Wait, what?

.


One in a series that takes a look at the unexpected and the absurd.*




Here's the Senate Majority Leader on employment priorities in this nation in the year of our Lord 2011:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Wednesday said Congress needs to worry about government jobs more than private-sector jobs, and that this is why Senate Democrats are pushing a bill aimed at shoring up teachers and first-responders.

"It's very clear that private-sector jobs have been doing just fine; it's the public-sector jobs where we've lost huge numbers, and that's what this legislation is all about," Reid said on the Senate floor.

Wait, what?

Private sector jobs have been doing fine? Reid said that?





For those of you wondering why D.C. is "broken" or perhaps why it's "dysfunctional", maybe it wouldn't be so if incompetents such as Harry Reid didn't keep getting sent back there.

And what Reid was talking about was the President's jobs bill which the obstructionist Republicans who hate this country refuse to pass because they surmise, rightly so, that it's merely a half-pint repeat of the original jobs bill, Porkulus Pt. I, passed back in 2009 that worked so well...

... that, evidently, we're going to have to do again. One gets the sense that Reid believes that we're going to have to keep doing this until we get it right.




Also:

Reid reiterated his emphasis on creating government jobs by saying Democrats are looking to "put hundreds of thousands of people back to work teaching children, have more police patrolling our streets, firefighters fighting our fires, doing the rescue work that they do so well … that's our priority." He said Republicans are calling the bill a "failure" because they are "using a different benchmark for success than we are."

Teachers, police and firefighters are matters of the state and local levels. It's not incumbent upon the federal government to tend to the funding of these jobs. Never was. Porkulus Pt. I helped prop up these jobs and in many cases also helped states paper over their budget shortfalls without those same states making the necessary budget cuts and/or budget reforms so that many of those same basic need services could be retained. That states like California won't address their fiscal woes is now, apparently, a matter of federal concern.

Good luck with that.

* We thought about making this a Sarah Sez installment but what Reid says was even beyond the pale of any insanity that "Sarah" could muster.