Gov. Perdue today was questioned about the study recently released by Civitas and produced by the consulting firm Arduin, Laffer & Moore Econometrics.
Mark Binker at the Greensboro News & Record has an account at his blog. Listen below.
Perdue avoids the question and defaults into pre-programmed talking points. A bit off-script, however, is this telling line:
“I’m grateful for those jobs and will deal with the hereafter hereafter.”
In other words, I’ll do the politically-expedient thing now, which is to spend other people’s money to generate some ribbon-cutting ceremonies and give the appearance of “creating jobs.” If the long-term cost is a loss of real, sustainable jobs, then I’ll have my communications staff spin my way out of it later.
By the way, Binker’s take that the report “may be mixing up correlation and causality” because “the stimulus funds came at the time unemployment was rising” is quite curious given that even the report’s executive summary states that the stimulus spending will translate into “between 51.1 thousand and 66.9 thousand additional jobs lost in North Carolina during the time that ARRA funds are being spent” (emphasis in the original) – meaning in addition to the jobs that are already being (and will continue to be) lost due to the recession.
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