Hypocrites and Politics

Florida House Speaker Larry Cretul in his opening remarks to his fellow representatives reiterated a Republican mantra that "government does not create jobs." When the opposite is so obviously true, why do we have to have the debate? Yet again why can't the debate begin? Mr. Cretul stated this mantra as fact. As if there were not and could not be any dissenting opinion. Yet he stands at the podium collecting a salary provided by government and because of government. This is a job. Governing is a job. Get over it. Government can and does create jobs, thousands of jobs every day. Not only in the ranks of those elected, but in the number of staffers that must be employed, the services that must be provided and the laws that must be obeyed. Government provides jobs in the police force, armed services, utilities, and infrastructure. It provides jobs to oversee rules, regulations and compliance. Government provides and creates jobs on a daily basis.

After running against the growth of big government, how could you even suspect that government doesn't create jobs. They just did. You ran against the creation. Oddly enough you ran against the very thing you created. The explosion of government jobs in the last decade has been under Republican control not Democratic. During my last campaign, my opponent sang the same song. Yet there he was the Chancellor of a College receiving a salary from that college that was partially paid by state government funding. My opponent championed the University system as a vehicle for job creation. Insisting we needed to use the Florida Universities to move our recovery forward. The University he was primarily referring was the state chartered and supported Florida State University, a major recipient of government funding. FSU could not make it, or would be in serious jeopardy if state funding was eliminated. Tens of thousands of jobs at the University relied on government funding and these jobs were created by government funding. The private sector jobs that may come from the research at these Universities will owe their existence to government job creation.

So let's get past these mantras and face the reality. Government can and does create jobs. Without government jobs the unemployment rate would skyrocket to levels of unimaginable heights. We need government to step up and create jobs where needed. Government must create jobs where private business can't and won't. We need to put people to work and the last thing we need is mantras borne of some distant dismissed ideology.