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How To Have Your Cake And Eat It Too – Join the GOP

Who said, “. . . more spending is not what California or this country needs,” and “. . .congressional Democrats and the administration continue to insist that we can spend our way out of this recession and create jobs, but the numbers just don't add up?" A Republican? Right.
And who said, "We don't spend money on defense to create jobs. But defense cuts are certainly a path to job loss, especially among our high-skilled workforces. There is no private sector alternative to compensate for the government's investment?" A Democrat? Wrong! Both comments were made by the same person – Rep. Buck McKeon, R-Calif!
In the first case, Rep. McKeon was speaking about President Obama's $825B stimulus package in 2009. In the second instance, McKeon, now Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, was speaking about the military budget, which faces spending cuts of up to $600B if the bipartisan deficit cutting panel can't find a compromise within the next 18 days. I wonder if he would say the same thing if one of the largest government contractors, Boeing, were not located in his home state.
This also brings up the question: Given that Pentagon spending is as large as that of the next twenty nations combined, how much do we need to spend in order to be safe from such dangerous predators as Kim Jong II of North Korea or Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe?
And getting back to the 2009 stimulus, this past August the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that in the second quarter of this year alone, the spending package increased the number of people employed by between 1 million and 2.9 million.
It seems to me that if either the Federal or state government decides to hire someone to repair a highway, dam, post office, whatever, that person has a job that did not exist before.
But not according to the GOP. Apparently if the government wants to build a war plane, the workers have a job. If the government wants to repair a highway, the workers have a . . . what?
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