What we have here is a clash of worldviews. Sen. Harry Reid, Democrat leader in the US Senate, wants you to know that despite the layoffs and business failures, the dead housing market and the bleak prospects for those of us who aren’t living in gold-plated government jobs with lavish union-approved pension plans, the private sector is just fine.
Unemployment remains above 9 percent. But the private sector is doing just fine, says Harry Reid.
And he’s not finished there. He also wants you to know that he and his party are done trying to stimulate the private sector, and that they want to now grow the public sector.
Have a look at this Heritage chart, from February 2011.
While the private sector has outpaced the government sector’s job growth over the past few months, the fact is, it’s barely keeping pace with overall population growth and the Democrats came into power with Obama growing government faster than anything else. That’s about the only thing they have done successfully. That’s probably because government jobs are just about the only type of jobs most Democrats understand how to create. Throw money at a bureaucracy, it hires more people, productivity need not matter. The problem is, the private sector has to pay for that through taxes, which can end up squelching private sector job growth.
And that brings us to our clash of worldviews. Reid’s is a government-centered world view. The Republicans have a different approach. They don’t think that the overregulated private sector is “doing just fine,” and want to unshackle it so that it can grow again and create more jobs.
What Harry Reid has done is set himself up to star in GOP ads next year that will fairly depict the Democrats from Obama on down as out of touch with the world outside the beltway. Unless the economy is booming on election day, that ad will resonate.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member