Rick Scott's 700,000 Lies

See what I did there? That headline makes it sound like Rick Scott has told 700,000 lies since taking office. He has probably told far fewer, at least consequential ones, but it sound like a really big deal when I put it that way.

But really, this post is about one lie, that Rick Scott was going to create 700,000 in 7 years through, well, some other third 7 thing as part of his "7-7-7 Plan." (I bet the rest of the country thought Herman Cain was so creative)

The big politics story in Florida this week has been about how the press suddenly realized he was measuring job growth in a different way than he promised. See, the 700,000 was going to be in addition to normal growth, at least on the campaign trail. Now, Voldemort says that is never what he meant.

I always suspected Scott would claim the job growth was happening no matter what the numbers said, and there are frankly some other ways he is cheating the figures that have barely been discussed. For example, in this statement from Scott "clarifying" what he meant in the central promise of his campaign, he touts 87,200 private sector jobs, but a look at the graph at the bottom of the page shows he is ignoring a loss of 15,600 government jobs in the same time period. We'll get to that in a minute.

The big lie really dates back to the summer of when reporters were just starting to take Scott's campaign seriously. When he unveiled his plan, it didn't take terribly long for the press to realize how unremarkable 700,000 new jobs in seven years would be. This is Florida, a state with so many undeveloped platted housing lots waiting for the recession to end that job growth is almost guaranteed in that time period. Maybe he was initially caught flat-footed when the St Pete Times asked in July if he meant on top of normal growth and he said yes. But come the debates, he wasn't waiting for someone to question things. He stated boldly that everything was on top of normal growth, preempting a call of "bullshit" from Alex Sink.

In hindsight, maybe Alex should have just said, 'Well, I'll create 1 million,' knowing that wasn't a job more than would come if she played the violin her entire governorship. But enough hypothetical dreaming.

Here is why the difference matters. Let us look at the last release from the Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation tracking the jobs figures in Florida. In August, we actually had unemployment rate in Florida fixed at 10.7 percent, the same as the month before despite the addition of 9,900 jobs in statewide. How could that be? Florida's population growth is not just people coming here with jobs. We have retirees,families with only one person working, etc. That means jobs did not go up at a rate any faster than our regular population. That is why the number of jobs gained was inconsequential to the economy, other than ensuring things were not any worse.

There are in fact more people actively looking for work and unable to find a job in August than there were in July. The unemployment rate is better than it was a year ago, but in the last month, it has not improved despite the creation of nearly 10,000 jobs. Get it?

The good news is that while Rick Scott has job growth numbers to hide behind and pretend he is on his way to fulfilling his 700,000-job promise, that doesn't matter politically. The voters only really care if the economy is better. If after four years in office, Florida has created 400,000 jobs but added 3 million new people, the economy will be much worse, and Floridians will have no tolerance for "I only promised this many jobs in this many years" platitudes from the governor, and he will be tossed on his ear.

Of course, there are other dishonest things Rick Scott is doing here. One is the suggestion that his own policies have created the job growth which has occurred. I don't want to suggest his trade trips and marketing campaigns to prove Florida is "open for business" have born no fruit. I am sure there has been some good from all that, and they probably were the responsible thing to do. But understand that Scott has been in office less than a year. Any job growth which he could be considered responsible for could only have happened in the last few months.

For one thing, no real policy objectives could be accomplished by Scott until the legislative session, which did not happen until this Spring. The first few months of office, Scott literally could not get any laws passed because there was nobody in Tallahassee to write them. And with few exceptions, new laws don't take effect until the start of the new fiscal year on Oct. 1, about one week ago! This may be a surprise to Republicans, but government moves very slowly.

So Rick Scott's policies could not, in earnest, have done anything until eight days ago. Just another lie.

Now let us get back to those job growth numbers. I have noted before that Republicans supposedly obsessed with job creation certainly like firing government workers. That is something else coming to roost for Scott with the new fiscal year. All of the employee layoffs that had to come with cutting the budget mean an incredible amount of lost jobs, but Scott doesn't even think those count.

Why wouldn't they? If a teacher loses her job but two manufacturers gain employment, that only nets a job gain of one job, right? If we lay off four secretaries at the Florida Department of Health, but two people get jobs at McDonalds, that is a job loss of two jobs. But that is real math, not Republican math.

Rick Scott might say, with no basis is facts to back it up, that the private sector jobs created were somehow possible because of a reduction in money paid to government workers. Some of that would be because of reductions in taxes and regulations which give a little money back to the private sector so they can create more jobs. That money will be divvied out in small chunks though, so those two manufacturing jobs probably get paid about the same as the one teacher. Sounds like redistribution of wealth to me, but since teachers aren't really wealthy, I guess Rick Scott thinks it's ok. It isn't socialism if the rich don't pitch in.

But again, the fiscal year didn't start until October, and tax cuts to businesses won't set in for another year. The new laws go in effect now, but it will be 2012 before companies are paying out on new tax rates. What's that? Another lie!

Maybe I was wrong in that first paragraph. Rick Scott bundles so many fibs into every statement he says that 700,000 lies may be a conservative estimate.