Rep. Hoskins claims to be good at creating jobs, but I have a very personal opinion here because since he was elected to the House, I lost my job. Yep, the thing got moved to Germany, very quietly. I worked for a company in Warrensburg called Bomag(run by a German company, but owned by a French multinational) that built asphalt paving machines. When oil spiked to $140.00 a barrel in the spring of 2008(the real trigger-pull that caused this depression), the price of asphalt of course skyrocketed also. No one had cost-of-material clauses in their contracts(who knew this was going to happen?), so new machine orders were cancelled by the road companies to pay for the increased cost of asphalt. By January of 2009, the plant quietly closed and 30-40 $15.00 per hour jobs were lost. What was Rep. Hoskins doing at that time? Trying to force universities and colleges to allow concealed weapons on their properties. I’d like to ask him why, but he won’t talk to me any more.  

Reading one of the newspaper reports about the Roy Blunt-Robin Carnahan debate last night, I was struck by a no doubt trivial detail. At one point, talking about jobs, Blunt claimed that

Our jobs plan is over 100 pages. Secretary of Carnahan’s jobs plan is under 500 words _ you could tweet her jobs plan in four tweets,” said Blunt, referring to the Internet social networking site, Twitter.

Does he mean this Jobs Plan which can be downloaded from his campaign Webpage? Because I swear I can’t find more than 20 pages. Does he think that the linked references comprise part of the Plan? If so, I’ve got news for him – they don’t. I’ve also got to say that lots of those 20 pages don’t amount to more than boilerplate and whining about the Obama administration.

Am I really mistaken, or is this one more instance of Roy the serial liar? There are folks who just can’t resist a fib, no matter how silly. Is there another version of the “Jobs Plan,”  have I not seen it all, or is Roy one of those sad, dissembling individuals? I’m confused.

Update: The account of the debate in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch omitted Blunt’s assertion that his jobs plan had more than a hundred pages:

Blunt stressed his theme of private sector job creation, accusing Carnahan of lacking details on how she would boost the economy. He used a reference to the popular social media network, Twitter, to make his sharpest jab in the debate.

“You could tweet her jobs plan in four tweets,” he said.

An odd omission since the “four tweets” comment is part of a comparative statement.  

I came across some interesting nuggets tonight while reading Think Progress. According to a report from a nonpartisan group, Campaign Money Watch:

— Missouri has lost 102,608 jobs due to trade policies that encourage outsourcing since 1994.

— So far, during this election cycle, the Chamber of Commerce, a leading proponent of outsourcing, has spent $259,375 on attack ads targeting Robin Carnahan.

A Connecticut Post blogger who summarized several GOP candidates’ records on outsourcing noted that Blunt “voted five times to protect loopholes that reward companies that ship American jobs overseas and voted against providing extra assistance to Missouri workers who lost jobs due to outsourcing.”

Do you see a pattern emerging? One that perhaps explains Blunt’s failure to even mention outsourcing in that “Jobs Plan” he is always ballyhooing. Instead, he promises to:

— Repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) which will not go into effect until 2014 and which has had no appreciable effect on our current employment problems – although, since repealing the ACA will, according to the CBO, exacerbate the deficit problem, it might well make unemployment worse long-term.

— Fight against energy legislation that has the potential to create new clean-energy jobs.

— Cancel the stimulus funding that has not been paid out – although most of the remaining funds have been committed and projects have commenced; canceling these projects would do little but contribute to even more unemployment and misery.

— Cut taxes and cut them again – which has an arguable stimulative effect on the economy, but which would definitely zoom the deficit into the stratosphere.

— Cut spending to reduce the deficit – and given the effect on the deficit of his proposed tax-cutting spree, those cuts would have to be mighty indeed to have any effect, gutting essential programs like Social Security, Medicare and defense.

As you see, there’s lots of questionable verbiage about jobs, but not one mention of outsourcing. Does anyone need to be reminded that a similar formula didn’t perform that well during the Bush years?  Nor is there any reason to think it will be more effective the second time around, when conditions are worse and the need greater.

There are many factors that make outsourcing jobs attractive. Labor is defenseless in many countries and can be exploited for next to nothing; some favored locations are more than willing to degrade their natural environment, offering a regulation-free environment; and currency issues can be exploited to make the already lowered costs even more appealing.

There’s also plenty that Congress could do to make outsourcing less attractive and keep good paying jobs here in America, where workers would spend their surplus wages on American-made goods, creating even more jobs. Of course, that probably wouldn’t work so well for Blunt’s Chamber constituency, nor for their foreign donors who might just stand to gain when American workers lose.

Have you noticed how the GOP is exploiting the jobs issue – the problem they caused – as a club to fight off everything that worries their corporate friends no matter how weak the connection? Roy Blunt is no exception. Section 6 of his six point jobs creation plan offers this little favor for his long-time pals and clients of his lobbyist son in the telecommunications industry.

FCC Regulation of the Internet – Over the past two decades, the country’s telecommunications providers have taken advantage of a light regulatory environment to invest in and expand access to wide varieties of high-speed communications.  Unfortunately certain voices within the Democrat-controlled Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are determined to impose sweeping government regulations on the Internet. This will result in slower investment and innovation in this critical industry and fewer jobs of all levels.

What Blunt is talking about here is net neutrality – as in killing net neutrality, which is something that the big telecoms and Internet Service providers (ISPs) really, really want their pet politicians to do. If you’re not up on what net neutrality is and why it is important, take a look at this brief video:

Currently, as Blunt indicates, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is considering new rules that would preserve net neutrality.  In response, the ISPs recently debuted the “net neutrality will cost jobs” line of attack, and Blunt, like a good little toady, is simply parroting the industry line.  

Prior to launching their attack, the industry commissioned several “studies” that attempt to show a connection between job loss and the FCC’s proposed rules. Needless to say, none of the studies stand up to serious scrutiny, nor do they need to do so to serve their purpose. They are intended to bamboozle poorly informed but well-intentioned politicians like Missouri’s Russ Carnahan, Lacy Clay, and Emanuel Cleaver while providing some media talking points for the Blunts of the world, a way to muddy the waters in discussions where real scrutiny is almost always lacking.

At first glance, the three most ballyhooed studies seem to be issued by reputable sources, the New York Law School’s Advanced Communications Law & Policy Institute, the DLC affiliated Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), and by George Brazalon of the Brattle group. One should not, however, be deceived by appearances. PPI receives much of its funding from AT&T and the Bradly Group, which Timothy Karr describes as “a right-wing cabal  of anti-Neutrality groups.” The other studies were commissined and paid for by the telecoms, and, in the first case, co-authored by a known industry stooge, Bret Swanson, characterized by Techdirt as “AT&T’s go to guy for pure anti-net neutrality propaganda,” who “seems to relish in totally making stuff up.”

For what it’s worth in these days of “truthiness,” these studies have all been widely debunked in terms that ought to leave those responsible writhing in shame – if they were capable of shame, that is. For example, in the report cited above by Bret Swanson, mentined above, has:

… used completely bogus “science” to insist that network neutrality rules would result in 1.5 million job losses. He came to that number simply by adding up all of the people employed by companies that submitted comments to the FCC opposing network neutrality (seriously).

So much for net neutrality as a killer of jobs. In fact, as Karr points out, the ISPs have been busy cutting jobs for some time – a trend that will continue no matter what:

PPI’s report assumes that if the FCC has basic oversight authority, it will lead to bad outcomes. But history tells a different story. When the Bell companies were subject to the full weight of Title II, they increased employment by 15 percent, according to their own SEC filings. But once the FCC began dismantling these pro-competitive rules through massive deregulation, these companies shed nearly 40 percent of their work force, even as their revenues increased and profits soared.

AT&T and Verizon alone are responsible for tens of thousands of layoffs over the last two years. Verizon is accelerating its layoffs, while AT&T laid off 12,000 workers through 2009 and thousands more in 2010.

“Sadly, this pattern of ISPs destroying good jobs while reaping higher profits will likely continue with or without reclassification and Net Neutrality,” Turner says.

Of course, you can bet good ole Roy won’t talk about this predatory, job-killing corporate behavior, but  will, instead, whenever necessary, pull out the “research” that shows that preserving the Internet for all of us will cost jobs. After all, the job that he is worried about the most is his own – and AT&T and, over the years, the Baby Bells have done him and his very good indeed in that respect.

A recent ad put out by Roy Blunt smugly invites us to read his job creation plan which he summarizes as lower taxes, less red tape, and more American energy. So I took the time to look at the specifics and found, sad to say, nothing more than the expected plate of stale bread and cold potatoes.

It is something of an understatement to say that Blunt’s plan doesn’t deviate from current and past GOP orthodoxy. Speaking of John Boehner’s “two-step” job creation plan, Ezra Klein remarks

So on the one hand, a measure that will make a small dent in the deficit. On the other hand, a measure that will lead to a huge  increase in the deficit. There’s no theory of the economy in which this really makes sense.

This criticism applies equally to the Blunt plan if one adds that there is also no way in which it makes sense to claim that it will actually create jobs. To give Blunt credit, he does offer somewhat more detail than Mr. Boehner – six steps (missteps?) instead of two, which I’ll write about in greater detail in individual posts over the next couple of weeks – there are, after all, lots of little side embellishments – like destroying net neutrality –  not to mention questionable assertions, that deserve to be pointed out and considered in greater detail.

The short version is that Blunt proposes to extend the Bush tax cuts and cut corporate taxes even more; cancel the unexpended stimulus funds; re-deregulate, gutting financial reform legislation and deep-sixing the new consumer protection agency; repeal the Affordable Care Act and “replace” it with a few giveaways to the insurance industry (which he calls “sensible” health care reform); pare down welfare spending, cut entitlements (Social security? Medicare? Blunt quite carefully doesn’t spell it out); and enact measures like subsidizing nuclear power and making sure that coal producers get theirs. All that’s left to do is to tie the package up with a pretty ribbon and hand it over to the corporate biggies who have paid Blunt’s campaign bills lo these many years.

Did I already say this is all old news?. Like maybe a recipe for a rerun of the Bush years?  Surely you remember those  eight years of anemic job growth, culminating in economic disaster and massive job loss?  Roy Blunt was, of course, one of the chief enablers of similar measures then, which is why it is almost inexplicable that anyone is taking him seriously when he asks us to give him a do-over using the same tools from the same tarnished economic tool-box. (If you doubt the effect of the Bush policies on the American middle class, just take a look at this chart comparing how different economic segments of the population have fared under recent Democratic and Republican administrations.)

President Obama made the same point far more eloquently when he described the GOP economic philosophy that is exemplified in Blunt’s putative economic blueprint in a speech yesterday in Cleveland:

… There were no new ideas.  There was just the same philosophy we already tried for the last decade – the same philosophy that led to this mess in the first place:  cut more taxes for millionaires and cut more rules for corporations.  Instead of coming together like past generations did to build a better country for our children and grandchildren, their argument is that we should let insurance companies go back to denying care to folks who are sick, and let credit card companies go back to raising rates without any reason.  Instead of setting our sights higher, they’re asking us to settle for a status quo of stagnant growth, eroding competitiveness, and a shrinking middle class.

There you have it – Blunt in a nutshell.

Image from the GoldGuys Blog via Wikimedia Commons.

I haven’t had time to take a careful look at the “jobs” plan Roy Blunt unveiled yesterday. At a cursory glance, it seems like the same recipe that cost us 9 million jobs in the worst recession since the 1930s: gut regulation, cut taxes for the wealthy, roll back health care reform and let costs escalate, etc. Par for the course.

This lack of substance is, of course no surprise to those of us who have followed Blunt’s career as a corporate toady doing latrine duty in the Senate – take, for instance, the total lack of product, other than conservative platitudes, that emanated from the Republican Healthcare Solutions Group that Blunt chaired.

Think Progress‘ Pat Garafalo offers some initial insights into the lack of there there that tend to confirm my initial impression. Garofalo faults Blunt’s plan for the predictable emphasis on “fearmongering about the deficit,” and argues that Blunt’s desire to rescind the unspent stimulus funds would amount to a tax on the middle class. More interestingly, Garofalo notes that in spite of all the deficit rhetoric, one of the few substantive proposals involves extending an expensive stimulus benefit for the real estate industry. Should we believe that it is just a coincidence that real estate is one of Blunt’s ten largest donor groups when his receipts are broken down by industry, having gifted him with more than $150,000 during the 2009-2010 election cycle?

But, you ask, ever ready to extend the benefit of the doubt, the important question is whether or not this benefit will actually create jobs? According Garofalo:

… the home buyer’s tax credit was enacted as part of the stimulus and then extended a couple of times, and by all accounts it was a complete and total boondoggle, costing taxpayers billions to subsidize activity that was going to happen anyway. Even the credit’s staunchest supporters have said that its “sunsetting is an incentive to drive people to the marketplace” and poo-pooed the notion of extending it forever, which clearly turns it into a permanent subsidy to the real estate industry.

Garofalo especially disdains Blunt’s willingness to extend this benefit given his jump-on-the-bandwagon bleating about the dangers of the deficit. I would add that a person who spends so much time trying to paint a moderately successful round of stimulus spending as a failure, should be really, really careful about selectively extending it for favored campaign contributors. Though Blunt’s two-faced response to the stimulus is, I guess, kind of an old story by now – he has been more than willing to claim credit for the goodies it brought the state – but it still stinks when he tries to use those funds to do his benefactors a solid on the public dime. It’ll be interesting to see just what other giveaways are tucked into Mr. Blunt’s loudly ballyhooed jobs plan.

Thanks to the Democratic leadership in the U.S. House and Senate, who persevered in the face of ongoing Republican obstruction, Missouri will receive almost $400 million dollars to stave off teacher layoffs and cuts in Medicaid. This means, as Michael Bersin pointed out earlier, that jobs have been saved. Many of our neediest have been given breathing space for another year. The state, which is balancing on the edge of a fiscal knife, may avoid, for one more year at least, transformation into the third-world outpost that GOP legislative leaders seem to want to create.

It’s no surprise, though, that those same just-say-no Republicans who tried to kill the bill  are hell-bent on distorting this tiny extension of stimulus spending.

Blaine Luetkemeyer, for instance, wants to turn the tables and present his obstruction as an effort to save jobs:

It was a bad bill, pure and simple. It’s another bailout,” Luetkemeyer said. “Our challenge is to find ways to help businesses keep doing what they’re doing.

Luetkemeyer is partially right. Finding ways to help small businesses grow and expand is important if we are going to crawl out of this recession – but the way to do it is not to destroy the consumer base that provides the fuel for economic growth.  

Todd Akin tried another tack: play on the sense of resentment that seems to animate so many Republicans. Akin asks us to begrudge the money going to those grasshoppers in spendthrift states who fiddled while industrious Missouri ants suffered and cut their social spending right through to the bones of the neediest among them:

It wasn’t easy but our legislature balanced Missouri’s budget. And most Missourians individually make difficult and responsible spending choices every day. Yet today’s bill will force Missourians – and all Americans – to spend the next decade paying off six months of new spending, most of which will benefit states that had neither the courage nor the wisdom to balance their own budgets.

The next decade paying it off? Akin is more economically challenged than I thought – the bill is not only “paid-for” out of cuts elsewhere, but it will cut $1 billion from the deficit.

Roy Blunt couldn’t be bothered to vote on this spendig bill because he was too busy campaigning in Missouri – which is to say gallivanting around the state lying about his record as a leader of the Republican Congress responsible for a recession that cost the country nearly eight million jobs. When the Carnahan campaign called him on his dereliction, however, he quickly jumped on the resentment and begrudgery band-wagon so capably driven by Akin:

Now she’s [i.e., Carnahan] supporting another $26.1 billion bailout for states that have failed to manage their budgets so they can kick the can down the road another year. Missourians are saying ‘enough is enough.

I don’t know about all the Missourians that Blunt evidently thinks he speaks for, but this Missourian has had enough. Enough of lies about the stimulus, enough of obstruction, and more than enough of what is happening to our state because these prime jackasses think that they can keep on keeping on if only they make sure that the economy tanks so they can blame it on the Democrats. Ezra Klein eloquently sums the situation up:

…there’s no debate over what state and local aid does: It allows the continuation of programs that are already ongoing, the preservation of jobs that people already occupy, the protection of tax rates that are currently in place. It doesn’t promote economic expansion, which is a somewhat uncertain business. It prevents economic contraction, which is a much more predictable project.

If states have to cut $120 billion from their budgets, that money — and the things it does — will just leave the economy. There will be fewer jobs, higher taxes, less financial aid. None of that is speculative. There’s no theory in which it doesn’t happen.

Previously: What good is that sales tax free back to school shopping weekend if there aren’t enough teachers?

From a Department of Education press release:

CONGRESS PASSES BILL TO SEND MISSOURI $189.7 MILLION TO SUPPORT 3,300 EDUCATION JOBS STATEWIDE

President Signs Bill Into Law

Today, by vote of 247-161, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill to provide $10 billion to support an estimated 160,000 education jobs nationwide and another $16 billion to help states fund Medicaid budgets.  The bill allocates $189.7 million to support 3,300 education jobs in Missouri. The U.S. Senate passed the bill last Thursday by a vote of 61-39. Tonight, the President signed the bill into law.

“With the support of the jobs bill, these educators will be helping our children learn instead of looking for work,” Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said. “This is the right thing to do for our children, for our teachers, and for our economy….”

[emphasis added]

The vote in the House today:

FINAL VOTE RESULTS FOR ROLL CALL 518

H R 1586      YEA-AND-NAY      10-Aug-2010      3:26 PM

QUESTION:  On Motion to Concur in Senate Amendment to House Amendment to Senate Amendment

Yeas – 247

Carnahan

Clay

Cleaver

Skelton

Nays – 161

Akin

Emerson

Graves (MO)

Luetkemeyer

Not Voting – 25

Blunt

Four Missouri Democrats vote “yea”, four Missouri republicans vote “nay”, and Roy Blunt (r) didn’t vote.

From the always perceptive Digby:

…I’m telling you, this is where the vulnerable underbelly of their “just say no” campaign. They are voting against nice, white, suburban middle class Americans this time (along with nice brown and black suburban middle class Americans) with this crusade. And going after teachers, cops and firefighters is a very, very dangerous thing to do. And as I wrote before, the Democrats should throw it right in their face….

We will here, we certainly will.

When it comes to economic policy, Robin Carnahan is no Paul Krugman. But then again, she’s no Roy Blunt either, and that’s for sure. I’d rather put Phil the Gorilla in charge of job creation than Blunt. And Phil is dead.

In some respects, Carnahan deserves kudos. In others, raspberries.

Kudos: She proved, during her stint as Secretary of State, that she takes the problems of the middle class and of small businesses seriously, standing up to corporate malfeasance against Missouri families to the tune of $10 billion. That’s ten with a B that she got back for families from banks and brokerage houses that scammed them. And she saved small businesses nearly $12 million.

She pointed out at the kickoff of her “Stop the bull” tour:

We gotta focus on small businesses. While we know these big … big businesses are getting bailed out, small businesses continue to struggle. But the fact is–we all know this–that small businesses are the engines of economic growth in our country. (…) So that’s why I think we need to support them with the tax breaks. (…) These small business owners, you know they never come to Washington asking and begging for bailouts. You notice that? (…) They just want a fair shake.

So I think Washington needs to get serious about helping them do what they do best, which is create jobs. What does that mean? It means we can support them with tax rates and tax breaks if small businesses hire unemployed worker–and all kinds of other incentives that help them create jobs.

Raspberry (sort of): You’ll think I’ve gone mad to criticize Carnahan for promoting tax code changes designed to stop corporations from sending jobs abroad. Indeed, the crowd at that kickoff was enthusiastic when Carnahan mentioned her desire to slow outsourcing. She wants changes to a tax code that is “not only filled with loopholes that benefit these companies that [outsource jobs], it actually encourages them to do that.” Since she didn’t offer details about those faulty tax policies, I went looking for some. And got more than I bargained for from FactCheck.org.

A 2004 article there analyzed John Kerry’s proposal to change the tax code in the hope of limiting outsourcing. FactCheck maintained–backing up its contention with corroboration from a Nobel laureate in economics, from Ben Bernanke, and from a couple of Democratic economists–that changing the tax policy would have minimal effect on the American job situation. First of all, taxes have little to do with whether a company decides to outsource jobs. Obtaining cheap labor and locating factories nearer to their markets are much more powerful motives. And besides, outsourced jobs are a tiny fraction of the job loss picture in this country, about one percent of the jobs lost, by Bernanke’s estimate. In fact, and you’ll find this hard to credit, companies that outsource jobs usually are sending relatively low paying jobs abroad and creating even more well paying jobs right here.

Close your mouth and read on:

Recent studies show that when companies move some jobs abroad the savings stimulate job creation at home. Matthew Slaughter, a Dartmouth economist, looked at foreign and domestic job growth in multinational corporations from 1991 to 2001. He found foreign affiliates of American companies added 2.9 million workers to their payrolls overseas, but at the same time those companies added 5.5 million US employees to their payrolls.

How can that be?

Bernanke: An important reason for the U.S. trade surplus in business services is that this country provides many high-value services to users abroad, including financial, legal, engineering, architectural, and software development services , while many of the services imported by U.S. companies are less sophisticated and hence of lower cost.

Changing tax policy vis a vis outsourcing isn’t going to help the job picture much. So okay, it doesn’t exactly deserve a raspberry, but it’s not something to cheer for either. She should save her breath for more important concerns. Such as:

Kudos: Last February, she offered an articulate explanation of why the U.S. needs to go whole hog into creating alternative energy as a means of weaning ourselves off foreign oil and getting our soldiers out of parts of the world where the weapons used against them are being financed by the oil dollars we send there.

Kudos: You gotta love it when she lays into subsidies for the oil industry and when she strafes Blunt because he shills for same. Last year, Exxon Mobil posted a record profit of $45 Billion and paid lots of income taxes–to other countries. But none to the IRS. Despite all the corporate welfare it got here.

RASPBERRY: Carnahan favors enacting “the kind of commonsense, bipartisan reforms-such as strong “pay as you go” rules-that helped turn massive deficits into surpluses in the 1990s. Missouri families have to balance their checkbooks, and so should our government.”

Aargh! The federal government shouldn’t spend money to prime this wobbly economy?

See WillyK

Paul Krugman

and Michael Bersin.

For starters.

And keep in mind that after FDR’s first burst of Keynesian spending had a salubrious effect during the Great Depression, he and the Democrats backed away from priming the economy, it tanked again, and the Democrats lost a passel of House seats in 1936.

Sheesh.

Look, there’s plenty to applaud about Robin Carnahan on the jobs front. And come November, when this Senate race ends, I want the checkered flag waving over Carnahan as she crosses the finish line. But as for flags, this business of tightening the federal belt in a deep recession? That’s a red flag for me.

Previous postings about the “Stop the bull” kickoff:

No more bailouts!

Who owns Roy Blunt and Robin Carnahan

Carnahan’s not all that fond of Blunt

Kicking off the “Stop the bull” tour

The Missouri General Assembly is now in a special session, called by Governor Jay Nixon, for the purpose of enacting incentives for Ford to create and retain jobs at its Claycomo plant and paying for those incentives by creating a second tier retirement system for new state employees.

You know, robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Peter, in the form of HB 1 (on pensions)

…. (2) Requires any person who first becomes a state employee on or after January 1, 2011, to be a member of the Missouri State Employees’ Retirement System (MOSERS) Year 2000 Plan….

….A member of this plan must contribute 4% of his or her pay to the system….

[emphasis added]

Paul, in form of HB 2 (on incentives for job creation/retention incentives directed at Ford, though not by name), from the Bill Summary:

….(2)  Defines “qualified supplier” as a company that:

…. d) Provides health insurance to employees and pays at least 50% of the insurance premiums….

[emphasis added]

Uh, is offering a tax incentive to a company which requires they offer health insurance considered “socialized health care”? Just asking. And to think the bill was sponsored by a republican in the Missouri General Assembly. But, I digress.

Then there’s this gem of a quote by the sponsor of the Senate version of the pension bill, Senator Jason Crowell (r), in today’s Kansas City Star:

….Crowell, the architect of the reform legislation, said changes are critical for the state to keep up with broader trends in retirement.

“If you look at where this pension system is, based on where the private sector is, I think any taxpayer would call this necessary reform,” Crowell said….

Is Senator Crowell (r) endorsing a private sector pay scale for all public employees in the State of Missouri?

Then again, the comparison doesn’t quite work – from a technical note in the Bureau of Labor Statistics Employer Costs For Employee Compensation – March 2010 [pdf] news release:

…Compensation cost levels in State and local government should not be directly compared with levels in private industry. Differences between these sectors stem from factors such as variation in work activities and occupational structures. Manufacturing and sales, for example, make up a large part of private industry work activities but are rare in State and local government. Professional and administrative support occupations (including teachers) account for two-thirds of the State and local government workforce, compared with one-half of private industry….

And in higher education [pdf] (the provisions of this bill would apply to public higher education employees in Missouri):

…Salary is one of many factors considered by prospective faculty members in weighing offers of employment; many of today’s academics are prepared to move among institutions (and private sector industries) for a more favorable compensation package. When top faculty members leave to pursue other opportunities, local and regional economic development can suffer through the associated loss of external funding, technology transfer and other entrepreneurial activity, and the loss of talented researchers and graduate students brought and attracted by cutting-edge scholars….

What effect do you think a reduction in pension benefits will have on recruiting and retaining new faculty at Missouri’s public higher education institutions? Just asking.

So much for promoting the long term economic development potential of the state, eh? That defeats the whole stated purpose of the special session, don’t you think? Peter and Paul, meet the Missouri General Assembly.

Retaining and and creating new jobs at the Ford Claycomo plant and for their suppliers is a good thing. It’s the General Assembly’s proposed method of paying for it that has me worried about the unintended consequences elsewhere.

In the Senate SB 1 [pdf] also addresses the public employee pension issue. The different language in the House and Senate bills will have to be reconciled. The Summary of SB1:

SB 1 – This act modifies provisions relating to retirement.

This act creates a new retirement plan for any person who becomes a state employee on or after January 1, 2011. To be eligible for normal retirement under this plan, employees will be required to reach age sixty-seven and have at least ten years of service or reach age fifty-five with the sum of the member’s age and service equaling at least ninety, uniformed members of the highway patrol with a mandatory retirement age of sixty will be required to reach age sixty or reach age fifty-five with ten years credited service, members of the general assembly will be required to reach age sixty-two and complete at least three full biennial assemblies or reach age fifty-five with the sum of the member’s age and service equaling at least ninety, and statewide elected officials will be required to reach age sixty-two and complete at least four years of service or reach age fifty-five with the sum of the official’s age and service equaling at least ninety. Employees, except for uniformed members of the highway patrol, are eligible for early retirement at age sixty-two with ten years of service. Employees must work for the state for ten years to vest in the retirement system. Members of this retirement plan will be required to contribute four percent of their pay to the retirement system. Members will not be able to purchase credit in the retirement plan for their past non-federal full-time public employment, their military service, or transfer credit from other public retirement plans. The employee contribution rate, the benefits under the year 2000 plan, and any other provision of the year 2000 plan may be altered, amended, increased, decreased, or repealed, but such change will only apply to service or interest credits after the effective date of the change. Employees under this plan shall not be eligible for the Backdrop option, which provides a lump sum payment at retirement for those working at least two years beyond normal retirement eligibility. (Section 104.1091)

This act also creates the Missouri State Retirement Investment Board. This board may manage the investment of the assets of the Missouri State Employees Retirement System (MOSERS) and the Missouri Department of Transportation and Highway Patrol Employees Retirement System (MPERS). The board may also administer the deferred compensation plan for state employees and the existing college and university defined contribution plan. Other Missouri public pension systems may upon approval of the system or plan and approval of the board enter an agreement with the board to provide investment oversight and management. The board is prohibited from managing the investments of the Public School Retirement System (PSRS), the Public Education Employee Retirement System(PEERS), the Missouri Local Government Employees Retirement System (LAGERS), the Public School Retirement System of St. Louis, the Public School Retirement System of Kansas City and the retirement plans established by the Bi-State Development Agency and the Reg
ional Investment District.

Before the investment board is authorized to manage the investment of assets, the boards of MOSERS and MPERS must each vote to irrevocably transfer oversight and management of the investment of assets managed by these retirement systems to the investment board. If either the MOSERS or MPERS board do not transfer its assets, then the powers and duties of the investment board lapse and the board is prohibited from overseeing or managing any funds.

The Missouri State Retirement Investment Board is organized as a body corporate and instrumentality of the state with its records subject to the sunshine law and its meetings open to the public. The company’s initial capital is provided on an equitable basis by MOSERS and MPERS. MOSERS and MPERS may transfer any of their executives or employees to the company, except for their executive directors.

The board has seven members, the executive director of MOSERS, the executive director of MPERS, the commissioner of administration, and four members appointed by the governor, initially from a list of names submitted by the executive directors of MOSERS and MPERS, and subsequently from a list of names submitted by board members. The governor has the right to reject any or all of the people on the list submitted by the executive directors or the list submitted by the board members. If the governor rejects any of the people recommended on the lists, the executive directors or the board members, as the case may be, are required to submit a list of two people for each vacant position. This process shall continue until no position on the board remains vacant.

No member of the board or member of the MOSERS or MPERS board may be employed by the board or have a business relationship with any service provider of the board for two years after the end of their membership on the board. No current or former member of the general assembly or statewide elected official may become an employee of the board or work for or have a business relationship with any service provider of the board for five years after their service in the general assembly or as a statewide elected official has ended.

The assets of these retirement systems may be held by the board in a collective trust fund for investment as a single pool. The board is not liable for any payment they make as directed by the executive director, chief executive officer, or other person designated by the retirement system. The administrative and investment expenses of the board shall be apportioned among the retirement systems.

The assets of MOSERS and MPERS will be transferred to the board over a transition period after the MOSERS and MPERS boards elect to transfer the management of investments to the investment board. MOSERS and MPERS are responsible for managing their assets until they are transferred to the board. (Sections 104.1500 to 104.1506).

The act also creates a new retirement plan for any person who first becomes a judge on or after January 1, 2011. Judges will be required to reach age sixty-seven and have at least twelve years of service or reach age sixty-two and have twenty years of service before they are eligible for normal retirement. If a judge retires at age sixty-seven with less than twelve years of service, or at sixty-two with less than twenty years service, their retirement compensation will be reduced proportionately. Judges in this retirement plan will be required to contribute four percent of their compensation to the retirement system. Judges will not be able to purchase credit in the retirement plan for their past non-federal full-time public employment or their military service. Judges under this plan who continue to work after their normal retirement date will not have cost-of-living increases added to their retirement compensation for the period of time between their eligibility for retirement and their actual retirement date. When a retired judge under this plan dies, their beneficiary will not receive an amount equal to fifty percent of the judge’s retirement compensation. Instead, judges will make a choice at retirement among the benefit payment options, that includes options for the amount received by the beneficiary. The employee contribution rate, the benefits under the judicial retirement plan, and any other provision of the judicial retirement plan may be altered, amended, increased, decreased, or repealed, but such change will only apply to service or interest credits after the effective date of the change. (Sections 476.521 and 476.529)

This act prohibits a retired judge who becomes employed after January 1, 2011, as an employee eligible to participate in the MOSERS retirement plan, from receiving their judicial retirement benefits while they are employed. Any judge who serves as a judge while he or she is receiving their judicial retirement is prohibited from receiving their judicial retirement while serving as a judge. A judge who serves as a senior judge or senior commissioner while receiving judicial retirement will continue to receive judicial retirement and additional credit and salary for their service. (Section 476.527)

This act is similar to the perfected version of SB 714 (2010).

And, to add to the fun, another republican in the House introduced a joint resolution, HJR 1:

Proposes a constitutional amendment limiting any increase in the merchants’ and manufacturers’ replacement tax, allowing local governing bodies to reduce the rate, and eliminating the tax in 2015.

Yes, yes, let’s keep cutting revenue. That’ll really help to stabilize the cash flow problems for government entities in Missouri, right?