"We just love firing people, don't we darling?" (Jeff Haynes/Reuters)
Via Greg Sargent, Mitt Romney once again
made it clear that his jobs plan is to fire government workers:
The Republican presidential candidate criticized his 2012 competitor for "pushing aside the private sector" and instead wants to add more government jobs. He cited the recent gubernatorial recall vote in Wisconsin as a sign voters want the opposite.
Romney said of Obama, "he wants another stimulus, he wants to hire more government workers. He says we need more fireman, more policeman, more teachers. Did he not get the message of Wisconsin? The American people did. It's time for us to cut back on government and help the American people."
Of course, the fact is that over the past 27 months, we have added 4.3 million private sector jobs—while losing more than a half-million public sector ones. If we'd simply held the line on government jobs instead of laying people off, the economy would be in much better shape. But Mitt Romney believes the exact opposite: he wants to fire even more government workers.
Last month, he even falsely claimed that under Obama, the government workforce had grown by 145,000. That's utterly false, but Romney said he wanted to fire them anyway.
Why? In his words, firing government workers would put other Americans "back to work." But that's nuts. Anytime somebody loses a job, it's bad news for the economy. That alone demonstrates that Mitt Romney doesn't understand what it takes to be president. He should head back to Bain. At least he was good at that job.