Steele Confuses Stephanopoulos: Claims Government Jobs "Aren't Jobs," Private Sector Jobs Never Go Away

There is certainly a political debate to be waged over whether or not government spending can effectively create jobs. But in his interview on This Week with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, Michael Steele seemed to suggest, as he did back in January, that government jobs are not, in fact, really jobs.

Rather, Steele said, government jobs are "just work." (Is work not a job?) The newly-minted RNC Chairman added that when it comes to the private sector, job loss is never permanent.

"They come back though George," said Steele. "That's the point. They've gone away before and they come back."

Stephanopolous did his best to sift through the logic, pointing out that millions of private sector jobs have been lost in just this past year.

Earlier in the interview, Steele acknowledged that the government can create "work" in the short-term. But the notion that this type of spending could spur economic growth -- whether in advancing environmentally friendly industries or through the filter down of more infrastructure -- was dismissed out of hand by Steele.

"These road projects we're talking about have an end point," he said. "As a small business owner, I'm looking to grow my business, expand my business. I want to reach further. I want to be international. I want to be national. It's a whole different perspective on how you create a job, versus how you create work...

"I guess I don't really understand the distinction," said Stephanopolous.

"Well, the distinction is this," replied Steele. "If you got a government contract that's a fixed period of time it goes away. The work may go away. There's no guarantee that there's going to be more work when you're done with that job."

The whole thing is worth a watch if only to get a better sense of where the nexus of the anti-stimulus argument lies. It is as much a critique of any federal spending as it is critique of "wasteful" spending.

Transcript:

STEELE: You've got to look at what's going to create sustainable jobs. What this administration is talking about is making work. It is creating work.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But that's a job.

STEELE: No, it's not a job. A job is something that -- that a business owner creates. It's going to be long term. What he's creating...

STEPHANOPOULOS: So a job doesn't count if it's a government job?

(CROSSTALK)

STEELE: Hold on. No, let me -- let me -- let me finish. That is a contract. It ends at a certain point, George. You know that. These road projects that we're talking about have an end point.

As a small-business owner, I'm looking to grow my business, expand my business. I want to reach further. I want to be international. I want to be national. It's a whole different perspective on how you create a job versus how you create work. And I'm -- either way, the bottom line is...

STEPHANOPOULOS: I guess I don't really understand that distinction.

STEELE: Well, the difference -- the distinction is this. If a government -- if you've got a government contract that is a fixed period of time, it goes away. The work may go away. That's -- there's no guarantee that that -- that there's going to be more work when you're done in that job.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Yes, but we've seen millions and millions of jobs going away in the private sector just in the last year.

STEELE: But they come -- yes, they -- and they come back, though, George. That's the point. When they go -- they've gone away before, and they come back.

Comments

[drumfetish]

10:54 PM on 02/27/2009

No your job is not a job and no one could be worse at it than you .
Thank you GOP .....................Idiots

[atoonce]

05:23 PM on 02/11/2009

The objective is just to get people working and off unemployment. It's mean to be temporary to help us through the crisis period. In the mean time, we get new roads and public facilities that we all can enjoy and use. Facilities that were probably cut under Republican regimes for political reasons, not practical reasons.

[NL207]

06:37 PM on 02/11/2009

"mean time, we get new roads and public facilities that we all can enjoy and use"

How much of this $800 Billion is earmarked for these projects? About 3%. ~$24 Billion.

Wouldn't you like to know what the rest will be spent for?

And did you know there is a section buried in this bill that gives the Federal government the power to monitor or even interfere with YOUR medical care?

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&refer=columnist_mccaughey&sid=aLzfDxfbwhzs

"But the bill goes further. One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective"

You think the Patriot Act violated privacy? You aint seen nothin' yet!

[anelder]

03:16 PM on 02/13/2009

You are so uninformed on this health care issue. Check out your facts with health care professionals. Technology is what they are looking for. Eliminating misreading doctors orders. Making sure pharmacy gets it right. Eliminating all the paperwork that so eats up the time of nurses and doctors. Makes records available throughout the hospital system to prevent the kind of errors that are so prevalent in the system. And this is just the tip of the iceburg.

All that data quoting Daschle's book is not in the bill. That's part of his proposal for the big health care bill in the future. Now really, his proposal, as is translated in the Bloomberg article - can you really imagine passing muster. Yuck, your reaching into a future that doesn't exist in order to put down something very different in the here and now.

The problem, as I see it, is in allowing pundits, such as the Bloomberg article, to sway you to a position they hold without even knowing their agenda. I know this is more work for you, looking things up and checking things out but it is necessary to be well infomred.

[ScapeGoat]

11:43 AM on 02/14/2009

The National Coordinator for Health Information Technology isn't "new"; it was created by George W. Bush five years ago. More importantly, the measure is about medical records, not limiting physicians' treatments. The junk you are regurgitation are lies.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/13/press-ably-picking-apart_n_166707.html

But as we all know, members of the r*e*i*c*h are not really big on facts.

[Systematic1]

03:22 PM on 02/11/2009

Steele is so far out of touch with the needs of unemployed citizens. He complains that public works projects are just short term solutions to a long term problems. So that means we should just skip the short term solution? Steele clearly was objecting to the fact that public works projects are publicly (government) run and "long term solutions" are privately run. The boat has capsized and I really don't trust the Wall Street wizards who got us into this mess to get us out.

Businessmen have proven time and again that they look out for themselves first, so don't expect them to have your best interests at heart. Remember when Pensions become 401k's and now Health Care is converting to HSA's. All government "sponsored" ways to pass on the responsibility for these things to you and away from the poor businessman pockets.

[Michael Valentine]

10:42 AM on 02/11/2009

Everyone knows that once you get a privet sector job your good for life.

[NL207]

05:34 PM on 02/11/2009

Everyone knows that once a government program is established, it never goes away.

[jalaroc]

10:06 AM on 02/11/2009

So, all those seasonal jobs by the private sector, which are brought on by the holidays, aren't actually jobs? Even better, all those people in our military don't have jobs? they just do work because they're on contracts that specify their enlistment periods? Semantics. Semantics designed to avoid unpalatable truths to the republican party. And the jobs don't usually come back, they're usually replaced by lower paying positions with less benefits.

[aaronr2000]

10:04 AM on 02/11/2009

Will somebody please take me out of my misery and squash this Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac talking point as being the match that started this financial melt down? It's been already established that 2/3 of the subprime mortgages were processed through unregulated entities hedging their bets on the housing market never declining. And to have him say George W. Bush tried to save us from ourselves by warning us from the pending doom coming our way by helping the poor secure homes is beyond miind boggling. What in the world am I missing here?

[LeftRight]

11:39 AM on 02/11/2009

And the whole lie about the CRA being the other cause, since it applied to exactly ONE of the top twenty subprime lenders!!!!!!!

[NL207]

12:36 PM on 02/11/2009

The CRA was forcibly applied to one of the top twenty lenders, [Ctitibank, Chicago by none other than ACORN and Barack Obama]. Do you for one moment think the implications of that legal decision was lost on the other 19? Do you think they made business decisions in a vacuum and without the advice of counsel?

The effects of these CRA loans were felt throughout the mortgage market via Fannie and Freddie. 70% of the mortgage money in America flowed through their hands in the period in question. The self confessed Democrat crook, Frankiln Raines, had Fannie bundle the subprime debt in with other mortgage securities to form blended bonds. He then marketed these to investors as AAA mortgage secured debt, while not informing then the debt actually contained a percentage of high risk, low quality loans.

When this ugly truth was exposed, invesors devalued ALL of teh mortgage paper because the bad debt was indistiguishable from the good debt.

This is prime Democrat policy at work. Help a few people. Screw everyone else to do it.

[jonaziz]

07:06 AM on 02/11/2009

I think Mr. Steele is overlooking one main point, even if we let the rest of his argument stand: even "work" is better than unemployment. The government can't force the private sector to make jobs any more than it can force banks to start lending; what the government can do is create these jobs and hope it helps. I'm sure many out there who would get "work" out of this plan would appreciate it.

[Mildmannered]

03:04 AM on 02/11/2009

and of course all of the republican congressmen, senators and their staffs, as government workers don't have jobs either

[MuseScavenger]

03:03 AM on 02/11/2009

Steele confuses himself. As a quasi-governmental empolyee, he doesn't know if he has a job or is just going to work. Steele is beginning to rust. His words corrode their very meaning as soon as he speaks them.

[Mildmannered]

03:12 PM on 02/11/2009

clever

[Blaster]

02:09 AM on 02/11/2009

He gives me a rush Limbaugh

[MuseScavenger]

03:04 AM on 02/11/2009

he makes your limp what rush?

[Awakenedcitizen]

01:13 AM on 02/11/2009

Stupid headline, Steele is the one who is confused.

[jonmayer]

12:11 AM on 02/11/2009

I'm a liberal like the rest of you, but I think Steele has the better of the argument (even if he has not perfected the nomenclature for his point). There is an incentive for small business to make long lasting jobs. Gov't doesn't have the same level of incentive.

[bethea3]

12:25 AM on 02/11/2009

True that. But more to the point, small busineses are not creating jobs. They are loosing them via the trickle-down theory. They tend to be privatly owned wherein the owner depends upon them for his living. He has a vested interest in them being an on-going concern.
That is not the case with the proposed government sponsored positions. There is no vested interest. And the government does not depend upon them to sustain it. And there is the understanding that these jobs are not to be the type you retire from. But if we do nothing, I hope you have a good alarm system on your house.

[Awakenedcitizen]

01:15 AM on 02/11/2009

Not quite correct; 80% of new jobs are in companies of 100 or few employees.

[Peter007]

07:08 AM on 02/11/2009

The problem is that the government has too many jobs. There are essential service jobs but there are also many silly jobs. Many regulations and regulators we have now didn't exist 50 or 100 years ago. We prospered then.
When people feel the role of government is to be involved in every aspect of daily life, it becomes financially burdensome. We have reached that point. Its similar to the Soviet Union 20 years ago. The private sector profits can no longer sustain the public sector. Now the public sector faces collapse. Solution ? Borrow the money from your children to pay for todays retirees.

[Awakenedcitizen]

01:14 AM on 02/11/2009

Get real. The largest employer in Arizona is the state, there is more stability there than in any of the private sector companies who have come and gone in this state.

[Michelle Mixon]

11:41 PM on 02/10/2009

There he goes again. Using talking points and forgetting what they mean. Republicans told him to get in Will Not Create Jobs and he did. Did not matter that the words were out of context and made no sense. Brings to mind the talking points Mavericks, Socialist, Taxes,Safe and the many Joe's. Republicans please talking points don't work , try talking common sense.

[TLaw]

11:27 PM on 02/10/2009

sigh......

[geraldsc1]

10:46 PM on 02/10/2009

I listened to Obama last night who said that his plan would create jobs - up to 4 million jobs, and today on the tellie I heard how his plan would not work. Tonight I just read how the new chairman of the GOP - GO POOR - sid that these jobs would not be jobs because the y are just work which will go away and in the private sector the jobs may go away but teh come back. One of the biggest ritics of government programs spent his life working at teh FAA Center where he retired with at good pension after working at a non job for over 30 years. Down at the non job post office the workers who don't have a job get a good paycheck and other benefits most of my friends would really enjoy having.
Our country needs jobs. Jobs give us the oportunity to have pay and all that goes with it. One of the last acts of teh Bush Group was to create a 700 billion dollar bailout. This paid a lot of rich people some great bonus benefits. How many jobs were createed? How many roads were paved? How mmany bridges were fixed? How many schools were built? I don't really give a rat's ass who makes the bill or who gets the credit, but in the end I will judge it on the number of jobs created. Put people to work by providing the opportunity for JOBS - private

[Awakenedcitizen]

01:17 AM on 02/11/2009

Actually, he said create or maintain job. the stimulus may just keep millions more from losing jobs. ladies and gentlemen, we may need to simply tread water for the next 18 months and not drown.

If we can just stop the bleeding, that is something, then we can work on getting stonger and returning to health.

[bethea3]

02:09 AM on 02/11/2009

In the past fifty years I have seen many economic turns. But I have never seen this. Simply treading water would be a viable option if not for the anchor on your legs in the middle of the ocean. The anchor is basically cash flow, or the lack of it. Having worked collections for a subprime mortage lender for ten years, I saw the beginings of the problem years ago. Clients would go from an $500 per month to a $2500 per month mortage. When they default, there is no money to lend and everything stagnates. When I left they were writing half the business they were when I started.
Without getting to far afield, everybody is dependent upon lending institutions for their month to month expenses. No cash flow from mortage money means no funds for inventory or payrolls. Everything comes to an abrupt halt. We have never lost 3 million jobs before and never had such major loses percentage wise in a mere 18 months.
Hopefully, the stimulus will create the cash flow needed to restart things. But hiding under the covers and waiting for the monster in the closet to go away only works for children.