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Friday, September 7, 2012

Paul Ryan's Fuzzy Math On Obama's Economic Policy

     Like an ambulance chaser, he was the first to the scene this morning, salivating to get on CNBC to blame the President for today's nonfarm payroll number that missed expectations.

     On CNBC, this no doubt played well, as they mostly are shameless Obama haters on the show.

     It was expected to be 125,000 new nonfarm jobs. Instead it was only 96,000-and this is important, there were actually 7,000 jobs lost by the government sector, so the private sector increased by 103,000. This, to be sure, is not the first time in recent months that we've seen the ADP numbers much higher than the nonfarm numbers released by the BLS.

     Ryan, of course, laid this all at the feet of the President-it's his fault as he's shown no "leadership" and his fiscal policies hurt the private sector, increasing uncertainty, etc.

        What I don't get, though, is this. Why do Republicans Ike Ryan always seize on the top line number of 96,000 jobs created? After all, Romney has claimed that government jobs don't create growth-it's a basic Republican idea that government jobs just lead to a "crowding out" of the private sector.

     If you believe that government jobs are fake jobs and don't contribute to the growth of the economy why not not include them? Ryan should speak of 103,000 jobs created not 96,000, based on his own premise. You might even wonder if you should add them back.

     I mean if government jobs crowd out private jobs, then in a sense every government job cancels out a private sector job. If we had been at plus 7000 jobs, then we would have had 110,000 total jobs. But as the Republican view is these aren't real jobs, shouldn't they be subtracted out? I mean if Obama's policies have led to a 7,000 loss in government employment hasn't he in some way contributed to more private sector jobs?

    Yet Ryan did not do this, Romney never does this, all Republicans look at the same top line number that the BLS looks at; implicitly then, they are admitting that government jobs do contribute to growth.

    Yet Ryan claims that Obama's fiscal stimulus hurt job growth. So he's contradicting himself, pulling  a Mitt Romney: talking out of both sides of his mouth at the same time.

    Ryan's almost pathological intellectual confusion on this issue is buttressed by the fact that he himself actually applied for the President's stimulus.

   "Representative Paul Ryan wrote five letters requesting money from Obama’s stimulus program—the same $787 billion economic rescue package he voted against and decried as a “wasteful spending spree.”

    http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-09-06/so-about-that-money-paul-ryan-requested-from-obamacare

    If it was a wasfteful spening spree why did he paraticipate in it? How can he implicate the President with such an air of self-righteouness when he himself was a con-consipirator? Why would he participate in shomething that shrunk the economy? Why would he be part of the "Obama Recession?"

  
After repeated denials, Paul Ryan has admitted he requested stimulus cash even after sharply criticizing the program.
Ryan had denied doing so as recently as Wednesday, when he spoke to ABC’s Cincinnati affiliate, WCPO, in Ohio.
“I never asked for stimulus,” Mitt Romney’s new running mate said. “I don’t recall… so I really can’t comment on it. I opposed the stimulus because it doesn’t work, it didn’t work.”
Two years ago, during an interview on WBZ’s NewsRadio he was asked by a caller if he “accepted any money” into his district. Ryan said he did not.
“I’m not one [of those] people who votes for something then writes to the government to ask them to send us money. I did not request any stimulus money,” the congressman answered.
But as we’ve now learned, Ryan did write letters. He did request stimulus funds.

In 2009, Ryan wrote to Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis asking for stimulus money to cover costs on two energy conservation projects in his home state of Wisconsin. In the letter, Ryan said the funds would help create jobs and reduce “energy consumption” in the state. At least one of the companies received the requested cash.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/08/presented-with-letters-ryan-admits-requesting-stimulus-cash/

     Oh dear! I'm mortified ot even hear such language out of the Congressman. He actualy said that Obama's stimulus funds he was requesting would create jobs! Apalling that he said such a thing. As he says the funds were wasteful and didn't work how did he come to request them?

    He has a good answer:

   
“After having these letters called to my attention I checked into them, and they were treated as constituent service requests in the same way matters involving Social Security or Veterans Affairs are handled,” he said in a statement. “This is why I didn’t recall the letters earlier. But they should have been handled differently, and I take responsibility for that.
“Regardless, it’s clear that the Obama stimulus did nothing to stimulate the economy, and now the President is asking to do it all over again.”

     Yes, sir. He did ask for some of teh Obama stimulus that did nothing to stimulate the economy but his explanation is that he asked for them by accident. Kind of like a cross between 'the dog ate my homwork' and 'I had an out of body experience.'

    So he thinks it's wasteful and does nothing to stimulate the economy-government jobs aren't real jobs-but on the other hand he factors in government jobs when evaluating job performance.

    But by accident and against his will he requested them just the ssame. It must be a pretty serious accident that compelled him to say that the funds actually create jobs.

    The lates now is-he also requested funds from ObamaCare. You can't make this stuff up.

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