer, an auto parts factory, moved to Mexico.
If the stimulus program ends on schedule next week, Perry County officials said, an estimated 300 people there will lose their jobs — the equivalent of another factory closing.
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