tim pawlenty believes the prc should be paid before members of the US Military and Social Security recipients if an agreement isn't reached on raising the federal budget cap. Since pawlenty is so concerned about the financial interest of the prc, who holds approximately 9% of our national debt, maybe he should run for office there. From HuffPost.....
WASHINGTON -- Tim Pawlenty on Friday joined the Jim DeMint wing of the Republican Party in the debt ceiling debate. Sort of.
Pawlenty argued in multiple TV interviews against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's plan to hand over primary responsibility of raising the debt ceiling to the president in exchange for no tax increases, saying there has to be structural change to change the federal government's spending patterns.
"It's a Band-Aid on a broken bone," Pawlenty said of McConnell's plan in an interview with Bloomberg TV. "It doesn't solve the problem ... I don't like it."
The former Minnesota governor's charged rhetoric appeared at first blush to align him with Sen. DeMint (R-S.C.) and other Tea Party lawmakers in the Senate and House, who have staunchly refused to consider voting for a debt ceiling increase unless there is a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, among other things.
“It’s balance or bust,” DeMint wrote in an April fundraising email. “Agreeing on the right policy is not enough to save our country. Republicans also have to be willing to fight to enact that policy, even if it means sacrificing their political careers."
Pawlenty mentioned the balanced budget amendment as a "long term" goal that should be sought, but did not mention what kind of reforms should be sought in the short term. Many Republicans are still pushing for a cut, cap and balance plan that includes immediate spending cuts, spending caps for the future and the balanced budget amendment in the long term.
"This is uncomfortable. It's awkward. I know it's concerning to the markets for understandable reasons," Pawlenty said on CNBC Friday morning. "But if we don't get people in Washington D.C. to take this seriously and actually make the tough decisions -- they always say 'Oh, we're going to make the tough decisions. We'll do it. We'll do it,' and then they never do ... Now is the time. The hour is late, and these problems are big, and the only way you're going to get people to do something tough is to put their backs up against the wall."
Pawlenty aides highlighted that portion of the interview on Twitter. It came amid rising tensions about the consequences of a potential default by the U.S. government on its debts. It appears as though a substantial portion of the Republican base and some of the party's most vocal leaders in Washington are prepared to accept a default if they cannot convince President Obama and congressional Democrats to accept deep cuts to spending levels and sweeping changes to future commitments.
But in a portion of the same CNBC interview that was not promoted by the Pawlenty campaign, the candidate admitted that the debt ceiling will be raised.
"They're going to have to raise the debt ceiling," he said. "But they should get some structural reform."
In the Bloomberg TV interview released later in the day, Pawlenty said, "I don't think there should be a default. We shouldn't default. No, I don't think there will be."
That didn't stop the Democratic National Committee from sending out a press release with the subject header: "Pawlenty Calls For Default."
“Governor Pawlenty is hardly the only Republican who would prefer that the United States default on its debt, but as a presidential candidate, his words cannot be dismissed lightly," said DNC Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
The two sides define default differently. Republicans generally use it in a narrow sense, meaning a failure to pay creditors and bondholders, and believe this is the key issue to maintaining current interest rates and a stable stock market. Democrats often use it more broadly as referring to failure to pay any obligations, such as federal compensation, payments to vendors doing business with the government, or payments to those receiving government assistance, such as Social Security beneficiaries.
The DNC and others attacked Pawlenty for saying that creditors such as the Chinese should be paid before those in the military or Social Security recipients.
"Pawlenty has shown himself to have a truly sick and twisted set of values by advocating that it’s ok to keep paying foreign countries while cutting off senior citizens from their Social Security and Medicare that literally could make the difference between their life and death," said Eddie Vale, spokesman for Protect Your Care, a liberal organization founded to defend Obama's health care overhaul.
Republicans argue that prioritizing payments would maintain the AAA bond rating that keeps borrowing costs low, but financial analysts have said that there would be substantial negative financial consequences for such an action. Defaulting on Social Security obligations could also conceivably trigger a downgrade.
"Even in a scenario in which Treasury interest payments are 'prioritized,' halving other payments like Social Security or military salaries would drop the U.S. income level by 8-9 percent of GDP in a short period," wrote Steven Wieting, Managing Director in the Economic and Market Analysis team of Citigroup, in a July 11, 2011 report.
Wieting also wrote in his analysis: "The financial implications of an actual Treasury default, even briefly, could represent the largest financial shock in history, potentially creating a domino of defaults."
[UPDATE: 5:31 p.m.] - In another interview Friday afternoon on CNBC's "Kudlow Report," Pawlenty said that Republicans should pass the "Cut, Cap and Balance" plan through the House and Senate so that Obama has to veto it.
"If he vetoes it, then send him the installment plan, you know meter it out to him every couple of months so he has to come back and walk the plank every few months," Pawlenty said.
It appeared to be an admission by Pawlenty that the McConnell plan that he rejected earlier in the day would be the best option at the end of the day. Pawlenty's scenario was overly optimistic as well in projecting the passage of the "Cut, Cap and Balance" plan through the Senate, where Democrats hold a 51-to-47 advantage, with two Independents who caucus with the Democrats.
Kudlow pointed out that the Senate will not pass such a plan, but Pawlenty essentially ignored him, continuing to insist that Republicans force Obama to veto the idea.
"They should send him a bill and challenge him to veto it or sign it," Pawlenty said. "I'd send it to him relatively soon."
Pawlenty did have one suggestion to alter McConnell's plan, which would force Obama to request a debt ceiling increase three times between now and the 2012 election.
"I would make him come back every month, not just give him some six month window," he said.
BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
Showing posts with label tim pawlenty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tim pawlenty. Show all posts
15 July 2011
14 July 2011
Tim Pawlenty says scientists are “in dispute” over whether being gay is a choice 13JUL11
tim pawlenty is wrong to use semantics to pander to social conservatives just to further his political ambitions. What is wrong with speaking the truth? From PolitiFact......
During an interview on "Meet the Press," Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty discussed the science behind what causes homosexuality. We fact-checked two of his statements.
Says scientists are "in dispute" over whether being gay is a choice.
Tim Pawlenty on Sunday, July 10th, 2011 in an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press"Tim Pawlenty says scientists are “in dispute” over whether being gay is a choice
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During an interview on "Meet the Press," Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty discussed the science behind what causes homosexuality. We fact-checked two of his statements.During a July 10, 2011, appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press, host David Gregory asked Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty about the origins of homosexuality. Here’s their exchange:
Gregory: "Let me ask you about social policy. You've notably said that you're a big fan of Lady Gaga and even the song Born This Way. There's a lot of debate about a gay marriage pledge in Iowa. And related to that, I wonder, do you agree with some of those who are behind that, that being gay is a choice?"
Pawlenty: "Well, I have two teenage daughters who listen to Lady Gaga, so I'm subjected to it. And it has some good qualities to it. But as to, as to gay marriage, I'm in support of traditional marriage as between a man and a woman. I have not supported the issues of allowing gay couples to have the same benefits … as traditional couples. And so this is an issue in Iowa and across the whole country. But I've stood in favor of traditional marriage and traditional relationships in that regard.
Gregory: "Is being gay a choice?"
Pawlenty: "Well, the science in that regard is in dispute. I mean, the scientists work on that and try to figure out if it's behavioral..."
Gregory: "Right."
Pawlenty: "...or if it's partly genetic."
Gregory:"What do you think?"
Pawlenty: "Well, I defer to the scientists in that regard."
Gregory: "So you, you think it's not a choice."
Pawlenty: "Well, there is no...."
Gregory: "That you are, as Lady Gaga says, you're ‘born that way.’"
Pawlenty: "There's no scientific conclusion that it's genetic. We don't know that. So we don't know to what extent, you know, it's behavioral, and that's something that's been debated by scientists for a long time. But as I understand the science, there's no current conclusion that it's genetic."
We decided to rate two of Pawlenty’s statements separately. In another item, we’ll look at his claim that "there's no scientific conclusion that it's genetic." In this item, we’ll look at the first part of the exchange. We're not fact checking whether being gay is a choice, but whether scientists are "in dispute" over whether it is or is not.
We’ll start out by noting an important difference -- the difference between sexual orientation and sexual behavior.
Scientists don’t doubt that it’s possible for someone who’s gay to choose, through sheer willpower, to ignore their impulses and abstain from homosexual activity. Both gay and straight people have been going celibate by choice since time immemorial. But scientists add that for such people, sexual impulses don’t go away.
So, scientists argue, even if sexual behavior is a choice, sexual orientation -- the state of being gay, and the impulses one feels -- is not a choice.
"We only choose to act, and our actions are influenced by desires," said Michael Bailey, a Northwestern University psychologist who specializes in the origins of homosexuality. "So I think that in an ordinary understanding of ‘choice,’ sexual orientation -- i.e., increased sexual desire for one type of person -- is not chosen, but sexual behavior is."
Both the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association -- the two leading organizations for their professions -- reject the idea that the driving factor in determining one’s sexual orientation is personal choice.
A spokeswoman for the American Psychiatric Association -- which has about 36,000 members out of roughly 48,000 psychiatrists nationwide -- didn’t recall any significant internal dissension in recent years over the question of whether sexual orientation is a choice. Meanwhile, the American Psychological Association, which has 150,000 members, also considers it a "settled question" that homosexuality isn’t a choice, said Clinton W. Anderson, the associate executive director of the American Psychological Association and the director of its lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender concerns office.
Interestingly, we found less division than we’d expected between gay-rights advocates and social conservatives.
Michael Cole-Schwartz -- a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, a leading gay advocacy group -- said that "there is significant agreement that one does not choose one’s sexual orientation."
Meanwhile, Peter Sprigg, a senior fellow at the Family Research Council -- a leading think tank for social conservatives -- agreed with the distinction between orientation and behavior. He suggested that fuzzy definitions of "sexual orientation" explain why the two camps sometimes talk past each other.
"Part of the problem is that the term ‘sexual orientation’ is somewhat ambiguous," Sprigg said. He suggests that it is sometimes used to cover three separate elements -- attractions, behaviors and self-identification.
"What I generally say is that I don‘t believe that same-sex attractions are a choice, but behaviors and self-identification are," he said. "If Pawlenty had wanted to be more subtle, he could have asked Gregory what he meant" by being gay.
In fact, Sprigg articulated his somewhat nuanced view on the Family Research Council website in 2010, in a document titled "The Top Ten Myths About Homosexuality." In it, he reviewed some of the studies on this topic and concluded that "if it was not clear in the 1990’s, it certainly is now—no one is ‘born gay.’" Yet he went on to write that "homosexual attractions are clearly not a ‘choice’ in the vast majority of cases."
In an interview, Sprigg said he didn’t see the two statements as contradictory.
"When I say it’s clear that no one is born gay, I don’t think any of those three factors" -- attractions, behaviors and self-identification -- "are fixed and determined at birth. Just because it’s not a choice doesn’t mean it’s present at birth. It could be the result of developmental factors in childhood. Sometime between the time you’re born and the time you begin to experience sexual attraction, things can happen that can affect your development."
He even pointed to an American Psychological Association statement that "although much research has examined the possible genetic, hormonal, developmental, social, and cultural influences on sexual orientation, no findings have emerged that permit scientists to conclude that sexual orientation – heterosexuality, homosexuality, or bisexuality -- is determined by any particular factor or factors."
The scientists we spoke to freely acknowledged that much is unknown about what determines sexual orientation. (More on that in our accompanying item.) But what scientists do know pretty much rules out the idea that homosexuality is simply a choice.
At this point, we need to note an important caveat: What we’ve been discussing here applies primarily to gay men. There is actually no solid scientific consensus about the causes of female homosexuality, because the research on that question has been much less extensive.
We struggled with the question of how we should factor in what one might call the lesbian exception to the scientific consensus on homosexuality. Neither Pawlenty nor Gregory specifically referred to either gay men or gay women in their comments. Ultimately, we concluded that the science of what causes women to be gay was too unformed to draw any solid conclusions, so we set it aside as a factor in our ratings.
So where does this leave us?
Pawlenty said that scientists are "in dispute" about whether being gay is a choice or not. We think most people would interpret that to mean sexual orientation -- that is, attractions and impulses -- rather than sexual behavior. And on that question, it seems that the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the Human Rights Campaign and even the Family Research Council are in agreement. So we rate Pawlenty’s statement False.
Subjects: Gays and Lesbians, Science
Sources:
Tim Pawlenty, interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, July 10, 2011
J. Michael Bailey, Michael P. Dunne and Nicholas G. Martin, "Genetic and Environmental Influences on Sexual Orientation and Its Correlates in an Australian Twin Sample," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, March 2000
Susan J. Bradley, Gillian D. Oliver, Avinoam B. Chernick, and Kenneth J. Zucker, "Experiment of Nurture: Ablatio Penis at 2 Months, Sex Reassignment at 7 Months, and a Psychosexual Follow-up in Young Adulthood," Pediatrics, July 1998
William G. Reiner and John P. Gearhart, "Discordant Sexual Identity in Some Genetic Males with Cloacal Exstrophy Assigned to Female Sex at Birth," New England Journal of Medicine, January 22, 2004
American Psychological Association, amicus brief for gay marriage, Sept. 26, 2007
Family Research Council, "The Top Ten Myths About Homosexuality," 2010
Chandler Burr, "Homosexuality and Biology" (The Atlantic), March 1993
E-mail interview with Michael Bailey, Northwestern University psychologist, July 12, 2011
Interview with Clinton W. Anderson, associate executive director of the American Psychological Association, July 12, 2011
Interview with Jack Drescher, distinguished fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, July 12, 2011
E-mail interview with Michael Cole-Schwartz, spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, July 12, 2011
Interview with Peter Sprigg, senior fellow at the Family Research Council, July 12, 2011
Written by: Louis Jacobson
Researched by: Louis Jacobson
Edited by: Martha Hamilton
Gregory: "Let me ask you about social policy. You've notably said that you're a big fan of Lady Gaga and even the song Born This Way. There's a lot of debate about a gay marriage pledge in Iowa. And related to that, I wonder, do you agree with some of those who are behind that, that being gay is a choice?"
Pawlenty: "Well, I have two teenage daughters who listen to Lady Gaga, so I'm subjected to it. And it has some good qualities to it. But as to, as to gay marriage, I'm in support of traditional marriage as between a man and a woman. I have not supported the issues of allowing gay couples to have the same benefits … as traditional couples. And so this is an issue in Iowa and across the whole country. But I've stood in favor of traditional marriage and traditional relationships in that regard.
Gregory: "Is being gay a choice?"
Pawlenty: "Well, the science in that regard is in dispute. I mean, the scientists work on that and try to figure out if it's behavioral..."
Gregory: "Right."
Pawlenty: "...or if it's partly genetic."
Gregory:"What do you think?"
Pawlenty: "Well, I defer to the scientists in that regard."
Gregory: "So you, you think it's not a choice."
Pawlenty: "Well, there is no...."
Gregory: "That you are, as Lady Gaga says, you're ‘born that way.’"
Pawlenty: "There's no scientific conclusion that it's genetic. We don't know that. So we don't know to what extent, you know, it's behavioral, and that's something that's been debated by scientists for a long time. But as I understand the science, there's no current conclusion that it's genetic."
We decided to rate two of Pawlenty’s statements separately. In another item, we’ll look at his claim that "there's no scientific conclusion that it's genetic." In this item, we’ll look at the first part of the exchange. We're not fact checking whether being gay is a choice, but whether scientists are "in dispute" over whether it is or is not.
We’ll start out by noting an important difference -- the difference between sexual orientation and sexual behavior.
Scientists don’t doubt that it’s possible for someone who’s gay to choose, through sheer willpower, to ignore their impulses and abstain from homosexual activity. Both gay and straight people have been going celibate by choice since time immemorial. But scientists add that for such people, sexual impulses don’t go away.
So, scientists argue, even if sexual behavior is a choice, sexual orientation -- the state of being gay, and the impulses one feels -- is not a choice.
"We only choose to act, and our actions are influenced by desires," said Michael Bailey, a Northwestern University psychologist who specializes in the origins of homosexuality. "So I think that in an ordinary understanding of ‘choice,’ sexual orientation -- i.e., increased sexual desire for one type of person -- is not chosen, but sexual behavior is."
Both the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association -- the two leading organizations for their professions -- reject the idea that the driving factor in determining one’s sexual orientation is personal choice.
A spokeswoman for the American Psychiatric Association -- which has about 36,000 members out of roughly 48,000 psychiatrists nationwide -- didn’t recall any significant internal dissension in recent years over the question of whether sexual orientation is a choice. Meanwhile, the American Psychological Association, which has 150,000 members, also considers it a "settled question" that homosexuality isn’t a choice, said Clinton W. Anderson, the associate executive director of the American Psychological Association and the director of its lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender concerns office.
Interestingly, we found less division than we’d expected between gay-rights advocates and social conservatives.
Michael Cole-Schwartz -- a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, a leading gay advocacy group -- said that "there is significant agreement that one does not choose one’s sexual orientation."
Meanwhile, Peter Sprigg, a senior fellow at the Family Research Council -- a leading think tank for social conservatives -- agreed with the distinction between orientation and behavior. He suggested that fuzzy definitions of "sexual orientation" explain why the two camps sometimes talk past each other.
"Part of the problem is that the term ‘sexual orientation’ is somewhat ambiguous," Sprigg said. He suggests that it is sometimes used to cover three separate elements -- attractions, behaviors and self-identification.
"What I generally say is that I don‘t believe that same-sex attractions are a choice, but behaviors and self-identification are," he said. "If Pawlenty had wanted to be more subtle, he could have asked Gregory what he meant" by being gay.
In fact, Sprigg articulated his somewhat nuanced view on the Family Research Council website in 2010, in a document titled "The Top Ten Myths About Homosexuality." In it, he reviewed some of the studies on this topic and concluded that "if it was not clear in the 1990’s, it certainly is now—no one is ‘born gay.’" Yet he went on to write that "homosexual attractions are clearly not a ‘choice’ in the vast majority of cases."
In an interview, Sprigg said he didn’t see the two statements as contradictory.
"When I say it’s clear that no one is born gay, I don’t think any of those three factors" -- attractions, behaviors and self-identification -- "are fixed and determined at birth. Just because it’s not a choice doesn’t mean it’s present at birth. It could be the result of developmental factors in childhood. Sometime between the time you’re born and the time you begin to experience sexual attraction, things can happen that can affect your development."
He even pointed to an American Psychological Association statement that "although much research has examined the possible genetic, hormonal, developmental, social, and cultural influences on sexual orientation, no findings have emerged that permit scientists to conclude that sexual orientation – heterosexuality, homosexuality, or bisexuality -- is determined by any particular factor or factors."
The scientists we spoke to freely acknowledged that much is unknown about what determines sexual orientation. (More on that in our accompanying item.) But what scientists do know pretty much rules out the idea that homosexuality is simply a choice.
At this point, we need to note an important caveat: What we’ve been discussing here applies primarily to gay men. There is actually no solid scientific consensus about the causes of female homosexuality, because the research on that question has been much less extensive.
We struggled with the question of how we should factor in what one might call the lesbian exception to the scientific consensus on homosexuality. Neither Pawlenty nor Gregory specifically referred to either gay men or gay women in their comments. Ultimately, we concluded that the science of what causes women to be gay was too unformed to draw any solid conclusions, so we set it aside as a factor in our ratings.
So where does this leave us?
Pawlenty said that scientists are "in dispute" about whether being gay is a choice or not. We think most people would interpret that to mean sexual orientation -- that is, attractions and impulses -- rather than sexual behavior. And on that question, it seems that the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the Human Rights Campaign and even the Family Research Council are in agreement. So we rate Pawlenty’s statement False.
About this statement:
Published: Wednesday, July 13th, 2011 at 12:23 p.m.Subjects: Gays and Lesbians, Science
Sources:
Tim Pawlenty, interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, July 10, 2011
J. Michael Bailey, Michael P. Dunne and Nicholas G. Martin, "Genetic and Environmental Influences on Sexual Orientation and Its Correlates in an Australian Twin Sample," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, March 2000
Susan J. Bradley, Gillian D. Oliver, Avinoam B. Chernick, and Kenneth J. Zucker, "Experiment of Nurture: Ablatio Penis at 2 Months, Sex Reassignment at 7 Months, and a Psychosexual Follow-up in Young Adulthood," Pediatrics, July 1998
William G. Reiner and John P. Gearhart, "Discordant Sexual Identity in Some Genetic Males with Cloacal Exstrophy Assigned to Female Sex at Birth," New England Journal of Medicine, January 22, 2004
American Psychological Association, amicus brief for gay marriage, Sept. 26, 2007
Family Research Council, "The Top Ten Myths About Homosexuality," 2010
Chandler Burr, "Homosexuality and Biology" (The Atlantic), March 1993
E-mail interview with Michael Bailey, Northwestern University psychologist, July 12, 2011
Interview with Clinton W. Anderson, associate executive director of the American Psychological Association, July 12, 2011
Interview with Jack Drescher, distinguished fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, July 12, 2011
E-mail interview with Michael Cole-Schwartz, spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, July 12, 2011
Interview with Peter Sprigg, senior fellow at the Family Research Council, July 12, 2011
Written by: Louis Jacobson
Researched by: Louis Jacobson
Edited by: Martha Hamilton
10 June 2011
Tim Pawlenty and That Old-Time Supply Side Black Magic 7JUN11
tim pawlenty, former gov of Minnesota, gop / tea-bagger candidate in the repiglican presidential primary, wants to bring to America what he left in Minnesota, a larger deficit than when he took office, approximately $6.8 BILLION....from MOJO.....
Tim Pawlenty today:
to do anything? That's some tough talkin', governor. You'll probably take a real hit in the polls for this kind of truthtelling.
It's hard to know what to say about this. The pander quotient in Pawlenty's speech is just off the charts. It's less a speech than a series of Reagan-era applause lines bulked up on steroids and then stitched together for public consumption. Reduce taxes on the rich (plus a little bit on the middle class so it's not too obvious what's going on). Cut corporate taxes. Pass a balanced budget amendment. Raise the Social Security retirement age. Eliminate the post office, the government printing office, Amtrak, and Fannie and Freddie. Apply "Lean Six Sigma" to generate 20% spending reductions.1 Slash regulations that cost us $1.75 trillion per year. Repeal Dodd-Frank. Repeal healthcare reform. Gut the EPA. Keep the dollar strong. No more "printing money."
I dunno. It feels like Pawlenty is auditioning for the lead role in a campaign remake of "Heart of Darkness" or something. A couple of miscellaneous comments, though. First, after a few years of skirting dangerously close to reality, I guess it's once again official Republican dogma that tax cuts pay for themselves and then some. Glad to see they can still kick it old school. Second, it looks like the battle of the GOP "adults" — Romney and Pawlenty — is taking shape. Romney lately seems to be hedging a bit toward non-insanity, hoping that there's still a majority in the Republican Party that isn't quite willing to sail completely over the Palin/Beck/Limbaugh cliff into fairyland. Pawlenty, conversely, is going all in. If you believe in faith, freedom, and that old-time supply-side black magic, he's your man.
Which will Republican voters choose? I don't know, but the battle lines seem fairly well drawn now.
1No, I have no idea what this bit of corporate consultant babble means either, and I refuse to Google it to find out.
I promised to level with the American people. To look them in the eye. And tell them the truth.OK, Tim. Hit me with it. I'm ready to be leveled with and told hard truths that I might not like:
I propose just two rates, 10% and 25%.....A one-third cut in the bottom rate....And a 28% cut in the top rate to spur investment and job creation. In addition, we should eliminate all together the capital gains tax, interest income tax, dividends tax and the death tax.So that's Tim Pawlenty's hard truth? That if I suck it up and accept lower taxes, federal revenues will magically go up and our deficit problem will already be half solved without anyone having
....Once we unleash the creative energy of America’s businesses, families and individuals as we did in the eighties and nineties, a booming job market will reduce demand for government assistance. And rising incomes will increase federal revenues....5% economic growth over 10 years would generate 3.8 trillion dollars in new tax revenues.
to do anything? That's some tough talkin', governor. You'll probably take a real hit in the polls for this kind of truthtelling.It's hard to know what to say about this. The pander quotient in Pawlenty's speech is just off the charts. It's less a speech than a series of Reagan-era applause lines bulked up on steroids and then stitched together for public consumption. Reduce taxes on the rich (plus a little bit on the middle class so it's not too obvious what's going on). Cut corporate taxes. Pass a balanced budget amendment. Raise the Social Security retirement age. Eliminate the post office, the government printing office, Amtrak, and Fannie and Freddie. Apply "Lean Six Sigma" to generate 20% spending reductions.1 Slash regulations that cost us $1.75 trillion per year. Repeal Dodd-Frank. Repeal healthcare reform. Gut the EPA. Keep the dollar strong. No more "printing money."
I dunno. It feels like Pawlenty is auditioning for the lead role in a campaign remake of "Heart of Darkness" or something. A couple of miscellaneous comments, though. First, after a few years of skirting dangerously close to reality, I guess it's once again official Republican dogma that tax cuts pay for themselves and then some. Glad to see they can still kick it old school. Second, it looks like the battle of the GOP "adults" — Romney and Pawlenty — is taking shape. Romney lately seems to be hedging a bit toward non-insanity, hoping that there's still a majority in the Republican Party that isn't quite willing to sail completely over the Palin/Beck/Limbaugh cliff into fairyland. Pawlenty, conversely, is going all in. If you believe in faith, freedom, and that old-time supply-side black magic, he's your man.
Which will Republican voters choose? I don't know, but the battle lines seem fairly well drawn now.
1No, I have no idea what this bit of corporate consultant babble means either, and I refuse to Google it to find out.
09 June 2011
David Axelrod Tells Tim Pawlenty What He Can Google 9JUN11
BRAVO David Axelrod for throwing it right back in pawlenty's face...the people have the right to know, and tim pawlenty shouldn't be throwing stones from inside his glass house....from HuffPost....
WASHINGTON -- The assumption that President Barack Obama's reelection campaign will be felled by poor economic news is partially premised on the idea that the Republican alternative can offer something both fundamentally different and alluring. And so, while the president's reelection team is a bit away from running on all cylinders, top officials have been scheming to frame the top-tier Republican candidates as compromised on matters like jobs and recovery.
In an interview with The Huffington Post on Wednesday, Obama's adviser David Axelrod offered a fairly sharp criticism of Tim Pawlenty (for this early stage, at least). Axelrod was decidedly un-persuaded by the former Minnesota governor's idea that, if you could find a private company to handle a function via Google, the government shouldn't be involved.
"What he should Google is 'job growth for the last decade,'" said Axelrod, who, despite not officially being involved in the reelection at this point was huddling with top Obama advisers in D.C. on Wednesday. "What he should Google is 'what happened to income for the last decade,' when in many ways the policies that he prescribed were the governing theory. And then he should also Google 'budget deficits in the state of Minnesota.' And what he'll find is, when he left, he left a projected deficit of $6.2 billion, which doesn’t exactly qualify him as an expert on fiscal responsibility."
Pawlenty, whose campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment, has taken some jabbing for the "Google test." One could, after all, find private militias via Google. Does that mean he doesn't think the government shouldn't fund an army? And what of public universities, from which Pawlenty earned two degrees?
But Axelrod's comments are, perhaps, more significant for what they say about the reelection campaign than what they say about Pawlenty's gimmicky suggestion. Top aides to the president are fond of arguing that elections represent a choice, not a referendum. Certainly, with unemployment expected to remain above 8 percent by November 2012 -- the first time it's been that high during an incumbent's run for a second term -- the idea is to turn the spotlight on to the opposition.
Former Gov. Mitt Romney has already undergone this treatment. He has been criticized for both his tenure in Massachusetts, in which the state ranked 47th out of 50 in job creation, and his time at Bain Capital, whose history of shipping jobs overseas served as a sticking point in his 1994 Senate loss against Ted Kennedy.
Pawlenty registers lower in the national polls than Romney. But his candidacy is growing serious enough that Obama's aides are starting to apply the same standards of scrutiny and push back.
WASHINGTON -- The assumption that President Barack Obama's reelection campaign will be felled by poor economic news is partially premised on the idea that the Republican alternative can offer something both fundamentally different and alluring. And so, while the president's reelection team is a bit away from running on all cylinders, top officials have been scheming to frame the top-tier Republican candidates as compromised on matters like jobs and recovery.
In an interview with The Huffington Post on Wednesday, Obama's adviser David Axelrod offered a fairly sharp criticism of Tim Pawlenty (for this early stage, at least). Axelrod was decidedly un-persuaded by the former Minnesota governor's idea that, if you could find a private company to handle a function via Google, the government shouldn't be involved.
"What he should Google is 'job growth for the last decade,'" said Axelrod, who, despite not officially being involved in the reelection at this point was huddling with top Obama advisers in D.C. on Wednesday. "What he should Google is 'what happened to income for the last decade,' when in many ways the policies that he prescribed were the governing theory. And then he should also Google 'budget deficits in the state of Minnesota.' And what he'll find is, when he left, he left a projected deficit of $6.2 billion, which doesn’t exactly qualify him as an expert on fiscal responsibility."
Pawlenty, whose campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment, has taken some jabbing for the "Google test." One could, after all, find private militias via Google. Does that mean he doesn't think the government shouldn't fund an army? And what of public universities, from which Pawlenty earned two degrees?
But Axelrod's comments are, perhaps, more significant for what they say about the reelection campaign than what they say about Pawlenty's gimmicky suggestion. Top aides to the president are fond of arguing that elections represent a choice, not a referendum. Certainly, with unemployment expected to remain above 8 percent by November 2012 -- the first time it's been that high during an incumbent's run for a second term -- the idea is to turn the spotlight on to the opposition.
Former Gov. Mitt Romney has already undergone this treatment. He has been criticized for both his tenure in Massachusetts, in which the state ranked 47th out of 50 in job creation, and his time at Bain Capital, whose history of shipping jobs overseas served as a sticking point in his 1994 Senate loss against Ted Kennedy.
Pawlenty registers lower in the national polls than Romney. But his candidacy is growing serious enough that Obama's aides are starting to apply the same standards of scrutiny and push back.
22 April 2011
Why Are the Republicans Afraid of President Obama? 22APR11
THE repiglicans are cowards and clowns, as pointed out in this post by Bob Cesca on Huffpost.....
One of the most often-overheard refrains from the Republican Party and its far-right base is that President Obama is the worst president in American history. Others say he "pals around with terrorists." They say he's destroying America. They say that he's weak, that he dithers and that he's effete -- implying either that he's gay or effeminate or both. Around half of all Republicans have told pollsters that he's not even constitutionally eligible to be president, which ought to mandate an immediate removal from office.
But what does all of this say about the men and women who are noticeably hesitant to officially announce their candidacies for the Republican nomination? Not a single one of the well-known frontrunners has declared anything more than "exploratory committees" -- quite literally the presidential campaign equivalent of dithering.
At this juncture in the 2008 cycle, most of the major Democratic and Republican candidates were underway with their official campaigns. And yet...
Michele Bachmann, a would-be frontrunner, called the president "even worse" than President Carter. She accused him of being "infantile" and suggested he wouldn't even run for a second term because the "floor has dropped out" from his support. However, tough-talking Michele Bachmann hasn't officially declared her candidacy to run against this allegedly unpopular weakling.
Mitt Romney said that his "worst fears" about the president have come true and that the chief executive is pushing an "extreme liberal agenda." Romney also accused the president of being "tentative, indecisive, timid and nuanced" on Libya. However, tough-talking Mitt Romney hasn't officially declared his candidacy to run against such a timid and indecisive extremist. How would Mitt react when confronted by actual extremists? Hopefully not with the same timidity he's exercising in his run for president.
Sarah Palin has screeched nearly every imaginable insult at the president (often while she's utterly botching commonly-known facts about the Constitution). She accused him of "dithering" on Libya. He's a "spectator-in-chief," she said. She's accused him of being a socialist. She told Sean Hannity that she "fears for our democracy" due to the president's agenda. She's famously accused him of being a terrorist sympathizer -- this alone ought to compel her to run for president if only to rid the executive branch of an obvious terrorist. However, pit bull Sarah Palin appears to be "dithering" when in comes to her campaign to run against this alleged terrorist, socialist ditherer.
The irreversibly somnambulatory Tim Pawlenty has accused the president of being "weak" on foreign policy and "clueless" on the economy. Pawlenty accused the president's Libya decision of being "belated and timid." Okay, but what does it say about Pawlenty when he's only announced an exploratory committee to run against someone who he believes is "weak" and "timid?"
Newt Gingrich couldn't even generate a consistent position on Libya. No wonder he can't decide whether to run against the president, who, by the way, he accused of being "weak" and an "amateur" and the most "incompetent" commander-in-chief "since Carter." But still no official campaign announcement from Gingrich. You'd think someone as weak and incompetent would be easy to defeat, no?
Donald Trump is, well, he's the driver of the GOP clown car at this point; and, as we're all aware by its around-the-clock coverage on cable news, doesn't believe the president is a citizen much less a legal office holder. And, of course, Trump believes the president is the "worst president in history." No official announcement from Trump even though defeating a president this criminally out of bounds should be a cakewalk.
If what they're all saying were true (its' not), why are they so clearly afraid to run against President Obama: a president who they claim is some sort of gelatinous, terrorist, girlish, treasonous, Eurotrash socialist, gay, Kenyan constitutional usurper?
There are several reasons why the Republicans are dithering.
First, Republican voters are more convinced about the wacky birth certificate thing than they are about their preference for a nominee. While 45 percent of Republicans believe the silly, fringe conspiracy theory that the president isn't a citizen, 56 percent of Republicans support "none of the above" candidates, with most of the frontrunners sharing single-digit support. That's bad. 56 percent of Republicans would rather see "none of the above" than any of the current roster of would-be nominees. Simply put, Birtherism is more popular than the candidates themselves.
Second, the president's approval numbers are artificially weak. Gas prices and the slow decline of the unemployment rate are pissing off voters, and so they're taking it out on the president. That said, there's a long list of accomplishments which the president can ballyhoo against these negative event-driven gripes. In other words, in the absence of jobless numbers and high gas prices, there are quite a few positives.
Economic growth is up, and has been steadily growing since the passage of the president's recovery act. President Obama successfully appointed the first Hispanic female Supreme Court justice which invigorates a growing Hispanic demographic. Unemployment is slowly declining. The stock market is up, thus stabilizing 401(k)s and mutual funds owned by middle class Americans. And despite what the Republicans say, the president and the Democrats cut the deficit by $122 billion last year: the largest single-year decline in the deficit in American history. The list goes on and on. As soon as the Obama 2012 re-election campaign gets cranking on these accomplishments, the mostly unpopular Republican candidates will be almost totally neutered. Moreso than now.
Third, the Republican legislative record is ridiculous. Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan and John Boehner have introduced ideologically far-right, inconsequential and symbolic bills that kill Planned Parenthood and NPR. They've passed legislation that cuts spending for pregnant women. They've passed legislation that magically circumvents the constitutional lawmaking process. They refuse to raise taxes on the rich while trying to gut Medicaid and kill Medicare, even though supermajorities of Americans support both of these crucial healthcare programs -- including majority support from tea party Republicans.
And finally, at this late juncture, I don't see how the Republicans will be able to compete with the Obama machine when it comes to money, even with the awful Citizen's United decision and its subsequent deluge of corporate cash into the Republican Party.
The modern Republican Party fancies itself the party of quick, decisive action. Shoot first and let God sort out the rest. You're either with us or you're with the terrorists. It's the part of swift military action. It's the party that's spending $500,000 in congressional money to fight gay people. It's the party of apoplectic, doomsday talk radio screamers. It's the party that mocks "femi-nazis" -- the party that refuses to "bend over" for the "little black man-child." This is what they say, and it's a whole lot of blustery, impotent noise.
There's one last reason why the Republicans are so cautious about declaring their intentions. They're cowards. And they're self-debunking the mythology that modern Republicans are bold, brave "Reagan-ish" leaders. They're cowards and so they're moving at granny-speed rather than light-speed to run against the president -- a real leader onto whom they're projecting their dithering and indecisiveness.
Not that I'm complaining.
Listen to the Bubble Genius Bob & Elvis Show, with Bob Cesca and Elvis Dingeldein, on iTunes.
Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog! Go!
One of the most often-overheard refrains from the Republican Party and its far-right base is that President Obama is the worst president in American history. Others say he "pals around with terrorists." They say he's destroying America. They say that he's weak, that he dithers and that he's effete -- implying either that he's gay or effeminate or both. Around half of all Republicans have told pollsters that he's not even constitutionally eligible to be president, which ought to mandate an immediate removal from office.
But what does all of this say about the men and women who are noticeably hesitant to officially announce their candidacies for the Republican nomination? Not a single one of the well-known frontrunners has declared anything more than "exploratory committees" -- quite literally the presidential campaign equivalent of dithering.
At this juncture in the 2008 cycle, most of the major Democratic and Republican candidates were underway with their official campaigns. And yet...
Michele Bachmann, a would-be frontrunner, called the president "even worse" than President Carter. She accused him of being "infantile" and suggested he wouldn't even run for a second term because the "floor has dropped out" from his support. However, tough-talking Michele Bachmann hasn't officially declared her candidacy to run against this allegedly unpopular weakling.
Mitt Romney said that his "worst fears" about the president have come true and that the chief executive is pushing an "extreme liberal agenda." Romney also accused the president of being "tentative, indecisive, timid and nuanced" on Libya. However, tough-talking Mitt Romney hasn't officially declared his candidacy to run against such a timid and indecisive extremist. How would Mitt react when confronted by actual extremists? Hopefully not with the same timidity he's exercising in his run for president.
Sarah Palin has screeched nearly every imaginable insult at the president (often while she's utterly botching commonly-known facts about the Constitution). She accused him of "dithering" on Libya. He's a "spectator-in-chief," she said. She's accused him of being a socialist. She told Sean Hannity that she "fears for our democracy" due to the president's agenda. She's famously accused him of being a terrorist sympathizer -- this alone ought to compel her to run for president if only to rid the executive branch of an obvious terrorist. However, pit bull Sarah Palin appears to be "dithering" when in comes to her campaign to run against this alleged terrorist, socialist ditherer.
The irreversibly somnambulatory Tim Pawlenty has accused the president of being "weak" on foreign policy and "clueless" on the economy. Pawlenty accused the president's Libya decision of being "belated and timid." Okay, but what does it say about Pawlenty when he's only announced an exploratory committee to run against someone who he believes is "weak" and "timid?"
Newt Gingrich couldn't even generate a consistent position on Libya. No wonder he can't decide whether to run against the president, who, by the way, he accused of being "weak" and an "amateur" and the most "incompetent" commander-in-chief "since Carter." But still no official campaign announcement from Gingrich. You'd think someone as weak and incompetent would be easy to defeat, no?
Donald Trump is, well, he's the driver of the GOP clown car at this point; and, as we're all aware by its around-the-clock coverage on cable news, doesn't believe the president is a citizen much less a legal office holder. And, of course, Trump believes the president is the "worst president in history." No official announcement from Trump even though defeating a president this criminally out of bounds should be a cakewalk.
If what they're all saying were true (its' not), why are they so clearly afraid to run against President Obama: a president who they claim is some sort of gelatinous, terrorist, girlish, treasonous, Eurotrash socialist, gay, Kenyan constitutional usurper?
There are several reasons why the Republicans are dithering.
First, Republican voters are more convinced about the wacky birth certificate thing than they are about their preference for a nominee. While 45 percent of Republicans believe the silly, fringe conspiracy theory that the president isn't a citizen, 56 percent of Republicans support "none of the above" candidates, with most of the frontrunners sharing single-digit support. That's bad. 56 percent of Republicans would rather see "none of the above" than any of the current roster of would-be nominees. Simply put, Birtherism is more popular than the candidates themselves.
Second, the president's approval numbers are artificially weak. Gas prices and the slow decline of the unemployment rate are pissing off voters, and so they're taking it out on the president. That said, there's a long list of accomplishments which the president can ballyhoo against these negative event-driven gripes. In other words, in the absence of jobless numbers and high gas prices, there are quite a few positives.
Economic growth is up, and has been steadily growing since the passage of the president's recovery act. President Obama successfully appointed the first Hispanic female Supreme Court justice which invigorates a growing Hispanic demographic. Unemployment is slowly declining. The stock market is up, thus stabilizing 401(k)s and mutual funds owned by middle class Americans. And despite what the Republicans say, the president and the Democrats cut the deficit by $122 billion last year: the largest single-year decline in the deficit in American history. The list goes on and on. As soon as the Obama 2012 re-election campaign gets cranking on these accomplishments, the mostly unpopular Republican candidates will be almost totally neutered. Moreso than now.
Third, the Republican legislative record is ridiculous. Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan and John Boehner have introduced ideologically far-right, inconsequential and symbolic bills that kill Planned Parenthood and NPR. They've passed legislation that cuts spending for pregnant women. They've passed legislation that magically circumvents the constitutional lawmaking process. They refuse to raise taxes on the rich while trying to gut Medicaid and kill Medicare, even though supermajorities of Americans support both of these crucial healthcare programs -- including majority support from tea party Republicans.
And finally, at this late juncture, I don't see how the Republicans will be able to compete with the Obama machine when it comes to money, even with the awful Citizen's United decision and its subsequent deluge of corporate cash into the Republican Party.
The modern Republican Party fancies itself the party of quick, decisive action. Shoot first and let God sort out the rest. You're either with us or you're with the terrorists. It's the part of swift military action. It's the party that's spending $500,000 in congressional money to fight gay people. It's the party of apoplectic, doomsday talk radio screamers. It's the party that mocks "femi-nazis" -- the party that refuses to "bend over" for the "little black man-child." This is what they say, and it's a whole lot of blustery, impotent noise.
There's one last reason why the Republicans are so cautious about declaring their intentions. They're cowards. And they're self-debunking the mythology that modern Republicans are bold, brave "Reagan-ish" leaders. They're cowards and so they're moving at granny-speed rather than light-speed to run against the president -- a real leader onto whom they're projecting their dithering and indecisiveness.
Not that I'm complaining.
Listen to the Bubble Genius Bob & Elvis Show, with Bob Cesca and Elvis Dingeldein, on iTunes.
Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog! Go!
02 March 2011
Asked If Bank Of America Paying Nothing In Corporate Taxes Is Fair, Pawlenty Responds: Taxes Are ‘Too High’ 2MAR11
NO question here about who tim pawlenty represents, he is owned and controlled by corporate America. If you think things are bad now, just think what will happen to this country if he would be elected president! I just can't understand how people can support any politician who kow-tows to corporate masters and defends their not paying taxes. How do these people feel they are going to benefit from allowing this to continue? Where do they think the money for even the basic government services is going to come from? Can these people really be so ignorant to believe it is OK for these corporations to not pay taxes? Tea-baggers, how is supporting this attitude going to improve your lives? THINK ABOUT IT!!! From ThinkProgress....
ThinkProgress filed this report from the Tea Party Patriots Policy Summit in Phoenix, AZ.
Last weekend, Americans around the country organized “Main Street Movement” protests to stand in solidarity with organized labor and demand that corporate interests pay their fair share. As ThinkProgress has reported, many of the nation’s largest corporate interests pay literally nothing in corporate income taxes. ExxonMobil made nearly $20 billion in profits in 2009, but paid nothing in corporate income taxes. Other extremely profitable companies GE, CitiGroup, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and Boeing similarly have had entire quarters or years without paying corporate income taxes.
At the Tea Party summit last weekend, we spoke to former Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN), a prospective GOP presidential candidate, about corporate tax cheats. Asked about Bank of America, another wildly profitable American bank that paid nothing in corporate taxes in 2009, Pawlenty simply relied “Well actually the corporate tax rate in Minnesota and around the country is too high.” Reminded several times that Bank of America doesn’t pay it’s corporate taxes, regardless of rates, Pawlenty said that both exemptions and rates should be lowered. However, he again emphasized that he was not troubled, or even aware, of corporate tax dodging, and that corporate tax rates should be reduced:
Even Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), a Republican well to the right of Pawlenty on most issues, told us that corporate tax dodgers “broke the law.” As he prepares to run for president, Pawlenty has positioned himself close to the corporate right. Last year, we broke a story about how bailed out banks — still on the hook for taxpayer money — were funneling cash to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to kill financial reform. We asked Pawlenty if he had any problem with taxpayer-owned banks secretly lobbying against reforms for their industry. He didn’t.
ThinkProgress filed this report from the Tea Party Patriots Policy Summit in Phoenix, AZ.
Last weekend, Americans around the country organized “Main Street Movement” protests to stand in solidarity with organized labor and demand that corporate interests pay their fair share. As ThinkProgress has reported, many of the nation’s largest corporate interests pay literally nothing in corporate income taxes. ExxonMobil made nearly $20 billion in profits in 2009, but paid nothing in corporate income taxes. Other extremely profitable companies GE, CitiGroup, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and Boeing similarly have had entire quarters or years without paying corporate income taxes.
At the Tea Party summit last weekend, we spoke to former Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN), a prospective GOP presidential candidate, about corporate tax cheats. Asked about Bank of America, another wildly profitable American bank that paid nothing in corporate taxes in 2009, Pawlenty simply relied “Well actually the corporate tax rate in Minnesota and around the country is too high.” Reminded several times that Bank of America doesn’t pay it’s corporate taxes, regardless of rates, Pawlenty said that both exemptions and rates should be lowered. However, he again emphasized that he was not troubled, or even aware, of corporate tax dodging, and that corporate tax rates should be reduced:
FANG: Governor, today liberals are demonstrating all over the country in what CBS has called a liberal version of the Tea Party. Their main complaint is that a lot of corporations aren’t paying their fair share. For example, Bank of America, in 2009 paid nothing in corporate income taxes, same with ExxonMobil, GE, and a lot of other big corporations. Do you think corporations like Bank of America should pay their fair share? What are your thoughts on that?Watch it:
PAWLENTY: Well actually the corporate tax rate in Minnesota and around the country is too high. And I think one thing we could and should do is–
FANG: You think zero is too high with Bank of America paying nothing?
PAWLENTY: We have the highest corporate tax rate, or one of them, in the world–
FANG: But they use loopholes and offshore bank accounts to pay nothing.
PAWLENTY: The things I’ve called for is reducing tax rates and looking at exemptions or special deals within the tax code that give certain companies privileges or benefits. I can’t speak individually to any country, company would get in that regard, but I think one goal or direction is to simplify and reduce tax rates and clean out as many of the special deals as possible.
FANG: To be clear, do you think Bank of America pays too much in taxes already?
PAWLENTY: I don’t know what Bank of America pays in taxes. I’ll just say, setting aside Bank of America, the corporate tax rate in America is too high compared to our competitor nations.
Even Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), a Republican well to the right of Pawlenty on most issues, told us that corporate tax dodgers “broke the law.” As he prepares to run for president, Pawlenty has positioned himself close to the corporate right. Last year, we broke a story about how bailed out banks — still on the hook for taxpayer money — were funneling cash to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to kill financial reform. We asked Pawlenty if he had any problem with taxpayer-owned banks secretly lobbying against reforms for their industry. He didn’t.
06 January 2011
Tim Pawlenty repeats questionable statistic on growth of federal workforce from POLITIFACT 13DEZ10
A Christian deliberately using false information to inflame the electorate's disgust with government is wrong, hypocritical.....and sadly so typical of the gop and tea-baggers
Tim Pawlenty, a potential Republican presidential candidate, ran afoul of the Truth-O-Meter for a statement about the expansion of the government workforce.
The Truth-O-Meter Says:
"Since January 2008 the private sector has lost nearly 8 million jobs while local, state and federal governments added 590,000."
Tim Pawlenty on Monday, December 13th, 2010 in an op-ed in the "Wall Street Journal"Tim Pawlenty repeats questionable statistic on growth of federal workforce
Share this story:
Tim Pawlenty, a potential Republican presidential candidate, ran afoul of the Truth-O-Meter for a statement about the expansion of the government workforce.In the Dec. 13, 2010, edition of the Wall Street Journal, outgoing Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty -- a potential contender in the 2012 Republican presidential primary -- wrote a column that blasted public-employee unions. Pawlenty wrote that government employees, especially those who are unionized, have become unfairly advantaged compared to private-sector workers, through a "silent coup, an inside job engineered by self-interested politicians and fueled by campaign contributions."
"Across the country, at every level of government, the pattern is the same: Unionized public employees are making more money, receiving more generous benefits, and enjoying greater job security than the working families forced to pay for it with ever-higher taxes, deficits and debt," Pawlenty wrote. He even repeated what has become a major Republican talking point -- that "federal employees receive an average of $123,049 annually in pay and benefits, twice the average of the private sector." (In November, we ruled a less precisely worded version of this statistic False.)
"The majority of union members today no longer work in construction, manufacturing or 'strong back' jobs," Pawlenty wrote. "They work for government, which, thanks to President Obama, has become the only booming 'industry' left in our economy. Since January 2008, the private sector has lost nearly 8 million jobs while local, state and federal governments added 590,000."
We thought we'd take a look at one of the cornerstones of Pawlenty's column -- his contention that the private sector lost nearly 8 million jobs while government added 590,000.
To see if he was right, we turned to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which calculates a wide range of labor and employment statistics on a monthly basis.
In January 2008, total private-sector employment in the United States stood at 115,562,000. By November 2010, the most current month available, that number had sunk to 108,278,000 -- a drop of roughly 7.3 million jobs. That pretty close to the "nearly 8 million" figure that Pawlenty cited. (Almost two-thirds of those job losses, incidentally, happened while George W. Bush was president.)
But Pawlenty's public-sector figures were problematic. The BLS has a category called government employment -- which encapsulates local, state and federal employment, just as Pawlenty had defined it. Over the same period, the number of government jobs went from 22,379,000 to 22,261,000 -- a decrease of 118,000, rather than an increase of 590,000, as Pawlenty had written.
At first we were flummoxed about how Pawlenty got the numbers so wrong. We called BLS to make sure we weren't overlooking another data set that measured the same subject, and spokesman Gary Steinberg confirmed that we were using exactly the same numbers he would use.
We also looked at federal employment trends over the same period, on the guess that Pawlenty might have meant to refer to federal jobs, rather than all government jobs. By this calculation, the number of jobs did increase, rather than decrease, but the amount was only one-sixth of what Pawlenty had indicated. Over that period, federal employment rose from 2,739,000 to 2,837,000 -- 98,000 jobs in all.
After a bit of online research, we found a reference to the mysterious 590,000 number in -- of all places -- a fact-check by our colleagues at PolitiFact Ohio.
It turns out that on Aug. 10, 2010, they analyzed a statement by Rep. Steve LaTourette, R-Ohio, that "since the president became the president, we have lost 3.3 million jobs in the private sector. But you know who's done okay and who's not complaining today? The public sector. We've gained 590,000 public sector jobs."
LaTourette's number for private-sector job losses at that point was spot-on. But PolitiFact Ohio found fault with his public-sector numbers. Here's what they wrote:
"In January 2009, there were 2,803,000 federal employees. By May, there were 3,396,000 federal workers. That’s a gain of 593,000, putting LaTourette on the money. But here’s the problem. BLS makes clear, the White House makes clear, and every major news report makes clear when these numbers are released each month that the stimulus had little to do with the growth of the federal workforce. Most of it -- 559,000 new jobs from January 2009 through May – came entirely from the temporary buildup of Census workers. And many of those jobs have already disappeared. ... Exclude all the Census workers hired from January 2009 through May 2010 and total federal hiring comes to only 34,000, not the 590,000 figure that LaTourette cited."
Assuming that Pawlenty was drawing his number from the same source as LaTourette did -- and we don't know for sure, because his spokesman did not respond to an inquiry -- then the Minnesota governor has even less justification for using the 590,000 figure than his Ohio colleague. Here's why:
• When we see Pawlenty saying "since January 2008," we assume he means from January 2008 to the present. But the numbers he used appeared to be based on the change from January 2009 to May 2009.
• Pawlenty specifically wrote that his job numbers referred to "local, state and federal government" employment, but LaTourette's 590,000 only counted federal workers.
• Pawlenty's statement doesn't account for the tremendous -- and now vanished -- bump from hiring Census workers.
The closest we could come to a 590,000 job gain using a legitimate statistic was a measurement suggested by Rea Hederman Jr., a research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation. He suggested looking at the federal workforce minus U.S. Postal Service employees. Postal workers are a different enough category of employee that the BLS does calculate a statistic that excludes them from the federal workforce, and that statistic shows an increase in federal employment since January 2008 of 215,700 employees. But that's still barely one-third of the total Pawlenty cited, and to get to it, you still have to directly contradict the definition of government workers that Pawlenty used in his column.
The question of whether government employees, because of public-employee unions, are compensated too generously or enjoy too much job security strikes us as a fair topic for debate. But Pawlenty did his cause no service by using the 590,000-employee statistic.
Not only did he apparently mangle the time frame, contradict his own definition of federal workers and fail to acknowledge the huge caveat of Census worker hiring, he also repeated a statistic that had been criticized as inaccurate as long as six months ago. (Another politician who got caught by PolitiFact Ohio was the incoming House Speaker, John Boehner, R-Ohio.) And in the context of his column, the job numbers comment was more than a throwaway line. The comparison of job growth he made -- which showed the size of the federal workforce going in exactly the opposite direction as it did in reality -- is a key pillar supporting the premise of his column, that government work is "the only booming 'industry' left in our economy." Pawlenty's number is so compromised that we rate his statement Pants on Fire!
UPDATE: After we posted our story, a spokesman for Pawlenty, Alex Conant, contacted PolitiFact to report that the source for Pawlenty's 590,000-job figure was a June 24, 2010, post by Veronique de Rugy, a senior research fellow at George Mason University's Mercatus Center, on the Big Government site run by conservative activist Andrew Breitbart. After looking at what de Rugy wrote, we stand by our analysis that the 590,000 number doesn't encapsulate the time frame or definition set out by Pawlenty in his Wall Street Journal op-ed, and that it is still skewed by a large bump in temporary Census jobs.
Subjects: Federal Budget, Workers
Sources:
Tim Pawlenty, "Government Unions vs. Taxpayers" (Wall Street Journal op-ed), Dec. 13, 2010
Bureau of Labor Statistics, main search index for "Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics survey (National)," accessed Dec. 15, 2010
Bureau of Labor Statistics, search form for full database of "Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics survey (National)," accessed Dec. 15, 2010
PolitiFact Ohio, "Rep. Steve LaTourette says that the stimulus has done little for private jobs while the federal workforce is booming," Aug. 18, 2010
PolitiFact Ohio, "John Boehner says Obama has presided over private job losses, increase in federal jobs," July 15, 2010
Interview with Gary Steinberg, spokesman for the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Dec. 15, 2010
E-mail interview with Wayne Vroman, senior fellow with the Urban Institute, Dec. 16, 2010
E-mail interview with Gary Burtless, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, Dec. 15, 2010
E-mail interview with Rea Hederman Jr., research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, Dec. 15, 2010
Written by: Louis Jacobson
Researched by: Louis Jacobson
Edited by: Martha Hamilton
"Across the country, at every level of government, the pattern is the same: Unionized public employees are making more money, receiving more generous benefits, and enjoying greater job security than the working families forced to pay for it with ever-higher taxes, deficits and debt," Pawlenty wrote. He even repeated what has become a major Republican talking point -- that "federal employees receive an average of $123,049 annually in pay and benefits, twice the average of the private sector." (In November, we ruled a less precisely worded version of this statistic False.)
"The majority of union members today no longer work in construction, manufacturing or 'strong back' jobs," Pawlenty wrote. "They work for government, which, thanks to President Obama, has become the only booming 'industry' left in our economy. Since January 2008, the private sector has lost nearly 8 million jobs while local, state and federal governments added 590,000."
We thought we'd take a look at one of the cornerstones of Pawlenty's column -- his contention that the private sector lost nearly 8 million jobs while government added 590,000.
To see if he was right, we turned to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which calculates a wide range of labor and employment statistics on a monthly basis.
In January 2008, total private-sector employment in the United States stood at 115,562,000. By November 2010, the most current month available, that number had sunk to 108,278,000 -- a drop of roughly 7.3 million jobs. That pretty close to the "nearly 8 million" figure that Pawlenty cited. (Almost two-thirds of those job losses, incidentally, happened while George W. Bush was president.)
But Pawlenty's public-sector figures were problematic. The BLS has a category called government employment -- which encapsulates local, state and federal employment, just as Pawlenty had defined it. Over the same period, the number of government jobs went from 22,379,000 to 22,261,000 -- a decrease of 118,000, rather than an increase of 590,000, as Pawlenty had written.
At first we were flummoxed about how Pawlenty got the numbers so wrong. We called BLS to make sure we weren't overlooking another data set that measured the same subject, and spokesman Gary Steinberg confirmed that we were using exactly the same numbers he would use.
We also looked at federal employment trends over the same period, on the guess that Pawlenty might have meant to refer to federal jobs, rather than all government jobs. By this calculation, the number of jobs did increase, rather than decrease, but the amount was only one-sixth of what Pawlenty had indicated. Over that period, federal employment rose from 2,739,000 to 2,837,000 -- 98,000 jobs in all.
After a bit of online research, we found a reference to the mysterious 590,000 number in -- of all places -- a fact-check by our colleagues at PolitiFact Ohio.
It turns out that on Aug. 10, 2010, they analyzed a statement by Rep. Steve LaTourette, R-Ohio, that "since the president became the president, we have lost 3.3 million jobs in the private sector. But you know who's done okay and who's not complaining today? The public sector. We've gained 590,000 public sector jobs."
LaTourette's number for private-sector job losses at that point was spot-on. But PolitiFact Ohio found fault with his public-sector numbers. Here's what they wrote:
"In January 2009, there were 2,803,000 federal employees. By May, there were 3,396,000 federal workers. That’s a gain of 593,000, putting LaTourette on the money. But here’s the problem. BLS makes clear, the White House makes clear, and every major news report makes clear when these numbers are released each month that the stimulus had little to do with the growth of the federal workforce. Most of it -- 559,000 new jobs from January 2009 through May – came entirely from the temporary buildup of Census workers. And many of those jobs have already disappeared. ... Exclude all the Census workers hired from January 2009 through May 2010 and total federal hiring comes to only 34,000, not the 590,000 figure that LaTourette cited."
Assuming that Pawlenty was drawing his number from the same source as LaTourette did -- and we don't know for sure, because his spokesman did not respond to an inquiry -- then the Minnesota governor has even less justification for using the 590,000 figure than his Ohio colleague. Here's why:
• When we see Pawlenty saying "since January 2008," we assume he means from January 2008 to the present. But the numbers he used appeared to be based on the change from January 2009 to May 2009.
• Pawlenty specifically wrote that his job numbers referred to "local, state and federal government" employment, but LaTourette's 590,000 only counted federal workers.
• Pawlenty's statement doesn't account for the tremendous -- and now vanished -- bump from hiring Census workers.
The closest we could come to a 590,000 job gain using a legitimate statistic was a measurement suggested by Rea Hederman Jr., a research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation. He suggested looking at the federal workforce minus U.S. Postal Service employees. Postal workers are a different enough category of employee that the BLS does calculate a statistic that excludes them from the federal workforce, and that statistic shows an increase in federal employment since January 2008 of 215,700 employees. But that's still barely one-third of the total Pawlenty cited, and to get to it, you still have to directly contradict the definition of government workers that Pawlenty used in his column.
The question of whether government employees, because of public-employee unions, are compensated too generously or enjoy too much job security strikes us as a fair topic for debate. But Pawlenty did his cause no service by using the 590,000-employee statistic.
Not only did he apparently mangle the time frame, contradict his own definition of federal workers and fail to acknowledge the huge caveat of Census worker hiring, he also repeated a statistic that had been criticized as inaccurate as long as six months ago. (Another politician who got caught by PolitiFact Ohio was the incoming House Speaker, John Boehner, R-Ohio.) And in the context of his column, the job numbers comment was more than a throwaway line. The comparison of job growth he made -- which showed the size of the federal workforce going in exactly the opposite direction as it did in reality -- is a key pillar supporting the premise of his column, that government work is "the only booming 'industry' left in our economy." Pawlenty's number is so compromised that we rate his statement Pants on Fire!
UPDATE: After we posted our story, a spokesman for Pawlenty, Alex Conant, contacted PolitiFact to report that the source for Pawlenty's 590,000-job figure was a June 24, 2010, post by Veronique de Rugy, a senior research fellow at George Mason University's Mercatus Center, on the Big Government site run by conservative activist Andrew Breitbart. After looking at what de Rugy wrote, we stand by our analysis that the 590,000 number doesn't encapsulate the time frame or definition set out by Pawlenty in his Wall Street Journal op-ed, and that it is still skewed by a large bump in temporary Census jobs.
About this statement:
Published: Thursday, December 16th, 2010 at 11:28 a.m.Subjects: Federal Budget, Workers
Sources:
Tim Pawlenty, "Government Unions vs. Taxpayers" (Wall Street Journal op-ed), Dec. 13, 2010
Bureau of Labor Statistics, main search index for "Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics survey (National)," accessed Dec. 15, 2010
Bureau of Labor Statistics, search form for full database of "Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics survey (National)," accessed Dec. 15, 2010
PolitiFact Ohio, "Rep. Steve LaTourette says that the stimulus has done little for private jobs while the federal workforce is booming," Aug. 18, 2010
PolitiFact Ohio, "John Boehner says Obama has presided over private job losses, increase in federal jobs," July 15, 2010
Interview with Gary Steinberg, spokesman for the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Dec. 15, 2010
E-mail interview with Wayne Vroman, senior fellow with the Urban Institute, Dec. 16, 2010
E-mail interview with Gary Burtless, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, Dec. 15, 2010
E-mail interview with Rea Hederman Jr., research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, Dec. 15, 2010
Written by: Louis Jacobson
Researched by: Louis Jacobson
Edited by: Martha Hamilton
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