From his campaign tour bus, Roy Blunt twitters:
Missourians are enterprising people. We don’t need the govt to create jobs. We’ll create jobs if govt will move over. #RoyBluntBusTour
Before we let Mr. Blunt get away with this, there are a few inconvenient facts that he needs to explain.
As of December 2009, Missouri’s unemployment rate was 9.6%, very close to the highest ever recorded rate of 10.3% in 1983. That miserable statistic, of course, is the result of the deepest national recession since the great depression, brought to us, as all honest economists agree, by the tax and regulation cutting GOP. The lowest unemployment rate recorded in Missouri was 2.3% in 2000, under the liberal Mel Carnahan, during the last years of the liberal Clinton administration.
When Roy’s son, little Matty, ascended to the Missouri statehouse, he along with his Republican legislative enforcers in Jefferson City brought unemployment to highs of 6-8%. Doesn’t actually inspire confidence in Mr. Blunt’s grandiose claims about what he and his anti-government fellow travelers can achieve, does it?
Of course, there’s also the inconvenient fact that government interference in the form of the stimulus, maligned as it is by good old boys like Roy, probably saved our goose – even though it’s still a skinny old bird. The question is whether or not the likes of Roy Blunt, touting their failed economic theology, are the people to fatten the goose back up and give us some of those golden eggs.
On Friday, Blunt said essentially the same thing in a restaurant on Pine Street in Warrensburg.
Here is the irony of that. The two largest employers in Johnson County are Whiteman Airforce Base and the University of Central Missouri.
The restaurant he made that statement in would not exist with those government jobs in Johnson County.
I noted this to the owner of a coffee house right next door. He said without the government jobs in Warrensburg he wouldn’t exist nor any other small business on Pine Street.
I asked Blunt why should I vote for him given his opposition to the stimulus bill. I pointed out to him that the stimulus bill has meant there have been no drastic cuts in public universities in Missouri and NO college student enrolled in a public university in Missouri experienced a tuition increase this year or next. His response: it was a waste.