June 04, 2012 12:32 AM UTC

Fact Checking "Both Ways Bob" (McDonnell)

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Washington Post reports, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, speaking as one of the growing army of “Mitt Romney surrogates” making the rounds, bobbled a key talking point today:

McDonnell, a potential vice presidential candidate who has sought to walk a tightrope between conservatives and moderates, acknowledged on CNN’s “State of the Union” that federal assistance aided Virginia in balancing its budget, but said it had no positive long-term impact.

“Did it help us in the short run with health care and education and spending to balance the budget? Sure,” McDonnell said. “Does it help us in the long term to really cut the unemployment rate? I’d say no.”

The remarks were part of a war of words between Obama and Romney surrogates in the wake of Friday’s disappointing jobs report, which showed just 69,000 jobs added in May and a slight uptick in the unemployment rate to 8.2 percent. The numbers slowed in part because of continued losses in public-sector jobs… [Pols emphasis]

During his CNN appearance, when asked whether Obama deserved “just a tiny bit of credit” for helping the economy, McDonnell said: “Well, sure. I think there are national policies that have had some impact.”

But McDonnell also criticized Obama for “overburdensome regulations” and argued that Republican-led states have fared better during the downturn and struggling recovery.

The weaker-than-expected jobs numbers posted last week were tough political news for Barack Obama’s reelection campaign, but just about every positive jobs report we’ve enjoyed in recent months, including this one, has been tempered by a counteracting loss of public sector jobs–teachers, cops, firefighters, motor-vehicle clerks. And this gets back to the tough spot Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia found himself in today, as TPM explored in March:

Just as relativity theory only works for large objects and quantum theory only works for small ones, Republicans are currently producing two incompatible visions of the economy depending on the national vs. state outlook. In this case, it’s not hard to figure out what’s causing the equation to break down. The Republican governors elected in 2009 and 2010 promised to get residents back to work. In Virginia, Bob McDonnell’s campaign slogan was “Bob’s For Jobs.” Rick Scott pledged to create 700,000 jobs in seven years. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder described his 2010 message as “jobs, jobs, jobs.” Now that they’re in office, they’re eager to showcase any and all improvements as proof that their policies are working.

“I think even Democrats would have to give folks like John Kasich and Rick Scott and Rick Snyder credit for the job creation numbers they’re posting, the unemployment rates going down in their states,” Mike Schrimpf, spokesman for the Republican Governors Association, told TPM.

If the numbers keep ticking up, that’s good news for the governors’ re-election campaigns. Unfortunately, they happen to govern the very same battleground states where Republicans working on the 2012 presidential race are trying to convince Americans that the economy is a disaster under President Obama.

Now Virginia is shielded, at least in part, from the compounded economic effect of the recent years of job losses in the public sector. The reason, of course, is that Virginia has the biggest base of stable public sector employment there is–proximity to Washington, DC. But the great majority of public sector job losses marking down the recovery are happening at the state and local levels, and fastest of all in newly Republican-held states.

So while Republican McDonnell says that the 2009 stimulus bill “helped health care” and helped his state “balance the budget,” but didn’t help “reduce unemployment,” it’s painfully obvious after all these months of job growth slowed by public sector job loss that the stimulus, underpowered and horse-traded into a mess as it was, actually saved a lot of jobs while it lasted.

This is why Republicans shouldn’t admit the stimulus did anything. It’s just a can of worms.