While doing my cardio on Hallowe’en, I looked up at the TV to see Barbara Boxer campaigning from a union hall, telling us that this race was all about jobs.
Okay, Ma’am, if you want to talk about jobs, why don’t you talk about your record?
Barbara Boxer was elected to the United States Senate during a (mild) recession. At that time, unemployment in the Golden State stood at 9.8%. Today, it stands at 12.4%.
She was reelected to her third (& current) term in 2004, but would serve in the minority, with Republicans bolstering their majority that night. Unemployment in California that November stood at 5.8% .
Two years later, her party regained the majority, with Boxer, then beginning her fifteenth year in the Senate, chairing the Environment and Public Work Committee. Unemployment in California during the month of the 2006 midterms was 4.7%.
Two years later, when her party increased its majorities in both houses of Congress and won the White House, unemployment in California was 8.3%.
Once her party took power, the president and Democrats, including Boxer, took immediate action to fix the economy and create jobs. They passed an approximately $800 billion “stimulus.” Approvingly citing the White House, she said it would “save or create approximately 400,000 jobs in California”. She hailed the legislation as offering “help and hope.” (Her emphasis.) At that time (February 2009), 16,489,677 Californians held jobs. Today 15,975,076 do. That’s a loss of 514,601.* I thought Boxer said the “stimulus” was going to create — or save — jobs. Not a lot of savings in a half-million job loss.
Senator, maybe it’s not such a good idea for you to campaign on jobs.
*I used a different Bureau of Labor Statistics chart that the one I used yesterday when I listed nonfarm payroll jobs. Even if we give use a lower job loss figure, California still lost more jobs since the “stimulus” passed than the Democrats claimed it would create or save.
Hmmm…
She may’ve “worked so hard to get that title” of Senator. But, she certainly hasn’t done much to deserve it.
Oh, well. As it says in the Jerry Zucker parody of Barbara Boxer, “We’ve called her ‘Senator’ for nearly twenty years. It’s time to call her ‘Ma’am,’ again.” And G-d willing, we’ll start calling her that the evening of November 2.