Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Pat Bauer Admits Unemployment Higher Than Claimed By Obama Administration

Indiana House Democratic Leader Pat Bauer (D-South Bend) pens a column in today's Star in opposition to Republican legislative efforts to make Indiana a right to work state. In it, Bauer admits the actual unemployment rate is much higher than the unemployment rate statistics touted by the Obama administration, particularly after the federal government manipulated the way the statistics are calculated so that many unemployed simply no longer exists in the eyes of the government. Using the Obama administration statistics, Indiana's unemployment rate is supposedly 9%. Bauer pegs the actual number at over 16%.

It is a joke to claim that right to work will provide more jobs for Hoosiers at a time when our true unemployment rate (counting people who have given up looking for work) is over 16 percent. Those one in six Hoosiers who don’t have a job don’t think it’s funny.

Bauer is also offering hope that Democrats this next legislative session will stay on the job and offer their own proposals rather than flee the state in order to shut down the legislature as they did during this year's legislative session. Among his caucus' legislative ideas are:
  • A job creation tax credit to encourage small business owners to hire.
  • State funding for a small business loan program.
  • Giving Indiana contractors first crack at performing any public works contracts.
  • Clawing back economic development incentives from businesses who fail to live up to their promises.
  • A voucher program to allow low-income people to enroll their children in pre-school programs.
  • Full-day kindergarten for every eligible child.
  • Tax credits for child care expenses.
  • A sales tax exemption for textbooks and school supplies
"Right to work for less", Bauer promises, will not be the only answer Hoosiers will be offered for their current economic woes.

4 comments:

Concerned Taxpayer said...

I wonder if B. Pat blames Daniels for the high unemployment?
After all...surely it can't be the fault of Bauer's party in Washington!

Marycatherine Barton said...

I like these eight legislative ideas proposed by the Indiana Democratic caucus. We need our own state bank.

Bradley said...

CT- If Mitch Daniels can take credit for the unemployment rate in Indiana being lower than "all our neighboring states" and "the national average" as almost ever monthly unemployment rate press release from his DWD states, then he should have to take the blame for the high rates, too. I'm not absolving Obama, though. Pols from both parties and at national and state levels screw with the rates to make themselves look good OR not as bad. Obama, Bush before him, and so on. Mitch does it, Kernan and O'Bannon before him, and so on.

Mitch's folks have a particular knack for making even the increasingly bad unemployment rate not sound as bad, but his folks have been doing that all 7 years for most everything they've done when in many ways we're still just the Mississippi of the North (and many areas worse-off than we were before he took office).

CircleCityScribe said...

Bauer or any other Democrat....I don't believe anything they say without verifying it!

Democrats lie.