What Romney really wants to do

June 12, 2012

ThinkProgress reports, "Mitt Romney slammed President Obama last week for wanting to hire 'more firemen, more policemen, and more teachers,' making a clear assertion that those workers belong among the 700,000 public sector workers who have lost their jobs in the last three years. Romney's campaign chair and other endorsers have backed him up on this desire to keep public employees out of work. But during an appearance on Fox News Tuesday morning, Romney contradicted his own remarks, saying that the Obama campaign was making 'a very strange accusation' when it claimed he didn't want to hire more teachers."

Progressive Point: Many Virginians are struggling and trying to sort out what politicians are really saying and stand for. Mitt Romney's latest statement--that we should lay off our firefighters, police officers, and teachers wasn't a "gaffe"--is what he really thinks, what he pushed for when he was Governor of Massachusetts, and where his policies all lead.

Virginia's families don't want leaders who think our children are too smart, our homes are too safe, and the middle class has too many good jobs. Good teachers, firefighters, nurses, and police officers don't just keep our Commonwealth running. Keeping them on the job keeps customers in our stores--and that's just what Virginia's private sector needs to thrive and hire.

Get the Facts: via the Media Matters Action Network:

• While the private sector has added over 4 million jobs in the past two years, 600,000 firefighters, nurses, cops, teachers, and other workers in the public sector have been laid off.


• Last year alone, Washington Republicans tried to kill over 7 million jobs. At the state and local level, GOP leadership pushed for the public sector layoffs that are dragging down the national economic recovery.


• In fact, if public sector employment had been allowed to recover normally, we could have nearly 2 more million jobs today -- including 500,000 jobs in the private sector.


• If GOP politicians hadn't also blocked efforts to put Americans back to work fixing our roads and bridges, the unemployment rate could be down to 6% already.

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