Call me naive, but I only just realized that some members of the GOP don’t think government employees really count:
At a press conference yesterday, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) told reporters that if some federal jobs were lost as a result of his proposed spending cuts, “so be it.”
I suppose this is of a piece with Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s efforts to roll back collective bargaining rights for state employees: government jobs (except for those held by elected and/or appointed members of the GOP, perhaps) are really just an extension of welfare. Or something. At the very least, those jobs don’t really count. They are doing all of those people a favor by forcing them to go get real jobs in the private sector rather than living off the federal dole. I mean what else can you call teachers, policemen and women, firefighters, mail carriers, and criminal prosecutors but total mooches, amirite?
At least this is the only way I can understand the thinking behind my home state’s decision to fire a shit ton of people, including public school teachers at schools that are already stacking classes way over the state-mandated limit, rather than raise anyone’s taxes a couple hundred bucks.
Perhaps the Republicans’ campaign slogan in 2012 should be “a car in every garage, a chicken in every pot, and a public employee hanging from every lamppost!”
Except then they’d complain that public employees need to clean up the dead bodies double-quick before they start to stink, but there would be none left.
Of course, never any mention of removing his government job.