Harry Reid Continues Stupidity: "Private Sector Jobs Are Doing Just Fine"

Potato Love From Congress

Today in Washington, D.C. - Oct. 20, 2011 Reid Reveals Democrats See Government Not Businesses As "Main Engine Of Job Creation." Looks like Dem's view the private sector workers (the majority) and business owners as just plantation slaves for the Government (the Big House) Plantation Bosses who provide the so called "real" jobs.

Reminder: The House is not in session; it is a constituent work week. Of course, neither is the Presidency. Candidate Obama (with no democratic opponent is still too busy campaigning for reelection in 13 months and thus absent from his duties. His comments at the various pit stops seems to be shout-outs for Sen. Harry Reid to keep up with his partisan insanity. Also, Vice President Joe Biden appeared to be off his meds and White House Press Secretary Jay Carney was forced to defend Biden's comment that rape and murder incidences in the U.S. "would" increase without passage of an Obama $35 billion jobs bill.

With Biden and Obama whooping it up, the news outlets provided Hillary Clinton air time as people wanted to know what this Sec. of State Clinton, a former anti-war peace hippie, felt about the Libyan President Qaddafi being killed. Obama has no need to worry if Clinton running as an opponent. Just dust off this video where she was giddy and joked: "We came, we saw, he died."  Now, does he want her to replace Biden as his ticket mate in 2012?

The Senate resumed consideration of H.R. 2112, the Fiscal Year 2012 Agriculture appropriations bill today, which will combine the FY 2012 Agriculture, Commerce-Justice-Science, and Transportation-Housing and Urban Development appropriations bills (also referred to as an Ag-CJS-THUD minibus). By voice vote the Senate accepted an amendment by Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) that blocks the USDA from putting any limits on serving potatoes or other vegetables in school lunches. The House has already said enough with interfering with the amount of potatoes and other vegetables served in school meals. For the moment, "french fries" have been saved in public schools. And so are the jobs of many in the agriculture industry. Cost for the Potato bailout - Zero dollars.

The Senate will vote on confirmation of Heather Higginbottom to be deputy OMB director. Immediately following that vote, the Senate will vote on two amendments to H.R. 2112: one from Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), which would allow the re-importation of prescription drugs from Canada, and one from Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA), which would establish a National Criminal Justice Commission. Both amendments will require 60 votes for adoption.

There will be 4 more amendment votes: An amendment from Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), which would require steel and iron used in certain projects be produced in the U.S., one from Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) which would increase funding for Housing and Community Development, one from Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), which would add requirements of oversight and accountability for Justice Department grant programs, and one from Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS), concerning funding for watershed and flooding protection. The first 3 of these amendments will require 60 votes for adoption. Further votes are possible today.

Last night, Majority Leader Harry Reid filed cloture on the Inouye substitute amendment, which contains the minibus, and on the underlying bill.  Also last night, Reid filed cloture on S. 1723, Democrats’ teacher bailout bill, which is the first of what Democrats say will be several bills containing parts of President Obama’s new stimulus plan.

Sen. GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) filed cloture on S.1726 a bill he is co-sponsoring with Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) to repeal a requirement that the government withhold 3% of their payments to contractors for tax purposes, which inhibits job creation by private contractors.

At noon, the Senate voted 82-17 to confirm David Mariani to be District Judge for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. The Senate then voted 59-39 to table an amendment to H.R. 2112 from Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) which would have ensured that transportation funding is used for repairing bridges and highways instead of building bike trails and squirrel sanctuaries.

Criticisms of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) for his disconnect from reality have been mounting after he declared on the Senate floor yesterday, “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.”

Asked if he disagreed with Reid’s comments by MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough this morning, former Obama administration economic advisor Austan Goolsbee said, “I guess I would disagree a little.”

Examining Reid’s comments in an editorial, The Wall Street Journal writes, “[I]t’s hard to see what Mr. Reid could possibly mean when he says it is ‘doing just fine.’ Private nonfarm employers added only 137,000 new jobs in September and 352,000 in the last three months. That’s why the overall jobless rate remains an unprecedented 9.1% two years into an ostensible economic recovery. Going back to 2008, the Labor Department reported 111.822 million employed private workers at the end of 2008. The number plunged during the recession, and as of September of this year overall private employment had climbed back to 109.349 million. But that’s still some 2.5 million fewer jobs than in 2008. If this is doing fine, we’d hate to see Mr. Reid’s definition of lousy. What these numbers show is that, contrary to Mr. Reid, the real U.S. jobs problem continues to be in the private economy. If private employers were hiring at the pace they normally do in an economic recovery, we might be doing fine.”

In a floor speech this morning, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell added, “For Democrats, the solution [to the jobs crisis], apparently, is to increase the number of people who work for the government. My good friend the Majority Leader made this pretty clear yesterday when he said the private sector ‘is doing just fine,’ and that the President’s latest stimulus is focused on government jobs instead. . . . [I]t’s become increasingly clear to many Americans that Democrats in Washington have lost all sense of balance when it comes to the size and the scope of the federal government in Washington.”

As the WSJ editors point out, “Mr. Reid was trying to defend a new Democratic proposal to spend another $35 billion that the government doesn’t have to help states hire teachers and other public workers. He seems to be under the impression that private job creation is doing well, and that happy days would be here again if we could only gin up more government jobs. . . . Mr. Reid knows his proposal can’t pass the House, and perhaps not even the Senate, so his real agenda is to stage a vote that Republicans will oppose so President Obama can claim on the stump that Democrats are doing something to help create jobs and that Republicans stopped them. Instead, Mr. Reid’s comments yesterday reveal that he and his fellow Democrats inhabit an economic universe in which government is the main engine of job creation. That’s how you get a jobs crisis.”

Leader McConnell addressed the problem with Democrats’ view of the economy, saying, “ . . . Washington, D.C. area now has the highest median income in the country — primarily because of the high salaries that so many government bureaucrats are making these days. And I have no doubt that many of these people do good work. But the point is, they’re weathering this economic downturn pretty well. Not only are they making big salaries relative to the private sector. They’re also holding onto their jobs. The unemployment rate for the country as a whole is 9.1 percent. For government workers it’s almost half that, at 4.7 percent. So with all due respect t . . .  it’s the private sector that’s been begging for mercy. It’s the private sector that’s being crushed by regulators in Washington. So I don’t think the solution to this crisis is to make the federal government even bigger.”

Contrary to Democrats’ latest bill, which would raise taxes on job creators, McConnell said, “When it comes to jobs, the primary role of government is to create an environment in which Americans and American businesses can grow and flourish without the heavy hand of government on their backs. We shouldn’t be making it harder for people to do business and prosper. We should be making it easier.”

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